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number of vocal lines. If you listen carefully you'll hear four different vocal ideas on the final choruses. This is a
powerful hook because no single voice can replicate it. The only way to satisfy the desire to hear it again is to play
the record one more time. Yeah, I think I've got to play it again...
16—
Elvis Costello:
'I Want You' (1986)
'I Want You' is one of Costello's most dramatic arrangements. It has a false intro long enough to be a section unto
itself, played in a country style using I IV V in A major. The second verse comes to an unexpected end on A G F#m.
Appropriately for a song about emotional disjunctions, a sudden unrelated D#m chord on the electric hastens in the
first verse proper in a new key. The main part of the song is built on a I III VI Vmaj turnaround in E minor: Em G C
B7, occasionally interrupted by the D#m. The mix comprises a brittle spikey electric, sustained organ chords, an
acoustic guitar, bass and drums. The playing gradually intensifies with the organ seeking higher voicings. At 3:21
there's a demented two-note guitar solo on two deliberately "wrong" notes. The music subsides, builds up and
subsides again at about the five-minute mark. The long coda gradually fades to nothing – a kind of anti-climax.
The lyric obsessively alternates the title with the other lines. Costello's theme is jealousy and its self-torturing focus
on the imagined details of a lover's betrayal. 'I Want You' falls short of the last degree of greatness. There's
something melodramatic about it, almost as if the songwriter enjoys the conceit and prolongs the song as a
consequence. Would it be any less effective if it were a minute or 90 seconds shorter? The speaker seems all too
willing to embrace the pain he suffers. His imagination is voyeuristic, and the lyric (reinforced by Costello's close-
miked vocal presence) implicates us as voyeurs if we get any pleasure out of this pain. But it's rivetting theatre.
17—
Dire Straits:
'On Every Street' (1991)
Dire Straits are a frustrating band. It's easy to understand why their huge sales and the popularism of songs such as
'Twisting By The Pool', 'Money For Nothing' and 'Walk For Life' lead many to dismiss them as incapable of creating
anything of depth – but don't let the image obscure how potent they can be.
In his vocal delivery, lyrics and guitar playing, Knopfler is a master of understatement, which in rock is an
astonishing thing in itself. 'On Every Street' is a love song that conceals deep feeling behind sometimes offhand,
oblique imagery. It has a powerful three-verse-plus-coda structure. The verses are melody driven, with frequent
chord changes that rise with effort to C, the apparent key, and an interpolated 2/4 bar, indicating that rhythm does
not have the upper hand. The hook has a sombre and unexpected Bb (bVII) chord, which lets the suppressed emotion
through by shifting to Bbmaj7, reaches C with momentary hope and then dashes it with a drop to A minor on a
tremoloed 1950s three-note guitar lick. Each verse is followed by a few bars of what will become the driving theme
of the coda, the second statement having a rhythmic anomaly in it. Knopfler's trademark mournful guitar supplies
tell-tale sighs throughout.
At 2:50, the guitars introduce a four-bar turnaround that is in C but never reaches the key chord and includes a
telling D/F# inversion to preserve the shape of the bassline. The song rides out on a coda that is in strong dynamic
contrast to the verses, with the drums entering for the first time. The use of a turnaround for the coda is more
powerful because the verses did not have one. And how many guitarists could have resisted soloing loudly at this
point? Knopfler judged rightly that the song did not need it.