Wednesday, May 6, 2020

"Pleasant Valley Sunday"

This morning I was thinking about "Pleasant Valley Sunday," and I realized a number of features in it.

Just in thinking about the song, I realized that the three syllables of "ev'rywhere" in the line "Charcoal burnin' ev'rywhere" are all sung to different pitches (C A G), musically giving a sense of that breadth.

When I read the lyrics, I discovered some other things.  In the first verse, the ends of the lines don't really rhyme:
The local rock group down the street is tryin' hard to learn their song
They serenade the weekend squier who just came out to mow his lawn
The slant rhyme between "song" and "lawn" illustrates that the "local rock group" hasn't learned its song well enough.  It's not quite what it's supposed to be yet.  Additionally, the use of a plural possessive ("their") in place of a singular ("its") grammatically demonstrates something of a division within the group; they're not acting as a whole.

The second verse does have line-ending rhymes, and there's also internal rhyme:
See Mrs. Gray; she's proud today because her roses are in bloom
And Mr. Green, he's so serene; he's got a TV in ev'ry room
These added rhymes give a sense of the perfection of the "pleasant valley."  Because these rhymes include characters' names, there's also a sense of how ingrained this perfection is and how essential it is for those who live there.

In referencing the recording again, I also noticed that "room" in the backing vocals is sung with a melisma (G F#), for a sense of "ev'ry."

In the last line of the bridge ("I need a change of scenery"), "scenery" is sung with a melisma (B A G# F# E), musically giving a sense of that "change."  There's also a shift in octave between the A and G#, which emphasizes this.