Monday, June 13, 2011

Why "Don't Pull Your Love" by Hamilton, Joe Frank, and Reynolds Is a Great Song

Hamilton, Joe Frank, and Reynold's is a minor band from the seventies, the next best thing to a one hit wonder. However, I still think their first hit Don't Pull your Love" is a great song:


This doesn't seem like a likely candidate for several reasons. First off it's pretty standard, especially in the lyrics department. We've all heard lyrics like "big white bird" (as a metaphor for airplane) before. other examples include "What about that brand new ring doesn't that mean love to you" and "if I threw away my pride and I got down on my knees". Hundreds of songs probably include lyrics extremely similar to these. However, I still really like this song.

The reason I think this song is great is because of the chorus. The chorus carries the song, which isn't surprising since most of the song is the chorus. However, the chorus is really well done in this song. Choruses, by the way, are often a problem for artists. Many an otherwise beautiful song is marred by its chorus. A recent example of this which I've found is the song "Animal" by Neon Trees:


I was really taken in by this song up until the chorus, which I found a huge let-down. Another, more classic example, is the song "Sister Golden Hair" by America, an absolutely gorgeous song except for the chorus:


The point of a chorus is to hold a song together, it takes the disparate elements of a given song and binds them together into a cohesive whole. However, in these two songs the choruses seem more like obligatory gestures that the artists didn't have the imagination to do away with rather than an integral part of the song. For instance, "Sister Golden Hair" begins slow, melancholy, and lilting but then runs into the chorus which is upbeat and sing-songy. The chorus throws off the melancholy feel of the beginning and the song never quite recovers, failing to decide what it wants to be. The problem is the change in tone seems out of place and thus the chorus throws the whole song off. In "Don't Pull Your Love", on the other hand, the song starts off with the chorus and it infuses its energy into the song. In "Don't Pull Your Love", the chorus fulfills its function of holding the song together.

However, the real reason I like this song has to do with a quality that is harder to explain. I feel like in some songs there is a quality of pacing that lends it a quality of perpetual motion. I actually have a list of some other songs that have this quality: "Doctor My Eyes", "Hit the Road Jack", "Lisztomania" by Phoenix, "My Boy Builds Coffins" by Florence and the Machine, and "Cold War" by Janelle Monae (I could probably think of several other songs that have this). Anyway, in my head this quality is connected to the feeling one gets sometimes when running, more often when young and usually briefly, that the movement has become effortless, that one could keep running in the same fashion forever. In music, I feel like this quality is a result of a certain proportion between the beat, the pace of the instruments, and the pace of the singer's voice. I can't exactly set down a sort of golden ratio that it adheres to (hell, maybe it is the golden ratio that describes this quality). However, it strikes me sometimes when I'm listening to a song, and I feel that any song it occurs in becomes, to some extent, perfect (although I don't think that the "best" songs necessarily have this quality). The fact that the list of song which possess this quality is so short should hint that its occurrence is somewhat rare, and, while some songs possess this quality more deeply and consistently, the fact that it occurs in "Don't Pull Your Love" makes it a special song.

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