"Shadow of a Doubt"

Backdated, archival post

[link to original on tumblr]

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I think I've been neglecting Colin Blunstone's solo career, so I started transcribing a few of his songs, which somehow led to learning the chords for "Shadow of a Doubt," which I think has become one of my favorites of his (I'd always liked it, but after looking at the lyrics, I like it even more).  It feels like I've been working on this for a few days, but I only transcribed the lyrics yester-day morning.

There's some alliteration in the first line of the third full verse: "The nosy next door neighbours," which I mention first only because I don't have anything to add to it.  There are more interesting things to say.

Like the first half of the second verse:

Company convivial, the drink went to my head
Conversation trivial, don't ask me what I said
Could have been pure coincidence the moisture in your eye

There's alliteration (with some really interesting phrases and internal rhyme), but the really interesting thing is that trivial doesn't fit into that alliteration.  As if the word itself - like its meaning - isn't important enough to merit that same starting letter.

Also the future tense in the bridge (I think it's a bridge):

What's passed is history I'll never wish to read
You're the very last thing I want, the first thing that I need

The singer/speaker is saying that he doesn't want to relive the relationship, but at some future time.  At the present time, he's still interested in thinking about it.

Also "You're the very last thing I want, the first thing that I need" is a solid example of structural parallelism.

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I'm not sure my voice suits this very much, but it's better than I'd feared.  The chords are sort of all over the place (and - as always - I may have gotten some wrong; I'm not sure there are actually full-blown chords during the bridge either), so I felt having the vocal would help glue it together.  I actually recorded this live (as electric guitar and vocals), but I wasn't paying attention to where the melody was going at one point, so I had to re-do the vocal track (and then I double-tracked it).  There's a bunch of just C and F chords at the beginning and end; they're supposed to have variations, but I know only one so far (the last one before the lyrics start), so those parts aren't that interesting.  Also, the solo is sort of painfully absent.

This is a new song in the catalogue.