"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.

"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.

Out of the Shadows

Backdated, archival post

[link to original on tumblr]

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As part of my listening schedule, I listened to Colin Blunstone & Rod Argent's Out of the Shadows this morning, and I noticed a couple things about a few songs.

"Sanctuary"

The vocal effects in the third verse are what I noticed here:

When all around seems to be trouble
When life seems only to deceive
When nothing really seems to matter
And I look in desperation
For something I can believe

I'm not sure if it's Blunstone doing separate backing vocals or some echo on the last word or two in each line, but after "When all around seems to be trouble," there's a separate "trouble."  There's the same thing with "to deceive" and "to matter" in the next lines.

For "trouble" and "deceive," that extra word emphasizes the lyrics.  The "trouble" in the main lyric is centered, but the echoed "trouble" seems distant, panned left and right.  So, directionally, there really is "trouble" all around.  That effect also is either the cause of or takes advantage of the inversion in that line - how it's "all around seems to be trouble" rather than "trouble seems to be all around."  That effect wouldn't be achieved as well if "trouble" didn't end the line.

There's a similar thing with "deceive."  There's the "deceive" in the lyric, but also the echoed "deceive," which provides a sense of duplicitousness since there are two of them.

Argent's harmony comes in for the last two lines, and having an-other voice for the "desperation" emphasizes that feeling too.  It's as if more force is mustered coming down to the last hour.

"Baby Don't You Cry No More"

After the first line of the first verse ("I'm listening to that midnight whistle blow"), there are some glissandi in the guitar part, apparently a musical representation of the whistle.

"Love Can Heal the Pain"

The first two lines of this (as formatted in the liner notes) are:

You know love can conquer
Almost every thing my friend

I found this interesting not so much for the lyric itself, but that it's an altered version of the old phrase amor vincit omnia, which - translated - is the title of "Love Conquers All" from the New World album, from about a decade before Out of the Shadows.  "Love Can Heal the Pain" was written by Argent; "Love Conquers All" by Blunstone.

"Baby Don't You Cry No More"

Backdated, archival post

[link to original on tumblr]

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The last things I noticed when I listened to Out of the Shadows a few days ago are in "Baby Don't You Cry No More."  At the end of the last section, a few lines are repeated, resulting in:

Baby, don't you cry no more
No more
My baby, don't you cry no more
I've been a lot of trouble, but I won't be any more
Baby, don't you cry, no
Baby, don't you cry no more

There are two interesting ambiguities in this (which typing the lyrics out kind of ruins).

First there's the line "I've been a lot of trouble, but I won't be any more."  That's the way it's printed in the liner notes, but audibly, it's no different from "I've been a lot of trouble, but I won't be anymore."  They negate slightly different things:  "I won't be any more" is quantitative ("I won't be any more [trouble]"), and "I won't be anymore" is more temporal ("I won't be trouble any longer").  However, just by hearing it, it could be taken either way.

Second, there's the "no" in "Baby, don't you cry, no" - the penultimate line.  That part isn't printed in the liner notes at all (apparently because it's just a repetition, so they assume the reader can figure it out), but like any more/anymore, it can be rendered in two different ways.  There's either "Baby, don't you cry no" or "Baby, don't you cry, no."  The comma makes a big difference.  Without the comma, it seems like the line is interrupted and that it was supposed to be the same as the following line "Baby, don't you cry no more" but the "more" was left out for any number of reasons.  With the comma, the "no" becomes an interjection instead of an adverb.  Those two options also vary the function of "cry" - whether it's transitive (taking "no more" as an object) or intransitive (taking no object at all).  The difference in semantics isn't as different here as it is with any more/anymore, but it's still an ambiguity that's present only in an audible form.

Referencing Rod Argent's version from Red House (titled just "Baby Don't You Cry"), I've discovered that the ambiguous "any more"/"anymore" and "no" are present there too.