Good one! “My Eyes” (Dr. Horrible/Penny) and “A Man’s Gotta Do” (Capt Hammer/Penny/Dr. Horrible) come to mind.
I Understand from the early 60’s by the Cleftones and A 'Soalin" by Peter Paul and Mary.
Yep.
Wha…? “Eleanor Rigby” was by the Beatles, not the Rutles, and in any case doesn’t really have much in the way of multiple concurrent vocal lines. (For twelve seconds at the end, Paul’s “Ah, look at all the lonely people” is double-tracked with his “All the lonely people, where do they all come from/belong?”). Am I missing something here?
One Day More from Les Miseravles. Best ending ever.
Tomorrow we’ll discover
What our God in Heaven has in store!
One more dawn
One more day
One day more!
Most songs by Gentle Giant fit the bill. See “On Reflection” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ro3eVIFzN5g , “Knots / The Advent of Panurge” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CcsMENTM-Cw, “No God’s a Man” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g9CYyVYKxC8 , “Pantagruel’s Nativity” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WRS8EC6dL4I and many more. (Sorry, don’t know how to make those fancy name-links).
More: The choruses to “Hyena” and “Just A Touch” (I think; the latter is hard to figure out if Mills is singing something different from Stipe or not). I had *Lifes Rich Pageant playing on the iPod this morning.
Just because:
Bach, “Little” Fugue (G minor, BWV 578)
Falling by Andrew Lloyd Webber, Charles Hart & Don Black. The show has the best music and the worst staging of any ALW show.
I’m assuming we’re all talking about counter-melodies.
The first one of theirs that I thought of was “Kid Fears” where it’s Amy, Emily, and Michael Stipe doing three separate lines. Speaking of whom, Michael Stipe did this with Natalie Merchant in 10,000 Maniacs “Campfire Song”.Running in the same circle is Billy Pilgrim’s “Insomniac” with the Indigo Girls.
Live has a great one that is just a vocal overdub with “Pillar of Davidson”.
I’m still not sure exactly what’s being discussed, but the first thing that comes to mind is:
vocalese
For example, Lambert, Hendricks, and Ross on their album “Sing A Song of Basie” – the orchestral parts, plus solos, are fitted with lyrics or vocalizations instead of the usual instrumentation, and it’s all going on at once. This was in the 1950s sometime, so pretty impressive to have like 30 tracks of music overdubbed.
Duran Duran - New Religion
David Bowie & Bing Crosby - Little Drummer Boy/Peace on Earth
Since the thread is about vocal lines, I thought your link would be to this.
Did you resurrect a thread just to post “Concurrent Vocal Lines Where The Singers Look Most Uncomfortable With Each Other”?
To contribute a Since-This-Thread-Started example: Rolling In The Deep. The backup singers are given enough (hard-to-catch) lyrics that it comes close to a counter melody.
Surprised not to see “I Just Wasn’t Made For These Times” by The Beach Boys (even though Brian Wilson is the only one present)…the chorus has three vocal lines overlapping each other at one point:
“Sometimes I feel very sad.”
“Ain’t found the right thing I can put my heart and soul into.”
“People I know don’t know me.”
And the background, if you count that, “Cuando sere un dia sere?”
Other songs with vocal countermelodies:
- “New River Train,” I believe a traditional folk tune
- “Selling Out” by Tom Lehrer
- and if you go to a ComedySportz improv show, one of the games they do is to improvise a musical. So far each time I’ve seen them do this, the big opening song would have each of the three players sing a verse, then afterwards, they all sing their verses at the same time.
That’s the one I was going to add. I freaking love that song.
Here’s a truly stunning example that hardly anyone seems to know about. Judie Tzuke, ‘For You’. Three different but complementary acapella vocal lines. I’ve loved this song for over 30 years. Here’s the song itself and here is a not-very-good live version where Judie sings the song with her daughters performing the other two parts.
I love that song. I used to play Judie, and that song especially, on my radio show.