Hi Josie,

I never knew you could sing in this genre. Just wow! I have to say that the song was incredibly easy to listen to – very nice indeed! You and Dean have put together a really great collaboration. (I tip my metaphorical hat to you both. You're a wonderful singer and he's a mighty fine guitar player and arranger.)

I hope you don't mind, but these lyrics are spectacular and I couldn't let them pass without some comment on them because there are so many valuable lessons for lyricists contained within them. I'm so glad you chose this song smile

Below is the song's format and some of its lyrics.

  • It's classic 'Tin Pan Alley', written by Harry Warren and Al Dubin in the mid-1930s and uses the popular AABA format. The standard way of utilising this format is to play through the entire song once (omitting the tag if there's one), have an instrumental that's usually based on the chords of the A-section, and then repeat the B- and final A-section; a tag is sometimes added to give a sense of finality.

Quote:
[A1]
The leaves of brown ...
Remember, in September, in the rain

[A2]
The sun went out ...
That September in the rain

[B-section]
To every word of love I heard you whisper
The raindrops seemed to play our sweet refrain

[A3]
Though spring is here ...
That September in the rain

Instrumental

Repeat [B-section] and [A3]

[Tag]
That September that brought the pain
That September in the rain


If the tag is not considered, the bulk of the song is 58 words long. How amazing is that! To take 58 words and to turn them into a 3 minute, delightful journey of music is really something.

What I particularly wanted to highlight with these lyrics, though, are the very clever writing techniques used in the B-section. Such techniques show a great deal of thought and expertise.

First
Consider the phrase ”Every word of love I heard you whisper”. We have the inner-rhymes 'word' and 'heard' symmetrically placed on beat 3 of consecutive bars. We also have the 'w' alliteration of 'word' and 'whisper'.

Second
The real lyric powerhouse in the B-section is line 2, ”The raindrops seemed to play our sweet refrain”.

  • I bet the writers, Warren and Dubin, undertook considerable thought and re-writing in an effort to get this line as perfect as it is.

The phrases 'raindrops seemed' and 'play our sweet' parallel one another in that beat-1 contains words with long 'a' sounds and beat-3 words have long 'e' sounds. Moreover, these are consecutive measures. In addition, there's a long 'a' sound on beat-1 of the next bar with the word 'refrain'.

  • The net result of this lyrical movement is that when I say the line out loud, those two gently rolling phrases of parallel assonance give me the feeling of swaying; just like the leaves on the tree in the first A-section. Now THAT'S one aspect of prosody at it's most creative! It's also an incredibly sophisticated way of establishing a long-distant lyric relationship between remote sections of the song.

... but that's not what really grabbed me about the B-section.

What really made me sit up and pay attention was the fact that the B-section did not rhyme. This pushed it headlong into the final A-section. Most importantly, though, was that the last line of the B-section set-up the closure of the final A-section by giving 'rain' a rhyming partner with which to end the song. The feeling of payoff that comes from finally rhyming “September in the Rain”, the title, makes the musical and lyrical journey a very satisfying emotional experience.

What a song! What a singer! What an arranger and instrumentalist!

I loved it smile

All the best to you both,
Noel


Disclaimer: "Fair Use" allows copyrighted material, such as portions of these lyrics, to be quoted for the purpose of critique without infringement.

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