Jane Shields from Worcester, England, asks how a lyricist with limited musical knowledge can estimate the number of verses and choruses needed for a three-minute pop song. Similarly, Peter Dalton from Canberra, Australia, asks how a lyricist can know how long a song will be. The classic pop formula is two or three verse\/chorus pairs and perhaps a bridge. You\u2019ll usually have four or six or eight lines for each verse, a chorus that\u2019s either half as long or the same length as the verse, and a bridge of about the same length as the verse. Of course, this can vary dramatically depending on the tempo of the song and myriad other factors, but most of my songs that follow that recipe come in between two and four minutes. One way to check is to find another artist\u2019s tune that has roughly the same beat you envision for your composition. Try singing or chanting your lyrics over the structure. If it fits into, say, Honky Tonk Woman or Respect or Proud Mary, it\u2019ll probably come in at about three minutes.<\/p>\n
\u03b8\u03b8\u03b8\u03b8\u03b8\u03b8\u03b8\u03b8\u03b8\u03b8\u03b8\u03b8\u03b8\u03b8\u03b8\u03b8\u03b8\u03b8\u03b8\u03b8\u03b8\u03b8\u03b8\u03b8<\/p>\n
Sharon Messa from Glasgow asks whether it\u2019s OK to change the words in a pre-chorus. The flippant answer would be, \u201cOf course. You can do what you want. It\u2019s your song!\u201d But more seriously, there\u2019s a reason song structures have developed the way they have, and repetition of the chorus (and I tend to consider the pre-chorus to be part of the chorus) helps make a song catchy and memorable. That said, songwriters do sometimes change parts of the chorus.<\/p>\n
In Alternative Facts, I tweak both the pre-chorus and the chorus. The first pre-chorus begins with the lines, \u201cHere\u2019s alternative fact Number One\/What we had is really done.\u201d Then the second and third pre-choruses (logically enough) become alternative fact Number Two and Number Three, with corresponding rhymes. The chorus itself also shifts, with the first instance starting \u201cAn alternate truth you know it ain\u2019t right\/Light is black and dark is white\/We ain\u2019t broken only cracked\/To say we\u2019re through is alternative fact.\u201d In the next instance, the third line becomes \u201cWe\u2019re unglued but still intact,\u201d and the final time it\u2019s \u201cWe should add but you subtract.\u201d Of course, part of the conceit of the song is the litany of alternative facts one, two, and three, so the pre-chorus had to change (and in that respect it might be considered part of the verse). For the chorus itself, I could have used just one of the variations I chose, but I think there\u2019s enough memorable repetition to allow for changing out the third line, which to my ear makes the song more interesting.<\/p>\n
Since I received your question, I\u2019ve been looking around for hit songs that change out part of the chorus, and it\u2019s not easy to find them. (I\u2019d welcome any other examples readers manage to unearth.) The Beatles make small tweaks to Day Tripper, In My Life, I Feel Fine, and several others. The Rolling Stones do it in Wild Horses and Dead Flowers, as does Springsteen in Brilliant Disguise. In Life During Wartime, Talking Heads switch out the third line of every instance of the chorus. Each one begins, \u201cThis ain’t no party, this ain’t no disco\/This ain’t no fooling around\u201d and ends \u201cI ain\u2019t got time for that now.\u201d But the third line shifts from \u201cNo time for dancing, or lovey dovey,\u201d to the deliciously evocative (for those who knew New York in the \u201880s) \u201cThis ain’t no Mudd Club, or C.B.G.B.,\u201d and then to \u201cI’d like to hold you, I’d love to kiss you.\u201d Before the final instance, there are four lines that follow the chords and melody of the chorus but have entirely different lyrics\u2014serving almost as a bridge, which the song otherwise lacks. In other words, it\u2019s always good to be aware of the rules and it\u2019s generally best to follow them. But when it makes sense to you, go ahead and change the pre-chorus or the chorus–because you can do what you want. It\u2019s your song!<\/p>\n
Happy SongwRx<\/sub>iting Jane Shields from Worcester, England, asks how a lyricist with limited musical knowledge can estimate the number of verses and choruses needed for a three-minute pop song. Similarly, Peter Dalton from Canberra, Australia, asks how a lyricist can know how long a song will be. The classic pop formula is two or three verse\/chorus pairs […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"parent":462,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-563","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry","post"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thegincident.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/563","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thegincident.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thegincident.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thegincident.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thegincident.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=563"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/thegincident.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/563\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":616,"href":"https:\/\/thegincident.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/563\/revisions\/616"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thegincident.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/462"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thegincident.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=563"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nThe Lyrics Doctor<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"