You're Gonna Lose That Girl

Title: You're Gonna Lose That Girl

Words and Music: John Lennon and Paul McCartney

Sheet Music: "The Beatles Best" published by Hal Leonard (ISBN 0-88188-598-3)

Recording/Video: The Beatles - You're Going to Lose That Girl [Restored & Remastered]

Analysis

<Chorus>

B7                   E                    C#m7

You're gonna lose that girl. 

                        F#m7       B7
You're gonna lose that girl 
                           
<Bridge>

                       F#m7       D

You're gonna lose______
G                             C                                  G
I'll make a point of taking her away from you. Yeah. 
                                      C                               F 
The way you treat her, what else can I do?

Tonicization of G Major (bIII)
CLICK TO ENLARGE

The most interesting section in this song is the bridge, which E major momentarily moves to G major. In music theory, this type of key change is called tonicization and we would say that G major has been tonicized.   

To achieve tonicization, composers need to use a chord (or sometimes a single pitch) to relate two different keys. This kind of chord, called a pivot chord or common chord, must contain pitches that are shared by both keys. In this case, the only pitches that exist in an E major and G major scale are A, B, E, and F#. As you can see in the diagram above (click to enlarge), a D major chord, which contains A and F# (colored in red), is used as a pivot chord. A D major chord is a bVII in E major, and a V in G major.

Following the D major pivot chord, G major is firmly established with a IV-I cadence. Well...maybe not 'firmly' established because IV does not contain a leading tone. However, the "Yeah.__" that John and Paul sing actually lands on a G. At first, this may not seem like a big deal, but this is the only time the melody lands on the tonic! The rest of melodies in this song end on scale degrees 2, 3, or 5. So I feel like I have enough evidence to use 'firmly.'

Now to move back to E major, a F major chord that contains the common tone A (again, in red) serves as a pivot chord. F major is bVII in G major and bII in E major, also known as a Neapolitan chord. The transition from the F major chord to E major sounds a little odd because all pitches in F major move down together in parallel motion. This is exactly why  Neapolitan chords usually appear in first inversion form in classical music to avoid parallel fifths, a big NO NO in classical composition. 

And one last note. The Fm#7-B7-Fm#7 progression that happens between the chorus and bridge is ii7-V7-ii7. Note that the V7 does not resolve to a tonic chord. This is called retrogression. It is rarely found in classical music but quite common in pops. A famous example is the ending of a blues (V-IV-I).

By the way, wikipedia is a great source for learning music theory!