Come Back And Stay – Paul Young
We alighted on this by complete chance. We were just dicking about in the rehearsal room when the song just seemed to jump out at us. So we went away and learned it.
At the time, I remember this being firmly a ‘pop’ song hardly worth bothering with, but it turns out this song is a masterpiece.
In the course of learning this song I must have seen about 10 arrangements by Paul Young and his band themselves, not to mention 20 or 30 cover version arrangements. This song just keeps on giving. You can jam it for a million years, like Chic songs. It’s really just a framework.
One thing that always gets me is the hand clap. It’s so absolutely 1980’s it makes me want to wear a Frankie Says Relax T-Shirt. The classic 80’s Phil Collins style gated reverb is applied to the Roland sample with as if it was poured on from outer space. CLAP!!! Did you hear me.. I said CLAAAAPP!
One thing to note is that the Paul Young version we know and love is actually a cover version. The original is by a guy named Jack Lee. Which is a sort of ZZ-Top style country-blues-rock version. Listen to it, it’s… strange.
Lyrics
In the original Jack Lee version of the song, the lyrics seem integral to the song. A man laments the ending of a relationship, to thumping upbeat teen angsty guitars and a straight pumping 4/4 drum beat.
In the Paul Young version, we get lost in the virtuosity of the musicians, and the lyrics fall away to leave you concentrating on Paul Young’s voice. The way it breaks.. his vibrato. The way he sort of upscale “William Shatner’s” the breakdown section.
The lyrics aren’t important, they’re perfunctory.
Music
What can you say about this song that will do it justice?
Let’s just go straight there.. Pino…. Palladino. What the living ****?
Pino’s fretless bass parts on Paul Young’s songs in the 80’s were iconic.
I think the one on ‘Everytime You Go Away’ is probably more famous, but this one is the best by a country mile.
The rhythm of the song is 4/4 but with a sort of ‘horse jump’ offbeat snare every bar.
We worried that we needed the girl backing line singers, but it turns out the song sounds staggering with just one person singing harmony.
The song is usually listed as being in F#m but there’s a certain jazz edge to this song that makes me really want to go with some other key. The ‘i’ chord is always played as F#m7 rather than just F#m. And the D (the IV chord) which should be a full D major is always played as D(sus)2.
That having been said the i,III,IV chord progression was big in the 80’s. Think Sunday Bloody Sunday for example.
And if you look at the note distribution we get heavy emphasis on the notes that make F#m sound minor. That is the root (F#), flat 3rd (A), flat 6 (D) and the flat 7 (E). There’s also a lot of emphasis on the iv (B).
All that points really firmly at straight F#m. But still.
But there’s something about the chord progression which allows you to play just about anything over it and it’ll sound fine. I think in fact the song is probably in F# Dorian.
For example if you play an E Major scale (F# dorian) over the F# chord it sounds wonderful.
But You can also play A Maj (F#m) and it’ll obviously be great.
If only I was an actual musician.. I’d know exactly what the trick is to this song. Because it doesn’t sound vanilla minor to me.
Before commencing this waffle I’ll just say that I’ve really ended up playing either vanilla F#m minor over the F#m7 (i) chord, or occasionally E major (F# dorian). Now and then I throw in a lick which is F# dorian/melodic minor that is spicy. I like the sound if continuing on into the D chord with the F#m because what you have then is D Lydian. That allows me to bust out some Satriani licks I learned as a kid 🙂
The passing A major in the chorus is a work in progress for me. For some reason my brain doesn’t like it even though it’s entirely spot on correct. So I just pick a couple of notes in the A.
F#m7 is essentially A major with an F# bass note.
Also you can of course play it as barre chord :
These chords show us something interesting which is the C# note.
It seems important?
Here is the chord progression structured for some analysis :
F#m7 A Dsus2 ----------------- F# - A - A - A C# - C# - D E - E - E
Here we can see that E seems somehow important too (Dorian?). It’s the minor 7th in F#, but it seems to carry through.
Any solo might really use the C# to D change somewhere just before the move to Dsus2. You can play A or E anywhere pretty safely.
Here are the notes of A/F#m and D organised for analysis:
A – B – C# – D – E – F# – G# – A (A/F#m) A - B - C# - D - E - F# - G - A (D)
What we can see here is that the G in the D major scale is the only note which doesn’t appear in A major. This might be useful as a note to land on over the Dsus2 just before the move back to F#m?
In the scale of A major the G# chord is diminished, so perhaps use some sort of arpeggio featuring G#-B-D.
Because of this G, a bit of cursory messing around gives us a nice scale which fits neatly over everything, A Mixolydian. This is because it encompasses the G from the D Major scale in place of the G# from A Major.
This is going to sound best over the D. One thing you could use is a mixolydian pentatonic shape something like this :
E --5---9 B --5--8- G ---67-- D --5-7-- A --5-7-- E --5---9Or for run ups or downs a neat alternative might be :
E -------9(10)(12) B ------8-(10) G ----67-9-- D ---5-7---- A --45-7---- E ---5------You could always also try D lydian over the D.
Another mode that fits more neatly over F#m is C# phrygian.
Again you might consider a simplified phrygian like phrygian pentatonic (shown here is A phrygian pentatonic, so move it all up to C#!)
E --56--- B --5--8- G ----7-- D --5-78- A --5-7-- E --56---And obvs.. there’s always G# locrian… if you’re Alan Holdsworth.
I’m in the process of working a melodic solo for this song, so I’ll try and post it here when I’ve finished.
Messing about with midi I came up with these phrases..
9-5-7-2----------------------------------------------5- --------------10-12-10--7--5--5--5--2--2--2----------5- ------------11----------6--4--4--4--4--4--4--4-----6--- --------1214---------------------------------6---4----- ------------------------------------------------------- -------------------------------------------------------