The following has been contributed from guest blogger Matt Schwartzer.
"Something in the Way She Moves"
Written and performed by James Taylor
"Something"
Written by George Harrison
Performed by The Beatles
Ah, the love song. Nothing stirs the soul like romantic love, which has been by far the most common topic of popular music, going as far back as Charles Harris’ After the Ball, written in 1890 and widely considered to be the first pop song.
Something in the Way She Moves by James Taylor and Something by The Beatles are two of the most well-known love songs of the last century, and are loosely related. As the story goes, Taylor played his song for George Harrison and Paul McCartney while auditioning for the Beatles-owned Apple Records. Harrison liked the song so much that he stole the first line, which inspired him to write one of his most beloved compositions.
The bridge sections in these two songs serve their themes very differently. Taylor’s reaffirms the ideas presented throughout the rest of the song, whereas Harrison presents an uncertainty in the narrator’s thoughts and feelings. They are similar, however, in that they do their jobs incredibly well.
For the purposes of this piece, I’m referencing the version of Something in the Way She Moves on James Taylor’s Greatest Hits album, which was re-recorded due to rights issues. This is the most well-known version, and having had a chance to come back to it after he’d initially recorded it for his debut album allowed time for the song’s arrangement to mature, slowing it down, adding some instrumentation, and losing a relatively bizarre harpsichord intro.
Something in the Way She Moves is very straightforward lyrically. The “she” in the song makes the narrator feel good, despite the harsh difficulties of his life. The song starts “There’s something in the way she moves / Or looks my way or calls my name / That seems to leave this troubled world behind.” As we progress to the chorus the narrator tells us that whenever she’s with him, “I feel fine.” (The title of an earlier Beatles song, and a reason the ever-gracious Taylor has offered as to why it’s only fair that Harrison borrowed his first line.)
The bridge then elaborates on the painful feelings from which our narrator needs relief. “Every now and then the things I lean on lose their meaning / And I find myself careening / To places where I should not let me go.” A plaintive pedal steel guitar is added to the acoustic guitar and bass that have backed Taylor’s vocals for the rest of the song, giving the bridge a more lost and mournful quality than the other sections as he describes his existential despair. He finishes the section by explaining again how this woman has the power to save him from these dark places in his mind.
In contrast to Taylor’s bridge, which simply extends the ideas expressed throughout the rest of the song, the bridge of Harrison’s Something shows us the precariousness of the narrator’s feelings, and indeed of romantic love itself. He begins the song similarly to Taylor, telling us that “Something in the way she moves / Attracts me like no other lover.” Nobody else can make him feel the way she makes him feel, a similar sentiment to Taylor’s song, and to thousands of other pop songs. The chorus then confirms these feelings. He tells us he doesn’t want to leave her, and he believes in her.
But then the bridge delivers a gut punch. “You’re asking me will my love grow,” he says, then admits to her that he doesn’t know. His commitment is being questioned, and he doesn’t have an answer. The future is unknown. She’ll just have to “stick around” and see what happens. To demonstrate his uncertainty, the music, which has thus far been relatively subdued, suddenly builds, growing more raucous as the bridge approaches. The strings swell, and the final chord of the chorus, instead of resolving on the root chord C as it had done before and likewise does later, now decidedly does not resolve, becoming an A chord instead, and giving the music an anxious feel. McCartney’s bass, which plays a lovely counter-melody throughout the song, slingshots a sudden flurry of notes at us. The bridge then is played at a higher volume than the rest of the song. George’s singing gets more aggressive, vocal harmonies are introduced for the first and only time, and the drums, which have otherwise been sparse, become quite busy, playing sixteenth note triplets on the toms and hi-hat. Thus the band magnificently encapsulates the uneasy feeling presented in the lyrics.
There’s something in the way each of these bridges serve their respective song that works perfectly, even if they do so in very different ways. And how.
-Matt Schwartzer
"Something in the Way She Moves"
Written and performed by James Taylor
"Something"
Written by George Harrison
Performed by The Beatles
Ah, the love song. Nothing stirs the soul like romantic love, which has been by far the most common topic of popular music, going as far back as Charles Harris’ After the Ball, written in 1890 and widely considered to be the first pop song.
Something in the Way She Moves by James Taylor and Something by The Beatles are two of the most well-known love songs of the last century, and are loosely related. As the story goes, Taylor played his song for George Harrison and Paul McCartney while auditioning for the Beatles-owned Apple Records. Harrison liked the song so much that he stole the first line, which inspired him to write one of his most beloved compositions.
The bridge sections in these two songs serve their themes very differently. Taylor’s reaffirms the ideas presented throughout the rest of the song, whereas Harrison presents an uncertainty in the narrator’s thoughts and feelings. They are similar, however, in that they do their jobs incredibly well.
For the purposes of this piece, I’m referencing the version of Something in the Way She Moves on James Taylor’s Greatest Hits album, which was re-recorded due to rights issues. This is the most well-known version, and having had a chance to come back to it after he’d initially recorded it for his debut album allowed time for the song’s arrangement to mature, slowing it down, adding some instrumentation, and losing a relatively bizarre harpsichord intro.
Something in the Way She Moves is very straightforward lyrically. The “she” in the song makes the narrator feel good, despite the harsh difficulties of his life. The song starts “There’s something in the way she moves / Or looks my way or calls my name / That seems to leave this troubled world behind.” As we progress to the chorus the narrator tells us that whenever she’s with him, “I feel fine.” (The title of an earlier Beatles song, and a reason the ever-gracious Taylor has offered as to why it’s only fair that Harrison borrowed his first line.)
The bridge then elaborates on the painful feelings from which our narrator needs relief. “Every now and then the things I lean on lose their meaning / And I find myself careening / To places where I should not let me go.” A plaintive pedal steel guitar is added to the acoustic guitar and bass that have backed Taylor’s vocals for the rest of the song, giving the bridge a more lost and mournful quality than the other sections as he describes his existential despair. He finishes the section by explaining again how this woman has the power to save him from these dark places in his mind.
In contrast to Taylor’s bridge, which simply extends the ideas expressed throughout the rest of the song, the bridge of Harrison’s Something shows us the precariousness of the narrator’s feelings, and indeed of romantic love itself. He begins the song similarly to Taylor, telling us that “Something in the way she moves / Attracts me like no other lover.” Nobody else can make him feel the way she makes him feel, a similar sentiment to Taylor’s song, and to thousands of other pop songs. The chorus then confirms these feelings. He tells us he doesn’t want to leave her, and he believes in her.
But then the bridge delivers a gut punch. “You’re asking me will my love grow,” he says, then admits to her that he doesn’t know. His commitment is being questioned, and he doesn’t have an answer. The future is unknown. She’ll just have to “stick around” and see what happens. To demonstrate his uncertainty, the music, which has thus far been relatively subdued, suddenly builds, growing more raucous as the bridge approaches. The strings swell, and the final chord of the chorus, instead of resolving on the root chord C as it had done before and likewise does later, now decidedly does not resolve, becoming an A chord instead, and giving the music an anxious feel. McCartney’s bass, which plays a lovely counter-melody throughout the song, slingshots a sudden flurry of notes at us. The bridge then is played at a higher volume than the rest of the song. George’s singing gets more aggressive, vocal harmonies are introduced for the first and only time, and the drums, which have otherwise been sparse, become quite busy, playing sixteenth note triplets on the toms and hi-hat. Thus the band magnificently encapsulates the uneasy feeling presented in the lyrics.
There’s something in the way each of these bridges serve their respective song that works perfectly, even if they do so in very different ways. And how.
-Matt Schwartzer