“Not a Second Time” is one of my favorite early Beatles songs – I love the way the melody swoops up and down. One nice moment is when Lennon adds the “oh-oo-oh, yeah” right after “I cried for you” the second time around. Another is his singing in the fade-out.
(By the way, I just now realized the joke – probably unintentional – of having a song called “Not a Second Time” that consists of a verse sung once, and then a second time.)
In “I Should Have Known Better”, Lennon’s vocals at 1:00: "And when I ask you to be mine, "Hi-Hi-Hiiiiiiine…
mmm
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I always thought that the highest portion of the “Hi-Hi Hiiiine” was Paul (the Hiiiiine). I believe John wasn’t satisfied with his vocal quality at that range. Maybe wrong, though.
Yeah, that melisma evokes a sort of moody, medieval-sounding scale.
A similar bit is Paul’s Indian-scale-ish vocal melisma at the end of George’s “I Want To Tell You.” (Even though a lot of the late Beatles in-fighting pit John and George against a bossy Paul, in 1966 it was Paul who was supporting George in some interesting ways).
Hadn’t thought of that – good job!
Ringo’s drumming in “A Day in the Life” which doesn’t actually start until 50 seconds in.
Yes! Me too.
During the first two lines of Penny Lane:
In Penny Lane there is a barber showing photographs
Of every head he’s had the pleasure to know
Paul plays the great familiar bass line and takes a rest on the word “know”. I don’t know why I like that so much, and I don’t know if it was a mistake, but I really like that lack of a note.
From “Get Back”:
“I’d like to say thank you on behalf of the group and ourselves, and I hope we passed the audition”
Wow, I never noticed that. I think it’s deliberate – notice how the flute is introduced, briefly, exactly during that bass rest. “Let the flute be heard” might be the idea.
The punning word play in “Because” (Abbey Road)…
Because the wind is high, it blows my mind…
Because the world is round, it turns me on…
:smack: You’re right! I’ve actually been mishearing that my whole life, thanks for the correction.
Seconded. Funnily enough, I’ve only begun really liking “Because” fairly recently. For some reason, it never really stood out as a great song, but now it’s one of my favorite. Especially Paul’s high part when it splits away on words like “round.” Rah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ound.
The riffs Paul plays when the bass comes back in on Paperback Writer.
She loves you, yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah
Always admired those guys for writing such a simple and mindlessly repetitive lyric. Then it became a early hit.
“She came in through the bathroom window” One of my all-time favorite lines of any song.
Funny story that I heard (who knows if it’s true?) is that when J & P wrote that song, they sang it for Paul’s dad in the living room. Supposedly, McCartney Sr. thought “yeah” was too American, and that they should sing “yes yes yes”. In reply, J & P fell on the floor laughing. Younger, hipper minds prevailed.
Yep, Paul’s voice cracks at that point. I was surprised they left it in, but I’m glad they did as a “human” moment from them. And it doesn’t ruin the song for me at all. The harmonizing is almost sublime to me.
At the time, the default format for pop records was mono, and all of the attention went into reducing a song’s various studio tapes into a mono mix. I was only 13 in 1963, but as I understand it “stereophonic” LP’s were considered a new-fangled curiosity of interest primarily to audiophiles.
Some companies (such as Parlaphone) didn’t really understand what to do with the format, and with much of the early Beatles catalogue they pretty much slapped together “instruments left, vocals right” mixes resulting in extreme (and primitive) stereo.
In the case of the Beatles, the stereo records were produced almost as an afterthought, and I think that’s why mistakes like the one in question were carefully corrected for the mono mixes, but left as is for the unimportant stereo versions.
Another wonderful example is John’s vocal flub in “Please Please Me”; listen to the stereo version and you can’t miss his mistake, and his audible grin as he tries to keep singing afterward.
I love the vocal countermelodies in some of the middle-period Beatles songs… like “Ooh I wouldn’t, ooh I wouldn’t” in “You Won’t See Me” and the “La, la, la-la-la-la-LA!” in “And Your Bird Can Sing”. (I just realized that both of those come in at the exact same point in each song – the transition from the bridge back into the verse. In both cases it’s perfect; it just kicks you right back in.)
I will third this. And after loving this song ever since it came out, I only noticed those puns for the first time a couple of years ago.
Ha! I hadn’t noticed that before. Again, I like how it was left in for some reason. A mistake like that would never be allowed to leave the studio nowadays.