Simon & Garfunkel's "Blessed"

Last week I listened to Simon & Garfunkel's Sounds of Silence for the first time in over a year, and I remembered something I'd previously noticed but (apparently) haven't written about: the song's verses have the same structure as the Beatitudes (Matthew 5:3-12).  Each Beatitude has the structure "Blessed are [group] for...."  The first three lines of each verse in "Blessed" begin with either "Blessed are..." or "Blessed is...."  For instance, the first line of the song is "Blessed are the meek for they shall inherit," which is almost straight from Beatitudes.  It's just missing the direct object of "inherit" - "Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth" (Matthew 5:5).

I'd noticed that similarity years ago, but when I listened to the song again recently, I found an-other Biblical reference.  Each verse ends with the line "Oh, Lord, why have you forsaken me," which is similar to the first half of Psalm 22:1:  "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"  This verse is also quoted by Christ on the cross (Matthew 27:46, Mark 15:34).

The Moody Blues' Keys of the Kingdom

Last month I read Matthew 16:19, where Jesus tells His disciples "I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven."  This reminded me of the Moody Blues album Keys of the Kingdom, and I started wondering whether this verse had any influence on the album title.  I listened to Keys of the Kingdom a few days ago, and while I didn't find anything that connects it to this verse from Matthew, I did find a couple things to write about.

"Bless the Wings (That Bring You Back)"

The last three lines of the bridge are "The dust of many centuries / Has blown across this land / But love will not be scattered like the sand."  These are fairly similar to the bridge of "Lovely to See You" from On the Threshold of a Dream: "Tell us what you've seen in faraway forgotten lands / Where empires have turned back to sand."  There are a number of similarities here: both songs were written by Justin Hayward; both of these sections are bridges; and both rhyme "land(s)" with "sand."

A couple months ago I wrote a post about the bridge in "Lovely to See You" and postulated that it might have been influenced by Percy Bysshe Shelley's poem "Ozymandias," which has the same image of a domain erased by sand and even the same land/sand rhyme.  This same image appearing again in "Bless the Wings" (although this time with love surviving) could be coincidental, or it might be Hayward's revisiting either his older song or Shelley's poem.

"Once Is Enough"

A year or two ago I noticed that the Moody Blues reference themselves at the beginning of the second verse.  According to the lyrics printed in the liner notes:

Sometimes you're first
Sometimes you're last
Then again you're somewhere
In your "days of future passed"

Days of Future Passed is the title of the Moody Blues' second album.

Listening to the song again recently, I noticed something besides this allusion.  The first line is "Just ask me once," and it's sung by a single voice.  The second line is "Don't ask me twice," and it's sung by two voices.  In those two lines, the number of voices singing is a musical representation of the "once" and "twice."

The Lovin' Spoonful's "Younger Girl"

An-other thing I noticed while listening to a compilation album of the Lovin' Spoonful last month is the ending of "Younger Girl."  The lyric at the end is the same as at the beginning:

She's one of those girls who seems to come in the spring
One look in her eyes and you forget ev'rything you had ready to say

Where the introduction completes this with "And I saw her today, yeah" and then continues with the rest of the song, the coda fades out part-way through the "One look in her eyes..." line.  Fading out during that line gives an impression of what the line itself describes: "forget[ting] ev'rything you had ready to say."  It's as if the song itself gets distracted by "one of those girls," forgets what it's doing, and just trails off.

The Lovin' Spoonful's "Did You Ever Have to Make up Your Mind?"

A couple weeks ago, I listened to a compilation album of the Lovin' Spoonful and noticed something about "Did You Ever Have to Make up Your Mind?" specifically these two sections:

Sometimes there's one with big blue eyes, cute as a bunny
With hair down to here and plenty of money
And just when you think she's that one in the world
Your heart gets stolen by some mousy little girl

Sometimes you really dig a girl the moment you kiss her
And then you get distracted by her older sister
When in walks her father and takes you in line
And says, "Better go home, son, and make up your mind"

For each line in these two sections - and within the last line of the second section - there's a different singer or combination of singers.  There's a constant musical shifting in the same way that "your heart gets stolen" or "you get distracted" by the allure of sundry girls.