Popular Culture Review Vol. 12, No. 1, February 2001 | Page 16

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Popular Culture Review

this light SFF not only defied conventions of prior Beatles’ hits (see pp. 4-5, above)
but defied as well a defining convention of pre-Beatles pop, viz., co-ordinating
song plot, characters and, after Burns, “lessons” to revalorize romantic heterosexual
love.

Interaction Invention

I have noted how SFF’s opening lyrics invite auditors rather than, say, preach
at them. (In contrast, the line, “Living is easy with eyes closed” preaches.) By
directly addressing auditors, however, “Let me take y ou down” exemplifies
interaction (see p. 3, above; emphasis mine). Interaction is also augmented through
the disjointed style found in such lines as, “That is you can’t you know tune in but
it’s all right/That is I think it’s not too bad;” and “Always, no sometimes, think it’s
me/But you know I know and it’s a dream/I think I know I mean a ‘Yes’ but it’s all
wrong/That is I think I disagree.” Martin insists
the brilliance of the song’s lyrics lies in the way they call up
strong images, using the often illogical and disjointed language
of everyday speech. Play back a tape of people talking, and
you hear words used out of context, sentences in reversed order,
interruptions, ‘urns’ and ‘ers’ and hesitations all over the place.
The spoken word is a shambles. Listen again to John’s song,
and you will hear this exquisitely captured (15).
The disjointed style heightens SFF’s interaction because it constructs a
conversational context. Never before had the Beatles used both in a song-recording.
Few other artists had, either. A musicologist reminds us that a lyric can “‘draw
attention to itself qua language, by deviating from accepted linguistic norms,”
including songwriting norms. Indeed the craft of songwriting inheres in hearing
“‘spoken language as a poem’” (Lodge, qtd. in Frith, “Why Do” 99-100). For
critic Ian MacDonald the art of SFF’s lyrics inheres in their attempt to express the
inexpressible, to articulate “sensations too confusing, intense, or personal to
articulate” (172).

Production Invention

A third aspect of SFF’s inventiveness lies in the relative expense and novelty
of its production history. Compared to previous songs the Beatles recorded,
production of SFF was far more complex. The Beatles’ first LP, Please Please Me,
took one day to record and cost approximately $400 in studio time and labor. Sgt.
P epp er 5 L on ely H earts Club B and, for which SFF was designed, took four months