Monday, December 30, 2019

"I'll Make It up to You"

In "I'll Make It up to You," the "every"s in the lines "That in every way" and "In each and every way" are sung with three syllables, musically giving a sense of number, and the "way" in "That in every way" is sung with a melisma (G D E), giving a sense of amount.

Monday, December 23, 2019

"The Way You Do the Things You Do"

In "The Way You Do the Things You Do," "bright" in the line "You got a smile so bright" and "rich" in the line "You made my life so rich" are both sung with a melisma (B B), musically giving a sense of degree (for "so").

"Tight" in the line "I'm holding you so tight" is sung with a melisma (B A B D E, I think), also giving a sense of degree.

Monday, December 16, 2019

"Watch Your Step"

In "Watch Your Step," the "away" in the line "Before you go away" is sung with a melisma (C C Eb F G, I think), musically giving a sense of movement.  "Every" and "night" in the line "You gonna miss me every night" are also sung with melismas (G Bb C Eb F Eb and F G respectively), musically giving a sense of number or frequency, and in the following line - "I'm gonna get myself together, and ev'rything gonna be alright" - the "al" of "alright" is sung with a melisma (G F Eb), musically giving a sense of breadth or entirety.

While reviewing the song in order to write this post, I also noticed that "wide" in the line "Keep your eyes open wide" is also sung with a melisma (D C Bb G, I think), musically giving a sense of the word's meaning and that the three syllables of "ev'rything" in the line "I'm gonna get myself together, and ev'rything gonna be alright" are all sung to different pitches (G F Eb) for a sense of breadth.

Monday, December 9, 2019

"Look Away"

At the beginning of "Look Away," the only instrumentation is organ, and the sparseness of the arrangement gives some sense of the solitude of the first line:  "All alone, standing here by myself."

"Alone" in that first line is sung with a melisma (Bb C Bb A G F G) musically giving a sense of the degree of that "all."  In the first line of the second verse - "She's so close, the girl that I knew so well" - "close" is sung with the same melisma for a musical sense of the degree of that "so."  The second "so" there ("so well") is also sung with a melisma (A G F) for a sense of degree.

At least one of the "away"s in the title phrase in the lead vocals (at ~1:47) is sung with a melisma (D D C), musically giving a sense of movement.  The "look away"s in the backing vocals are sung to phrases that move in opposite directions (one descends - C C A; one ascends - E E F), which gives a sense of movement or even of distance.

Monday, December 2, 2019

"Since I Don't Have You"

"Since I Don't Have You" exhibits the rhetorical effect of anaphora - the repeated "I don't have."  This gives a sense of the singer/speaker's utter lack.  In the verses, the backing vocals double only "I don't have," so the lack of the various things that the lead vocal mentions ("plans and schemes... hopes and dreams...") is also represented by their absence.

The three syllables of "anything" in the repeated line "I don't have anything" are all sung to different pitches (G F Db), musically giving a sense of breadth.

While it's probably intended to be causal (in the same way that the title phrase is), the line "Since you walked out on me, oh, in walked old misery" in the bridge could also be understood as temporal.

"Share" in the line "And I don't have love to share" is sung with a melisma (F Db); since the word is sung to two different pitches, there's a musical sense of that "shar[ing]."