"Little Deuce Coupe"

While reading The Beach Boys yester-day, I ran across the phrase "Deuce Coupe" (on page 287, Dennis mentions a ballet with this name, inspired by the Beach Boys' music).  In thinking about the song "Little Deuce Coupe" afterwards, I realized that the second half of the line "Well, I'm not braggin', babe, so don't put me down" is sung to a descending melody ("so don't put me down" is sung to the notes Db C Ab Ab Ab), so while the expression is used more metaphorically and is negated, there's a musical sense of "put[ting]... down."

"Spirit of America"

Months ago, I had a small realization about "Spirit of America," but it wasn't until recently that I was able to articulate it.

The phrase "half airplane, half auto" is sung to a melody something like this:

"Half airplane" is sung to notes that total five beats, and "half auto" is sung to notes that total six beats, so it's not quite exact, but there is a sort of musical balance that matches this "half" and "half."

This balance is also present in the lyrics alone:  the two phrases have the same number of syllables, and there's a parallelism in the initial letters of the words.