KEY c minor/E-flat Major
METER 4/4
------ 2X --------
FORM Verse -> Refrain -> Bridge -> Refrain -> Verse ->
Refrain -> Verse (instrumental) -> Refrain (fadeout)
GENERAL POINTS OF INTEREST
- Considering that the Beatles didn't go in for full-fledged modulations all that much in their songs, this one is quite notable for the way in which it keeps changing key throughout. In particular, it makes use of the technique of alternating between a minor key and its relative Major towards ends that are both expressive and structural. Paul would appear to have as much a soft spot as John for this gambit over the long run. Off the top of my head we've seen it most before in "Not a Second Time" , "And I Love Her" , and "Yesterday."
- The form is of interest for its inclusion of *both* a refrain and a bridge, as well as its placement of the instrumental solo so near to the very end; the latter, yet another gonnection with "You've Got Hide Your Love Away"
- The melody is similarly uncomplicated though a nice exotic touch is to be found in the augmented seconds (as in "girl who came to stay") made possible by the so-called 'harmonic minor' scale.
- John's single track lead vocal has a quivering sincerity that is intensified by the placement of the tune so high in his range, and the rhythmic fexibility given to his scanning of the words against the underlying meter. Lewisohn describes it as "sultry"; I relate to it more as "extremely direct presence".
- In the refrain the backing voices provide a classically Beatles-like italicizing of title word. In the bridge they provide a uniquely "naughty" (again, nach ML) scat singing backwash.
- With the exception of two significant momentary lapses the backing rhythm is carried by a rocking or lilting of implied fast triplets. The lapses occur in the bridge and final verse where a shift to exactingly even eighth note motion signals a mood change; the even motion connoting a "no mincing of words" kind of rise above the more relaxed and resigned feeling of the triplets. This use of surface rhythm as a combination leitmotif and articulative/associative device is (IMHO) a mark of extreme compositional sophistication.
- Layering the arrangement a bit had always been a favorite trick of theirs, but here it's carried a step more subtle. What sounds like either a mandolin or acoustic 12-string adds a counter-melody to the lead vocal in the second verse. This idea is further developed in the final (and completely instrumental) verse section by the addition of a *second* counter-melody (this one sounding very much like a finger picked sitar!) played in counterpoint to the one that had already been heard the previous time around. The choice to recapitulate the "no mincing" rhythm in *this* verse, so late in the song and the only instrumental section of it to boot, is an uncanny and unfying stroke.
SECTION-BY-SECTION WALKTHROUGH
- The verse is eight measures long and is built out of two parallel phrases; the melodies of which are identical but with a small different twist in the chord progressions:
- The words too intensify. The attitude earlier in the song had been more on the side of sadness than anger, but starting here and continuing into the final sung verse a streak of bitter and not entirely becoming pique and anger exposes itself. How true to form it is, as well, for John's hurt to be revealed as critically linked on some level to humiliation in public by the words and deeds of his beloved.
SOME FINAL THOUGHTS
- The most intruiging aspect of this song is how it manages to forge an ultimately coherent statement out of what on the surface would seem to be a tangle of internally contradictory and changable, confused sentiments. There's a restless emotional shifting of mood and perspective as we move from one section to the next as the song unfolds; this is reinforced on the purely musically plane by the extent to which the key and melodic style changes every time to match.
- It is as though coherence is dynamically established here as a kind of tense truce drawn for the moment between the negative anxiety and hurt of the verses and bridge articulated explicitly by words, and and the ineffible certainty of desire of the refrains, left entirely implicit and embedded between the phonemes.
Regards,
Alan ([email protected])
--- "She'll only reject me in the end..." 062493#84 --- Copyright (c) 1993 by Alan W. Pollack All Rights Reserved This article may be reproduced, retransmitted, redistributed and otherwise propagated at will, provided that this notice remains intact and in place. Click here to return.
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