[link to original on tumblr]
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To go along with the conjectured influences I've been writing about lately, "A Sign from Me to You" might have some connection with the Beatles' "From Me to You." In the phrase "from me to you" if nothing else. I haven't looked into that very much. More tenuously, the phrase "oh boy" in "Pay Me Later" might come from Buddy Holly's "Oh Boy!" Since it's also just a phrase that people say, I'm not that confident in that connection.
There's an interesting progression of verb tenses in "A Sign from Me to You." The first chorus has the line "I try so hard to prove that I have changed my ways," and the second chorus changes it to "I tried so hard to prove that I have changed my ways." I haven't really looked into this yet either.
It struck me that many of the songs on the album contain similar sort of themes (if "themes" is the right word to describe it). Basically, a lot of the songs talk about songs (sometimes breaking the fourth wall, or whatever the sonic equivalent is) and wine.
As far as songs, you have "This is a song written exclusively for me" in "Exclusively for Me," "Funny how the only song I could ever write for you / Is when you said you finally had enough" in "How Wrong Can One Man Be," and "Now that we've written this song / How could we dare to be wrong" in "How Could We Dare to Be Wrong."
And as for wine: "So don't you worry, I'm here for the day / With a bottle of wine on my knee" in "I Want Some More," "Hey, I said, 'Darling, it seems a waste of time / Hey, all we do is sit and drink our Spanish wine'" in "Andorra," and "Take me up, fill my cup with your wine" in "How Could We Dare to Be Wrong."
I think there's also a not insignificant number of references to remembering and summer, which seems a natural extension of Zombies themes, but I'll save that for later.
