Everybody had a good time????*
I've Got A Feeling is a pleasant enough song that punches a little above it's weight and appears slightly better than it really is.
Part of that is down to the feeling that this is a return to the Lennon/McCartney duets of old. Many Beatles tracks prior to Help have a shared lead vocal making it almost impossible for transcribers to discern who is singing melody and who is harmonising.
The reality is that this is another patchwork song like A Day In The Life, only in reverse - Lennon supplies missing 'bridge' for Paul. So despite appearances there is little emotional connection between the two and this is as much a true duet as Free As A Bird.
That said the song works because luckily the two parts fit together perfectly. They have the same chord sequence (though my guess is that Lennon's melody sat nicely on Paul's chords rather than both having come up with the same (admittedly simple) chord progression. The overlapping of parts isn't on a level with Paul's brilliant descant on Help (they both start on the 'and' after the one here) but John's low 'regular' line sits nicely under Paul's high meandering one. Paul's parts are all about 'I' but John's are about 'Everybody'. And John's wit shines against Paul's slightly lazy and vague lyrical offering. (He spends far more time telling us he has a feeling than what the feeling 'is').
There are a few nice lyrical moments in Paul's verse (please believe me/if you leave me) and bridge (wandering around/wondering how) but the latter get lost in the screaming, where as John's hair down/socks up/foot down gives a strong sense of shape to his part.
Predictably enough for blues screamer the melody uses lots of b3rd and b7ths, with Lennon's part employing the major pentatonic. There's some cool nods to the blues in the distorted chromatically descending 7th chords (0:29) that reminds me of Led Zeppelin channelling Robert Johnson on Celebration Day.
Perhaps the most interesting song tip to take away is how the band places the title in the verses.
This is the title,
The title one more time,
Oh yeah, oh yeah.
This is the title,
The title with a rhyme,
Oh no, oh no, oh no, yeah, yeah.
This is the title, yeah.
In the second verse McCartney develops the idea with less repetition
The second verse,
Is nothing like the first,
oh yeah, oh yeah.
A straight repeat,
Might even make it worse,
oh no, oh no, yeah, yeah.
This is the title, yeah.
But then the third verse (after the bridge) returns to the original scheme.
Maybe that's something you can take away.
*Andy Warhol - incase you were wondering. You're welcome.
This is such an obvious cut and paste job lyrically. Macca had something unfinished, so they stuck on a piece that John had a rough idea of (if you listen to the sessions, you'll see that he plays with variations of "everybody had's" before this version came about).
ReplyDeleteIt's certainly nothing new, and in a way it is another case of John taking a "just passed" song of Paul's, and making it something more. It is a song that I actually quite like, but can't understand why to be honest.
In some ways it's almost tit for tat with what Paul did for A Day In The Life, although what John already had there was so much more than this would even have after John's bits were added.
Yeah I like it too, but for me it's based on the vibe rather than any solid songwriting ideas...
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