"The Same Old Sun"

Yester-day, I was thinking about the vocal melody in "The Same Old Sun" and noticed a small but significant contrast between different sections.

The first section ("Tell me what to do / Now the light in my life is gone from me...") is sung to a melody something like this:

The following section ("Taking my life / One day at a time / Cause I can't think what else to do...") is sung to a melody something like this:

The first section has a considerable number of sixteenth notes, but the following section includes longer note values, the longest of which are half notes tied to eighth notes.  This increase in note duration musically demonstrates "Taking some time / To make up my mind."

When I did the notation, I noticed that the melody is slightly different when this section is repeated:

There's a longer pause between "Taking some time" and "To make up my mind" (in the fifth measure), and this also illustrates the meaning of those lyrics.

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For what it's worth:  I wrote about a different aspect of the vocal melody in "The Same Old Sun" back in May.

"The Same Old Sun"

I was thinking about "The Same Old Sun" yester-day and realized that near the end of the lines "And the moon would rise way over my head" and "And the clouds will rise way over my head," the vocal part moves to a higher register, giving a sense of the height of "way over my head."

The lines are sung to phrases something like these (the pitches for both are the same, but the rhythm is slightly different the second time):

(I'm not completely sure on the key.)

While doing the notation, it also occurred to me that there are ascents in the melody corresponding to "moon would rise" and "clouds will rise" (D F Bb), musically illustrating that "ris[ing]."