10:48 Hey Jude (pt.2) Lyrics - How Do You Solve A Problem Like McCartney?

I'll be honest folks. When I started work on Hey Jude I was tempted to induct it into the Lyrical Hall Of Shame. The combination of dummy lyrics that never got replaced, words chosen for the way they sound, and 'it-means-whatever-you-want-it-to-mean-man' attitude adds up to a lame lyric riding the coattails of a world class melody. And that's before you realise that half the song consists of the word 'nah' sung 209 times.

But digging deeper I've realised the lyrics display such structural genius that I'm more than willing to give Paul a pass on this one. But let's look at the negatives first.

Star Wars For Dummies

As was often the case, McCartney had the music locked by the time the recording started but the lyrics were still in flux (like Rocky Racoon and I Will). If you listen to the Anthology 3 rehearsal Paul doesn't have them all (or he doesn't know them). He indulged in a Yodaism in the phrase “for well you know that it's a fool” and the song contains placeholders lines, as Paul admitted

I remember I played it to John and Yoko, and I was saying, 'These words ['The movement you need is on your shoulder,'] won't be on the finished version'... and John was saying, 'It's great!' I'm saying, 'It's crazy, it doesn't make any sense at all.' He's saying, 'Sure it does, it's great.'" *

Creepy Words Of Wisdom

Secondly, the song had an odd genesis, which goes some way to explaining the bizarre interpretations that have followed.

It was optimistic, a hopeful message for Julian: 'Come on, man, your parents got divorced. I know you're not happy, but you'll be OK.' I eventually changed 'Jools' to 'Jude'**

Changing Jools to Jude cos it 'sings' better is all well and good. But this is a song written to comfort a 5 year old boy about his parents divorce, yet it seems to consist of philosophical advice on getting a girlfriend - a flower-powered take on the 'love life advice' sub-genre that dates back to She Loves You.

There were clearly other biographical currents bubbling up into the song. Paul was in the no(wo)mansland between Jane Asher and Linda Eastman. John heard it as an endorsement for his relationship with Yoko, a thumbs up from Macca's subconscious. Both Beatles were caught between their commitment to making art with multiple (even unintended) meanings and their contempt for the public reading their own meanings into Beatles lyrics. John in particular felt embarrassed at doing exactly what he condemned in others

He said it was written about Julian … But I always heard it as a song to me. Now I'm sounding like one of those fans reading things into it... Think about it: Yoko had just come into the picture. He is saying. 'Hey, Jude'-- 'Hey, John.' Subconsciously, he was saying, 'Go ahead, leave me.' On a conscious level, he didn't want me to go ahead. The angel in him was saying, 'Bless you.' The devil in him didn't like it at all, because he didn't want to lose his partner***

The debate over open interpretation was thrown into sharp focus once Charles Manson got his hands on a copy of the White Album, read murderous things into the lyrics of Helter Skelter and Piggies, and put his crazy interpretations into action.

Advice on preschool love and loss? The Pre-Ballad Of John And Yoko? Or a Dear Jane letter, containing a deep and meaningless line about a parrot?**** No wonder Manson et al had a field day.

Lennon for what it's worth never changed his assessment, calling Hey Jude

“[Paul's] best song" and “a damn good set of lyrics” *****

So what do I know? Let's look at the good stuff.

A fine line between stupid and clever

For starters verse 4 is a mutated hybrid of verse 1 and 2. This makes it feel familiar but not totally predictable. As usual the song is full of parallel words and phrases (Ticket 24)

make it bad/better/you were made

let her into your heart/under your skin

let it out/in

don't make it bad/be afraid/let me down

remember to/the minute you let her into your heart

plays it cool/a little colder

carry the world upon your shoulders/movement you need is on your shoulder


Also McCartney manages to 'break' the rhyme scheme in the second bridge without making it feel wrong or awkward.

In the first bridge the rhyme scheme is

AAB - CCB (pain/refrain/shoulders – fool/cool/colder)

but the second bridge is

AAB – CCD (in/begin/perform with – you/do/shoulder).

Feels really jarring when you focus solely on the last words doesn't it? (Another case for not keeping a meaningless dummy lyric) but in the song it sounds fine. (Be honest. Have you ever noticed it before?). McCartney's masterstroke is that he breaks the rhyme using a word that rhymes with the first bridge, so it feels right even though it's totally 'wrong'.

We've encountered this technique before in The Long And Winding Road (and Ringo break a rhyme for a different reason in Octopus's Garden) so it's high time it got it's own ticket. Welcome Ticket 73.

But the crowning achievement is the way Paul uses internal rhymes to create a kind of odd-meter, seven line stanza that transforms the verse from this

Hey Jude, don't make it bad
Take a sad song and make it better
Remember, to let her under your skin
Then you'll begin to make it better

into this

A7 - Hey Jude, don't make it bad
A3 - Take a sad

B6 - song and make it better
B6 - Remember to let her

C4 - into your heart
C4 - Then you can start

B5 - to make it better

More amazingly he maintains this punishing rhyme scheme perfectly through the three remaining verses

Hey Jude, don't be afraid
You were made
to go out and get her
The minute you let her
under your skin
Then you begin
to make it better

Hey Jude, don't let me down
You have found
her, now go and get her
Remember to let her
into your heart
Then you can start
to make it better

And there's a few other internal rhymes scattered around. The first verse contains a bonus rhyme

Hey Jude, don't make
it bad, Take
a sad song...

Beautiful. And we're not done yet. There's a few more things to say about lyrics...

Footnotes

* Paul 1974  Beatles Songwriting And Recording Database

** Paul Anthology (p.297)

*** John in David Sheff: All We Are Saying

**** Paul called the line “a stupid expression; it sounds like a parrot" Anthology (p.297)
***** John 1972 interview and All We Are Saying Beatles Songwriting And Recording Database 



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10:30 If I Will It Dude, It Is No Dream (I Will pt.2 – Melody, Structure, Chords)

I've had an interesting problem analysing I Will. Having taken it apart it's hard to see where the magic resides. On the whole it's not brimming over with originality or rule-breaking quirkiness but I think I've found a few points we can take away. The very plain diatonic melody is transformed by a clever rhythmic device and the standard structure is tweaked throughout by a number of interesting substitutions.

Melody

The vocal melody is constructed largely of chord tones moving in intervals of 2nds or 3rds and Lennon and McCartney's usual 'blue notes' spices (b3, b5, b7) are absent. But what we do have is a vocal melody filled with 'pushes'. Just about every other note comes before the beat.

Who KNOWS how LONG I've LOVED YOU (4 AND - 2 AND - 4 AND – AND)

What this means is that we're constantly arriving on a chord tone BEFORE we hear the chord it belongs to. So Paul sings the F which should be over F major while the guitar is still on C major. He sings

G over Dm leading into Gm7
C over Dm leading into Am
D over F7 leading into Bb
G over Bb leading into C7
A over C7 leading into Dm

and so on. This constant, but temporary dissonance, propels the song forward because your brain craves the resolution that comes when the correct chord 'catches up'.

Structure

The Beatles' use of AABA, or verse/verse/bridge/verse structure (Ticket 26) dates back to the first single and first album track (Love Me Do/I Saw Her Standing There) but there are a few twists.

We have no intro other than a vocal pick up (Ticket 2 cf All My Loving)

A1 – Paul turns the would-be 8 bar sequence into a 9 bar one by replacing the usual 'final bar on the I chord' with a 2 bar turnaround lifted from the first two bars.

A2 - is 8 bars long but the final bar uses I to I7. This out of key F7 chord is what theorist call the dominant tonic, or V of IV. It prepares us for the IV chord (Bb) so strongly that it implies we've changed key to Bb. Hey Jude, which was recorded about 6 weeks earlier, pulls this exact same moves just before the line “and anytime you feel the pain”.

B - Whether we're in F or Bb now is unclear because the 8 bar bridge uses a number of chords that don't belong in either key (ticket 28). The 4th bar ends on F7 again leading us back to Bb and bars 6 – 8 lead us backwards through the circle of fifths - Dm G7 C7 F. The G7 to C7 (the V of V*) has a particularly strong homing instinct to our starting point of F.

A3 - Just to shake things up, this time we get 'stuck' on bars 5&6, playing them 3 times linked by some out of key passing chords. We then pick up with bar 7 before going into false/delayed ending on Db (the bVI7) for 2 bars before finally landing on the root.

B2 (CODA) – did I say finally? The coda is bars 1- 4 of the original B section with a modified melody.

So we have a coda and a turnaround constructed from other parts of the song (ticket 4) lots of judiciously applied out of key chord (ticket 28) like the Billy Shears approved bVI (ticket 1), two false endings (ticket 47). Not bad. Let's finish by looking at the bridge chord progression and figuring out what those passing chords are.

7 Drop

We last saw the 7 drop (Ticket 60) in I'm So Tired but let's compare how Paul uses it here with his most famous example, the opening of Yesterday.

If we put Yesterday and I Will in the same key for a moment, the first 4 chords are

Yesterday (verse) - F5 | Em7 A7 | Dm Dm/C
I Will      (bridge) - F     Em | Am  Dm |

Yesterday - I vii III7 vi
I Will -        I vii iii    vi

For the record I don't think the bridge in I Will involves a key change, so the 7 drop starts on the IV chord not the I. Making the progression

F   Em | Am Dm (in the key of Bb)
IV iii      vi    ii

But, as Paul says, it doesn't really matter. Once you get used to an unusual move like this it becomes an option you can slip into your song, whether you kick it off from the root (like Yesterday) or the IV chord (like I Will).

Mystery Chords

If you check the chord sites you'll find a lot of agreement on the chords till you get to the “easy to be near you line” (1:15). The chords are played

x4x3xx = Bb, Db
x3x2xx = A, C
x2x1xx = Ab, B

But what ARE they? Bbm, Am, Abm? Gb maj, F maj, E maj? Some combination? The easiest way to get clarity is by factoring in the melody notes. Doing that makes me lean towards calling them Bbm, F and F dim.


Believe it or not that was my 100th Beatles song folks!

Next up – Glass Onion.


*G7 is the fifth chord in the key of C, and C7 is the fifth chord in the key of F (our home key). So in theory shorthand G7 is the fifth of our fifth or V of V. In practical terms hearing a G7 followed by a C7 makes it feel almost inevitable that we'll end up back on F.

10:29 I Will (pt.1 - Demo and Lyrics)

For me I Will is a timeless Beatles song that could have snuck onto any album from '64 onwards. But for the fact it's almost a solo McCartney track (Ringo & John percussed) I could imagine the band 'soundchecking' it for Victor Spinetti in A Hard Days Night. It's a sweetly unassuming, brilliantly composed track. It shows why Paul is both a master wordsmith and bad lyricist. And, thanks to the Esher demos on Anthology 3, it gives us an insight into the different working processes of Lennon, McCartney & Harrison.

We've looked at Piggies and Happiness Is A Warm Gun already. Compositionally Piggies is pretty much finished by the time it's demoed, but undergoes a folk to classical makeover in the studio, dumping Blackbird and shacking up with Eleanor Rigby. Warm Gun on the other hand is totally hot-rodded - one section removed, others added in - the band are 'all hands on deck' to pimp Lennon's ride.

In contrast, I Will is almost identical to the finished product, bar one thing - the lyrics. Even the clave-like 3 over 4 hemiola (Ticket 29) at the end, which sounds off the cuff on the album (1:42 WA*), is there on the demo (this time played on guitar - 1:46 A3**). The melody, the arrangement, the chords, down to the odd dissonant passing chords in the final verse (1:11 WA/1:13 A3), are all there. But the lyrics are still incomplete. Though some lines are clearly bloopers (he reverses “endear you to me” on the demo) the fact that he has every other detail nailed down, implies that lyrics are the last thing on his mind (quite literally).

Next time we'll look at the music, but for now let's examine the words – good and bad, and what they tell us about Paul the lyricist.

Good Words

First we have the ever present rhyming of ideas, or parallel lyrics as I've come to call them (ticket 24)

who knows how long I've loved you/you know I love you still

love you forever/love you whenever

Paul plays off the title brilliantly

will I wait a lonely lifetime? / If you want me to I will

and later

I will always feel the same

On top of this standard poetic devices abound like alliteration

how long I've loved you

will I wait (2 w's) a lonely lifetime (3 l's)

if you want (me to I) will

and internal rhyme

if you (want) me to

After the triple rhyme of

hear you/near you/endear you

the run on line has a brilliant internal rhyme again

the things you do – endear you to me

immediately followed by

oh/you know

calling this worthy of Gershwin might be a slight stretch to but those old school writers certainly wouldn't have been ashamed to pen a verse like that.

There also a satisfying bookending implied in the lyrics – the song starts with a question

who knows...?

sung on the 7th rising to the root note (E to F). The penultimate line ends with a statement

(You know) I will

the melody reprising the 7th to root note movement before the final soaring octave leap (I Will!).

Overall this is pop lyricism at it's most transcendent – the words have rhythm and melody in themselves – they 'sing' without the need for music. So why do I say they represent McCartney's bad writing too?

Bad Words

In the bridge McCartney uses cliches like he gets them wholesale. Ask anyone you know (a child!) to fill in the blanks

Love you forever and ________
Love you with all my ____
Love whenever we're _________
Love when we're ______

They might say 'ever' in place of 'forever' but I bet they score highly - like bridge of Oh Darling! this is an utterly predictable clichéclasm.

Secondly – what is the story? A hymn to an unknown, or possibly unrequited, love? At first listen, maybe. But in verse 2 we learn it's a love he's never seen (or can't remember seeing)

For if I ever saw you, I didn't catch your name

Perhaps the woman of his dreams? But by the bridge he Loves her whenever they're together. So he does know her!

But by verse 3 we're back to the unknown woman again.

And when at last I find you

And we won't even get into who is, or should be, singing 'her song'.

In some ways this is McCartney's companion to While My Guitar Gently Weeps – a great song with great lyrics...and bad lyrics. I think for Paul as a lyricist, both the genius and the failings have the same root. Words are things to be manipulated, just like notes. The notes and chords have to be aesthetically pleasing, but they don't need to 'mean' anything. McCartney's work seems to display the same attitude to words.

Good Or Bad?

One final thing, which I noted as a fault but I'm beginning to suspect is a mark of genius.

The rhyme scheme in the verses (or A sections) is ABCB

A - you
B - still
C - lifetime
B2 - will

A - you
B - name
C - matters
B2 - same

but in verse 3 the scheme is not only extended, but ultimately abandoned as McCartney bails out on the last line - ABCCCD

A - you
B - air
C - hear you
C2 - near you
C3 - endear you
D - will

That last line should stick out like a sore thumb but it doesn't (be honest – had you even noticed it?). Perhaps the reason we don't is that the last word in verse 3 is the same as in verse 1 (it's also the title). Am I saying you can bail out of a rhyme scheme by substituting the same word you used in a different verse? It would appear so. Paul did EXACTLY the same thing in The Long And Winding Road

Like I said. Genius.

*WA = White Album aka The Beatles
**A3 = Anthology 3

The Minor 4 Chord (pt3)

The Beatles were masters of slipping chords that didn’t fit the key into their songs. Chord like the minor 4 (iv). Last time we were looking at progressions where they went from the major 4 (IV) to the minor 4 (iv) like this change from In My Life (the iv is Dm)

There are A places E I remember all my D life Dm though A some have changed

25 or 6 to 4

Now lets look at the second most common change – from the minor 6 to the minor 4 (vi to iv)

Ask Me Why (Verse) -  vi, iv, II7, V, I (Key of E)

That C#m I, I, I, I, I should Am never, never, never be F#7 blue B

She Loves You (verse) - I vi iv, V (in G)

She G loves you and you know that can’t be Em bad,

She Cm loves you & you know you should be D glad

Any Time At All (verse) -  I, iii/VII, vi, iv/bVI (in D)

D If you need some F#m/C# body to love,

Bm Just look into my Gm/Bb eyes

I Will (verse tag, as a weird passing chord) - I7, IV, V, vi, iv, I (in F)

F7 Sing it Bb loud so C7 I can Dm hear you Bbm F

The Continuing Story Of Bungalow Bill (verse) - III, V, vi, iv (in C)

He’s the E all-American G bullet-headed Am Saxon mother’s Fm son

The Night Before (verse) - vi, iv, vi, iv, I (in D)

Bm Now today I Gm find,

Bm You have changed your Gm mind D treat me…

The iv resolves to the I chord in every song except Ask Me Why & You Won't See Me..

For a modern example check out If It Kills Me by Jason Mraz. The Chorus progression (in D) is I, iii, vi, iv

D Well all I really want to do is

F#m love you, a kind much closer than

Bm friends use, but I still can't say it after

Gm all we've been through

Once again your homework is simple. Try to get this chord progression into one of your songs!

Related Posts:

1: Introduction
2: Major 4 to minor 4
3: Minor 6 to minor 4
4: Minor 2 to minor 4
5: 1 to minor 4 

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