There was a time, prior to 1964, when ‘My Girl’ didn’t exist. That collection of notes, arranged in that order… it hadn’t been thought of yet. Or if it had, it hadn’t been recorded either on paper or tape. And then Smokey Robinson sat down and pieced it all together into the song we all know and love.
I’m often baffled by the thought that there must be a finite set of melodies out there, and it seems to me that the world’s songwriters should have used them up by now. I mean, how many notes are there in the scale? 12? And how many different ways can they be arranged to form a melody? OK, that’s a huge number. But how many of those sound like something other than noise? Probably a much smaller number.
And yet… people have been writing music for hundreds of years and still every year more and more of it comes out. You hear similarities in sound and tempo to music that’s come before, sure, but I’m baffled that there are any new songs to be written.
When I hear about Joe Satriani suing Coldplay because the chorus of their ‘Viva la Vida’ is a little too close to a tune he wrote, I marvel that things like that don’t happen every single day. How is it possible that Coldplay has written songs that don’t contain the same notes as something that’s been written before?
And how is it that nobody in human history happened upon the notes of ‘My Girl’ before Smokey did? Can there really be another ‘My Girl’ out there waiting to be discovered? Another melody so sweet you just have to stop and shake your head at the majesty of it?
I have to assume the answer is yes. Because I’ve been asking myself this question for 25 years now and every year I’m surprised by something new.
On a cloudy day
When it’s cold outside
I’ve got the month of May
Well, I guess you’ll say
What can make me feel this way?
My girl (my girl, my girl)
Talkin’ ’bout my girl (my girl)
I’ve got so much honey
The bees envy me
I’ve got a sweeter song
Than the birds in the trees
Well, I guess you’ll say
What can make me feel this way?
My girl (my girl, my girl)
Talkin’ ’bout my girl (my girl)
I don’t need no money
Fortune or fame
I’ve got all the riches, baby,
One man can claim
Well, I guess you’ll say
What can make me feel this way?
My girl (my girl, my girl)
Talkin’ ’bout my girl (my girl)
Talkin’ bout my girl
I’ve got sushine on cloudy day
With my girl
I’ve even got the month of May
With my girl
Meet Me In Montauk 
I had no idea you were such a HUGE FAN of “My Girl.” Get thee to your flair board – stat. 😉
While I understand what you’re saying, I find it intriguing this is the song that stops you in your tracks to marvel at it all. No disrespect to “My Girl,” which is a perfectly delightful tune.
There’s a great scene (the only great scene, probably) in Flash of Genius, where Greg Kinnear’s character is being cross examined about how and when he formulated his idea for the intermittent windshield wiper. The attorney is harping on the fact that each component that went into the invention had already been invented or discovered. Kinnear asks one of his kids to get him a copy of A Tale of Two Cities, which he proceeds to begin reading on the witness stand. He (who is acting as his own attorney) turns the tables on the lawyer, the judge, the whole courtroom, by asking if the words “this,” “time,” “wisdom,” “best,” etc. had existed before Dickens wrote “This was the best of times. It was the worst of times. It was the age of wisdom, the age of foolishness…”
Well, you get the idea. There may be C notes, and A notes, and chord progressions and harmonies all of which have always existed, but the decision to put them together in that particular order to that particular timing with those particular words and these particular instruments, that stays fresh for each new artist, building on what has come before. Sometimes it’s likely the ability to turn your back on what has come before or reimagine it that fuels contemporary artists. It’s not as if you find artists hiding in their studios, afraid to listen to what else is out there. Quite the contrary, they often go on and on about the things that inspire them. So… yes, this is a fascinating topic to discuss. And “My Girl” is a great song.
And…. did you choose it for Sophia’s birthday?! 🙂
This is, indeed, a fascinating topic. In that interview with Smokey on Spectacle, he told the story of how, when he first was taken into the Motown family, Barry Gordon insisted that Smokey sit down and listen to all of popular hits of the day so that he could use those songs as inspiration for his own writing.
There is such a thin line between creations inspired by other works and creations that have “stolen” from other works. With My Girl, while the famous combination of notes sounds wholly unique, it is, in fact, nothing more than a variation on the classic, almost generic, blues structure where you separate out the notes of the 7th chords in the 1-4-5 blues pattern (as in C – F -G) But what made Smokey’s song unique is that he walked us through the in between notes of that blues structure. Not sure if that was the first time it had been done or not, but it was both derivative yet truly unique all at once.
It’s not that I find ‘My Girl’ the epitome of songwriting or anything like that… this whole concept really applies to any song. And this one seems so simple (as Dana points out) and yet it’s the only song that sounds exactly like it in recording history. I guess a lot of it has to do with instrumentation, production, vocals and all that.
And I didn’t intentionally pick this for Sophia’s birthday (I wrote it a week or more ago when planning ahead) but it’s a pretty cool coincidence. 🙂