"My Back Pages"

I listened to The Byrds' Greatest Hits yester-day and noticed a small feature in "My Back Pages."  Most of each verse is sung by Roger McGuinn alone, but more voices join in for the final line "Ah, but I was so much older then; I'm younger than that now."  In a way, these extra voices match the greater degree of the adverbial phrase "so much" and the comparative adjectives "older" and "younger."

I was thinking about the song again this morning and realized that the alliteration in the phrase "quite clear" in the fourth verse also provides a degree of emphasis.

"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").

"My Back Pages"

This is just a small point, but "from stern to bow" in "My Back Pages" is a merism.