"I Want Her She Wants Me"

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As I mentioned in the previous post, there are some key changes in the bridge in "I Want Her She Wants Me."  (It flips between G major and Eb major four times.)  After realizing this, I got to thinking about the lyrics during the bridge:

She told me to be careful if I loved her
'Cause she had given her heart once before

I realized that the first of the key changes takes place right before loved.  Along with the rest of the lyrics ("She told me to be careful"), that key change seems to imply that a romantic relationship between these two people won't work out.  It's as if the key change on loved indicates a misstep.

At first, I didn't think anything further about this, aside from that it's pretty cool how Rod Argent did this.  But then I realized that Chris White did the opposite in "This Will Be Our Year."

I mentioned this in a post about half a year ago, but in the bridges of "This Will Be Our Year," there's a minor to major modulation right before "'Darling, I love you.'"  (The whole line is, "And I won't forget the way you said, 'Darling, I love you.'")  With this realization, I thought this was super cool.  One song has a key change that seems to portent ill toward a relationship, and an-other song on the same album has a minor-to-major modulation that suggests the opposite - that the declaration of love is a joyous thing.

And then I thought of something else.  I'll admit that I had to look at the track listing to confirm this, but "I Want Her She Wants Me" and "This Will Be Our Year" are sequential tracks.  Not only is there this playing around with the musical accompaniments to love, but they're on back-to-back songs!

If they planned it that way, it's genius.  Even if they didn't plan it that way, it's amazing.

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This post is the fifth of five ideas/realizations I had about Odessey and Oracle.

"Care of Cell 44" and "I Want Her She Wants Me"

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As I was thinking about "Care of Cell 44," I realized that - along with the key it's (mostly) in (which I've talked about elsewhere) - it has an-other similarity with "I Want Her She Wants Me."

Both songs are based on (mostly) diatonic bass parts.  During the first half of the verses of "Care of Cell 44" and during the first half of the bridge of "I Want Her She Wants Me," the bass plays almost a whole descending scale.  What's weird is that "I Want Her She Wants Me," while the older song, is more inventive in how the chords are positioned on top of this (mostly) diatonic line.

The bass part for the first half of the verses of "Care of Cell 44" is G, F#, E, D, C, B, A (an unresolved descending G major scale).  The chords on top of that are G major, D major, E minor, D major, C major, B minor, A minor.  The relationships between the bass note and the overlaying chord are root, third, root, root, root, root, and root, respectively.

The bass part for the first half of the bridges of "I Want Her She Wants Me" is G, F, Eb, D, C, B, which isn't a scale, but resembles one.  The chords on top of it are G major, G major dominant 7th, Eb major, G minor, C minor, G major.  What's interesting here is that there are two key changes.  It starts in G major, goes to Eb major, and then comes back to G major.  The relationships between these notes and the overlaying chords are root, dominant seventh, root, fifth, root, and third, respectively.

Here's a chart of both of them:

According to the Zombie Heaven liner notes, "I Want Her She Wants Me" is from 1966 (and the oldest song on the album), and apparently "Care of Cell 44" was written for Odessey and Oracle, so it's interesting that the older one is more adventurous as far as bass note/chord relationships, going so far as to include a key change while still retaining the descending bass line.

I'd also just like to note that this sort of comparison is possible because both sections of these two songs have a pretty steady one-to-one ratio of bass note/overlaying chord.  Lots of other bass/chord rhythms are more complex than this.

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This post is the fourth of five ideas/realizations I had about Odessey and Oracle.

"Care of Cell 44"

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I was thinking about "Care of Cell 44" before I went to sleep (which is apparently a thing I do a lot), and I realized something interesting about it.  I've noted before that Rod Argent frequently employs sequential half-steps in his writing.  Usually, these are in the bass parts, but I found an instance in "Care of Cell 44" where he does this across instruments.

During the second part of each verse ("thinking of me while you are far away"), the bass goes from G to F#, but then the key changes (right before "you are far away," which - interestingly - seems to further underscore the distance), and it goes to Bb.  But right after the key change, the mellotron part comes in, and it starts on an F.  So you still get G to F# to F; it's just not all on the same instrument.

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This post is the third of five ideas/realizations I had about Odessey and Oracle.

"I Want Her She Wants Me"

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I recently figured out the chords for "I Want Her She Wants Me."  (Or at least I think what I have is correct.)  I'd gotten the feeling that they were familiar for some reason, and I finally figured out why: they're similar to the chords for "Remember You."

They're not just an exact copying though.  While they are almost the same, they're positioned differently against the phrasing of the lyrics.

The chords for "Remember You" start with a descent from D to C to G and then stick around on F# for a while ("When I'm thinking back, I won't forget you") before going to B to E to Abm* to D ("And if I should change my mind").  It's the G to F# to B to E that I want to draw particular attention to because that's really close to the chords for "I Want Her She Wants Me."

After the introductory part of "I Want Her She Wants Me" (a bass line and then a cycle of G D C G), the chords move from G to F#m to B to Em ("I close my eyes, and soon I'm feeling sleepy").

So you have G F# B E in "Remember You," and G F#m B Em in "I Want Her She Wants Me."  The bass is doing different things, and the articulation and length of the chords are different, as are the vocals, obviously, but I still think it's interesting to note.

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*It might technically be G#m.  They're played the same, but I'm not sure which key it's in at this point, so I'm not sure of the actual name.

This post is the second of five ideas/realizations I had about Odessey and Oracle.

Odessey and Oracle

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Recently I was looking through the liner notes of the 30th anniversary edition of Odessey and Oracle - the one that includes the lyrics.  I'd been suspicious of the accuracy of these lyrics, specifically the first line of "A Rose for Emily" and part of "Changes."

These liner notes list the first line of "A Rose for Emily" as "The summer is here at last," but I'd always heard it as "Though summer is here at least."  Additionally, though acknowledges the difference in mood - summer is usually seen as a happy time, but the rest of this song is about a woman who doesn't have any love.  Though seems to signal that contrast.

The liner notes also have part of "Changes" as:

I knew her when summer was her crown
And autumn sad
How brown her eyes

The British accents are a bit difficult for me to decipher here; just by hearing it, I can't tell whether it's "sad" or "sighed."  But based on the other lyrics, I think it's "sighed."  I (mostly) agree with these other lyrics that the liner notes list:

I knew her when winter was her cloak
And spring her voice
She spoke to me

I'd always thought it was "In spring her voice she spoke to me," but that's a minor point.

Still, you have the structural parallelism between "summer was her crown" and "winter was her cloak," so it makes sense to me that that parallelism would also apply to further words and that they would relate to speech and respiration  - "Autumn sighed" and "She spoke to me."

Those were my qualms up to that point.  But just recently, in looking through the lyrics, I found that among the friends listed in "Friends of Mine" are "Jim and Christy."  But the Zombie Heaven liner notes lists them as "Jim and Christine."  The on-screen text on the 40th anniversary concert DVD also has "Christine."

With the cases of "A Rose for Emily" and "Changes," I had only my own dissent, but now I have more viable evidence.  The Christy/Christine thing for me is the final straw that sort of invalidates the lyrics as listed in the 30th anniversary edition liner notes.

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This post is the first of five ideas/realizations I had about Odessey and Oracle.