I just posted the next Odessey and Oracle song entry, and it contains a thumbnail consideration of the whole album…although without any theory vis-a-vis the title. Do let us know what you think, Chan.

And JQA, my thanks. I’m no modern-day Damon, but I will bring some Plato into the mix soon enough.

Looking forward to following along as you explore more of this great album.

Very good analysis of the lyrics. Maybe the implications of the words in songs sail over the heads of most audiences, but, as you show, it’s worth it to draw out those implications, especially given how repetitive, and therefore insinuating pop music is (repetitive not only in the simplistic structure of songs themselves, but how often they are or have been played on the radio).

In more of a Plato’s Republic vein, I’d like to see you discuss the musical elements of this and other songs in your songbook — major v. minor key, chords and chordal changes, the direction of the melody, rhythm, dynamics — and how they add meaning to the words. For example, does the gorgeousness of the chorus (in both harmony and melody) redeem the monotonous creepy come-on in the second verse? Or is the beauty of the chorus undone by the animals-in-heat content of the lyrics?

Thanks, and keep up the good work!

There’s nothing to the Zombies’ name, IMO.

There is probably something going on with that echo effect in the second verse–it isn’t there in the first, and while sung by the Zombies, it does sound deliberately female-like.

The lyrics are–

what’s your name?/who’s your daddy?/is he rich like me?/has he taken any time/to show what you need to live?

In the song, each of these lines is immediately echoed by another voice–a seemingly female voice. “what’s your name? (‘what’s your name’)/who’s your daddy (‘who’s your daddy’). Then the two separate voices are joined in the refrain of the “Season for Loving” if not earlier.

Unlike current events, we can all hear and sing the song, and it will always be what it is even if it is performed by many others. Regardless of its version, it’s meaning as a song can and will be disputed by many but at its core it is what it is–that is to say, open to a public. I say “public” as an audience only to refer to the the three excellent essays on the film “The Lives of Others” in the most recent Perspectives on Political Science.

To return to Carl’s post, a song is a song. A Gershwin or Berlin song is what it is, and so is The Zombies “Time of the Season.” A thing to be experienced as listener, but a thing that can also in principle be performed. No doubt, The Zombies’ version is unsurpassed in performance.

Let me get my education out of the way regarding what Carl wrote–when I read what Carl had to say about the vicissitudes of love in the early 21st century, I thought that if there were only world enough and time we could find some meaning and purpose for love in terms of the permanence found in the image of extended but unrequited overs on a Grecian urn. But that urn is cracked in the this time of the season of sexual liberty and license. Regarding the new dispensation that the sexual revolution brought, I was reminded of Philip Larkin’s remark that 1963 was an “Annus Mirabilis”–the year “sexual intercourse” began. For an extended meditation on this idea of Larkin’s odd chronology, let me suggest Martin Amis’ recent novel The Pregnant Widow.

Okay, I got my pretension out of the way. What of Carl’s post?

Carl asks, “Do the Zombies see such intertwining of love’s highs and low-downs as the tragically monstrous character of humanity’s sexuality–a perennial trait, albeit one only recently reactivated on a wide scale after a long and unnatural cultural hibernation–that we simply have to learn to live with? Or, do they seek to gently (and thus ironically) warn us in 1968 against embracing last summer’s madness, the bad fruits of which are already becoming all too evident?”

You are right to emphasize the strange arrangement of vocals, music, and percussion in this song. It offers promise as it builds up, but in a menacing way. The beautiful refrain–”the season of the loving”–hits on all of the 1960s tropes of flower power but it becomes cynical in its “what’s you’re name?/who’s you’re daddy?/is he rich like me?” sequence. The season for loving seems corrupted by Machiavellian gamesmanship. Yet, the beautiful choral singing seems to belie that point.

As a person who became familiar with his song in ’80s movies that tried to evoke the “spirit of the ’60s” I think that Zombies were more on the warning side of your dichotomy.

And of course remember the name of the band. Perhaps this should not matter, but it is sung by The Zombies. It is true that zombies as an imaginative trope are much more prevalent circa 2011 than 1968, but surely they knew they were singing this song from the point of view of the undead. The undead have a hard time making their eros real–that requires purgatorio and paradiso too.

Thanks for this post!