Sunday, October 9, 2022

"Never My Love"

A couple days ago, I was thinking about the Association's "Never My Love" and realized that in the lines "When I've asked you to spend your whole life / With me," "life" is held for almost two measures in the lead vocals and sung with a melisma in the backing vocals and that both of these articulations provide a sense of the entirety of that "whole."  I also referenced the version by "Neil MacArthur" (Colin Blunstone's pseudonym from the late 1960s) and found that while it's a bit different, these elements are present there too.  The backing vocals in this section don't have words, just "ah"s, but "life" is sung with a melisma in the lead vocal (C# B) and held for almost a whole measure.