10:28 Top 10 'Birthday' Thoughts

A Christmas confession. After a number of stone cold classics packed with great writing tips (Piggies, Warm Gun, I'm So Tired and Martha) it's a relief to have a song that's so lousy you can easily sum it up in one post and still get two new songwriting tickets from!

So let's wheel out Birthday. An oddly structured 'two bridge' (Ticket 62) novelty song that was written from scratch during the recording session.

Structure

A A B C D A E D A

A - 12 bar blues verse (Ticket 34)
B - 8 bar drum build up
C - Bridge 1 'Party'
D - Bridge 2 'I would like you to dance'. This section is in a different key (C maj) to the rest of the track (A maj) - Ticket 45.
E - Guitar/bass break.

As it's the time of lists here's 10 thoughts

I Like

1) Section E. For me, the hooky (Ticket 3) four bar guitar/bass break (1:48) is the high point of the track. For a few seconds the boys sound like Cream. If only Cream were any good. (I'm just kidding! They WERE good. For about four seconds).

2) The piano effect. I don't know what Ken Scott did but it was more Leslied than a room full of Leslie speakers and on the final single ringing chord (Ticket 18) it sounds like he's switching through different settings. Weird. Anyone know what it is?

3) Build up on the V chord. Section C may use the same trick as the opening of Back In The USSR but with stacked vocals harmonies we're giving the nod to Twist & Shout. A build up on the V is a songwriting trick that many writers have used and SO CAN YOU! (Ticket 65).

4) Lennon squared. One of the most beautiful sounds on God's green earth is John Lennon's double tracked vocals. Listen to the 'party' section (1:01).

I Don't Like

5) BVs from hell. The BeatleWAGs contribution to the first bridge has to rival Macca's prepared piano on For You Blue for 'worse sound on a Beatles record'. Their impersonation of mentally-challenged martian-children should be the one that McCartney can't forgive, screwing up 50% of the two syllables they're required to sing -  the second is neither straight or pushed.

6) Utterly stock cliched blues riffs. See section A.

7) Empty drum beat transition. Macca counting off bars in section B, 'A Day In The Life'-stylee, suggests they were going to fill in the gaps later, but the fact that it remained 'blank' (like Two Of Us) says maybe the 'think tank' was empty.

8) McCartney's inappropriate screaming. Last heard on Golden Slumbers Paul's Little Richard withdrawal symptoms manifest here like a kind of Rhythm & Blues Tourette's.

9) Lyrics. They make no sense, follow no rhyme scheme and the few rhymes there are irredeemably dumb - “like you to dance/take a chance”

10) The 'melody'. Melody only in the most general sense. Almost monotonal.

Why is such a banal song so popular? I've shared it numerous times myself and I think the track sucks. The answer's obvious! It's an 'occasional' novelty song (Ticket 66) - meaning 'written to commemorate an occasion'. Christmas is the mother of all occasions but if you wrote a song for a public holiday or special occasion that everyone shares you could be celebrating your birthday 365 days a year.

And on that note Happy New Year from Beatles Songwriting Academy!

 

10:19 Savoy Truffle – The White Album Is Like A Box Of Chocolates

Critiquing

Allow me to be blunt. This is not a very good song. At least I don't think it is. And I think I have some good reasons.

But

I like the track. And I have a couple of reasons for that too. My reasons? Firstly, it's an interesting recording, with lots going on and it's well played. A perfectly credible album track that holds it's own - more than mere filler. And secondly, I have listened to this album repeatedly from a very young (and largely uncritical) age. We have personal history, Savoy Truffle and I.

But I'm trying to learn the art of songwriting from The Beatles here and that requires me to be critical about what works and why (and what doesn't and why) IN THE SONGWRITING. And if you're reading this blog I guess that's what you're here to do too.

Which is all to say – you may love Savoy Truffle. Great. Try and work out why. Because, like me the real object of your affection may be an arrangement, a recording, a performance or even a life event. Or it may be a polyrhythm, a play on words, an internal rhyme or a dominant substitution. Either way let me know in the comments.

Good Bits

The song as a whole is well played and quite funky for the Beatles, but for me almost everything cool about the song is packed into the first 10 seconds.

We have a very free form feel, driven by the electric piano and lead guitar. The melody starts on 9th degree of the scale and a Lennon edit (ticket 37) means we have a disorientating bar of 3/4 at the start of verses 1 & 2, almost like the song is crashing then rebooting, but the third verse (which has the same lyrics as verse 1) is 4/4 all the way through. Check out the way tangeRINE falls on the one in v1 and on the four in v3. The internal rhyme in the opening line CREAM tangeRINE is beautiful.

The chorus has a menacing rising 5th movement (ticket 32 the legendary James Bond chords) - probably the best chord progression in the whole song, but it's used much more effectively in the chorus of Hey Bulldog (not to mention the instrumental break in the White Album's Glass Onion).

The sax's are another Marmite element – the original session players were horrified by the distorted effect, but I like it and think producer/arranger/keyboard player Chris Thomas* did a great job in writing some hooky riffs.

The overall concept is cool, in a way – a bad boy chocolate lurking in the box ready to take you down! But I'm not sure the execution does it justice.

Bad Sounds

There are a couple of things wrong with this song and they're things we've come across before. First an ugly chromatic melody – just like Harrison's For You Blue and Paul's Maxwell. The verse melody is largely constructed from chord tones ascending from the 3rd to the 5th.

montelimar – G# A A# B
pineapple heart - A# B C C#
coffee desert - B C C# D

and the almost chromatic

know it's good news - B C - D D#

This links up with the chorus in a subtle way, as the ascending chromatic concept reappears in the 'James Bond' chords but elsewhere there are too many chords that don't resolve and too many chromatic notes leaving everything feeling constantly unsettled. Just like Old Brown Shoe. Broadly speaking the song is in E major but the verse resolves to Em and the chorus resolves to G major.

And whatever you think of the sax sound, the drums sound nasty!

Bad Words

Savoy Truffle is a smorgasbord of bad lyrics techniques.

Bad prosody

Putting the emPHAsis on the wrong syLLAble. No one says SAV-oy. They say sa-VOY. When that's your chorus/title you got a problem.

Nonsense

I feel your taste? Listen, do you smell something?

Random change of 'person'

Speaking of which, why does George feel your taste? It's not him with the chocolate issues. It's Eric Clapton. So we've changed person. Unless what he's 'feeling' is the taste of Eric himself. Yuk!

Filler

We all know Ob-la-di-bla-da. But can you show me where you are?

What on earth has this got to do with the song? And though the fact that Harrison is misquoting one of his own band's lyrics (Ob-la-di, Ob-la-da) is nothing too heinous,** he is borrowing (again!) from Lennon's Glass Onion, which self-references five Beatles songs and was recorded less than one month earlier.

Lastly I'm just a little put off by the hectoring tone (as previously heard on Think For Yourself). Nag your friends to freedom? I don't think so.

Time to file this song away. Next time a special post on a special chord sequence!

*that's right – George Martin took a long holiday in the middle of the White Album and a number of tracks were produced or co-produced by George's apprentice Chris Thomas.

**thanks to Rich for pointing out that McCartney does sing "bla-da" at the very end of Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da.

11:18 Dig A Pony

Dig A Pony is a song of two halves. The chorus is a lover's plea for help along the same lines as I Want You (She's So Heavy) whereas the verses are sub par Dylanesque gibberish that doesn't even try to reach for the heights of I Am The Walrus. It's all lazy free association wordplay (Rolling Stones = roll a stoney) and arbitrary rhymes (celebrate/penetrate/radiate/imitate) which tread the same ground as George's outbreak of rhyme fever on While My Guitar Gently Weeps (alerted/diverted/perverted/squirted), only less successfully.

The music is not much better. The beat plods and the verse chord progression is angular and ugly. Beginning on the root chord (actually the same alternating A to D/A that drives I've Got A Feeling) we have

A       A       A      A
F#m  F#m
Bm    G       G
Bm    G       E      E


The G is out of key (a bVII) and Lennon employs his usual method of subtracting (Ticket 37) and adding (Ticket 52) bars at will - thus giving us a 4 bar phrase, then 2, then 3 and finishing on a 4 bar one.

A few clever touches, but I don't think there's a single idea in this song that John hasn't used to better effect somewhere else. It's not even the only song with 'Dig' in the title for crying out loud!

And on that rather underwhelming note – we have finished our fourth album! So before we dive into the White Album (which personally I'm looking forward to immensely) you can expect a couple of 'concluding thoughts' type posts, an index of all the Let It Be posts and a review of three Paul McCartney biographies!!!!!

12:37 Old Brown Shoe

I SAID SHOE!...oh, never mind...

I'm going to deviate from my normal M.O. and post on a couple of songs at the same time. I'll continue with Something soon but let's pause to examine George Harrison's curious footwear.

It's interesting that Old Brown Shoe was recorded directly before Something as they're kind of peas in a pod. Both songs break all kinds of rules but one pulls it off in breathtaking fashion. And the other one is Old Brown Shoe.

It's too much of a good thing. There are numerous tickets to write on display here but they combine to make a really bad song. All the right ingredients but instead of a cake you get an inedible frisbee of death.

It's not difficult to say why this song is so bad. It's just difficult to say why Harrison does a lot of the same things wrong in Something and gets such great results.

But here's a couple of examples.

Putting a foot wrong

Staying off the root (Ticket 6) is a great way to increase some freshness and movement into tired chord progressions. But here we only get the root chord (C) for the first 4 bars of a 16 bar verse. We end on the Am (The Aeolian cadence - Ticket 10). The chord he uses as a root is itself an unsettled 7th chord. The root doesn't appear at all in the bridge (the only other section of the song). We also (as always) have multiple out of key chords (Ticket 28) but hanging on them for several bars at a time increases the tonal uncertainty. The melody makes things even worse by being based largely on the minor pentatonic instead of following the chords (Ticket 22).

So instead of starting somewhere unfamiliar and then heading for home She Loves You (intro) or heading out the front door then taking a quick detour Here Comes The Sun (bridge) we just wander around lost with a sharp stone in our old brown shoe for the full 3 minutes.

The most glaring weirdness in this song is the loping off beat drum part. Ringo was a genius (yes I did call Ringo a genius – deal with it) at coming up with fresh and inventive parts, with or without Paul's input. But Ringo was away filming The Magic Christian. So Paul stepped up. But messing around with the beat as he does means we have lost not only the root, we've lost the 'one' too (no pun intended).

Contrast this track with weird metre/syncopated songs by Led Zeppelin. The weirder the riff, the more likely you are to find John Bonham playing a solid AC/DC approved 4 to the bar (e.g. The Ocean, Kashmir, Black Dog). Paul's not entirely to blame though. No drum beat could have saved this song.

Lastly the lyrics are really poor. Harrison sometimes displayed a really cynical shoddiness when it came to lyrics and that's what we have here.

There are some interesting lines - right is only half of what's wrong, but I'm stepping out this old brown shoe? What does that mean? 'Out OF'? Has he moved in with the old woman who lived in a shoe? Or 'out IN'? What happened to his other shoe? And don't get me started on being in the queue for her sweet top lip. What's wrong with her bottom lip? Does she even have one?

The song is crammed full of lines that are not only vague, stupid or nonsensical but also really clunky and awkward sounding. The former is a minor infraction in pop music. The latter is unforgivable.

won't be the same now, when I'm with you
Not worry what they or you say
pick me up from where some try to drag me down
To miss that love is something I'd hate

This song hurts my feet.

The guitar solo is brilliant though...

12:20 Maxwell Edison In The Hall Of Shame

Maxwell's in the dock but he doesn't stand alone. His accomplice Paul McCartney must shoulder the blame too. The charges are as follows

Rhyme Fever

The rhymes in themselves aren't bad, but driven by a need to rhyme the story gets distorted in all kinds of ways

• I must not be so... - so what?
• Is Maxwell at school or studying medicine at university? Medical school? (do you really have to write lines on the board at med school?)
• bang and clang? - presumably the clanging was caused by the hammer hitting the metal plates in everyone's heads?

I've paid good money for this dictionary, dammit!

Quizzical? Pataphysical? So you know big words – don't rub it in

Inigo Montoya rule

Pataphysics is a spoof science of imaginary solutions invented by Alfred Jarry (MacDonald p.357). No test tubes needed. Unless they're imaginary ones of course.

Sentence

McCartney - a restraining order preventing you coming within 100 yards of a three syllable rhymes.
Maxwell – Your hammer will be taken away and given to Pete Seeger.

10:34 While My Guitar Gently Weeps In The Lyrical Hall Of Shame

Oh the best laid schemes of mice and men...This week I'd scheduled a post about Lennon's last best song, and a guest post from Nicholas Tozier on Lennon's worst musical moment. But work and songwriting got in the way. So this will have to suffice for now... 

(seriously what schemes does a mouse concoct? 1) Run along the wall 2) find cheese 3) repeat?)

Don't tell me that this is a great song. I know it is. Which makes today's 'lyrical crime against humanity' all the more heinous. The scene of the crime is the second bridge

I don't know how you were diverted
You were perverted too.
I don't know how you were inverted
No one alerted you.

I call this particular crime Rhyme's Disease or "I paid good money for this rhyming dictionary, dammit!".

"Ladies and gentleman of the jury, I put it to you that the defendant was diverted and perverted before finally becoming inverted"

"Your honour, counsel would state in mitigation that at no time had the defendant been sufficiently alerted"

I rest my case.

Related post: She Came In Through The Bathroom Window's Lyric Fail

Lyrical Hall Of Shame 2: I'll Get You

Time for another lyrical crime against humanity from the pens of Lennon & McCartney.

Imagine I'm in love with you
it's easy 'cause I know
I've imagined I'm in love with you
many, many, many times before
It's not like me to pretend
But I'll get you 

 The problem with this is it makes no sense! The song is obviously one of unrequited love, she's not interested, but he's going to get her in the end! Go get her tiger! But he's asking her to Imagine I'm love with you which would imply he's not in love with her. In fact he's imagined he's in love with her many, (many, many) times before. Why is he doing this? What kind of weirdo imagines he's in love with someone he's not? Or if he is why does he need to imagine it? After all, it's not like him to pretend.

Secondly, I may have got my English usage in a tangle here but I'm pretty sure this is wrong too.

Well, there's gonna be a time
When I'm gonna change your mind
So you might as well resign yourself to me

 You can resign yourself to a situation but I don't think you can resign yourself to a person. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

So as both of these lyrical misdemenours are a direct violation of the Inigo Montoya rule I hereby consign I'll Get You to the (pauses to switch on reverb and digital delay) Lyrical Hall Of Shame (...Shame...Shame...Shame...)


Related Post: Paul McCartney babbles incoherently on She Came In Through The Bathroom Window

12:6 She Came In Through The Bathroom Window (pt.1)

Now we get to our first song that forms part of The Long One. The music is cool in a variety of ways but the lyrics are some of the worse that the Beatles ever released. In fact they’re so bad that I feel it’s time to inaugurate the Lyrical Hall Of Shame.

The lyrics stink in a myriad of ways but the overarching crime is that they’re portentous nonsense. Now I’m not against nonsense per se. When we get to Strawberry Fields  and I Am The Walrus  *SPOILER ALERT* expect me to gibber like a bewigged fanboy. But this is a different story…

Let Macca Tell You A Story...

She came in through the bathroom window.
Good start. Attention grabbing. I wonder who is this girl and why she is coming in though the bathroom window? Heck I wonder whose bathroom it is? I’m sure we’ll find out soon!
Protected by her silver spoon.
Is it some kind of magic amulet? Or a ninja weapon like a throwing star? What does she need protection from? Unpleasant bathroom smells?
Now she sucks her thumb and wonders.
About what exactly?
By the banks of her own lagoon. 
Which is presumably in the bathroom. Or is she no longer in the bathroom? If so, what was the bathroom incident all about?

Didn’t anybody tell her? 
What? Sucking your thumb is a bad habit? Or that there was nothing of interest in the bathroom and it really wasn’t worth the effort of climbing through the window.
Didn’t anybody see?
Her magical ninja spoon? Her unorthodox entry? (Perhaps she is a thief?!!!)
Sunday’s on the phone to Monday. Tuesday’s on the phone to me. 
Let’s take a break for a self-referential nod towards Lady Madonna. The fans will dig that.


She said she’s always been a dancer. 
A spoon-wielding, thumb sucking dancer. Or maybe even dancing thief!
She worked at fifteen clubs a day. 
That has to be against all union regulations. You would think a woman who owns her own lagoon wouldn’t need to work so hard.
And though she thought I knew the answer. 
The answer to that question that you haven’t actually mentioned so far? We’re beginning to have a few questions of our own Paul.
Well I knew what I could not say. 
You do surprise me. You’re normally so articulate.

And so I quit the police department. 
There’s another little detail you forgot to mention. You’re a police officer. Or you used to be. Is it too much to ask why you quit?
And got myself a steady job. 
Most people would say being a police officer is a steady job Paul. Pension, health care, no chance of work drying up.
And though she tried her best to help me. 
Presumably by performing another cross-city dance-a-thon? Why doesn’t she sell that lagoon?
She could steal but she could not rob. 
Genius.
Really.

Does anyone know another word for synonym?

To sum up

This is a bad song (lyrically) because -

• It introduces numerous details out of the blue, only to drop them and never mention them again.
• Has pointless imagery and personification that don’t mean anything or represent anything.
• It is cast as a narrative but has no narrative flow or structure.
• It takes a word and tries to make it mean something that it doesn’t.

2/10 McCartney. See me after class.

(Never fear, the rest of you, it all gets better from here!).