‘The confession’ is the last track of the album ‘Eli and the Thirteenth Confession’, released in 1968 when Laura Nyro was 21. (Perone, James E, 2012) Unfortunately, the songs she wrote in this album became hits for the others, (e.g. ‘Stone Soul Picnic’ by The Fifth Dimension and ‘Eli's Coming’ by three dog night) yet this fact shows her powerful songwriting skill. As the title of the song ‘The confession’ indicates, she wrote very honest lyrics about her passion, towards both spiritual and physical ‘love’. She accomplished to display these themes by the uses of both directional and ambiguous word selection, the unique structure that does not quite follow Murphy’s Six Forms (Murphy, n.d.) and frequent uses of repetition and rhymes that emphasise
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‘Oh I hate my winsome lover! Tell him I’ve had others at my breast
But tell him he has held my heart
And only now am I a virgin, I confess…I confess!’
This section also explains the difference between sexual intercourse and spiritual/emotional connection. The ‘virginity’ in the bridge is not about the physical status, but it refers the purity in love. Opposite to the men who had her ‘breast’ in the past, her lover has held her ‘heart’, which is the metaphor of the true love, for the first time. This contrast outlines the feeling of the deep emotional connection between them.
The structure of ‘The confession’ is close to Murphy’s 4th form, (Murphy, n.d.) expect the pre chorus is very short and has a completely new section at the end, instead of having chorus-out. The outro repeats one phrase chant for six times.
‘Love my love thing, love is surely gospel’
The duration of this song is 2:50 which is close to the average duration around 1960~1970. (Thebillboardexperiment.com, 2011) Although, the outro goes about 40 seconds which takes up more than 20 % of the whole song. This unusual length of outro emphasises the importance of this
‘Oh I hate my winsome lover! Tell him I’ve had others at my breast
But tell him he has held my heart
And only now am I a virgin, I confess…I confess!’
This section also explains the difference between sexual intercourse and spiritual/emotional connection. The ‘virginity’ in the bridge is not about the physical status, but it refers the purity in love. Opposite to the men who had her ‘breast’ in the past, her lover has held her ‘heart’, which is the metaphor of the true love, for the first time. This contrast outlines the feeling of the deep emotional connection between them.
The structure of ‘The confession’ is close to Murphy’s 4th form, (Murphy, n.d.) expect the pre chorus is very short and has a completely new section at the end, instead of having chorus-out. The outro repeats one phrase chant for six times.
‘Love my love thing, love is surely gospel’
The duration of this song is 2:50 which is close to the average duration around 1960~1970. (Thebillboardexperiment.com, 2011) Although, the outro goes about 40 seconds which takes up more than 20 % of the whole song. This unusual length of outro emphasises the importance of this