Saturday, August 14, 2021

"It's Not Too Late"

In the line "We'll go together ev'rywhere" in "It's Not Too Late," "ev'rywhere" is sung with a melisma (A A G F), musically giving a sense of that breadth.

Friday, August 13, 2021

"Never Enough"

I recently figured out the chords for "Never Enough," and I remembered that I have a few notes about songs on the Justus album that I never got around to writing about here.

In the line "Wasted alone with these endless tears" in "Never Enough," "tears" is sung with a melisma (G# A), and since the word is extended, there's a sense of the tears' being "endless."

The narrator of the song seems to be yearning for more (repeating that it's "never enough"), and when I figured out the chords, I noticed a few musical features that mirror this yearning.  In some ways, the song is expanding past some musical boundaries.  First, there are a couple accidentals in the chords.  The song begins in A major, but there are B majors (with a D# accidental) and C# majors (with an E# accidental).  After the key change (to Bb major), there's a D major (with an F# accidental).  Near the end, there's even a Gb major (whose root is an accidental).  The key change itself is also an instance of the song's musical expansion.  Finally, at the end of the last chorus (at ~2:41), the last two chords (IV and V) each have twice the value that they did in earlier iterations of the chorus.  Before, they each lasted two measures, but at the end, they last four.