Interview with Ralph Murphy

I strongly recommend watching this entire interview. I learned a lot from it, and I'm definitely going to buy his book.

Duet Series: "Young Folks" by Peter, Bjorn, and John

Structure

Well, here is a simple song.

Verse

Chorus

Verse

Chorus

Really? You might say. Are there only 2 musical sections that are simply repeated twice? Well, basically, yes!

Let's look a little closer though:

Verse 1 has two formal sections within it that are sung twice with different lyrics. The first one is sung by Him, the second is sung by Her.

1.1 Sung by Him:

"If I told you things I did before, told you how I used to be,

Would you go along with someone like me?

If you knew my story word for word, had all of my history

would you go along with someone like me?"

1.2 Sung by Her:

"I did before and had my share, it didn't lead nowhere

I would go along with someone like you

It doesn't matter where you've been, who you were hanging with

We can stick around and see this night through"

Chorus sung by Both:

"And we don't care about the young folks

talking 'bout the young style

And we don't care about the old folks

talking 'bout the old style too

And we don't care about our own faults

talking 'bout our own style

All we care about is talking

talking only me and you"

Verse 2 goes like this

Verse 2.1 sung by Her

"Usually when things have gone this far people tend to disappear

No one will surprise me unless you do"

Sung by Him:

"I can tell there's something going on, hours seem to disappear

Everyone is leaving, I'm still with you"

Verse 2.2 sung by Both

"It doesn't matter what we do, where we are going to

We can stick around and see this night through"

But, alas! What an anomaly! The second half of the second verse is cut short. They only sing those two lines in unison and then go straight on into the second chorus instead of singing the two more lines that would make the second verse of equal length with the first verse. But hey, why not? There's no reason to keep singing words just for the sake of structural evenness. In fact, as we've seen with other songs, the second verse is often not only shortened but cut in half.

The second chorus goes on ad infinitum from here to the end of the recording.

Lyrics

What are they saying?

-Verse 1.1

The first half of the first verse, sung by Him, communicates a very simple sentiment: if you knew the real me, would you still like me? It's not only a simple sentiment, it's an extremely vulnerable one and therefore draws the listener in immediately. He asks that question twice with different words, and that makes up the whole first half of verse 1. The first four lines are the same question asked twice in different words. This allows the listener to meditate. It takes time to focus on one issue before moving ahead in the story/conversation. And, taking the time to meditate on this particular issue, the simple and vulnerable one, is probably a very important reason for why this song exhibits such emotional immediacy.

-Verse 1.2

The first line of the girl's response doesn't make a lot of sense to me. The lyrics are a bit obscure until she sings "I would go along with someone like you," which is, obviously, a direct answer to that vulnerable question posed by Him in the first four lines. Her next two lines are a continued and MORE DETAILED response to his question. That, to me, is the key to going deep into one issue and keeping a song focused–one must find the interesting facets, the deeper details, the other words for one issue. The Guy asks the same question twice with different words, the Girl responds to that question with details, thoughts of her own. A lot of time and words are devoted to one question and one answer.

-Chorus

The chorus is sort of it's own thing as far as the lyrical concept goes. It doesn't directly relate to that question and answer in the first verse. What it does do is it focuses on the idea of nothing being important outside of their relationship. Question: Do they ever say "nothing is important outside of our relationship"? Heck no!!!! That would be really really boring. Instead, they find another way to say it. They use words that convey that idea in terms of its interesting facets, deeper details, or other words. It's not direct. It's resourceful. It relates the central idea, nothing is important outside our relationship, to other ideas. "We DON'T care about the young folks..." "we DON'T care about the old folks." "All we care about is talking, talking only me and you."

-Verse 2.1

The story moves forward here. After the inner thoughts of insecurity are voiced in verse 1, we see these two people actually start to come together. They show us the situation of how they talk with each other for longer than other people do, they stay with each other for longer than other people tend to stay with them, we get some butterflies ourselves as they start realizing what's happening between themselves.

-Verse 2.2

This is that shortened section, but it's a really important one. This is the line where they are finally together. "It doesn't matter what we do, where we are going to, we can stick around and see this night through." It addresses the doubts of the first verse with "It doesn't matter what we do, where we are going to..." And then, it focuses on their togetherness with "we can stick around and see this night through." Also, important to note about that last line is that it was used earlier in the first verse. That makes for a tidy wrap up of all the issues in the song by bringing back a line from earlier that applies just as well to this later place. It's like that idea in classical music of returning "home" by recapitulating the main theme at the end of the symphony.

-Chorus and tag

The chorus is repeated verbatim, and then the tag is just the last line of the chorus repeated over and over. "talking only me and you..."

Other thoughts

I love what this and the last duet entry, "Nothing Better," does as a conversation between two voices. Usually a song sung solo is a conversation with the self, a sort of lyric monologue. But, with this song, poetry and dialogue get to work together. We get to hear an explicitly back and forth conversation that uses words like poetry instead of straight prose like you would expect to hear in a spoken dialogue.

Also, in order to delineate this kind of duet from a song like "Sound of Silence" by Simon and Garfunkle, which I think needs to be thought of differently, we can call this kind of duet a dramatic lyrical duet. Certainly Simon and Garfunkle sing duets, but they aren't conversations between two lyrical voices. I wish there were more dramatic lyrical duets like this being written and recorded. Cheers, and happy songwriting!