"I Want You Back Again"

A couple days ago, I was playing the chords of "I Want You Back Again" with some approximation of the vocal melody on top of them.  In doing so, I discovered something interesting about the first verse, which I then referenced the recordings to verify.  The "feet" in the line "To stand on my feet" is sung to a C note.  The song is in C minor, so this is the tonic note, the pitch that the key is based on.  In the same way, the "feet" in the lyric symbolize the foundation, as it were, that the singer/speaker wishes to regain.

I knew off-hand that the Decca recordings (the single version and the alternate take* included on both The Decca Stereo Anthology and Zombie Heaven) are in C minor, but in referencing the version on Still Got That Hunger, I discovered that the Zombies actually raised the key to D minor there.  The lyric is ever-so-slightly different ("Somebody help me / Stand on my feet" instead of "Somebody help me / To stand on my feet"), but the "feet" there are also sung to the tonic note.

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*Oddly enough, what's termed the "alternate" take on The Decca Stereo Anthology and Zombie Heaven was actually recorded before the single version.  The alternate version was recorded on 25 November 1964 as part of the sessions for the Zombies' first album, and the single version was recorded on 2 March 1965.

"I Know She Will"

I haven't been recording much lately (for this project or any others), but I've been practicing my recently acquired flute almost every day for about a month, so I thought I'd record "I Know She Will" with an actual flute (rather than the fake flute setting on my keyboard like I used to do).  There are only seven pitches in the flute part in "I Know She Will" (F#, G, G#, A, B, C#, and D), so it's relatively simple.  Because it's simple and because I'm not very good at flute yet, I've been playing it a lot.  In my recording, I don't play the A G# F# phrase very cleanly because that's not the easiest transition to make at this tempo (at least not for me because I'm still a novice).  This was the first time I recorded my flute playing, and I think I placed the microphone too close because my breathing is audible in between a few phrases.  I feel I should also mention that I combined three takes.  So my recording isn't the best, but the genuine instrumentation makes it feel like I'm a step closer in accuracy.

"Helpless"

I recently listened to Out of the Shadows and realized something about "Helpless."  A few years ago I discovered that some of the lyrics quote Elvis' "All Shook Up," and at the time I was just excited that I'd found such an obvious Elvis reference in a Rod Argent song.  When I listened to it recently though, I realized the significance of that quotation.

The premise of the song is that the singer/speaker is unable to communicate with someone:  "I just want to communicate / I try so hard but my tongue frustrates."  The content of the Elvis quote fits the context of the song (the speaker/singer is "shaking" and "Can't seem to stand on [his] own two feet" because he can't communicate and therefore sees himself as "helpless"), but the fact that it's a quote also fits the song.  The singer/speaker is having trouble "get[ting] through to you," so - with that Elvis quote - he's trying to use someone else's words rather than his own, hoping that perhaps that will allow him to "get through to you."

"Another Day"

After I read the lyrics of "Breathe Out, Breathe In" in The "Odessey": The Zombies in Words and Images and realized that "falling" descends (which I wrote about here), I listened to the Breathe Out, Breathe In album again and found something else to write about.  In "Another Day," the "crime" in "I don't want to waste my time / Fixing every crime" is sung with a melisma (to the notes F E D).  Because it's sung with more syllables than it's spoken with, there's an implication of a multitude of crimes.  It's as if multiple crimes are encapsulated in that three-syllable pronunciation.  The "every" in the same line also hints at that plurality.

"Breathe Out, Breathe In"

As I was reading the lyrics for "Breathe Out, Breathe In" in The "Odessey": The Zombies in Words and Images last month, it occurred to me that there's a descending melody for the "falling" in the line "Catch the stars as they're falling."  It was only recently that I lookt into this in order to find the specific notes.  The melody for "they're falling" arpeggiates an A major chord in descending pitches:  E C# A.

When I referenced the recording in order to write about this, I also discovered that the musical phrase to which "Watch the sun go down" is sung descends (F# F# E D C#), just like the sun's going down.  In the next line, "Catch a little music in flight," the "flight" is sung with a melisma, starting with an E note and then moving up to an F#.  Between that melisma and the ascending interval, there's something of a representation of the flying.