It’s For You – An Early Sign of McCartney’s Sophistication

Although this website/blog is primarily concerned with McCartney’s career after 1970, it is sometimes instructive to look back to the 1960s to follow his evolving style.

Cilla Black

Cilla Black (born Priscilla White, 1943) had been a cloakroom attendant at the Cavern Club and had worked her way up to singing with several bands such as The Big Three and Rory Storm and the Hurricanes. She was subsequently signed by Brian Epstein and then George Martin on the Parlophone label. Her debut single was Love of the Loved, an early Beatles song that had been mainly written by McCartney. It was only a modest success and reached number thirty-five in the UK Charts in 1963.

Her breakthrough came with the Bacharach-David song Anyone Who Had A Heart, which spent three weeks at the top spot in the charts. This inspired McCartney to write another song for Black. McCartney cut a demo of this new song, It’s For You in June 1964. In 2016 this surfaced for auction from the estate of the recently-deceased Black:

It’s For You was subsequently recorded at Abbey Road Studios on 2 July 1964 with Martin producing and conducting his arrangement.

It’s For You – 3/4 Time

What is immediately obvious about It’s For You is its 3/4 time signature, in other words, it is clearly a waltz. Songs in 3/4 time form a small minority of The Beatles or McCartney’s post-1970s output. Other songs in 3/4 time include:

A Taste Of Honey
She’s Leaving Home
I Me Mine (verses)
Dig A Pony

Mull of Kintyre; We All Stand Together; Don’t Let It Bring You Down; and more recently, Do It Now from Egypt Station.

What’s more, this waltz is given a slight jazz lilt through the use of light swung eighths/quavers on the ride cymbal, which is obvious when the drums make their mark from 0:03:

Verse-Refrain Structure

As I have argued in Paul McCartney After The Beatles volumes one and two, the majority of McCartney’s songs both during and after The Beatles are not in the form of a verse and a chorus. It is a common misconception that all/most songs have a chorus – they don’t.

The only thing resembling a chorus in It’s For You is the repeated refrain of “it’s for you” at the end of each verse. Three words do not constitute a chorus, by any stretch of the imagination. Other than that, there is bridge section which offers variety.

As such, It’s For You is the form of verse-refrain, not verse-chorus structure.

Descending Bass

Like a number of Paul McCartney songs (such as Penny Lane and New), the chord progression is influenced by a descending bass line. This can be heard in the first four bars, as the chords move through C minor, C minor7, F/A and then F minor/Ab.

Exploiting the Minor Key

A minor key signature allows for a rich palette of chords. This is because there are three main minor scales; the natural minor, melodic minor and harmonic minor. Each comes with its own palette of chords and thus harmonic colours.

The chord of F major is taken from the melodic minor scale (with its raised sixth degree) and F minor is from the natural or melodic minor scale. The chord of G major is from the harmonic and melodic minor scales, but G minor is formed from the natural minor form of C minor.

McCartney is instinctively aware of the wide possibilities offered by the minor key signature, and moves freely between the chords of F major and F minor; and G major G minor, offering the listener a rich harmonic palette.

Circle of Fifths

From McCartney embarks on a circle of fifths chord progression, moving from Eb major to Ab major, Db major and then Gb major. This style of chord progression is explained in my book Paul McCartney After The Beatles: A Musical Appreciation Volume Two:

The circle of fifths is used in The Beatles song You Never Give Me Your Money and several songs in McCartney’s post-Beatles career, most notably. Hold Me Tight from Red Rose Speedway.

However, given the flexibility of the minor key signature, the first two chords of Eb major and Ab major are a part of the natural minor scale.

However, the chord of Db major is emphatically not a part of the C minor key signature. It can also be construed as Phrygian II or Neapolitan chord. The chord is called “Neapolitan” because it is associated with the Neapolitan School, which included Alessandro Scarlatti and other important 18th-century composers of Italian opera. 

Modulation

By the end of this circle of fifths, it is clear that we have changed key signature to Eb major. This is reinforced by the use of a ii-V progression in Eb major of F minor to Bb9 at the end of the verse.

If you are a musician, try playing the chord of Eb major to follow the words “It’s for -” at 0:19 – can you see how the chord of Eb major seems more conclusive?

Interrupted Cadence

Instead, McCartney takes us back to the original home key of C minor. As such, the chord of C minor after the chord of Bb major is a clear example of an interrupted cadence – an unexpected (but nevertheless natural-sounding) harmonic progression.

Enjambment

Enjambment is a device most readily associated with the world of poetry. In poetry it means moving over from one line to another without a terminating punctuation mark.

In It’s For You McCartney draws upon this device to link the end of the refrain with the beginning of the verse. Unusually, the refrain only concludes at the beginning of the next verse:

It’s for –

[New verse] You love, true love…

The word “you” is then dovetailed to form a completely new phrase at the beginning of the next verse – an ingenious literary ploy.

Because the end of one verse also acts as the beginning of the next, the music is given a unique cyclical character.

Bridge Section – Controlled Anger

In the bridge section, first heard at 0:33 , McCartney does take us to the expected chord of Eb major, avoiding the interrupted cadence of the first verse. The move to the brighter territory of Eb major is marked by a short legato string passage.

However, at 0:33 we are suddenly deflected from our comfort zone of Eb major and steered back into C minor. The chords move upwards as Black’s vocals ominously ascend a semitone from D4 to Eb4 and then F4 on “they said that”.

The melodic rhythm in the song has thus far consisted of languid dotted whole-notes (dotted minims) and graceful dotted-quarters (dotted crotchets).

But in the tradition of McCartney’s best songs, the bridge section is based on the idea of contrast. In this case, Black angrily belts out the following phrase, based on a salvo of repeated eighth-notes (quavers).

The impact of this section is reinforced by Black’s remarkable ability to offer a vocal timbre that is infused with vitriol, but remains controlled and pitch-perfect.

Again, McCartney moves freely between both the major and minor forms of the subdominant chord – the word “find” is on F major, but a more dejected F minor follows immediately in its wake on the phrase “somebody who’d be kind”.

The anger rises above the surface again at 0:48 with the phrase beginning with “tell them they’re right” and tellingly, “who wants a fight”.

At 0:56, the anger dissipates, which is negotiated through the descending melodic phrase “Then I look at you” as Black skillfully resumes her previous smooth vocal timbre.

As it stands, the bridge section is one of McCartney’s most effective encapsulations of raw (yet controlled and expressive) anger within a song – a feat only to be repeated over four decades later on the Chaos and Creation track Riding To Vanity Fair.

Coda

After an instrumental version of the verse and another bridge section, the song’s coda begins at 2:07. In keeping with the bridge, the coda begins in Eb major, but soon steers itself to the original home key of C minor.

The circle of fifths technique is again used in the coda, with the chords passing through Eb major – Ab major – Db major. Db major here is used in more of Neapolitan form, as it leads directly to the dominant – in this case, G minor taken from the natural minor scale.

As the song concludes, Black soars to the pitch of C5, which stands on a plateau in contrast to a song that is pitched in the lower portion of the alto vocal range.

Conclusion

It’s For You is a remarkable song – an even more astonishing achievement when it is remembered that at the beginning of June 1964 McCartney was a mere twenty-one years of age!

The outstanding features of It’s For You include:

• A chord progression based on a descending bass line
• The free interchange of chords derived from all three minor scales
• A circle of fifths progression
• McCartney’s intuitive understanding of the Neapolitan chord
• Interrupted cadences
• Enjambment
• A dramatically contrasting bridge section
• The evocation of anger, while retaining musical expression
• A novel time signature in context of prevailing rock and roll idioms

And Finally:

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