"Why Do Fools Fall in Love"

About two weeks ago, I wrote a post on my general music blog about descending phrases in Frankie Lymon & the Teenagers' "Why Do Fools Fall in Love?"  Since the Beach Boys covered this on Shut Down Volume Two, I figured I should also post that here.

The Beach Boys' version is in a different key though.  Where Lymon's is in F# major, the Beach Boys' is in the much simpler F major (with only one flat rather than F# major's six sharps).  Because of that difference, all of the notes in my original post are a half-step higher than those in the Beach Boys' version, but this doesn't affect the musical/lyrical connections.

A couple years ago, I happened to think of Frankie Lymon & the Teenagers' "Why Do Fools Fall in Love?" and I realized that a lot of the musical phrases descend, as if to illustrate that "fall[ing] in love."

A lot of the rhythms are too complex for my novice notation skills, but the first "Why do fools fall in love" (after the initial "ooh wah"s) is:

 

The "Why do they fall" in the chorus is sung to the descending phrase A# G# F# E#, and while the initial note of the "in love" that completes the line starts from a higher pitch than that E#, that short phrase descends too.  The "love" is sung with an extra syllable, and the second note is lower than the first, continuing the descent so that "in love" is sung to G# G# F#.

Some other lines in the chorus descend too.  The "Fall from up above" in the lines "Why does the rain / Fall from up above" is sung to the phrase A# G# G# F# F#, and the "fall in love" in the line "Why do fools fall in love" is sung to the phrase A# G# F#.

"I Can Hear Music"

A couple days ago, I learned the chords for "I Can Hear Music."  I referenced the Ronettes' original and found that the Ronettes' version and the Beach Boys' version are in the same key (D major) and that they use the same chords (save for the a cappella part in the Beach Boys' version where the instrumentation drops out).  However, I also discovered that the chord progression during the first half of the verses has a different rhythm in the Beach Boys' version.

The first two lines of each verse have the same chord progression:  D major | F# minor | G major | A major.  In the Ronettes' version, the chord progression has the same rhythm in both lines:  four beats of D major, four beats of F# minor, six beats of G major, and then two beats of A major.  Illustrated with single notes, using the root note of each chord, the rhythm is something like this:

In the Beach Boys' version, the chord progression has different rhythms in those first two lines.  For the first line, each chord is strummed for four beats.  Using the same notation method as above (using the root note to represent the chord), the rhythm is:

The second line has the same rhythm that both lines in the Ronettes' version have:

Because the rhythm of the second line is not just an outright repetition of the first, I think this makes the Beach Boys' version a bit more interesting to listen to.

Here are the chords in their entirety (with the disclaimer that - as always - I might be wrong about something):

Verses:
D major | F# minor | G major | A major
D major | F# minor | G major | A major
G major
A major

Chorus:
D major
E minor | A major
D major
E minor | A major
D major | D7
G major | G minor
D major
E minor | A major | D major

Like I mentioned above, the instrumentation (save for tambourine and hand-claps) drops out for the bridge, but in the Ronettes' version, the chords there are just D major | A major | D major.