Please (please?) listen to “Because I Learn.” It’s an old old song but does this perfectly. She was all alone in the studio but it wasn’t being recorded for an album, it was for fun and to learn how to do overdubs (she was an unpaid intern). There are tons more I could link to but that’s such a great example of what I think you’re talking about. The lyrics are closed-captioned so you can see the interplay of dialogue.
Godspell’s All For The Best.
Pretty much the entire catalog of Gilbert and Sullivan.
My favorite example of this has always been the closing section of the Doobie Brothers’ Black Water (the “Dixieland/Honkytonk” part).
Another interesting single-singer example is Lindsey Buckingham’s I Want You. He sings the verses in two takes, vocalizing only the odd syllables in one channel and the even syllables in the other. The result is a single vocal line that bounces left and right in the mix. As far as I can tell he did it all by performance, not by clever editing.
Pink Floyd: Wearing The Inside Out
I didn’t realize this had sunk in to such a degree, but someone mentioned it the other day, and I launched into “Somemenareborntoliveateasedoingwhattheypleasericherthanthebeesareinhoney…” At 55 mph, no less.
The term I’ve heard used is a Counter Song.
First heard that in reference to “Song from Silver Lake” by Jackson Browne. All the more haunting by having a second song going on and not being able to catch much of it…
OH! Found “Lyrics to the Counter Song”:
A friend asked jackson browne for these lyrics was lucky enough to get jackson to write em the way he remembered:
Someone who had been away, suddenly came back today.
I allowed a hope to stray into my mind…
For the moment face to face, we looked back upon the place
Where today we went to chase our careless time.
Oh, what did we know, not what Ive been feeling, the past is healing so slowly.
My tomorrow.
Gone from sorrow.
The end of Let Down by the previously mentioned Radiohead has a beautiful example of this.
Velvet Underground “The Murder Mystery” off their third album
Sting’s St Augustine in Hell has a layered chorus (from the second time onward) where Sting sings two different lines overlapped.
Delerium’s Trulydoes something similar where again the chorus is layered with different lines overlapped.
A third example comes from The “Once More With Feeling…” Episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, where Amber Benson and Tony Head reprise their earlier songs in a nice complementary/overlapping manner. Linky. Note, this link, like the others, goes to a youtube page with the just the audio playing over a stationary graphic.
Cheers,
-DF
genesis: the fountain of salmacis
If you’re talking about counterpoint melody, Irving Berlin was famous for it. See An Old Fashioned Wedding and You’re Just in Love. Both songs start out with one tune and set of lyrics, then add another tune and set of lyrics, and then sing them both together.
Cat Steven’s “Father and Son” has some of this toward the end. Very effective.
The final coda to “Paradise by the Dashboard Light” by Meat Loaf uses this.
Haven’t heard that in forever. It’s gorgeous. Thanks.
Apparently you can’t hear it anywhere on-line, but Joni Mitchell has an old song called The Pirate Of Penance that has two voices singing both concurrently and in turn. Beautiful song.
In a college musical, I had to sing a competing song over the female lead’s. It was tough – the trick was to listen to “her” song for pitch and timing, but not to let the words past my filter, so I could concentrate on my lyrics.
Sleater-Kinney does quite a bit of this:
"Band From the End of the World The vocals in the verses are completely intertwined. One singer is singing one thought, the other another.
“Memorize Your Lines” is perhaps an even stronger example of the split/layered simultaneous vocals.
“Hot Rock” (vocals really start to layer at around 0:45.)
"Little Babies (layers a lot in the verses.)
Stereolab also does a lot of layered vocals, but usually with the layers singing nonsense syllables, though, not full lyrics (which is what I think you’re looking for.)
A much better example from The Music Man: Pick-a-little/Goodnight Ladies
There’s also Baby It’s Cold Outside
Row, row, row your boat…
The South Park musical (Bigger, Longer, and Uncut) features a medley-style song that has more than one song coming together in one piece and being sung simultaneously. It’s been a while, but I think that “Blame Canada” and “La Resistance” were in it; “Up There” might have been another song in the mix.
Mereditrh Wilson, the composer of the well known Christmas song “It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas,” did a counterpoint melody arrangement with his Chtistmas song “Pine Cones and Holly Berries” for the Toronto production of his musical “Here’s Love.” It remains one of my most favorite arrangments, particularly the version on the “Broadway Christmas” CD.
The Guess Who - No Sugar Tonight/New Mother Nature (the dual part starts around 3:55 in this video).
I think the term for what you’re talking about is polyphonic music or countermelody. I have difficulty distinguishing between the two. Apparently a countermelody is still musically similar to the lead melody, but different. A true polyphonic sound is more aggressively distinct.
SS
First time posting a link so forgive me if its done incorrectly…but this is one of my favorites and always look to share this with friends.
Life on Mars by the Ukelele Orchestra of Great Britain
Brilliant