"I Want Her She Wants Me"

Backdated, archival post

[link to original on tumblr]

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I've been really into Elvis' "Don't Be Cruel" lately, and I just realized that there's a similarity between it and "I Want Her She Wants Me."  Except for the first one, after each "Don't be cruel to whose heart is true," the bass descends diatonically from D to G (and, since it's in D major, it's D C# B A G).  I haven't learned the whole bass part (I know just the chords and the guitar part at the beginning), but in that section, they're playing the root note of the chords above them.  So that D C# B A G phrase is between a D major and a G major.

"I Want Her She Wants Me" is in G major, but it does the same thing.  After "'Cause she had given her heart once before" in the bridges, the bass descends diatonically (D C B A G) while the chords above go from D major to G major.  It differs slightly from "Don't Be Cruel" in that the G at the end of the phrase is above the D.

That phrase links the bridges to the verses in "I Want Her She Wants Me," and while I don't think the phrase in "Don't Be Cruel" really links any two sections, they are similar in that the vocals resume as soon as the bass hits the G.