Recently, I discovered some features in the Everly Brothers' "Devoted to You." Since the Beach Boys covered this on Beach Boys' Party!, I thought I'd write a post about it. (I feel I should note that I have only Beach Boys' Party! Uncovered and Unplugged, not the original album.)
The first line of the second verse is "I'll be yours through endless time." "Endless" is sung with a melisma (E D E in one voice; C# B C# in the other), and because it's drawn out, there's a musical sense of duration.
The first two lines of the third verse are "Through the years, my love will grow / Like a river, it will flow." "Love" is sung with a melisma (E D in one voice; C# B in the other), and that extra syllable provides a musical sense of its "grow[ing]." Both "river" (A G F# in one voice; F# E D in the other) and "it" (E D in one voice; C# B in the other) are sung with melismas, musically giving a sense of the movement of "flow[ing]."
There are two structural features that illustrate the speaker/singer's constancy: every verse ends with the phrase "Devoted to you," and the bridge uses the rhetorical device of anaphora with the repeated "I'll never...."
