"Little Girl"

When I listened to Good Times! recently, I noticed a lyrical ambiguity in "Little Girl," specifically in the lines "Cheer up; I'll turn your frown sunnyside up / Come fill your cup."  "Come" could be either a continuation of "I'll" ("I'll turn your frown sunnyside up / [And I'll] come fill your cup") or an imperative that's separate from the preceding line.  The structure of the following verse (with its lines "Stand up; we'll go to town / Go for a ride") suggests the former, but I think the latter is also viable.

"Me & Magdalena"

A few weeks ago, I happened to read some of the lyrics in Bob Dylan's "Romance in Durango" (from the Desire album), and I noticed the phrase "me and Magdalena" in the first verse:

Hot chili peppers in the blistering sun

Dust on my face and my cape

Me and Magdalena on the run

I think this time we shall escape

Of course, this reminded me of the Monkees song "Me & Magdalena."  The phrase stood out to me because, unless I'm mistaken, it's rather ungrammatical since the pronoun should come last ("Magdalena and me").  I listened to both songs recently, but I don't think there's really any connection between the two aside from this phrase.  While it might be just a coincidental similarity, I thought I'd note it all the same.

"Last Train to Clarksville"

I watched "Monkees at the Movies" this morning and noticed a feature in "Last Train to Clarksville" that I've already noted in a couple other songs:  the phrase "all alone" in the line "I can't hear you in this noisy railroad station all alone" alliterates, and because the two words begin with the same sound, there's a sense of that singularity.

"Monkees Get Out More Dirt"

I watched "Monkees Get Out More Dirt" last night and noticed a trivial detail.  The music that Peter plays (accompanied by some string players) in order to impress April seems to be based on the adagio from Bach's Harpsichord Concerto in D minor, BWV 1052.

"Since You Went Away"

In the line "Things are much better since you went away" at ~2:08 in "Since You Went Away," "better" is sung with a melisma (F# E D), giving a sense either of the comparative degree of the adverb itself (more notes for a higher degree) or of the degree of the modifying adverb "much."

"Long Way Home"

I listened to Pool It! yester-day and noticed a handful of small features.

I've noted this with other songs, but "Long Way Home" also contains the phrase "all alone" (in the line "But don't leave me here all alone") and since the two words alliterate, there's a sense of the singularity of being alone.  In its occurrence at ~3:01, "alone" is also sung with a melisma (C E D), giving a sense of the degree of "all."

"(Theme from) The Monkees"

Yester-day, I figured out the chords for "(Theme from) The Monkees," although I'd already figured out a section while writing this post a couple years ago.  The album version contains a couple key changes; it starts in C major, and while the song fades out rather than resolving, the coda cycles through a progression in D major (D major | G major | A major).  The version that was actually used in the television show goes even further; it starts in C major and resolves in E major.  To some degree, this key change (in either version) demonstrates the lines "But we're too busy singin' / To put anybody down" since the song ends in a higher key than where it started.

"Monkees a la Mode"

This morning, I watched "Monkees a la Mode" and noticed a detail in the set dressing.  In a few shots in Madame Quagmeyer's studio, there's a painting in the background.

The style is reminiscent of Piet Mondrian, who is perhaps best known for his painting "Composition with Red, Blue, and Yellow":

[source]

"No Time"

I was thinking about "No Time" yester-day, and I realized that since the line "Andy, you're a dandy; you don't seem to make no sense" contains a double negative, the line itself doesn't make sense (from a strict grammatical point of view, at least), so the semantics of the line match the intended meaning.

"99 Pounds"

A number of years ago, I noticed that the phrase "powder and paint" in the line "There's a little devil livin' under all that powder and paint" in "99 Pounds" alliterates and that this feature helps portray that artifice.  A couple weeks ago, I realized that there's more to it than that:  the words "little devil livin'" also exhibit assonance (the short i) and consonance (the repeated l).  In the same way that these rhetorical features make the line sound good although it's describing a "devil," the girl in the song looks nice when she's adorned in her makeup, but really, "she's a heartbreaker."

"You Told Me"

When I listened to the super deluxe edition of Headquarters a couple months ago, I felt that there was something ambiguous in the line "All these things you said you said sincerely" in "You Told Me."  I finally sorted out what it is.

The major difference is whether the first "you said" is part of a relative clause or not.  Rephrased in different ways, the line could mean either "All these things, which you said, you said sincerely" or "All these things you claimed that you said sincerely" (uninverted:  "You claimed that you said all these things sincerely").  In the first, the narrator affirms that the things were said sincerely; in the second, he seems dubious of the sincerity.

"I'll Spend My Life with You"

Yester-day, I was thinking about "I'll Spend My Life with You," and I realized that the structure of the verses highlights the meaning of some of the lines.  The verses have an AABCCB rhyme scheme (although there's a slant rhyme between "alone" and "home" in the first verse), so every third line stands apart from the two that come before it, and this distinction mirrors the lyrics in various ways.

Here's the first verse:

People come, and people go

Movin' fast and movin' slow

I'm in a crowd, yet I'm all alone

The road is long, the road is rough

I do believe I've had enough

I'm gonna turn around, head for home

The first two lines rhyme, but the third doesn't continue this; just like being "alone," it stands apart from the other two.  Similarly, the fourth and fifth lines rhyme, but the sixth doesn't follow suit, and this diversion matches the "turn[ing] around" in the lyrics there.

There's an-other instance of this significant structure in the second half of the second verse:

I've played a game that couldn't last

And now some mem'ries from the past

Have turned my thoughts around a different way

The first two lines establish a pattern that the third breaks from, and this matches the meaning of "turn[ing] my thoughts around a different way."