"When I Was a Boy"

Last night I saw a couple posts about how the "When I Was a Boy" single was released three years ago yester-day:

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On this day: 3 years ago, “When I Was A Boy”, the first single from Alone In The Universe was released.

A post shared by Jeff Lynne's ELO (@jefflynneselo) on Sep 25, 2018 at 2:23am PDT

Of course, this got me thinking about the song, and I realized a small thing about it:  "away" in the line "Far into the night and drift away" is sung with a melisma (D A G, I think).  Musically, this gives something of an impression of the movement of "drift[ing] away." 

"The Quick and the Daft"

This morning I was looking at the texts in Cherubini's Solemn Mass in G major for the Coronation of Louis XVIII, and I remembered something I'd long ago realized about "The Quick and the Daft" (an instrumental bonus track on the re-issue of Out of the Blue).  The title seems to come from either the Apostles' Creed or the Nicene Creed.  Cherubini's Mass includes the Nicene Creed, where one of the lines is: Jesus "shall come again with glory to judge the quick and the dead," but there's a similar line in the Apostles' Creed, which is older.  The title of the ELO song simply changes "dead" to "daft."

"Send It"

I forgot about this (more than once, even), but the reason I've been thinking about Balance of Power recently is that way back on 6 July I realized that the "way up above" in the line "The sun still shines way up above" at the beginning of "Send It" ascends (C# C# E F#, I think), musically representing that "up above."

In looking at the song now, I realized something else.  Each of the verses ends with the lines "If you see my dream / Send it back home to me."  The "me" is sung to an A note, and the chord progression there moves to an A major.  The song itself it in A major, so there's both the tonic note (A) and the tonic chord (A major) to represent that "home" musically.

"Heaven Only Knows"

Because I had been thinking about "Is It Alright" a couple days ago, I was thinking about the Balance of Power album yester-day and realized that some phrases in the vocal melody in "Heaven Only Knows" bear some resemblance to the vocal melody in the Beatles' "You Won't See Me."

The melody for the verses of "Heaven Only Knows" is something like:

(I used the first verse as a reference, but I'm missing some nuances.)

And the first half of the melody for the verses of "You Won't See Me" is something like:

(I guessed on the keys for both.)

The melodies are fairly similar, but the more recognizable resemblance is one of rhythm.  In simple terms, both songs have three syllables, some rests, two syllables, some rests, and then either a second line or the rest of the first line:

I don't know if Jeff Lynne intended the melody of "Heaven Only Knows" to be similar to that of "You Won't See Me," but there are a number of other Beatle references in the ELO catalogue, and the two melodies certainly are alike.  It seems to be at least a subconscious borrowing.

I also noticed that "change" in the line "But I think that it's about to change" is sung with a glissando (E to D, I think), which musically represents that shift.

"Is It Alright"

Yester-day, I was thinking about "Is It Alright" and realized something about the title line, specifically those in this section:

Is it alright
Now that you got what you want
And is it alright
Now that you're back where you belong

The "al-" part of the "alright"s is sung with a glissando from G to C, and the encompassing nature of this musical span helps to portray the "all."

"Waterfall"

I recently discovered that - after much practice - I can now play both hands of the piano part at the beginning of "Waterfall" simultaneously (although I'm unsure of specific chord voicings), which I couldn't do back when I learned that part.

A couple days ago (the 20th), I was thinking about the song and realized that the "waterfall" in that section descends to illustrate the "-fall" part musically.  The whole line "It's like a waterfall" is sung to a descending phrase (F# F# E D C# B).

"All My Life"

I figured out some parts for "All My Life" to-day, so now I can be more specific in writing about some features I noticed.

The two "All my life"s in the backing vocals in the choruses are sung to phrases that span large intervals (sixths) and include large note values (three whole notes each).  Between those features and the fact that "life" is sung with a melisma both times, there's a musical sense of the encompassing nature of "all."  Here's the notation for the first "All my life":

The second "All my life" has a peculiar rhythm at the beginning that I can't seem to suss out (so the dotted half note at the end of this first phrase might be wrong), but aside from that, it's fairly similar.

The other thing I noticed (and confirmed to-day) is that the guitar solo (~2:07) starts with a recurring phrase from the guitar solos in Paul McCartney's "Maybe I'm Amazed," just adjusted for key and with some changes in tempo.  The phrase in "All My Life" also doubles a note.

In "All My Life," the guitar solo begins with:

E|---5-7-5-7~9-9-7-5-----| 

B|-7-----------------7-5-|

The recurring phrase in "Maybe I'm Amazed" is:

E|---1-3-1-3~5-3-1----- 
B|-3---------------3-1-

These phrases seem too similar for this resemblance to have been coincidental.  Because Jeff Lynne workt with Paul McCartney (although long after "Maybe I'm Amazed"), I think this might be an intentional similarity.

"Turn to Stone"

Last week I learned some parts for "Turn to Stone."  Here are the guitar phrases and some string parts for two iterations of the chorus (starting ~2:32).  I'm not sure of the accuracy of the very end of the last guitar phrase.

"Latitude 88 North"

The first two lines of each verse of "Latitude 88 North" are sung to a paucity of pitches.  The first line of each verse ("The ice man came to me tonight" [1], "Then I knew that you were gone" [2], and "Frozen shadows in doorways" [3]) are sung completely to B notes.  There's a bit more variety in the second lines, but each is sung to only two pitches.  "So very near but out of sight" (1) and "It came to me; I was alone" (2) are each sung to a string of C notes with a single G note at the end, and "They will linger there always" (3) is sung mainly to a string a C notes, rises to a single D note, and then ends with an-other C note.

While it's especially appropriate for "Frozen shadows..." articulating these lines with only one or two pitches each musically demonstrates the "frozen" conditions of Latitude 88 North.  It's as if even the music can no longer move.

"Mr. Blue Sky"

In the chorus of "Mr. Blue Sky," the "so long" in "Please tell us why / You had to hide away for so long" is sung with two glissandi: the "so" stretches from F to D, and the "long" from D to C."  The echoing "so long" in the backing vocals has a similar feature: the "so" has a glissando from C and A.  The breadth of pitches that these glissandi encompass gives a musical sense of just how long Mr. Blue Sky has hidden.

"Steppin' Out"

In the section of "Steppin' Out" where the line "I'm steppin' out; I'm steppin' out" is repeated, that second "out" is sung alternately with a glissando (B to G) and a melisma (alternating between B and C#, I think).  When "I'm steppin' out; I'm steppin' out" is sung through a vocoder, that second "out" is sung with a different melisma (G B D).  All of these give something of a sense of movement.

"Starlight"

I noticed a couple different things about how the vocals are articulated in "Starlight."

"Run" in the line "And then you run" is sung with a melisma, although it's not always the same.  At ~0:47 and ~2:52, it's C Ab F, but at ~1:47, it's Ab G F G.  For both, there's a musical sense of the movement of "run[ning]."

"Away" in the line "Your eyes are lookin' out so far away" (at the beginning of the second verse) is sung with a melisma (C D F), musically giving a sense of distance.

At the end, in the repeated line "Starlight, your eyes are lookin' down on me, so far away," "down on me" is sung to a descending phrase (D C Ab, I think), giving a sense of that "down," and "away" is sung with a melisma (Eb D C Bb A), giving a sense of distance again.