THIS WEEK: FIVE UNDERRATED BEATLES SONGS
Things We Said Today
from the album A Hard Day’s Night
1964

The balladic “Things We Said Today” separates four John songs on A Hard Day’s Night with a love song from Paul. Both of McCartney’s bittersweet ballads on the record are in minor, tempering the cheerful persona that normally excels in major positivisms (even for goodbye songs) like “P.S. I Love You” and “All My Loving.” (This typically British underside will evolve into “Eleanor Rigby” and “For No One.”) “Things We Said Today” is wistful and nostalgic, and it’s one of the first from either Paul or John that takes on the issue of time in an explicit manner, even though it just skims the surface of the issue. Lennon’s temporalities can be ominous (“Not a Second Time,” “In My Life,” “She Said She Said,” “A Day in the Life”); McCartney’s concern with time is less pronounced in “Yesterday” and more humorous in “When I’m Sixty-Four.”

The assertive acoustic guitar intro sets up an atmosphere of impending departure (“You say you will love me / If I have to go”), and the middle eight bars go batty with head-over-heels delirium. The melody is the sound of romantic longing: it has the roll-on flow of a constancy that is approaching change, as well as the swells of hope that greet the inevitable (“Someday when we’re dreaming…”) — Paul’s voice is complemented beautifully during those moments. But the middle section, all rumble-tumble in major, stirs up the enchanting life of love itself, not renouncing the impending sadness but resting beside it with a completely different tone:

Me I’m just the lucky kind
Love to hear you say that love is love
And though we may be blind
Love is here to stay and that’s enough

Musically, the bridge kicks optimism in where the verse plaintively accepts separation. With his eyes on the distant future —

Someday when we’re dreaming
Deep in love, not a lot to say
Then we will remember
Things we said today

— he can’t help but revel in the present information with love he feels as he sings. Goodbye heartache is assuaged with bottomless affection.

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Founded in Madison, WI in 2005, Jonk Music is a daily source for new music.

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