Ever eavesdrop on a folks who speak another language than you? Sounds like hogwash right? You might be able to get an idea if the conversation is funny, sad, or angry, but you’ll miss the specifics by a long shot.
To avoid that bewilderment in our discussions of music and songwriting, we need a common vocabulary.
Lyrics on a page and notations in sheet music are symbols that represent song, just like letters represent sounds in our language. Though some differ dramatically, most song lyrics follow a standard structure:
Verse 1 (V1):
A steady rain is falling on your monogrammed umbrella
under which you write your last letter to me
Pre-med stationary is just lines on a page
and the answers for your silence are diagnosis made
from your books, from your new life
You’ll run away from me, crying as you go
and you’ll cry yourself to sleep every night you’re alone, but baby
A verse is a group of lyrical phrases used to set up the main idea and feeling of the song.
Verses are typically found before and after the chorus.
Chorus (Cho.):
If you let me
I will come to where you are
Even though I hate the weather
Sunny skies are so much better
But if you let me
I will bear Seattle’s gray
Just to see your face
If you let me
The chorus is the repeated lines that emphasize the main idea of the song. The most memorable line, or “hook”, is found in the chorus, bringing the listener back to the central thought or feeling in the song, and sinking the hook in deeper!
Verse 2 (V2):
A steady fire is reaching to the endless desert sky
under which you write your last of love to me
Combat letter paper is scarred brown with dust and rage
and hopes for our tomorrow are sad presumptions made
From this fight, from loss of life
You’ll run away from me, crying as you go
and you’ll cry yourself to sleep every night you’re alone
Notice there are common lines at the end of each verse, beginning with “you’ll run away from me/crying as you go”. This “prechorus” draws attention to the upcoming chorus. If you played the song in the sidebar, you’ll notice that the melody heightens with the prechorus, starting the music’s swing into the chorus.
Chorus:
If you let me
I will come to where you are
Even though I hate the weather
Cooler days are so much better
But If you let me
I will bear the ashy rain
Just to see your face
If you let me
Notice that each chorus is a little different. If you let me is pretty narrative (story-like), so it was fitting for me to lyrically sync each chorus with the verse (or bridge) above it.
Bridge:
What if we don’t survive and can’t go on
Will I still find you here to hold me in your arms?
Even if you have dreams you can’t see beyond
I will be here to love you when they’re said and done
When it’s all said and done
The bridge is a connection piece for songs that have a little more to say, or lose ends to tie. It arrives late in the song, serving the final thought before the final chorus.
Chorus:
If you let me
I will come to where you are
Even though I hate the weather
Life with you is so much better
If you let me
I will bear whatever comes our way
Just to see your face
If you let me
If the chorus changes throughout the song, the final chorus will wrap them up, bringing the song to a close. Here, all the talk about weather is summed up in the final thought: that life with the ones you love is more important than insignificant circumstances. It’s an awfully nice thought, don’t you think?
In an Origins post, I mentioned that form and structure developed later than song itself. Talking about a song’s structure, lyrics, or melody is like talking about plans for the weekend–they framework the experience to come, but they are not the experience.
That said, don’t get hung up on them! Write out your ideas before chopping them up into verses. Structure is a helpful tool, but as the writer you must let your song run free until it knows what it’s about and what it might like to become. Once you have direction, it’s much easier to distinguish your verses from your choruses, etc…
As I observe the trends in popular music, I can appreciate this striking metaphor about shoving our creativity into specific structures, just so it’s acceptable to critics. (If you have to read it twice, read it twice!):
In our modern days, we too often make our ideas to fit the forms. We put our guest, the poetic thought, that comes to us like a homing bird from out the mystery of the blue sky – we put this confiding stranger straightway into that iron bed, the “sonata form,” or perhaps even the third rondo form, for we have quite an assortment. Should the idea survive and grow too large for the bed, and if we have learned to love it too much to cut off its feet and thus make it fit, why do we run the risk of having some critic wise in his theoretical knowledge, say, as was and is said of Chopin, “He is weak in sonata form!” (1912)
