"I Know There's an Answer" / "Wouldn't It Be Nice"

Backdated, archival post

[link to original on tumblr]

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Last night, I spent a bit of time trying to figure out the opening keyboard part to "I Know There's an Answer" (I'd previously noted that there's an organ part and a piano part combined in an unusual way) and the chords to "Wouldn't It Be Nice."  I made some progress on both, but I don't think I know enough to post anything yet.

However!  I discovered some interesting musical things.  From what I know so far, I think "Wouldn't It Be Nice" and "I Know There's an Answer" are both in F major.  Along with this project, I do this same sort of thing for the Zombies, and lately I've been looking at the keys of the songs on Odessey and Oracle.  I have this idea that some of the unity of that album has to do with common tonalities.  So now I'm wondering if that could apply to Pet Sounds too.  I'll have to find out what keys the other songs are in to be sure, but I felt I'd at least mention the common key of "Wouldn't It Be Nice" and "I Know There's an Answer."

Secondly - and more interestingly - in figuring out the chords to the first part of "Wouldn't It Be Nice," I discovered that the "nice" in the lyrics falls on the F major chord (the tonic) both times in the first verse:

Wouldn't it be nice if we were older
Then we wouldn't have to wait so long
And wouldn't it be nice to live together
In the kind of world where we belong

Having that particular word fall on that particular chord (in that particular key) weds the musical feeling of centrality with the idyllic nature that the song describes.

I think the phrases start on down-beats too, so while "nice" is in the middle of the line, it manages to be on the first beat of the measure, which works nicely with how it falls on the tonic chord - it's primary in both pitch and meter.