Verco Verco Brico

I learned so much of what I know of poetry
From the joys of pop –
I soaked it up, subconscious, in no hurry,
Drop by golden drop.
The verse, the chorus, the linking-bit between,
And the bridge that would soar –
The words were the fuel in the polished machine,
In structures as old as lore.

I never knew how I knew it at all,
But I knew it all,
When I heard the chorus call –

And the songs remained the same,
That’s how they came,
How any old hit was made –
A-B-A-B, occasional C,
It’s all a game,
Repeat to fade.

I learned so much, I even learned surprise
When the form was messed about –
I loved it when they threw me, played me wise,
Odd takes that caught me out.
From starting with the chorus before the verse,
Or adding a verse when it ought to end –
It felt illicit, and I longed to immerse
In my iconoclastic, offbeat friend.

I never knew how I knew it was wrong,
But I knew so strong
When I heard that rebel song –

Cos the songs can’t stay the same –
The past’s to blame –
We need to sing new tricks
A-B-A-B, you’re boring me –
Let’s change the game,
Let’s re- the mix !

Come on, pop, I’m looking to you
For something new,
To change your key.
So come on, pop, don’t let it be,
Let’s tear on through
This boogaloo !
I need you, pop, to shake the tree,
Rejecting their authority,
A-one, a-two,
A-set-me-free,
That’s what you do –
So do it for me !

Are you ready,
Ready to leap right off this ridge ?
Into the space beyond the dials ?
Into our hungry ears ?
To see what’s at the other end of this bridge,
In the unfamiliar miles
Of the rainbow pregnant years ?
Just because we’ve played three minutes,
Who says that it’s time to stop ?
To push things past the social limits,
Isn’t that the point of pop ?

If the songs still play the same –
That’s such a shame –
We’ve heard them all before.
But why not sneak in extra lines
To shake things out of old confines ?
And rouse a bold refrain
That doesn’t quite rhyme,
That they can’t ignore ?
A-B-A-B, then jamboree,
Until the game
Comes home once more.

Examples of unusual song structures that struck me over the years:

OMD often used an instrumental hook as a chorus, as does Seven Nation Army.  Del Shannon’s Runaway used an instrumental in place of the second verse.  The Byrds’ version of Mr Tambourine Man has a chorus, a verse, a chorus…and that’s it !  Does that make the verse more of a bridge…?  Except it feels it lasts too long for that…  This feels like a cut-down version of AABA (like many ‘Great American Songbook’ tunes, such as Somewhere Over the Rainbow), where the verses are doing all the heavy lifting with just a single bridge coming in the latter half.

Speaking of verses, repeating the opening stanza at the end of the song is quite common (Nights In White Satin, Annie’s Song), but Paper Planes by MIA repeats all of its four verses as soon as it sings them, so we hear the first verse twice before moving onto the second, which then repeats before the third etc.  Killing In The Name uses the same verse (and of course the same chorus) before it’s extended bridge section that you’ll never hear on the radio, and Mr Brightside effectively repeats the entire song in the second half.  Not to mention I’m Henery the Eighth I Am…

Sometimes an instrumental would come early, after the first chorus instead of the second (Pipes of Peace, The Importance of Being Idle), followed by a repeat of the chorus which we perceive as the climax, but then proceed with the second unexpected verse while not actually being any longer.

Some songs reduce the chorus to a single line, like The Sound of Silence, or two, like Blowing in the Wind.  Perhaps this is less ‘chorus’ and more ‘refrain’.  Conversely, songs that could be thought of as all chorus include Love Me Do, There She Goes, and Relax, though each of them does have a bridge section at the half-way point.  Other songs, like many by Def Leppard, deny us the chorus the first time through, moving from pre-chorus straight into the second verse.

But speaking of choruses, it is very rare that they change their lyrics from one repeat to the next (except perhaps for the odd word for emphasis).  A couple that do are The Winner takes It All and Bob Dylan’s Hurricane, and one that frustratingly doesn’t is Paul Simon’s Fifty Ways to Leave Your Lover.  In the latter example, the chorus lists five ways, one tenth of that promised by the title, and then repeats it three further times with the same five examples!

Metal has often seen songs as more of a symphony, and not just in terms of guitar solos – they often have more lyrics and parts than three-minute pop – for instance, Metallica’s One develops midway into almost a completely different song, and doesn’t even circle back to its origins.  Even more medley-esque is Happiness is a Warm Gun, where the parts only feel loosely related.  Another song which wanders yet finds its way back home is Bohemian Rhapsody, keeping us on our toes through the journey (or at least it did when first we heard it, way back when).

Some songs seem to introduce the bridge for the first time, but then forget to repeat the chorus, so we have an outro instead, like Immigrant Song, Flash, or What Do You Want From Me.  Meanwhile, Franz Ferdinand described their approach to Take Me Out as singing only the verses in the first half, and then singing only the choruses in the second.

But best of all are the songs which refuse to keep under five minutes, and not just by repeating the chorus too many times (looking at you, Hey Jude, because you always feel to me like a three-minuter with far too much bloat).  Some, like Suede’s The Asphalt World make us think they’re winding down, but the coda turns into an intermission as they kick themselves up once more and regain their momentum.  I get this sense from I Feel Love as well.

Of course, not every song can have a bizarre structure, nor should it – but neither should we feel compelled to follow the formula when the song wants to go somewhere different.  If only, following AAB, the Rainbow had led us to a C instead…?