This Beatles song has always caught my attention. Within the song, there are essentially two different songs forming a dichotomy within itself. The verses about the news, obviously starting with, "I read the news today, oh boy," were written by Lennon about news paper articles. The other song within A Day In The Life, written by McCartney, is a little more light-hearted, starts, "Woke up, got out of bed, dragged a comb across my head." But why combine these two completely different songs?
As I've listened to this song, many times may I add, I see McCartney's part as the precursor to the beginning of the song. In Paul's part it says; "Found my way downstairs" and then a few lines later says "found my way upstairs". It doesn't say he went to these places, but rather he found his way. By saying "found" it makes me think that this character is just wandering around through his day. He doesn't seem to have an exact purpose. The last line of McCartney's 'song' says "I went into a dream". He isn't really fully in the present, rather off in some other place. And all of this is the set-up for Lennon's part (even though it comes later in the song).
Lennon's part also suggests this character is not in the present moment as he states; "He didn't notice that the lights had changed". This person was not paying attention to what he was doing. Driving wasn't top of mind, clearly. By saying that he didn't notice rather than just he crashed, shows how his mind was elsewhere. Then the song goes; "They'd seen his face before, nobody was really sure". Again, this alludes to the character's wandering through life because he was recognized, but no one could put a name to his face. If you are wandering through life, you are there, but are missing things that pass you by along the way. He had missed all the people. The face was recognizable, but he wasn't really remembered.
Though these two songs were written separately, I think they actually tie together quite nicely, and turned out to be one great song.
John Lennon
October 9, 1940-December 8, 1980
Dani-
ReplyDeleteNeat post. I'm not too familiar with the Beatles, so this helps me understand their music a little better. Perhaps the intertwining of the two similar stories, for lack of a better term, is to show how similar we all are. If one person can get in a crash, so can the other. It seems to speak to the fact that we are all made of the same "materials," come from a mom and dad, drink water and eat food, etc. We're not all that different, and must recognize eachother. Thanks for this post, it got me thinking!
Mad tech skills!
ReplyDeleteA careful analysis of individual lines from the lyrics. Nice questions posed.
Now Dani, how could you relate this to American Studies? :)