Wow! There's A Cell Phone You Can Eat!
Wow! I'd never heard this before! Writer Kenzie* and producers Bloodshy & Avant take a dramatic "Reach Out I'll Be There"-type melody, throw it into waltz time, and make it a funny, bumpy promenade. [EDIT: I meant to say they throw it into SWING time. My brain went herky-jerky there for a second. In any event, this most certainly isn't a waltz; it'
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[...] long notes starting on the down beat. "Run Devil Run" is the same way. Even for the "li-one-la-li-two-la-li-three-li-four-li" runs there's a sense of resolution on the down beats. "Sweet Dreams My LA Ex" has lots of long notes starting on the up beat or pick up note. That initial "Heeeeey" is actually starting on an eighth note up beat. The song also prominently makes use of quarter note triplets (which are actually "one-li-la-three-li-la") surrounded by regular quarter notes, the half time equivalent of juxtaposing eighth notes and triplets. The swing time rhythm is a two-beat measure, and "Sweet Dreams My LA Ex" and "St. James Infirmary" are treating that pattern like it's one beat. Almost cut time style? (Hence juxtaposing triplet quarters-quarters-eighth notes like triplets-eighths
-sixteenths)
Can't speak for the melody/progression, haven't studied it enough, although that blues pattern you mentioned jumped out at me once I played "St. James Infirmary." I think the pre-chorus might be doing a relative key change to the progession's key, though. Both things are absent from "Chocolate Love," as well, but they wouldn't necessarily fit the sultry theme "Chocolate Love" was going for, anyways. Don't want syncopation or deviance from the progression distracting from the seduction, after all.
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