"She Does Everything for Me"

Backdated, archival post

[link to original on tumblr]

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I transcribed the lyrics to "She Does Everything for Me" because - while I haven't really learned any more of it - I've been kind of obsessed with it lately.  And I found something interesting.

There are falsetto parts during the second half of each of the verses (or whatever they're called; I'm bad at song terminology; they might technically be pre-choruses), and in both cases, those falsetto parts are reductions of the lyrics in the verse proper.

[Disclaimer that my transcribed lyrics are as I hear them and quite possibly might be wrong.]

So, in the second half of the first verse, the lead vocals are:

She won't lead me up with air
And tell me that she doesn't care
About the way I feel
'Cause I'm a fool

[Side note to point out the interesting line-ending words here (feel and fool), which differ only in the vowels.]

And the falsetto part is:

She won't lead me
Up with air and
Tell me I'm
A fool

So, all of the lyrics in the falsetto part are contained within the lead vocals:

She won't lead me up with air
And tell me that she doesn't care
About the way I feel
'Cause I'm a fool

And in the second half of the second verse the lead vocals are:

She's a girl who makes me feel
That you're not there, you weren't real
I feel so good that
I don't care at all

And the falsetto part is:

She's a girl who
Makes me feel that
I don't care
At all

So, likewise:

She's a girl who makes me feel
That you're not there, you weren't real
I feel so good that
I don't care at all

I'm pretty sure that some of these features in the main vocals/backing vocals relationship (with special regard to lyrics) are also present in some Argent songs.  Maybe not where the lyrics in the backing vocals are reductions of the lyrics in the main vocals, but at least where the backing vocals are delivered with either longer notes or melismas so that they sort of match up to the main vocal's longer lyrics.  (Looking quickly, the only one I can find that does this is "Sleep Won't Help Me" from Ring of Hands.  During the choruses, the backing vocals deliver the same lyrics as the lead vocals but with different note values corresponding to particular syllables.)

Anyway, I think this is a really cool feature.  It's almost like counterpoint, but lyrically instead of musically.