The sixth day of Christmas: The king is half undressed

Here's another song which I've loved since I first heard it, but although it's all wonderful, there's one specific moment that gets into onto the Twelve Days of Christmas list.

Jellyfish - The King is Half Undressed

From a UK point of view, Jellyfish were a one-hit wonder, because although this song made the UK chart (just) in 1991, it was the only one of theirs that did. However, they did apparently have a bigger hit in the USA - Baby's Coming Back - but I've never heard their version of this, just the cover by the mighty McFly a couple of years ago.

However, The King is Half Undressed is a perfect pop song. (Its video even won awards.) I like the harmonies - not just your standard three or four chords, there are some really interesting ones. It even starts on a major seventh chord - not many songs do that! And there are some fabulous backing vocals - lots of psychedelic oohs and ahs, and a great "ba ba ba ba!" And there's a HARPSICHORD! (or at least something that's pretending to be a harpsichord...)

But my favourite bit is the lead into the last verse, which starts at about 2:55. The guitar does a thing that I think of as an "emphatic strum" - I can't describe it better than that without either using FAR more words or actually writing out the rhythm, but I love it when guitars do this. And it's extra emphatic this time. Why? Well, the guitar actually does this same emphatic strum right at the start of the song, but there the chord has the aforementioned added major seventh, plus it's only accompanied by the aforementioned harpsichord. For the recapitulation at 2:55, the chord is now straightforward major (no added seventh), and instead of harpsichord, the guitar is accompanied by bass and drums. All of these factors make the emphatic strum SO much more emphatic. But it gets even better, because the strum itself is only my second-favourite bit in this song. My favourite bit is the bit it leads into: a set of triplet crotchets (on an unexpected chord) that are so distinctive in my mind that when they appear in any other song I refer to them as "Jellyfish Triplets". (This really confuses people if I give them a copy of one of my guitar songsheets for any of these songs. Most often this has happened with She Loves You (I'll leave it to you to see if you can decide where in the song the Jellyfish Triplets appear....) but there are others! None as good as Jellyfish though...)

(P.S. She Loves You is far too well-known to make it onto this list, but I can't mention it without pointing out that the G6 chord that appears twice in the song (the very last chord, and the end of the intro) is one of the best chords EVER to sing in a small one-to-a-part group.)