Monday, April 27, 2020

"Baby Don't You Cry No More"

Some of the "more"s in "Baby Don't You Cry No More" are sung with melismas, so while it's negated, there's something of a sense of its meaning.  While writing this post, it occurred to me that "no more" has the same semantic ambiguity (it could be taken either temporally or as an amount) as "any more"/"anymore," which I wrote about five years ago.  I also referenced Rod Argent's version (titled just "Baby Don't You Cry") on Red House and discovered that it too has these melisma'd "more"s.