Informative, Music Blog, Song, Theme Prompt, Writing Challenge, Writing Prompts

One Thing Leads To Another

Nancy's Notes 🖊️♬

Written for Song Lyric Sunday –
“The Transition Follows
What Was Built Before It”

This week at Jim Adams’ Song Lyric Sunday, the theme is “The Transition Follows What Was Built Before It”. Our challenge is to write about a song that was written explicitly as a segue.

Courtesy Jim Adams @ Song Lyric Sunday

There is something special about the immersive listening experience that a full-length album can provide, especially when it’s ordered in the right way. I have found that a lot of my favorite releases over the years have fallen under this category, where one song will flow perfectly into the next. There were times when I initially didn’t even realize this transition has happened until I found I was suddenly listening to a new track. This can happen in the context of an entire album, but I’ve noticed that it occurs quite a bit more often in two- or three-song groupings, even when the rest of the album may not follow this same flow. With that in mind, here are two of my favorite musical segues.

© Pink Floyd Archives

Pink Floyd’s medley of “Another Brick In the Wall, Parts 1 & 2” and “The Happiest Days of Our Lives” is a powerful rock protest against abusive and rigid schools. The tracks are part of the 1979 rock opera, The Wall, which follows a troubled rock star named Pink. Written by bassist Roger Waters, “The Happiest Days of Our Lives” attacks teachers who emotionally and physically abused children to hide their own personal frustrations. Part 1 of “Another Brick In the Wall” deals with the loss of Pink’s father in WWII; Part 2 shows how cruel teachers add another painful “brick” to the emotional wall Pink builds around himself.

A group of students from the Islington Green School in London was added to sing the chorus; the school’s music teacher agreed to help in exchange for free studio time for the school orchestra. On the album, “The Happiest Days of Our Lives” flows directly into Part 2; a schoolmaster’s voice yells the famous line, “If you don’t eat your meat, you can’t have any pudding!” right before the main beat drops.

Pink Floyd’s 1980–1981 The Wall Tour was one of the most ambitious and logistically complex rock spectacles in music history. Driven by Roger Waters’ literal desire to separate the band from the audience, they built and collapsed a massive barrier right on stage. The wall grew to 30 feet high and 160 feet wide and was made from approximately 420 custom-designed, reinforced cardboard bricks, each about 5 feet wide and 21/2 feet tall. As the band played the first half of the album, an 80-man crew acting as stagehands meticulously placed the bricks using hydraulic lifts. To keep up with the album’s pacing, Pink Floyd played a then-unreleased instrumental track called “The Last Few Bricks” just to give the crew enough time to finish.

In 1980, the song was officially banned by the South African government after black school children adopted the lyrics as an anthem to protest racial inequality in apartheid-era schools.

This is “Another Brick In The Wall Pt. 1”, “The Happiest Days Of Our Lives” and “Another Brick In The Wall Pt. 2”  by Pink Floyd

↪️ ↪️ ↪️ ↪️ ↪️ ↪️ ↪️ ↪️

Image by Me & ChatGPT

The medley known as “The Long One” on Side Two of the Beatles’ 1969 album Abbey Road was an ambitious creation designed to turn unfinished musical fragments into a grand finale. As relations withing the band grew strained, Paul McCartney and producer George Martin stitched together several short, incomplete songs and ideas written by McCartney and John Lennon; instead of separate tracks, the songs segue seamlessly to form a continuous suite that acts as the band’s collective swan song. While the individual segments of the Abbey Road medley began as unfinished musical leftovers, they carry highly specific meanings that reflect financial frustration, colorful Liverpudlian folklore, and a bittersweet farewell. Here is a breakdown of the 9 tracks that comprise the medley:

“You Never Give Me Your Money” was written by Paul McCartney and is a direct attack on manager Allen Klein. The “funny paper” refers to the complex legal documents and empty financial promises choking the band at the time. The song then shifts to nostalgia, recalling the “magic feeling” of their early days before fame made everything complicated.

John Lennon wrote the dreamlike track “Sun King”, which features gorgeous harmonies. The lyrics fade into a fictional mix of Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese gibberish consisting of silly words and Liverpool schoolboy slang strung together.

“Mean Mr. Mustard” was inspired by a real newspaper story about a cheap miser who hid his money to avoid spending it. Lennon wrote this character sketch during the Beatles’ 1968 trip to India.

The “Polythene Pam“ track was inspired by a combination of a real fan from the Cavern Club days who used to eat polythene plastic, and an eccentric encounter John had in Jersey with a woman dressed in plastic.

“She Came In Through the Bathroom Window” is based on an actual break-in at Paul’s house. A group of obsessed fans used a ladder to climb into his bathroom window and stole several items, including a framed photograph.

“Golden Slumbers“ is about sheet music which McCartney found at his stepsister’s house featuring a 17th-century poem by Thomas Dekker. Unable to read the music, Paul composed his own melody for this lullaby.

The track “Carry That Weight“ reflects the heavy emotional and financial burden the Beatles felt while trying to keep Apple Corps afloat amid their fracturing friendships. It features a reprise of the “You Never Give Me Your Money” melody to tie the themes together.

“The End” serves as a deliberate final statement. It is famous for featuring the only drum solo Ringo Starr ever recorded with the Beatles, followed by a rotating sequence of guitar solos by Paul, George, and John. It closes with the iconic, philosophical couplet: “And in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make.”

The last track, “Her Majesty”, is a 23-second song which was originally slotted between “Mean Mr. Mustard” and “Polythene Pam” before being cut to the very end of the album as a hidden track. This little ode to Queen Elizabeth II is a tongue-in-cheek, mildly irreverent “love song” to the monarch. The Beatles grew up in the 1950s during the start of Elizabeth’s reign, and McCartney later admitted that they essentially viewed her as a “babe” and had schoolboy crushes on her.

This is “The Long One”, the medley from Abbey Road by The Beatles

The Transition Follows What Was Built Before It

Image by Me & Gemini

Big thanks to Jim Adams for hosting another great Song Lyric Sunday this week and every week. Be sure to follow his link and check out his site.

Thanks for stopping by and listening to some great music today. I hope you enjoyed the theme for this week as well as the information and music I featured.

That’s all she wrote, kids. See you on the flip side. 😎

NAR©2026

Everything on The Elephant’s Trunk was created by me, unless otherwise indicated, and may not be used without permission. Thank you for your consideration. NAR©2017-present.

42 thoughts on “One Thing Leads To Another”

  2. Two great examples of musical segues. Since The Beatles remain my all-time favorite group, of course, I have to favor the amazing Abbey Road medley over Pink Floyd. That said, Pink Floyd are among my longtime favorite groups as well.

    I remember joining my classmates as a 13-year-old in 1979 when we all became rebels during a small party in our home classroom, yelling, ‘teachers, leave us kids alone’ while “Another Brick in the Wall Part 2” was coming out of a ghetto-blaster – until our homeroom teacher (who taught English) walked in. He couldn’t suppress a brief grin before resuming a serious facial expression. That little anecdote still makes me chuckle.

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  8. Great choices, Nancy. In my experience of being a substitute teacher, it was never, “Teacher leave those kids alone” as it was more like students stop tormenting the teacher. The reality of being a substitute teacher is often much more of a battle for survival. Substitutes often bear the brunt of student testing, testing boundaries, and behavioral chaos because they lack the established relationship and authority of the regular classroom teacher. It is incredibly exhausting to step into a room where the power dynamic immediately shifts into “see what we can get away with.” I imaging that my experience is a very common, stressful reality for most guest teachers everywhere.  I love the Beatles Abby Road segue of nine songs which was great to listen to again today.

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    1. Thanks so much, Jim. As Clive commented, “It was as if the theme was chosen for you to play this one!” I couldn’t resist.

      I have to agree with you about substitute teachers; they were dumped on and mercilessly abused by us kids and we thought it was hilarious. As I matured (thankfully while still in school), I realized it really was an unkind thing to do and I stopped joining in the “fun”. Reading you’re comment was quite eye-opening to actually know how a sub felt and I’m sorry you were put through hell. I appreciate you sharing your thoughts.

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          1. One day they tormented me so much that I locked them all out in the hallway when they went to their lockers at the end of the day and the principle got mad at me for doing that, but I said I didn’t know the door was locked. I was finally able to get a bit of peace.

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  10. Both Choices wereon my list Sis ….and I am so pleased you chose them both … I loved the information you share to make sense of both choices.

    Our eldest was a huge fan of the Floyd that for his eighteenth birthday we had a huge wall cake made plus I made an extra small brick cake…. we wrote another brick on it 💜💜💜😎😎😎

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    1. Thanks, Sis. It was impossible to choose between these two great groups so I didn’t! 😀 I’m very glad you enjoyed the info about those tracks; it was fun researching them.

      You must have truly outdone yourself in the baking department! That birthday cake sounds amazing and I would have loved seeing pix. Great comments, Sis! 💜😎

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  14. Great choices Nance – I almost chose Pink Floyd but The Dark side of the Moon – great write up I didn’t know the backstory to The Wall – fascinating. Also loved the Beatles choice and your detailed description 🙌

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  16. I, too, chose “The Long One” from side 2 of Abbey Road for my SLS prompt response. I liked the way you wrote a brief description of each of the component songs of the medley.

    I had also thought about using Pink Floyd if I hadn’t gone with the Beatles, but I had The Dark Side of the Moon album in mind, rather than The Wall. I was specifically thinking of Brain Damage” / “Eclipse,” the album’s inseparable climactic finale, which were commonly performed together in concert.

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