This was on the American album Meet The Beatles (the UK version would be With The Beatles) that I first heard when I was a kid. Lennon’s voice in this is fantastic. It’s a bit more sophisticated than many of their other songs at the time. The lyrics and the chord structure are really good.
I’ve always liked this song and the song drew a serious review from William Mann. Willaim Mann was the music critic of The Times in London. The article, titled “What Songs The Beatles Sang…,” was printed on December 23rd, 1963, just over a month after the release of the album “With The Beatles” in the UK. This critical analysis was unlike any media exposure The Beatles were getting up to this time, most of which consisted of reports on the mass hysteria that accompanied their appearances or their hair.
“Harmonic interest is typical of their quicker songs, and one gets the impression that they think simultaneously of harmony and melody, so firmly are the major tonic sevenths and ninths built into their tunes, and the flat submediant key switches, so natural is the Aeolian cadence at the end of ‘Not A Second Time’ (the chord progression which ends Mahler’s Song of the Earth).”
Mann would go on to say that Lennon and McCartney were “the greatest songwriters since Schubert.”
Pop music wasn’t considered important enough for serious music critics to review. Lennon and McCartney had no formal musical training. They wrote by feel, which Lennon said in 1973: “Intellectuals have the problem of having to understand it. They can’t feel anything. The only way to get an intellectual is to talk to him and then play him the record. You couldn’t put a record on and just let him hear it.”
The effect of William Mann’s review had such a lasting impact that the subject was still raised in a 1980 interview shortly before John’s death. His last words on the subject of Aeolian cadences were, “To this day I don’t have any idea what they are. They sound like exotic birds!”
This is one Lennon and McCartney song that was written solely by John Lennon. He said he was influenced again by Smokey Robinson and the Miracles.
Not A Second Time
You know you made me cryI see no use in wondering whyI cry for you
And now you’ve changed your mindI see no reason to change mineI cry
It’s through, oh-ohYou’re giving me the same old lineI’m wondering whyYou hurt me then, you’re back againNo, no, no, not a second time
You know you made me cryI see no use in wondering whyI cry for you, yeah
And now you’ve changed your mindI see no reason to change mineI cry
It’s through, oh-ohYou’re giving me the same old lineI’m wondering whyYou hurt me then, you’re back againNo, no, no, not a second time
Not a second timeNot a second timeNo, no, no, no, noNo, no, no (not a second time)
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