Under The Influence: Björn Ulvaeus (Abba)

[The Beatles were] absolutely by far the most influential and most important band [for myself and Benny Andersson]. It was the idea that two people in a group could write their own songs and we thought, if they can do it, why can't we? That changed everything for us. Before the Beatles, songwriters were very anonymous people and nobody paid any attention to them.

The Metro

We tried to emulate what The Beatles had done, which was to develop from album to album… to take another step and be more daring

Indie London

And here's a bizarre reworking of Martha My Dear by a 'pre-Abba' Benny Andersson

10:18 Martha My Dear (pt.6) Lyrics

Time for the last post on Martha, though I feel I've only scratched the weird surface of this wonderful tune. Let's look at the lyrics. Though by McCartney's own admission they're little more than stream of conscious placeholders they display the wonderful way Lennon & McCartney placed, replaced and substituted words.

Bookending

Check out the way Paul ties together the very odd structured verse by starting and ending with the title

Martha, my dear
Though I spend my days in conversation
Please remember me
Martha, my love
Don't forget me
Martha, my dear

He does the same thing in bridge one

Hold your head up, you silly girl
Look what you've done
When you find yourself in the thick of it
Help yourself to a bit
Of what is all around you
Silly girl

That line also ties together bridge 1 and 2 as both end with the silly girl line. (There are plenty of musical parallels between the bridges too - both start with Dm7 to G9 or Gm9 and end with a Dm7 to Gm9 and the same one bar brass solo. This 'hook-in-common' means that both bridges lead back into the verse equally well).

Parallel Lyrics

The Beatles loved using this method, especially when tying together odd structures with no real rhyme scheme.

No lines demonstrate the rhyming idea concept better than

Martha, my dear
though I spend my days in conversation
Please remember me
Martha, my love
Don't forget me
Martha, my dear

repeating sentence structures abound

Martha, my dear/love
Please remember me/be good to me
Hold your head up/ hand out
See/Look what you've done

in fact, there's a lots to see...

Look what you've done/Take a good look around
See what you've done/you're bound to see

(...see what I did there?)

Rhymes/half rhymes

Another way of creating a sense of structure is to rhyme the same lines in different verse

V1 Martha, my dear
Though I spend my days in conversation

V2 Martha, my dear
You have always been my inspiration

and inner rhymes and half rhymes make individual lines 'sing'

Please re - member me

In the thick of it
Help yourself to a bit

Take a good look a - round you
Take a good look you've bound to see

Take a good look you've bound to see
That you and me were meant to be

Bonus features

Ticket 3 is in full effect with instrumental hooks like the strings/piano counter melody towards the end of the verses and the aforementioned brass fill arpeggios at end of the bridges.

Ticket 4 creates a solo by having the brass playing the verse melody.

Ticket 5 provides contrast between sections by bridge 2 having a double time feel to the rest of the song and, arrangement-wise, having the main melody doubled on strings in the verse but played on brass in the solo.

Coming Next – George Harrison Blasts Clapton In Anti-Chocolate Shocker!

10:17 Martha My Dear (pt.5) Cells And Rugs

So far we've seen that Martha My Dear is an incredibly complex song rhythmically and structurally key-wise, yet it doesn't descend into prog-rock indulgence. How come?

One of the reasons it remains accessible is the way McCartney uses melodic cells – creating different melodies by reusing the same 3 note fragments (Ticket 9).

So the first (and probably most memorable) cell is the Bb C G that occurs twice in the melody

Mar-tha my dear, 
though I spend my days

in interval terms that movement would be described as up a tone (to C) and down a fifth (to G)

this exact same interval also occurs in the phrase

Silly girl

at the end of every bridge

(F) up a tone (to G) and down a fifth (to D)

But what our ear instinctively picks up on and finds pleasing are not the notes or even the intervals as much as the overall shape.

So the SHAPE could could be described as - take three notes, play the middle, then highest, then lowest.

Bb C G - middle, high, low
F G D - middle, high, low

Inverting this pattern (middle, low, high) gives us the second cell, which occurs three times in quick succession in bridge 2

You're bound to see - F D G
That you and me - A G C
Were meant to be - F D A

different notes, different intervals, even different rhythms but the same shape – middle, low, high. The fact that the motif is repeated in an ascending pattern really helps the bridge section take off.

Is this some kind of musical Da Vinci Code? Am I seeing patterns where there are none?

Possibly.

Surely Paul wasn't consciously using patterns?

Probably.

But in random song like this with so little direct repetition something is making it catchy. One thing that distinguishes great songwriters is the instinctive ability to craft a melody with a pleasing shape. Like the Dude's rug melodic cells really tie the song together.

Another thing that ties the song together is the way McCartney ends both bridges with the same line “silly girl” (ticket 41) McCartney did this with Golden Slumbers, Let It Be and the guitar part of Blackbird and Lennon used it on Julia.

And speaking of bridges – did I mention that this song has two? That's gotta be worth a new ticket (T62). Why have one bridge when you can have two? Tricky to pull off without looking like you don't know what you're doing, but the Beatles did it on I'll Be Back. Do you think it works? Any thoughts on when a song might benefit from two distinctly different bridges?

Leave me a comment.

10:16 Martha My Dear (pt.4) Time and Key Signatures

As is sometimes the case with Beatles songs before you can mine them for songwriting tips you have to ask such (seemingly) obvious questions as “what key is this really in?” and “where is the one?” We had this issue with She Came In Through The Bathroom Window. This time I'll try to keep it quick and painless.

What time signature?

Easy. 4/4.

Hold on there hoss!

Once we get going it's 4/4. But the first musical phrase has 13 beats in it (it ends with remember me). So how does that divide up? The Beatles Complete Score has 3/4 2/4 4/4 4/4. Pollack counts it double speed and calls it 2/4 followed by 4/4's.

I think The clearest way to decipher it is to feel where the strongest accents are and call those the 'one' of each bar. The most likely suspects are

5/4 4/4 4/4
Martha my dear, though I spend my
days in conversation,
please remember
me

Or 4/4 5/4 4/4*
Martha my dear, though I
spend my days in conversation,
please remember
me

For me the second option feels right**. We're dealing with one rogue extra beat and, listening to the vocal line, it's the word “conver-sa-tion” that feels stretched out compared with the rest of the melody. Sing “spend my days in conversation, please” with the same rhythm on "-sation" as you have on the rest of the line (8th notes/semiquavers) and it converts seamlessly into good old 4/4. So you could say that Paul is using the Lennon Extension (Ticket 52) - adding an extra beat where he needs it to fit something in.

What Key?

More often than not the first chord is the root chord - but not here. Unlike Yesterday, where the 'seven drop' (ticket 60) takes you out of key in the 3rd bar of the song but brings you straight home in bar 4, here we never really get home to Eb major, because that isn't home.

Where we should be hearing Ab we have A natural quite prominently in the melody till we land on the F major chord on the word 'please'. Mentally pause there. Feels like home? Sure does. The first half of the verse is in F major and the only out of key note is the Eb we mistook for the root note. But it gets weirder. We DO get the Ab we need now in abundance in the next 4 bars as the chords alternate between Bb7 and Ab. But when we get to the final 'Martha My Dear' of the verse we are sitting peacefully on a Bb7 chord and a Bb melody note. We don't feel the need to resolve back to Eb even though all the notes fit in that key. That's because we are now in the Bb mixolydian mode (the 5th mode of Eb major). Once again it's all about what note and chord we feel settled on. If your ear isn't being pulled towards some other chord you're already 'home'.

What about the bridges? Well not to disappear down a rabbit hole of analysis (if I haven't already) we're back in F major in bridge one (hold you head up). Lots of A natural, no Eb at all. In bridge two there's the introduction of B natural within the G9 which could suggest we're in (wait for it!) D dorian mode. But, to my ear, these are notes that are merely spice up the key rather than change it. Not just because this only lasts four bars before we end up back in F major but because Paul 'ignores' the chord and doesn't use Bb or B natural in the melody at those points (ticket 14) whereas the earlier A natural note appears in the melody, chords and bassline.

For me the final proof about the song being largely in F major and Bb mixolydian is that when Paul lands 'home' on Eb major (after “for each other silly girl”) what should sound like a final chord sounds like the announcement of a key change (in the same way as the final chord in both sections of Penny Lane (meanwhile back) leads you into a new key.

Practically Speaking...

So if you've hung in with me thus far (and if so you have my admiration!) is there a practical songwriting lesson here?

How about this. Paul is doing something very clever (though instinctive) with key, time signature and a contrapuntal style of writing that was unusual. And he hits you with everything within a few bars! Many artists subconsciously 'psyche themselves' to include unusual stuff by bringing it in gradually. Don't do it. Grab your listener with the cool stuff right out of the gate (Ticket 61). Whether that's the mellotron on Strawberry Fields Forever, the talk box on Living On A Prayer or the drumless weird time signatures of Everything In It's Right Place or Pyramid Song by Radiohead.

* You could look at this as 4/4 3/4 2/4 4/4 but as 5/4 bars can be grouped 3+2 or 2+3 you can just think of it as a 5/4 bar counted 12312 or 123-45.

**Update courtesy of Rob Stevens the clapping on the instrumental verse (1:20-1:38) would suggest Paul thought of it as 4/4 4/4 5/4. Now I'm all conflicted!

10:15 Martha My Dear (pt.3) Silly Love Songs

You'd think that people would have had enough of silly love songs

What's in a word? A clue to a whole style or tone? Paul McCartney is often criticised for being twee his use of the word 'silly' is definitely twee. John Lennon never used it* (imagine him singing “silly bloomin' Tuesday”). Or imagine Paul substituting the word stupid in any of the following ...

Hold your head up you silly girl look what you've done
When you find yourself in the thick of it
Help yourself to a bit of what is all around you
Silly girl

Martha My Dear

Silly people run around
They worry me and never ask me
Why they don't get past my door

Fixing A Hole


He looks a lot like a guy I knew way back when
It's silly Willy with Philly band

Rock Show

Samson and Delilah would have made a crazy pair
if the silly woman hadn't shaven off his hair

Nobody Knows


That was a silly season, was it the best?
We didn't need the reason, just a rest.

Good Times Coming / Feel The Sun

Did any other songs influence McCartney's vocabulary? The Beatles covered Glad All Over (The one by Carl Perkins, not the Dave Clark Five)...

One little kiss from you
And I feel glad all over
Oo baby, hot dang gilly
It's silly
But I'm glad all over

Glad All Over

Are there words you find yourself using repeatedly in your songwriting. Or words you avoid?

*Lennon used 'Stupid' in I Am The Walrus and I'm So Tired

**Most of these photos are from a McCartney tumblr blog with a name to rude to mention

Golden Ticket: The Seven Drop

How do you use the 'seven drop' (Ticket 60) in one of your songs? Easy! Just start on the root chord and then immediately descend to the chord built on the seventh tone of the scale. In minor keys this is nothing special - it just gives you Em to D or Am to G etc - but in major keys things get interesting...

the 'correct' I – VII change in the key of C would be

C to B dim (B D F)

 or

C to B half dim 7 aka Bm7b5 (B D F A)

But that's a weird jazzy chord and many rock/pop guitarists don't like it (or even know it!).

So the Beatles tended to make things more complex by using simpler chords that don't fit in the key, like

C B7 (B D# F# A)

I VII7

or

C Bm7 (B D F# A)

I vii7

(out of key notes are in bold)

So we get progressions like I'm So Tired

      A  G#7   D                    E7
      I   VII7   IV                  V7
I'm so tired I haven't slept a wink


or Sexy Sadie

G          F#7      Bm
I           VII7      iii
    Sexy Sadie,          what have you done?

The verse of Martha My Dear doesn't have chord changes per se as it's made up of several interweaving lines but the progression that's implied is

Eb                                    D5           Gm
I                                       VII5          iii
Martha my dear though I spend my days

There's more going on than meets the eye (ear?) tonality wise here, because the root note and key here is actually F, but I'll save that for the next post. For now all we need to know is that our ear assumes the initial Eb is the root until we get to the end of the phrase.

Another example is Radiohead's Karma Police (directly inspired by Sexy Sadie) where the chorus has the same chord progression as part of Sadie's verse


Sexy Sadie 

C                      D                 G      F#7
IV                    V                  I       VII7
    You made a fool of everyone


Karma Police

C              D             G      F#
IV            V              I       VII
     This is what you get


The most famous/obvious example of this is Yesterday

F               E7sus4            A7                         Dm
I                VII7sus4         III7                        vi
Yesterday             all my troubles seemed so far


It's interesting that almost all these examples are from the beginning of the verses. So you could say the ticket works most effectively as a means of pulling the rug out from listeners the second they set foot in(on?) the song.

And also, whether we're going on a brief trip to a new key or heading for a home we didn't realise we had, the next step is often the same. Start on a major chord, drop a semitone to the seventh and then drop a fifth to the third degree of the scale.

     I – VII – III
eg C - B   -   E or Em

Next time we'll pause to look at some essential background work. What key is Martha My Dear in, and where exactly is the 'one'?

10:14 Martha My Dear (pt 2) - Sgt Martha Pepper

One of the cool things about a study like this is when you discover reoccurring patterns or motifs.

First listen to the five notes of Martha My Dear's bass line (played on piano) that occurs at 0:07. Now listen to the horn part on Sgt Pepper's Lonely Heart Club Band at 1:35 (coinciding with the words “Love to take you home”)

Yep. Exactly the same. Root, 2nd, 3rd, 5th, Octave.

Can you use it in your own song? Probably not.

Could bore the pants off non-muso friends with your trivia knowledge. Definitely!

More useful is the ticket to write I'm going to call the seventh drop (Ticket 60). It's so cool it requires it's own post! And it will be here in one hour!

Image: Mandy Mandii 

10:13 Martha My Dear (pt.1)

Phew! I'm back at the song grindstone! Never mind FAWM, this is such a wonderful complex song that I've been struggling to know where to start. So expect a bunch of rambling posts as I just dive in. Don't say I didn't warn you!

This track was written by Paul as a piano exercise that he says was “slightly above my level or competence” and that's the heart of the wonderful problem it presents. More than any song we've covered (including The Long One) the verses are truly classical in construction made up of three independent contrapuntal lines (Ticket 12 - basically the left and right hands of the piano part and the vocal line) with no real chord progressions to speak of.

When the verse kicks off the right hand and vocals are in unison (and doubled by the strings). After the line “Remember me” the vocals split from the piano to form three independent lines. In the instrumental section the strings are replaced by brass.

There are essentially two bridges (“Hold you hand out...” and “Take a good look around you”) which are more 'pop' in construction (melody atop chord progressions with bassline following the chords) but both sections are still rendered odd with extra beats (tickets 37 and 52), outside chords and a switch to double tempo.

The structure is

Verse 1 - intro
Verse 2 - vocals
Bridge 'a' - brass
Bridge 'b' – drums, electric guitar
Verse 3 – brass solo
Bridge 'a'
Verse 4 – vocals
Coda – bass and strings

Is the song about his sheep dog, Martha?

Only in sense that She Came In Through The Bathroom Window was about a burglary at his home. Which is to say, not at all. Paul for most of his career has had an almost pathological aversion to writing transparent songs that draw from his own life. Even when the impulse comes from real life (as in Hey Jude) he is at pains to hide it. More often though, real life merely provides a pithy phrase or an idea to kick things off (eg “I'm backing Britain” morphing into 'back in the USSR').

I was blocking out words - you just mouth out sounds and some things come - I found the words 'Martha, my dear'

Personally I don't have a problem with Paul's escapist approach. I think it's a valid way of writing though John (and to a certain extent George) went on to reject it in favour of more starkly communicating their genuine emotional, political and spiritual beliefs.

So to conclude – don't just practice technique in isolation from your songwriting. Write something with whatever you're trying to master – it may turn into a great song (New Ticket 59!). And as far as Martha is concerned, the lyrics aren't so critical – the magic's in the melodies.