Backdated, archival post
[link to original on tumblr]
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When I listened to the second disc of the 30th anniversary of George Harrison's All Things Must Pass this afternoon, the first vocal phrase in "The Art of Dying" sounded vaguely familiar to me. In my head, I could hear an-other part that wasn't in Harrison's song, so I figured that I was remembering an-other song that it sounded like. I eventually placed it as Colin Blunstone's "A Sign from Me to You," and I just lookt into the similarities.
The similarity is between only the first vocal phrase of each verse. I didn't figure out the exact melody for either, but they're both (roughly) a rising and falling phrase (something like A, B, C, D, C, B, A). They both have eleven syllables too. The first line of "The Art of Dying" is "There'll come a time when all of us must leave here" (in the liner notes, the lyrics are rendered with a line break ["There'll come a time / When all of us must leave here"], but there isn't really a break there as they're sung. The first line of "A Sign from Me to You" is "You say all you wanted was a sign, my love." The first lines of all the other verses in both songs also have eleven syllables.
In some interviews and things I've read, Blunstone has mentioned that he's a fan of the Beatles, but I don't know if that extends to their solo material. This similarity with Harrison's "The Art of Dying" would seem to suggest so.
