The Beatles “Sexy Sadie”

Scene Change/Amazing Journey, 21 Feb 2021

One of the things I like most about this is the chance to hear what other people are hearing. These songs sound different in each other’s company—duh—but sometimes maybe subtitles are needed.

None of us would be here on this chain if we didn’t know what it is to fall into the world of a song. My earliest memories are this feeling, and I eventually noticed there were different ways it happened. There were those songs that threw you in the car and drove off, nothing you could do about it. Or ones you followed down some street you’d never been. Maybe my favorite are the type where there’s a building—a house of some sort, usually empty—that you are led through. Sometimes you pass through a wing and end up back at the living room through a door you hadn’t seen… it seems like the structure is definite and fixed yet you keep being surprised by angles. You can’t get sick of the views, which have a lenticular quality; they keep changing depending on your approach.

The first song I ever heard that did this was Sexy Sadie. Another is Edge of Seventeen. There are many, usually crazily underrated songs. I bought a book once called “Songwriting Secrets of The Beatles” and Sexy Sadie wasn’t even mentioned.

So what happens? __tape edit—we’re somewhere in the middle of a performance/some descending chords/then a helpful drum fill and what feels like it must be Home/The Front Door. It’s immediately disorienting though: fall down a half step for a strong move to—“what have you done?” (pause on the only chord that gets a full bar in the whole song, but we don’t know that yet)—keep moving like nothing happened, drum fill sounds like back to the beginning but it’s only bar four...etc. It’s clearly a twisted hallway or the walls aren’t parallel or some shit, but it feels great and the logic of it is very strong. By the time you get to the ‘middle eight’ (just five bars in this case) the sun has come out, it’s warm on the back patio, reassuring bricks on each beat. Then he puts a hand on your shoulder and turns you back inside. But now that Bm chord is the ground...

This type of structure needs very solid building materials or it’ll just blow away. But check the form: Exactly two go arounds, no variations. Crystal clear geometry in the lyric:

Sexy Sadie

What have you done?

You made a fool of everyone

You made a fool of everyone

Sexy Sadie

What have you done?

•

Sexy Sadie

You broke the rules

You laid it down for all to see

You laid it down for all to see

Sexy Sadie

You broke the rules

•

etc

By the time we get to the outro the whole thing feels inevitable, and this is without question my favorite George Harrison guitar solo. It’s as if he’s leaning over me sweetly and going “look, it works like this: there’s that little corner _there_ and that new note _there_ and then we fall back to the beginning again; nothing to it!”

But what kind of magic trick is this? His simple looping melody has THESE notes in it:

D E F F# G A A# B C C# D E F#

So now you can try it too. Take those notes and construct a tune a six-year-old can play on a kazoo—in a five-phrase, seven-bar loop—and feel like it’s as natural as walking.

*plus a ps on the “normal” way of using a VII7: I met and spoke at something-like length with Chris Stamey precisely once, during which we covered a topic he essentially declared “the only reason to write a song”. His point being one must understand chord function and how the melody is outlining that harmony to make sure you aren’t repeating yourself… 

Well, it’s not hard to recognize the Sexy Sadie move in I’m So Tired (I-VII-IV-V, before he ‘fixes’ it on the repeat I-vi-IV-V). He’d written I’m So Tired first—missing Yoko in India, by definition pre-Sexy Sadie—so maybe the jump from VII7 to iii was his innate sense of novelty at work. They were well-positioned to do this harmonic development on behalf of guitar-based pop music, an instinct I always associate with that III7 in I Want To Hold Your Hand; their excitement about the chord itself is the defining feature of the tune, as they hammer it every way possible in 2:20.

**I picked up a guitar last night and was reminded of yet another magic trick they pull off here: you get to the guitar solo and suddenly—and completely naturally—the sequence starts on the IV and now the iii is the turnaround bar. They've changed nothing about the form or the cycle but where you get on and off. 

!!!

And now I'll STFU about it.