Showing posts with label So Long Baby. Show all posts
Showing posts with label So Long Baby. Show all posts

Monday, March 13, 2017

Del Shannon's "So Long Baby"

I've been listening to my two-CD set of Del Shannon a lot lately, and I noticed a couple of little things about the vocal melody in "So Long Baby."

The end of the line "Step by step you put me down" descends, and "down" has a melisma (Bb Ab F), so there's a musical representation (in two ways, actually) of the putting down.

The "hearts" in the line "We tried to break each other's hearts" also has a melisma (Eb F Eb), so the word itself is broken into syllables, mirroring the broken hearts in the lyric.