Composition
The song begins with Celtic-style fiddle played over a drum beat, with the bass guitar and piano providing accompaniment. The original single version has an additional intro of a Celtic fiddle solo, playing Thomas Moore's Irish folk song Believe Me, if All Those Endearing Young Charms.
The lyrics of the song begin with the lines:
Poor old Johnnie Ray
Sounded sad upon the radio
Moved a million hearts in mono
Our mothers cried, sang along
Who would blame them?
The phrase "Come on Eileen" is used as the chorus to the song, which was loosely inspired by the song "A Man Like Me" by the 1960s British soul group Jimmy James and the Vagabonds.
The bridge of "Come On Eileen" features an improvised counter-melody which begins in a slow tempo and gets faster and faster over an accelerando vocal backing. The chord sequence of the bridge is actually the same as the verses but transposed up by a whole tone.
Throughout the song, there are numerous tempo changes and key changes:
| Section | Introduction | Verses | Chorus and bridge |
|---|---|---|---|
| Key | F major | C major | D major |
Read more about this topic: Come On Eileen
Famous quotes containing the word composition:
“It is my PRIDE, my damn’d, native, unconquerable Pride, that plunges me into Distraction. You must know that 19-20th of my Composition is Pride. I must either live a Slave, a Servant; to have no Will of my own, no Sentiments of my own which I may freely declare as such;Mor DIE—perplexing alternative!”
—Thomas Chatterton (1752–1770)
“The composition of a tragedy requires testicles.”
—Voltaire [François Marie Arouet] (1694–1778)
“There is singularly nothing that makes a difference a difference in beginning and in the middle and in ending except that each generation has something different at which they are all looking. By this I mean so simply that anybody knows it that composition is the difference which makes each and all of them then different from other generations and this is what makes everything different otherwise they are all alike and everybody knows it because everybody says it.”
—Gertrude Stein (1874–1946)