Friday, April 28, 2017

Jonathan Richman and the Modern Lovers - "When I'm Walking" (1983)

This song is all verse, with a refrain couplet at the end. Somehow in listening to this over time, I've never been struck by the amount of text in the song. As with this song that I wrote about four years ago, it wasn't until I wrote it out and looked at it that I realized how long it is - eighty-seven words for the first verse (excluding the repeated interjections of "well").

It occurs in ten lines, five pairs of rhyming couplets. The harmonic progression from couplet to couplet is exploratory, with a long-delayed cadence finally tip-toeing back to the tonic by means of an unexpected V/V chord.

Richman plays all the way through the progression with a chordal lead guitar part to start the song and it looks like this (chords one bar each unless noted).

I - IV - iii - ii
I - IV - iii - ii
IV - V - IV - V
I - IV - I - IV
I - IV - I - V (two bars) - IV - V/V - I

Interestingly, though, when it repeats and the first verse starts, it's not on that I chord. He hangs on the I for a total of five measures through the end of the intro and the transition and starts the verse on the next chord, the IV. He groups the measures in four, though, and ends on the next I chord. Second time through, the progression doesn't go to I, so he cuts it off at three bars.

IV - iii - ii - I
IV - iii - ii

The verse also does away with the weirdness you see above in the last line I've written out of the original chord progression, changing it to four bars of tonic prolongation and a perfectly square, four measure V - IV - V/V - I progression for that couplet refrain.

One more verse and we're done.

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