"Down Came the Rain"

In the chorus of "Down Came the Rain," "rain" in the titular phrase is sung with descending melismas (B A the first and third times, B A G the second), musically giving a sense of that "down."

"All My Love"

In "All My Love," some of the titular phrases are sung with melismas, giving a sense of the entirety of that "all."  In the lead vocals, the "love" at the end of the bridge is sung to the notes G A Bb (and in the coda, it's sung to various other groups of notes), and at the end of each section, "all" in the backing vocals is sung to D notes an octave apart (this breadth also gives a sense of the entirety).  At the beginning of each verse, "all" in the lead vocals is also held for over a measure, and this too gives a sense of the entirety.

Coinciding with the lines "I see it all / The way we fall for one another's make believe" (that's how they're formatted in the liner notes), there's a descending phrase (I think it's a combination of synthesizer and strings:  E Eb D Db A), and this mirrors the "fall" in the lyrics, although it's used more metaphorically.

"Help Yourself"

In "Help Yourself," there's the recurring section "But you can never change / You just keep on being you."  That this repeats without any variation illustrates the "never chang[ing]."

"From out of Nowhere"

I have a handful of notes about From out of Nowhere to write about, and I'm going to try to write a post a week, going song by song.

I noticed a couple small features in the chorus of "From out of Nowhere":

Let me go

Let me fly

To a place that I love

Let me fly away

And start again

"Go," the first "fly," and "away" are all sung with melismas (I think they're E F# E, E F# E, and D C# B, respectively).  These all provide a musical sense of movement.

"Alone in the Universe"

I was thinking about "Alone in the Universe" yester-day and realized that - like "When the Night Comes" - the lyrics contain the phrase "all alone" and since "all" and "alone" start with the same sound, there's a sense of the singularity of being alone.

"The Sun Will Shine on You"

I'm pretty sure I'd noticed this before, but evidently, I'd neglected to write about it.  In the line "Before you learn how to fall" in "The Sun Will Shine on You," there's quite a drop between "to" and "fall" (an octave:  F# to F#).  Musically, this illustrates that "fall[ing]."

"When the Night Comes"

I listened to Alone in the Universe recently and noticed a couple small features.  In "When the Night Comes," there's the line "When the night comes and I'm here all alone."  Because "all" and "alone" start with the same sound, there's a sense of the singularity of being alone.  Additionally, "When the night comes" is sung by multiple voices, but "and I'm here all alone" by only one.

"Ticket to the Moon"

I figured out the chords for "Ticket to the Moon" last night and noticed an interesting feature.  As I noted before, each phrase in the vocal melody in the chorus ascends, giving an impression of taking off and going to the moon.  The chords, however, descend.  It's a repeating progression of D minor | C major | Bb major | A major.  This opposition between the descending chords and the ascending vocals illustrates the narrator's conflicted feelings.  He's obligated to leave ("I paid the fare; what more can I say / It's just one-way"), and yet he would rather stay and "see the sunrise / In your eyes."  The opposite trajectories of these musical elements demonstrate that he's pulled in two different directions.

"Julie Don't Live Here"

The other thing I noticed when I listened to Time yester-day is that the line "I remember when I thought your street was paved with gold" in "Julie Don't Live Here" seems to be a reference to Revelation 21:21:  "And the twelve gates were twelve pearls, each of the gates made of a single pearl, and the street of the city was pure gold, transparent as glass."

"The Bouncer"

I listened to Time this morning and noticed a couple of things in the bonus tracks.  In "The Bouncer," "forever" in the line "That's how I want it to be, want it to be forever" is sung with a melisma (although I'm unsure of the specific notes), giving a sense of duration.

"Do Ya"

In some ways, Electric Light Orchestra formed out of a band called the Move.  For Christmas last year, I got a compilation album of the Move (Magnetic Waves of Sound: The Best of the Move), and I've been listening to it fairly regularly.  One of the tracks is an earlier recording of "Do Ya" (the Move version includes a question mark:  "Do Ya?"), and I recently noticed a small difference between the two.  In the Move version, two of the lines are "They come a-runnin' just to get a look / Just to feel, to touch her long black veil."  In the ELO version, one word has been changed so that these lines are "They come a-runnin' just to get a look / Just to feel, to touch her long black hair."  This probably isn't a very significant difference, but I thought I'd note it all the same.

For what it's worth, Jeff Lynne comments on the two versions of the song in this interview (starting at ~23:28).

"Little Town Flirt"

I recently learned the bass part for the cover of Del Shannon's "Little Town Flirt" that's included as a bonus track on the CD re-issue of Discovery.  I wrote it out in notation and put the chords in above the staff, but - as always - there's the disclaimer that I may have something wrong.

Looking into the song reminded me of some old notes I'd forgotten about, and I also found a few new things.

"Around" and "by" in the line "She plays around with ev'ry guy that goes by" are sung with melismas (E D E D C and A B A B A B A G respectively), musically giving a sense of breadth for "around" and of movement for "by."  "Apart" in the line "When she starts to tear it apart" is sung with a melisma (E C A) for a sense of the word's meaning, and "go" in the line "That's when she'll let you go" is sung with a melisma (C D) for a sense of movement, although more metaphorical.

All of these features are also in Del Shannon's original, although some of the articulations are a bit different.