"You Better Move On" by Arthur Alexander
all hail monosyllables
“You ask me to give up the hand of the girl I love / You tell me I'm not the man she's worthy of / But who are you to tell her who to love? / That's up to her, yes, and the Lord above / You better move on”
One of the first things I read on Kindle was an e-book by an old music business guy. This little book was full of the kind of gems you’ll only hear from someone with a lot of real-world experience in music. These kind of people rarely take the time to write a book.
It was far from a bestseller, about as far as you can get. The guy’s name is Larry Butler, and the book is called THE TWELVE LESSONS OF ROCK 'N' ROLL (FOR YOUR CAREER AND YOUR LIFE. Yes, all caps.
Let me quote from Lesson 2, “Use Songwriting Tip to Write Hit Song(s)”.
Larry tells of being on the road, doing promo with Randy Newman and Mark Knopfler for Randy’s album “Land of Dreams”, which Mark had produced. The three of them are on one of many long car rides, “when the subject of songwriting and what makes a great song came up.” Read on:
Generally, Mark’s serious, learned discussions were often punctuated by Randy’s inherent sarcasm, but this particular subject matter was approached in all seriousness. After 15 minutes or so of observations and theories, they finally agreed on two things:
1.) The success of English as the lingua franca of global popular music is all due to one attribute: the abundance of single syllable words (SSW). They make the song easier to sing, to rhyme, to set to meter and, most of all, to remember. So when writing song lyrics, given the plethora of word choices in English that all mean the same thing, more than likely one of the word choices for the lyric would be a SSW, and then that word by default would be the best to use in the song.
2.) Randy and Mark also agreed that the quintessential SSW song for them was Arthur Alexander’s “You Better Move On.”
Despite the two-syllable word in the title, “You Better Move On” has about 230 words in the song, not counting the fade, 200 of which are SSW, which is about 87%. Now I haven’t done a word-for-word translation with other languages, but my experience with French, Spanish and German in high school is that there just aren’t that many SSW in other major languages. Perhaps there’s some Polynesian dialect spoken on some faraway South Pacific atoll made up of only SSW, but they aren’t teaching it in Ohio and nobody’s buying their records. Only in English could such a feat be accomplished. And that’s what makes a hit song, as Mark and Randy established on that fateful day on a promo tour up the coast.
There you have it. Oh, to have been a fly on those walls.
“Well, I know you can buy her fancy clothes and diamond rings / But I believe she's happy with me / without those things / Still you beg me to set her free / But, my friend, that will never be / You better move on”
The other cool thing about this song is that is both a Love Song and a Fight Song. When do you get to hear something like that? Not that often. The singer is simultaneously professing his love for the girl while telling another guy that he’d better watch himself. It’s a hell of a balancing act.
“I can't blame you for lovin' her / But can't you understand, man, she's my girl? / And I'm never gonna let her go 'cause I love her so”
The Stones did a version of this song. More people might know that one, but it’s worth seeking out the original. Arthur Alexander’s voice is at once muscular and transparently emotional.
“I think you better go, now, I'm gettin' mighty mad / You ask me to give up the only love I've ever had / Maybe I would, oh, but I love her so / Never gonna let her go / You better move on (you better move on) / You better move on (you better move on)”
I believe that every musician should work up a version of this song. It’s handy to have in the quiver, just in case someone in the crowd is thinking about moving in on your person:
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