Who Loves You

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There are many pop songs with great harmonies. . . Songs from the Beatles (Because), the Beach Boys (God Only Knows), the Everly Brothers (All I Have To Do Is Dream), Simon and Garfunkel (Scarborough Fair), and The Bee Gees (How Deep Is Your Love) all spring to mind. But my all-time favorite "great harmonies" song has to be Who Loves You, from Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons, because the harmonies (as stand-alone vocals, or accompanied by and doubled by the corresponding piano chords) are just so pretty, and the disco arrangement energizes the (mostly 4-part) harmonies into a great dance song (which is unusual for a song with great harmonies). As a singer, re-creating those gorgeous, high-energy harmonies was very enjoyable!

That disco instrumental bridge. This song repeats the chorus four times. That's a lot, even for a song with a truly great chorus, like this one! The only way to keep that final fourth repetition (which closes the song) from being boring is to add a new part to the song that is musically different from, and strongly contrasting with, the music of the verse and the chorus. So they created a strikingly different instrumental bridge for that purpose. The verse and chorus are major, so the bridge goes minor. And the musical style goes full disco, for contrast, adding a lot of funk via the electric guitars. There is a purely instrumental section for 4 measures. Then there are 4 measures of what might be called "ghostly disco harmonies", with a lot of echoing. (I used a little less echo than the original because the echoing was muddying up the voices too much, IMHO.) Then the purely instrumental part repeats again. It's that second repetition that is just a little too much. When the Four Seasons perform this song, Frankie Valli always asks the audience to clap their hands during the instrumental bridge — I have the strong feeling he knows this section is a little too long and could get boring unless he kept the audience occupied with clapping their hands! Anyway, my way of dealing with this issue is different: I (artfully) removed the second repetition, and really tightened up that bridge, shaving 17 seconds off the song.

How exactly does that minor-key instrumental bridge fit into the story painted by the song's lyrics? If I were making a music video for this song, whose theme is "Who's gonna help you through the night?", I'd make the instrumental bridge be the night — and have those "ghostly disco harmonies" correspond to ghosts — her personal demons — leaping out at her from all directions. He appears and helps her fight the ghosts, who all disappear at the rising of the sun that coincides with that wonderful violin arpeggio that leads into the final chorus: "Who loves you, pretty baby?"