Monday, October 28, 2024

"Will You Love Me Tomorrow"

I had some old notes on "Will You Love Me Tomorrow," and in looking at the song again, I found a few more features to write about.  The Zombies recorded two versions of the song for the BBC.  I'm more familiar with the first (recorded for Saturday Club on 20 September 1965) because it appears on both Zombie Heaven and The BBC Radio Sessions.  The second version (recorded for The Beat Show on 8 November 1965) appears only on The BBC Radio Sessions.  My comments below are based on the first version, with a couple footnotes on significant differences in the second.

In the line "You give your love so sweetly," the phrase "so sweetly" is sung with melismas (F# E | F# E E), giving a sense of degree, and in the line "Is this a lasting treasure," the phrase "lasting treasure" is sung with melismas (B A C# B | C# B B, I think*), lending something of a sense of the durative nature of "lasting."

In the line "When I can feel the magic of your sighs"**, "sighs" is sung with a descending melisma (A G# F#), providing the impression of a sigh.

Of these features, the Shirelles' version (in C major rather than the Zombies' A major) has just a melisma'd "treasure" (E D D) and "sighs" (C A).

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*The second version has a melisma here, too, but it's more complex.
**In the second version, this line is "Well, I recall the magic of your sighs," although in the Shirelles' version, it's "Can I believe the magic of your sighs?"

Sunday, October 27, 2024

"Sitting in the Park"

"Sitting in the Park" doesn't resolve, and this matches the theme of the lyrics.  In the same way that the narrator is left "waiting for you," the listener is left waiting for a musical resolution.

Saturday, October 26, 2024

"She's Coming Home"

I listened to The BBC Radio Sessions at the end of August and noticed some features that I'm finally getting around to writing about.

The second verse of "She's Coming Home" ("Oh, baby, baby, baby, I'll be good to you...") has softer dynamics than the first verse ("I saw her walking out the other day..."), and this matches the description "gentle" in the line "Our love was such a sweet and gentle thing."

This is also true of the studio version, but the BBC version actually has a greater change in the dynamics.

Wednesday, October 9, 2024

"Never Get over You"

I listened to Still Got That Hunger to-day (because it was released to-day in 2015), and I noticed a small feature in "Never Get over You."  In the line "Not after all this time," the phrase "all this time" is sung to notes of all different pitches (C D F), giving a sense of that entirety.

I referenced Colin Blunstone's solo version ("Now I Know I'll Never Get over You" on The Ghost of You and Me) and discovered that this feature is there, too, but because that version is in a different key, the specific pitches are different (E F# A).

Tuesday, October 8, 2024

"Indication"

Recently, I heard a clip of the beginning of Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D minor, BWV 565 (quoted in Garth Hudson's improvisation "The Genetic Method"), and I realized that the final phrase in "Indication" has the same sort of musical vocabulary.

The bass register is something like this (played with a ritardando):


And here's the beginning of Bach's toccata:

[source]

In both, there's a diatonic descent followed by an accidental on the seventh degree of the scale (G# in the A minor of "Indication" and C# in the D minor of Bach's toccata).  This accidental is also at or near the end of the phrase and played with a longer note value than the preceding notes.

There's a definite similarity here, and Rod Argent sometimes mentions Bach (in the liner notes for Classically Speaking, he wrote, "And I've always loved Bach!" and in a 2009 BBC radio segment, he called Bach "without any question, the greatest musician who ever lived"), but of course, it's just speculation on my part that this is an instance of Bach's influence.

For what it's worth:  in the live version of "Hold Your Head Up" from the Zombies' concert at Abbey Road, Argent even plays part of the fugue that follows this toccata.