Saturday, March 26, 2022

"Care of Cell 44"

I was thinking about "Care of Cell 44" recently and had two thoughts:

First, it would make more sense to understand the "good morning" at the beginning of the song more metaphorically than strictly temporally.  It's an epistolary song ("writing this letter..."), and the letter could be read at any time of the day, not just the morning.  As a metaphor, though, this "good morning" could represent the renewal of the relationship that the narrator describes ("we'll get to know each other for a second time").

Second, a change in the bass part seems to indicate the narrator's growing eagerness.  For the first three verses, most of the bass part is half notes, but in the verse after the bridge, the bass part is mostly quarter notes.  To some degree, this provides a musical sense of increasing excitement, as if the narrator's heart is beating faster in anticipation of meeting his girlfriend again.