Writing music to mess with the listener, again.

In a recent lesson, I was hipped to the Rolling Stones song "Dead Flowers." It's a cool song. I usually don't listen to the Stones' music. I guess there were too many years of me being a dish-dog at a Chili's, being forced to listen to horrible classic rock, to even want to put the effort into checking out artists played on those stations. "Dead Flowers" is a cool song.

The chorus of the song is strangely sculptured, which like a Mississippi John Hurt song, tends to bring the listener into the mix again. The chorus as a whole is 24 bars long. There is A to D (a four bar phrase repeated twice), then G to D (again, a four bar phrase each), and one final D - A - G - D at the very last of the chorus (one bar per chord). This is the cap of the song. The effect, at least to me, is like this:

1. The A to D sets up the intensity of the next part
2. The G to D really sets the pace of the chorus, and makes it very very remarkable. The goofy thing was that every time I played this part in the lesson, I felt like there only should be two repetitions instead of three.
3. The D-A-G-D caps the chorus, and sets up the verse sections of the song very nicely.

Again, a nice example of how the song just messes with the listener in a nice way. Sometimes just an odd little thing inserted into a song makes all the difference.