Saturday, October 18, 2025

"Baby Don't You Cry No More"

Earlier this week, I watched the clips from Rod Argent's A Keyboard Approach that the Zombies Fan Club posted on YouTube years ago.  I realized that the short line "Walk away" in "Baby Don't You Cry No More" is sung to a diatonic phrase (E F# G#), giving a sense of the steps involved in this "walk[ing]."

I also referenced the studio versions (Rod's solo version on Red House and the version with Colin on Out of the Shadows) and discovered some differences between them.  First, in the Red House version, the section with "Walk away / Sad to say / Love's grown thin..." is present only musically, not lyrically.  Apparently, the words were a later development.  Second, the two versions are in different keys, so the "Walk away" in the Out of the Shadows version is sung to the pitches F G A.