"Dim, Dim the Lights (I Want Some Atmosphere)"
I actually noticed a couple months ago that the line "Turn down the lights" descends (I think it's E C C# A), as if to match the lowering of the light level, but I didn't think that that alone was significant enough to write a post about.For what it's worth, the title What a Crazy Party comes from a line in this song.
"Burn That Candle"
At the very end, there's a near quote of Mendelssohn's Wedding March from the incidental music to A Midsummer Night's Dream (Op. 61). I probably noticed this quotation before but didn't really think about it.The phrase at the end of "Burn That Candle" (played on saxophone) is something like:
And here's the phrase from Mendelssohn's Wedding March that it quotes:
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| [notation found here] |
That's just the first violin part, but the same phrase is played on the flutes, oboes, and clarinets.
There are only slight differences between Mendelssohn's phrase and this quotation. The rhythms are basically the same (the phrase in "Burn That Candle" just turns some of Mendelssohn's quarter notes into pairs of eighth notes), and with the exception of one note (the third in each phrase), the intervals are the same.
Recently, however, I noticed that there's an-other phrase that seems to come from the Wedding March. After the first chorus and the saxophone solo, there's this five-note phrase:
These are the same four notes that begin the Wedding March quotation at the end, just an octave lower and with the order of two notes (E and D) reversed.
"Hey Then, There Now"
One of the verses ends with the line "Will you be the apple of my eye?" which is a phrase from the Bible. It's in Psalm 17:8 ("Keep me as the apple of your eye; hide me in the shadow of your wings"), but apparently the first instance is Deuteronomy 32:10: "He [God] found him [Jacob] in a desert land, and in the howling waste of the wilderness; he encircled him, he cared for him, he kept him as the apple of his eye.""How Many?"
I noticed a couple things about the bridge:Now there must have been a million
For everywhere you go
You seem so well acquainted
Ev'rybody says hello
The "every-" of "everywhere" is pronounced with three syllables (rather than just two, like the "ev'ry-" of "ev'rybody"). This three-syllable pronunciation provides a sense of the breadth of everywhere.
I also noticed a grammatical ambiguity: for could be understood as preposition or a conjunction. As a preposition, there's a sense of calculating. With that parsing, the sentiment is: you've surely known a million guys in each place you've been. Parsing for as a conjunction provides a reason for positing that "there must been been a million." It's easier to see the distinction if for is replaced with because: "Now there must have been a million [guys you know] / Because everywhere you go / You seem so well acquainted."
