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Let's Talk Format: Building Songs

Think of a song you like! Right Now!

What did you just imagine? You probably thought about the chorus with its hooky lyrics, or maybe the iconic introduction that gets you right in the mood to hear the rest of the song. These are both important parts of song structure and I’d like to talk about the goods and bads of song structure and how we interpret it.

Let's get the basics down if you don’t know them already. Yea! (This is mostly for pop/rock)

INTRODUCTION

This is the first thing you hear when a song starts; it usually fits into two categories depending on the song. 

1. It is a unique piece that stands connected to the rest of the song but does not share many motifs with the rest of the song. Something like exposition material. Think about the Beatles song Honey Pie, which emulates the early 20th century music hall style. Songs of this era often used this style of introduction to get the listener into a song and set up the lyrical story (although this can also be applied to instrumental songs).
2. This second category is an introduction that is a version of something heard later on in the song. Think Dancing Queen and how the intro is just the chorus without vocals and without some of the instruments. This technique of using a permutation of a later section is employed in more modern contexts if songs even contain an introduction section at all.

Something to note is that while all songs start (duh), they don’t all have an introduction–some jump right into the verse/chorus. Other songs like WhiteRoom might seem to evade this system by opening with a brief instrumental section of no connection to the rest of the song, but this type of song would fall under the first category if that caused any confusion. 

In songs that focus on having more distinct sections, an intro might be very different from the verse or chorus but could return later as its own distinct section later on. This is more common in songs that are progressive as song structure is often explored and experimented with in this genre. This type of introduction technically falls into the second category, but prog often breaks analysis systems that are too rigid.

VERSE TIME

The verse of a song will contain the big story elements as they do not repeat their lyrical contents like chorus’s do. Also important to note, they typically are more “mellow” compared to the chorus as a way to give a song room to breathe in its intensity. 

Now, verses are very versatile and vary vastly across genres, but they are always distinct from the chorus as being the less intense one (think Zombie).

CHORUS

This is the loud, repetitive, and iconic part of a song that brings together the message of a song into a single section. Sometimes the chorus is revisited with minor changes to its structure up to three or four times in a song as it is the “meat” of the work. This is especially the case in pop/rock music where the chorus is made to be a big moment and is often especially catchy. In other genres the chorus can be more subtle in its differences from the other sections but usually a distinction is still present.

PRE/POST CHORUS

These are sections that are much more rare in contemporary music but you can still find pretty easily. They frame the chorus and allow for a greater ramp up and down from the intensity it brings to a song. In Get On The Right Thing, (a McCartney deep cut), the “believe me it’s true” section serves as a pre chorus to the huge GET ON THE RIGHT THING chorus that appears after the second verse/pre-chorus section. Another example of a pre-chorus is in Paul McCartney’s Silly Love Songs, during the “what's wrong with that/here I go again” section.

With Pre/Post Chorus’s, the lines can become rather blurry as what truly qualifies as a pre/post chorus section versus another style of verse (yes songs can have 2 different verse structures). However, it’s really about how you feel music (in my personal experience) that should shape someone's analysis. 

For the post-chorus, I will use the song You And Me, by the Moody Blues which has an instrumental post chorus with some ooh-and-ah vocals.

BRIDGE

Bridge’s are unique because they stand as significantly different sections from the rest of a song and are sometimes in a completely different key. They can help keep a song from being too repetitive and add to the contour. In the Beatles song Do You Want To Know A Secret?, there is a pretty obvious bridge that starts with “I’ve known a secret for a week or two”. Sections like this operate as distinct while still within the confines of the songs feel. Other sections like Breakdowns or alternative verses might seem like a bridge, but typically a bridge is only used once in a song and does not contain a permutation of other themes from the song.

ENDING/OUTRO

Some songs might have a distinct section that brings a song to an end without fading away on a chorus or ending right after it like many songs do. These sections can be celebratory and high energy, or can take the song's energy somewhere else for a last minute change. Strawberry Fields Forever has an iconic ending section that fades out and back in and contains guitar parts and backwards vocals that are not present anywhere else in the song. 

OTHER SECTIONS

Some songs (very dependent on genre and the typical structures within said genre) will have fewer or greater amounts of different sections and different contrast between those sections. I am not an expert on many different genres and have little experience outside of pop, rock, prog, and some basic jazz/classical knowledge, so I am not the person to discuss those other ideas. BUT THEY ARE THERE!

OK Now that these have been explained somewhat poorly by me, now I can talk about sections of a song and some things I find interesting about it.

I love progressive rock a lot, but I really like how formats are explored in prog music. Songs like The Cinema Show, (by Genesis if you haven’t heard of it) have a very interesting format. The song goes like this (this is how I break it up in my head)

Intro

Verse Theme

Verse

Build-Up

Verse Theme

Verse

Build-Up

Chorus

Post-Chorus/Transition To Solo

Woodwind Solo

Post-Solo build up

Chorus

Solo (with Chorus melody kinda)

Staccato solo (tempo increase/time change)

Theme Introduction

Theme Restated

Synth Solo

Synth Solo pt. 2 (picks up)

Theme Reference

Synth Solo Restated

Synth Solo Variation/Ending

Transition to “Aisle Of Plenty”

As you can see, this is kind of a huge mess that doesn’t make much sense. Yet, the song is very cohesive and works rather well. Maybe it is the cohesion of these sections yet quick speed of change that allow vastly different things to occur in a song without the sections being so obviously definable. Either way, I recommend you check out the song (if you can spare 10ish minutes).

I enjoy how the first half of the songs section takes a much slower tempo/standard time signature and the second half moves faster with an irregular meter. I also enjoy how the song glides along from the main vocal body of the work into the instrumental second half without sounding like a brand new song. For having so many different sections, it contains its cohesion.

Song structure is certainly strange. Some people complain that pop music “these days” is just too simple and lacks bridges, intros, and endings. Others might find straying from a definable system to be upsetting and too meandering. The truth is, music is subjective and we shouldn’t point to the more tangible things about a song as an excuse to explain why it is bad merely because we don’t like it. 

Song structure is important, and I personally find it fascinating, but that does not mean that it is a set of laws that need to be upheld. This is what I really want to talk about here. The same people who praise old music for following traditional forms (despite often not doing so and definitely straying from the standards of the era that it was created in–like the Beatles) will put down anything modern for its terrible commercial, “written by committee” nature. And sure, I’m not going to ignore the predatory practices of the music industry and how it stifles creativity (why do you think indie music is so popular?), but just because a certain rhythm is popular or a certain format is popular today doesn’t mean that it's any more or less formulaic than the formats of yesterday! 

I think breaking songs down into the sections that I perceive when listening is very fun, but I don’t use the fact that modern songs supposedly have “less” as a weapon to cling to my fading world of yesterday for fighting off tomorrow. Things are going to change but nothing truly ever goes away in our modern world of technology that we have, so don’t worry about “the bridge” disappearing! This is all fun and games, don’t make it so serious.

Thank you for reading this post that is probably just as long and meandering as a proper prog song lol. I’m hoping to do a specific analysis of Genesis’ Selling England By The Pound record soon, as it has been a recent favorite of mine.