After listening to Alone in the Universe periodically over the last couple years, I noticed some things about the songs, but I haven't been very good at writing posts about them here. From now on if I have any comments, I'm going to try to write a post corresponding to whatever song I'm trying to learn in a particular month (one of my 2018 musical projects is to learn at least one part for every song on Alone in the Universe, and since I have the edition with two bonus tracks, there's one song for each month). Here are a couple things I noticed about "Ain't It a Drag."
In the line "Just when you think it's cool, the s--- hits the fan," there's some sort of effect applied to the vocal for "the fan," giving a sense of that proximity, not unlike the slightly robotic-sounding effect one gets when speaking into a moving fan.
In the first "Ain't it a drag, babe" in the choruses, the "drag" is sung with a glissando. It starts on a C and descends, but I'm not sure what the terminal note is. For what it's worth, the following "babe" is sung to an F. In any case, "drag" moves smoothly through a multitude of pitches, so there's something of a musical portrayal of the word's meaning.
