Monday, February 26, 2024

"Get to You"

"Get to You" may have been inspired in part by Elvis Presley's "Trying to Get to You," written by Rosemarie McCoy and Charles Singleton.  The title phrase is nearly the same, and the songs also have a similar structure in that each verse ends with a variation of the same line.  The verses in "Get to You" end with the lines "But I really only want to get to you," "All the time it took me tryin' to get to you" (which contains the entire phrase from Elvis's song), and "But it took me twenty years to get to you."  Most of the verses in "Trying to Get to You" end with the line "Baby, tryin' to get to you," but the last ends with "When I was tryin' to get to you."

"Get to You" was written by Chris Hillman and Roger McGuinn.  I don't know if either was familiar with "Trying to Get to You," but in this interview (at ~3:17), McGuinn talks about how hearing Elvis's "Heartbreak Hotel" made him want to get a guitar, so in general terms at least, Elvis was an influence.

Monday, February 19, 2024

"Goin' Back"

In the line "I think I'm goin' back to the things I learned so well in my youth" in "Goin' Back," "well" is sung with a melisma (C# B), giving a sense of degree (for "so").

Monday, February 12, 2024

"Artificial Energy"

The first two lines of "Artificial Energy" are "Sittin' all alone now / I took my ticket to ride."  Since the words in the phrase "all alone" alliterate, there's a sense of the singularity of being alone.  The phrase "ticket to ride" in the second line seems to be a nod to the Beatles song of the same title.

Monday, February 5, 2024

"My Back Pages"

In "My Back Pages," the lines "Ah, but I was so much older then / I'm younger than that now" are sung to a melody something like


The first syllable of "older" (the C#) is sung with a longer value than any of the other notes, so musically, there's a sense of that greater degree (for just the comparative adjective itself or the modifying "so much").