"The Voice"

This morning, I started transcribing the lyrics in the booklet from Long Distance Voyager for easier reference, and I noticed some significant variations in the syllable counts in lines in "The Voice."

The first verse starts with the lines

Won't you take me back to school

I need to learn the golden rule

Won't you lay it on the line

I need to hear it just one more time

The first two lines establish a pattern (seven syllables then eight syllables), but the next two lines don't completely follow it (seven syllables but then nine syllables).  In a way, this extra syllable in the fourth line represents the addition that the lyrics themselves mention ("one more time").

The beginning of the third verse exhibits a similar expansion:

Make a promise, take a vow,

And trust your feelings; it's easy now

Understand the voice within

And feel a change* already beginning

Once again, the first two lines establish a pattern (seven syllables then nine syllables), and the subsequent lines initially follow this (seven syllables in the third line) but then break away (ten syllables in the fourth).  Here, the alteration in the number of syllables matches the "change" in the lyrics.  Additionally, the rhyme scheme shifts:  instead of line-ending rhymes (like the preceding "vow" and "now"), the final syllable of "within" rhymes with an internal sound in "beginning."

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*I think it's "a change" in the recording, but the booklet has "the changes."

"The Voice"

I'd previously noted the parallelism of "Make a promise, take a vow" in "The Voice," but just recently (in fact, the day my other post about it was published, which is the reason I decided to delay this post), I realized that this parallelism illustrates the seriousness of that pledge.  It's as if the gravity of the situation requires this to be said twice.

"The Voice"

In "The Voice" after the lines "'Cause out on the ocean of life, my love / There's so many storms we must rise above" (at about 1:52), there's an ascending synth phrase (panned left, playing the notes A B C, I think), which musically represents this "ris[ing] above."

The next two lines are "Can you hear the spirit calling / As it's carried across the waves," which seems to take an image from Genesis 1:2:  "The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep.  And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters."