The Band Who...Stated Their Name Clearly For The Record

Pop Quiz! What do all the following songs have in common?

Unchained Melody - The Righteous Brothers
Space Oddity – David Bowie
Sympathy For The Devil – Rolling Stones
The Weight - The Band
Paranoid – Black Sabbath
Immigrant Song – Led Zeppelin
Bohemian Rhapsody – Queen
Smells Like Teen Spirit – Nirvana
She Sells Sanctuary – The Cult
Song 2 – Blur
Enter Sandman - Metallica
Paranoid Android – Radiohead
The Scientist – Coldplay

Answer: None of the titles listed above appear anywhere in the lyrics.

Some bands are serial offenders, taking 'Title Avoidance Syndrome' to the extreme, like My Chemical Romance

You Know What They Do to Guys Like Us In Prison
Honey, This Mirror Isn't Big Enough For The Two Of Us
It's Not A Fashion Statement, It's A F***ing Deathwish

or employing it in a tasteful minimalist way like U2

Bad
Wire
Gone
Exit

But these bands are exceptions. One of the most foundational principles for making a song memorable is combining the title with a hooky melody and repeating it enough times for it to worm it's way into your subconscious. Now perhaps if your chorus lyrics are

“I need your love, I need your love, God speed your love to me”

“Woo hoo, well I feel heavy metal”

or even

“Argh argh aaaaaaaaargh....ARGH”*

you might be wise to write something else on the label. But successful songs with obscure titles are a rarity, if for no other reason than people can't buy a record if they have no idea what it's called. The Beatles understood this principle.


Of 211 tracks released by the Beatles, 
199 feature the title prominently.


Of the 12 exceptions, 1 is an instrumental (Flying, the incidental music from Magical Mystery Tour). Five more feature fragments of the title, but not the whole -

Revolution 9 - Number 9, number 9
The Continuing Story Of Bungalow Bill - hey Bungalow Bill, what did you kill?
She Said She Said - She said, I know what it's like to be dead
Love You To - I'll make love to you, if you want me to
Wild Honey Pie - (the only title that's longer than the lyrics) Honey pie, honey pie

This leaves a grand total of 6 songs that never mention the title

For You Blue
The Inner Light
A Day In The Life
The Ballad Of John And Yoko
Tomorrow Never Knows
Yer Blues

They are almost all album tracks (apart from Ballad Of.., and b-side, The Inner Light). But what's most interesting about this list is that every one is a Lennon or Harrison song. There is not one genuine McCartney song among them**.

If you want to understand Paul's success as a commercial pop writer this is one small, but undeniable, key.

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*Unchained Melody (The Righteous Brothers), Song 2 (Blur) and Immigrant Song (Led Zeppelin) respectively.

**McCartney was a co-writer on Flying, and let's be honest Wild Honey Pie is a weird outtake rather than a song in any traditional understanding of the word.



Read more about the Band Who...

...Kept Expanding
...Lived Outside
...Needed No Introduction
...Were Men Of Few Words

Under The Influence: Billie Joe Armstrong (Green Day)

A lot of punk rock bands are always trying to be so hard all of the time, macho brutality doesn’t necessarily mean you’re a good songwriter. I think that some of the Beatles’ songs are way more punk rock than most punk songs written today. Like the song Yesterday. It’s such a bittersweet song. It’s very important for me to have a message that goes along with the writing. So...what comes to mind for me is a song like The Ballad of John & Yoko, where [Lennon] had this really nice sounding song. But the lyrics penetrate like a knife. “They’re gonna crucify me…” That’s kind of nice way — nice, I mean, in an oxymoronic sense – to put forward something you want to attack.

Interview with Paul Zollo 

There are Beatles songs that are way more punk rock than anything the Circle Jerks or Bad Religion ever put out. That guitar figure at the beginning [of In My Life] introduces the song perfectly. Plus the harmonies and backup playing are terrific. John Lennon is analysing his past, all the people that came in and out of his life. He’s sort of bitter, but he’s trying to be levelheaded about it. I can imagine him singing it and having a very sly smile on his face. It’s almost like he’s sincerely bidding someone farewell - but telling them to f*** off at the same time.

Lava Magazine

12:43 John And Yoko Blues (The Ballad Of pt.2)

As I mentioned when I was trashing the Ballad of John and Yoko last time Lennon uses a variation on the 12 bar blues form (though he doesn't do anything interesting songwriting-wise with it)

a normal 12 bar would go

E E E E7
A A E E
B7 B7 E E

whereas Lennon's 16 bar pattern stretches the first four bars

E E E E
E7 E7 E7 E7
A A E E
B7 B7 E E

This is Ticket 19 – write a (non 12) bar blues

A traditional blues has three lines of lyrics, the first line, which is repeated, then followed by an answering line. The Ballad of... has four lines followed by another answering four line refrain.

This is Ticket 34 – write a blues but avoid the AAB lyric structure.

Check out how they messed around with the blues more effectively on Can't Buy Me Love

12:42 The Ballad Of John And Yoko

Oscar Wilde said "Some cause happiness wherever they go; others whenever they go”

That's how I feel about Beatles songs and here's one I'll be glad to show the door. Every so often you come across a song that offends you in some way that being objective about it's merits feels an impossible task. Sometimes it's issues of racism, sexism, blasphemy, profanity or crass commercialism. I find The Ballad Of John & Yoko so annoying that I'd rather have Two Virgins stuck on an endless loop through a sub woofer on the back of an Afro-Carribean carnival lorry driving over a million piglets than have to listen to it one more time.

Here's why I struggle with it.

Never has an artist gone from a healthy cynicism about the whole business to an unshakeable belief in his own self importance as completely as John Lennon. We have five verses (FIVE!) telling all about his woes with the press. Poor dear.

The reality is that Lennon, after leaving his wife and young child, had begun to indulge in a number pointless publicity stunts with then girlfriend Yoko Ono that were supposed to advance the cause of world peace and/or express some deep meaningful concept. These included making a 15 minute film of his penis (thankfully not featured on the Anthology DVD) giving interviews from inside a giant bag and, as the song relates, sending a pair of acorns to 50 world leaders. Because it was Spring the acorns had to be specially purchased. A pair of 'Acorns for peace' were also symbolically buried near Coventry Cathedral. A week later they were symbolically stolen by fans. Peace did not break out.

So Lennon was behaving in a ridiculous and pretentious manner and was reviled by the press. And he wrote this song to express his ire, with a persecution complex that took on messianic dimensions. The irony was that few years earlier, thanks to some ill advised remarks about being more popular than Jesus, Lennon was the target of death threats and record burnings from American fundamental Christians and the Klu Klux Klan. Now that would have been the ideal time to write an 'everybody's out to get me' song. It could have benefitted from the unique perspective of having self appointed defenders of the Prince of Peace baying for your blood.

The song is also rendered ridiculous in the same way as Imagine by John's altruistic claims. “Giving all [his] clothes to charity”, was a concept he never put into practice, in the same way he “imagined no possessions” from the comfort of his 71 room mansion.

Even if all this were not true the song still sucks for being a prime example of the “Millionaire Rock Star Blues.” If you are one of the very small minority to make yourself independently wealthy through a music career please don't write a song telling us how hard your life is. Even if we could understand, we probably wouldn't sympathise. I remember reading Def Leppard complaining in an interview about the 2 hours excitement/22 hours boredom of touring and thought “I know just how you feel” as I feasted on the finest cold meat pie the petrol station could provide and bedded down for the night on the floor of my band's beat up van.

In conclusion I'd rather see a infinite number of Bonos lecturing about waste management and listen all night to Jon Bon Jovi, sitting astride his steel horse banging on about the million faces that he's rocked than have to endure this self righteous tripe.

However

I'm here to blog about songwriting. I must put aside my personal feelings and prejudices long enough to analyse the song. Well, lucky for me – it's a load of rubbish. The music is a totally unoriginal 16 bar blues with an 8 bar bridge that is almost the same as I Saw Her Standing There. The lead guitar consists almost entirely of cheesy mariachi-style fills that are totally out of place,

the playing is unimaginative and the shakers are too louder. The reference to “Gibraltar near Spain” is a particularly awful result of rhyme fever (and it reminds me of the Indiana Jones film, where highly educated people keep reminding each other that Venice is in Italy).

But there are a few good things.

I like the 2 beat snare fill that comes after the bridge and ending on a 6th chord is a fun little self referential nod back to She Loves You (where the 6th is sung rather than played).

So I guess I'm saying there are about 4 seconds that are worth emulating.

If you disagree let me know!

Next time I'll take a quick look at the 16 bar blues structure and then move on to the final song from Abbey Road!!!!!