"It's Not Easy"

I was thinking about "It's Not Easy" a couple days ago and had a realization about the syntax in the lines "It's not easy / Lovin' you, baby / It's not easy / Wanting you so."  The sentiments here could be simplified as "Lovin' you isn't easy" and "Wanting you so isn't easy," but the sort of circumlocution (the inversion and pleonastic "it") matches the difficulty that the narrator is describing.

When I referenced the song, I also noticed that "heart" in the line "When you take this old heart and tear it in two" is sung with a melisma (G# F# E), giving a sense of being torn.

"It's Not Easy" b/w "Twelve Twenty-Nine"

According to Russo's Collector's Guide, Neil MacArthur's "It's Not Easy" b/w "Twelve Twenty-Nine" (Deram DM 275) was released in the U.K. fifty years ago to-day (17 October 1969).  The U.S. and Canada release (Deram 45-85054) was on 27 October.

"It's Not Easy"

The second thing I noticed when I listened to Into the Afterlife recently was some melisma'd "so"s in "It's Not Easy."  Both "so"s in the lines "Is it asking so much" and "I've put up with so much" are sung to the phrase F# E, and the "so"s in the chorus ("It's not easy / Wanting you so") are sung to the phrase C# B.  For all of these, the articulation emphasizes that adverb and gives the impression of a greater degree than if the "so" were sung to a single note.