Thursday, November 13, 2025

"It's Hard to Say Goodbye"

I listened to the two-albums-on-one-CD reissue of Planes and Never Even Thought earlier this week and noticed a small feature in "It's Hard to Say Goodbye."  In the line "Instead of always running," "running" is sung with a melisma (Ab Ab Gb Eb), giving a sense either of movement or of the duration of the modifying "always."

When I referenced the song again, I also noticed that "near" in the line "Always coming so near" is sung with nearly the same melisma (Ab Gb Eb), here giving a sense of degree (for "so").

[Note that the song is sort of in between keys.  I skewed towards Eb major, although I'm almost certain that this re-issue runs a bit fast and that everything sounds a half-step higher than it should, but that's a topic for a separate post.]