Lyrics

The Verse’s Purpose

Posted on by IJ


In a more recent article “Don’t Bore Us, Get To the Chorus“, we discussed the obvious importance of that part of a song. But while the chorus might be considered the “sexiest” or most pivotal part of the song…the verse is what really sets the chorus up to succeed. Behind every successful chorus is a strong verse 🙂

So it’s important to understand that the verse plays as crucial a role as the chorus, and that you need to pay a lot of attention to whether or not your verses are doing their job. If the chorus is the summation, the peak, if you will, of the song, the verses are the storytellers that help to make the chorus make sense. And when I say story, I don’t necessarily mean “once upon a time”. This is something that confuses a lot of people at first, because not all songs are little 3 minute stories in the traditional sense of the word. However, all songs need a beginning, a middle and an end. When you look at your verses from a lyrical standpoint, sometimes it’s a good idea to give a one-line summation of each one, just to see how they are adding up within the context of the song.



For instance, the first verse might be “I met him (her)”, the second “we had a great time” the third “something went wrong”. That’s just a very basic story line, but you get the idea. You can examine other songs that way to see how they work. I took a look at a couple of more recent pop/rock hits, for no particular reason and with no bias toward any, other than the fact that my guitar students have wanted to learn them. One of those was “Bubbly”, by Colbie Caillat. Now I wouldn’t exactly call the lyrics of that song brilliant or inspired, but they are kinda cute.

Bubbly is basically just a love/lust song, describing how he gives her “tinglies in a silly place” :-). So how do the verses stand up to the story test? The first verse starts with “I’ve been awake for awhile now”. The second describes being in bed and “the rain is falling on my window pane”. And the third verse begins with “I’ve been asleep for awhile now”. The rest of the song more or less describes how he makes her feel, especially the chorus. But the verses do meet the criteria of creating a beginning, a middle and an end. Waking up, fooling around, going back to sleep :-).

Another song is “Hey There Delilah” by the Plain White T’s. This song is almost written in the form of a letter, the first verse being a kind of “hey, how are you and how’s it going?”. “Hey there Delilah, what’s it like in New York City?”. The next verse is expressing the thought that one of these days things won’t be so hard and we’ll have a better life together. The last verse more or less says take care of yourself…something you might end a letter with. The chorus, interestingly, is just one line “Oh, it’s what you do to me.” repeated over and over…the melody is what makes that chorus stand out. It’s beautiful. So in this song, similarly to “Bubbly”, the verses are telling the story, the chorus is simply expressing or describing a feeling.

The third song I’ll look at is Taylor Swift‘s “Teardrops On My Guitar”. Again, this is a love song…this one about unrequited love. It sets up the story with the first line “Drew looks at me, I fake a smile so he won’t see”, and goes on to lament the fact that Drew has somebody else, but the singer is still pining for him. There’s continuity with the first line of the second verse, “Drew talks to me, I laugh because it’s so damn funny”. And the third verse begins “Drew walks by me, can he tell that I can’t breathe?”. In this particular song, the bridge carries on the story “So I drive home alone…”, and at the very end of the song, the last line is a repeat of the first line “Drew looks at me, I fake a smile so he won’t see”. This is a little songwriting trick that I’ve used myself before. I call it the 360, because the effect is to create a feeling of coming back to the beginning again, coming full circle. In a song like this about unrequited love, the feeling is never resolved, is it? So the effect of the 360 is that the story continues on indefinitely.

One very critical final point about the verse; the first verse, specifically. The first line has to draw the listener in, so in spite of all of the hullabaloo over the importance of the chorus, pay attention, very special attention, to your first line. Sometimes the chorus is sung first for a similar effect…to draw the listener in.

So far we’ve only discussed how verses can work best in a lyrical context. But what about the music? Usually there is a musical contrast between verse and chorus, and more often than not, the chorus melody lifts to some degree. I once heard someone say that the chorus always contains the highest note in the song 🙂 I can see why he’d say that because there is certainly is a feeling of a lot of choruses being at more of a fever pitch compared to the verses. Sometimes that is created just as much by the production than anything else; lots of background vocals coming in, maybe strings or other extra instruments being introduced, and the drummer riding the cymbals. This can give a sense of the chorus being louder and “higher”.

If you listen to the song I mentioned above, “Bubbly”…the melody of the chorus is not all that different from the verses, the notes are simply organized a little differently, they are shorter in length and the chords change more frequently. The melody in the chorus of each of the other songs definately lifts up to some degree.

“Teardrops On My Guitar” follows the classic contrast of a softer verse and more emotionally dominant chorus. The notes are longer in the verses, the melody is in the lower register, but there’s a kind of intimacy in the way it is sung that pulls you in. Verses do tend to be more low key (I don’t mean IN a lower key, I just mean softer), but if you make them too much so then you take the chance of losing a listener pretty quickly. Where else do you think the line “don’t bore us, get to the chorus” came from? 🙂 Songwriters often make the mistake of paying less attention to the verse melody and chord progression. But just as the verses need to drive the “story”, they also have to be compelling musically, enough so to keep those listener’s ears perked long enough to get to the chorus, if there is one. The performance, of course, also has an integral role. A lackluster vocal performance will make even the best melody a little mediocre. But I digress!

In “Hey There Delilah” the verse melody is again in a lower register, but the verses are more developed and much longer than the chorus. That’s because they are really doing the job of telling the story because the chorus has only that one emotional statement and that’s it..”Oh, it’s what you do to me.” You could write just about anything around a chorus like that. But it is made stronger by the verses, which do exactly the job they are meant to do, melodically and lyrically–to set the chorus up. Sometimes as you’re writing or re-writing a song, you realize that your verse melody seems to stand out more than your chorus. This is a good lesson…what do you do? One possibility is to switch them…make the verse melody the chorus and vice versa. Or you might want to find a new melody for the chorus altogether.

So now that we’ve examined the role of the verses more carefully, it’s time for you to go back through your songs and see how they measure up! It doesn’t mean you have to re-write anything that doesn’t work (although that’s certainly a good exercise!), but it will make you more aware of the function of the verse the next time you sit down to write a new tune. And remember, that sometimes things just work because they work, even if they break the so-called “rules”. Think of everything here simply as a guideline…but remember that sometimes it’s just as interesting to colour outside the line 🙂

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Be Bold

Posted on by IJ


Yesterday I was in the car listening to a radio show all about advertising…boring you might assume, but it was actually quite interesting. That’s because a lot of what advertising people are doing, the ones who are writing and producing commercials, is continuously trying to find new ways to say the same old things. How do you advertise a car in a way that no one has done before?

The most interesting thing I heard was an interview with a top notch ad guy in the US. He said that in the beginning, his success could be attributed to his LACK of knowledge. He didn’t know what he “couldn’t” do. Beyond that, he said, once you start to learn the rules and play by them, you start to become like everybody else. And once you become like everybody else, you stop standing out.

I found this particularly interesting because it creates quite a dichotomy when you are using the rules to try to come up with something new and fresh. How can you be new and fresh if you are simply following old patterns or methods? And when you have people like me telling you how to write a song, isn’t that the same as learning the “rules”? Maybe you should stop reading my tips right now 🙂



And, if, for instance, you are hearing from publishers or record people “We want the next ________”, meaning that they want you to be a new version of someone famous who has made them a lot of money…how does that make you new and fresh? You are going to come up against this again and again if you are trying to pitch your songs or try and make your band the next big thing. You don’t want to sound like anyone else, but a lot of people will push you in that direction.

I have always been an advocate of learning the rules, and then more or less learning how to break them. But now I wonder if rules don’t just get in the creative mind’s way, period. The mind is a pretty powerful thing. You know yourself, that if you let yourself second guess every word or every note, it ruins everything! So when you are first sitting down to write something, throw all the “rules” out the window…don’t even let yourself think about them.

Beyond that, let’s look at a couple of songs and artists that more or less break the “rules” and succeed. The first one I’ll mention comes to mind because a guitar student of mine recently asked me to figure it out for her to play. It’s a song called “Something Pretty” by Patrick Park. You can hear the whole song on his website in the media section, and it was introduced to a larger audience through the television show “The OC”. What’s really interesting about this song is that it starts out sounding pretty darn traditional country. But then you realize that his singing style isn’t really “country” , and musically the song takes some very nontraditional twists and turns, for instance, suddenly modulating to another key and back again, and having a very long instrumental section after the chorus. You’d rarely find that done in a popular contemporary country song today. Today’s country, especially country/pop, is very, very formula. And Patrick’s lyrical style is a kind of a self put-down, which is more of what you would find in rock or alternative (whatever alternative is these days!) songs. And for days after I worked it out, I had it spinning around and around in my head…it has a haunting quality that sticks with you.

Sometimes what makes a stand out, obviously, is the artist. Fiest’s “1,2,3,4” is just plain quirky. Her voice is different, the production is definitely not typical…lots of banjos and trumpets. Now when is the last time you heard that in a pop song? And someone like Amy Winehouse with her ballsy, vocal style, makes R&B sound new again, the way Norah Jones made jazz and country new and appealing to a pop audience a couple of years back. It seems these days that television commercials are breaking artists more commonly than radio. That in itself, is an interesting turn of events.

Occasionally, well-established artists go out on a limb and break their own rules. The first to famously do that in the folk/rock world was Bob Dylan. There was a huge backlash when he suddenly started playing electric guitar in 1965 at the Newport Folk Festival. They called him a sell-out, a traitor, even…they yelled “get rid of that electric guitar!” He was shaken from that experience, when all he was trying to do was to re-invent himself and move in a fresh direction. Another, less negatively received re-invention was Johnny Cash with that unbelievably powerful version of a Nine Inch Nails song and video “Hurt”. Who’d a thunk it…Johnny Cash and NIN? But it was a huge hit for him. The combination of that raw, seasoned voice and those equally raw and emotional lyrics, was profound.

So is the answer to re-invent yourself? Perhaps. One thing my husband likes to say to the kids is “Be bold.” And occasionally they take the bull by the horns and do something they never thought they could. I think that’s how you have to approach your songwriting (and performing, if that’s relevant to you)…I think you have to throw something completely different into the mix, and see what you come up with. If you’re looking to do something different, then pick a style you haven’t written before (even if you hate it!), or pick up an instrument you’ve never played. Use words that are not common to you. If you record your own songs, find the strangest loop you can possibly find, and write something to it. Find a trumpet player and ask him or her to invent a part for a song that doesn’t sound like it is meant for a trumpet :-). You see what I mean?

Be bold .

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Don’t Bore Us, Get To the Chorus!

Posted on by IJ


The chorus is what many songwriters and publishers and industry types consider one of the most critical parts of the song. As described in my other article on Song Structure, each part of a song has its purpose, and the chorus seems to be one that is most crucial in driving the whole song “home”. In this article I’m going to go into more detail about the functions of a chorus, using some familiar examples to give you an idea of how you might best construct your chorus when you get to that part of the song.

Well, let’s face it…probably more often than not, a song doesn’t “write itself” in any particular order. You may often find that you come up with some parts and don’t really know what their purpose is right away. In fact, you may even change your mind as to which is which at some point in your re-writing process, and that is perfectly fine. If you are at that point right now with a particular song you’re working on, there are some things to consider. First of all, the chorus is a stand out both lyrically and musically. It’s the part, or at least CONTAINS the part (often called the “hook”) that people remember. So look at what you’ve got and see if one part has that more dominant feeling. Maybe it’s not so obvious, in which case you may have to rework a part to achieve that…or you may not have a chorus yet, or even end up with one. Anything’s possible!



I’ve used this example before as a powerful chorus…Sheryl Crow’s “If It Makes You Happy“. There is NO DOUBT about that chorus, even when you just read the title of the song. Not all song titles are contained in the chorus, but this is fairly common. The contrast between that chorus and the verses is very obvious. Musically, it lifts up as the melody hits the highest note on “MAKES”. The melody line is simpler in the chorus, and more powerful. The chord progression jumps to a minor chord, an “Am”, whereas the verses stick to more major chords. Lyrically, it’s a great line. “If it makes you happy”….I wouldn’t be surprised if the whole song was written around that line.

Okay, here’s another one: “I Will Always Love You”. The song was written by Dolly Parton, who also recorded a version of it, but it was made even more famous by Whitney Houston. Now, this is not my favourite song or chorus because personally, it got kind of annoying after awhile. But you have to admit, with all of those vocal acrobatics, that was one darn powerful chorus. And what’s really interesting is that this is the only phrase in the chorus…I will always love you. That was it! The rest of it was the performance.

Here’s another…Joan Osborne’s “One Of Us”. What if God was one of us? Not only is it lyrically provocative, but the melody, which is mirrored with a guitar lick, is a real stand out. And which is the the first word in that chorus that contains the highest note? You’ve got it…”God.” 🙂 Either that’s really clever or a wonderful accident!

A great country song that came out in 2000 was by Lonestar…”Amazed”. Very powerful, emotional chorus. “I don’t know how you do what you do, I’m so in love with you, it just keeps getting better.” Now the lyrics are not particulary clever, but the melody and emotional deliverance in the performance are a real stand out.

U2‘s “Beautiful Day” from the same year had a really positive message. If you have no idea what the rest of the song is about (and I didn’t until I looked it up!), “it’s a beautiful day…” is all you need! Again, the production is very powerful as is the vocal delivery, but the phrase itself and the melody that accompanies it, is emotionally very uplifting.

Okay…I’m not going to name the next one…here are the lyrics in the chorus:

I get knocked down
But I get up again
You’re never going to
Keep me down

Do you recognize it? Oddly enough, here’s an example of a chorus with no sign of the title. It’s called “Tubthumping” by Chumbawumba. Who thought of that title? But it sure is a stand out chorus. Can you remember the rest of the song? Unless you listened to the song a number of times, the verses probably aren’t as memorable. Now you see what I mean about the chorus being a critical aspect of the song! If it’s well-written, it goes a long way to sell the song.

And finally, a more recent entry:

Oh, it’s what you do to me, oh, it’s what you do to me
Oh, it’s what you do to me, what you do to me

Again, no title in the chorus…it’s called “Hey There Delilah”. Very strong chorus, not particularly fascinating lyrics, but melodically, it’s very powerful and emotional. It’s interesting that each of the verses begins with “Hey there, Delilah…”, so that’s another way to make the title memorable without putting it in the chorus. Probably, using “What You Do To Me”, which is repeated over and over in the chorus, was considered too over-used or boring to use as a title.

Now these songs might not be your taste, and to tell you the truth, I know some of them only by the fact that my guitar students wanted to learn them! If it weren’t for my students I wouldn’t be exposed to a lot of music. Sometimes they are not songs that I myself would choose to listen to, but it sure gives me an insight into what is popular.

The title of this article comes from a well-known phrase in the music industry. When you are sitting in front of a record label exec or a publisher, this is often what is on their mind. It says a lot about what the industry thinks about. They don’t care about long intros and meandering verses…quite often, all they care about is the chorus. So the placement of your chorus is particularly important. On the other hand, if your verses really draw them in, the chorus becomes the bonus!

In a lot of songs, the chorus is the very first thing you hear. Is that a good trick? Well, it might be effective, but not every song works with that particular form…for one thing, the verses can be really effective in lyrically setting up the chorus, so in that case, you don’t want to put the chorus first and give the whole thing away! The purpose of a chorus, as I said in the beginning, is to drive the song home. It is the focal point, the summation…it explains the song. And sometimes, in the case of a chorus being the first thing you hear, the chorus is what sets everything else in the song up.

There are songs that don’t have choruses, but that isn’t as common in popular music genres such as rock and pop and country. In some cases, you have a song with a “refrain“, which might be a line or a phrase that recurrs in the same spot in a verse. For instance, “The Times They Are A Changin'” is an old Bob Dylan song that uses that refrain at the end of each verse. Folk songs, for instance, often don’t have a chorus. But if you are writing in the more popular styles, you are more likely than not going to have to write a chorus.

Studying the chorus’ of the songs you like is an excellent lesson in how they work, and more importantly, how they work successfully. Go to a Top 10 list of songs in any given year, and then listen to and read along with the lyrics of each one. Notice how the chorus is used, and decide for yourself what it is about that chorus that works for you. Where is the placement of the chorus? How many times is it repeated? How long is it? How is the melody structured? What do the lyrics say in the chorus that isn’t said in the rest of the song?

The more you study them, the more you’ll admire the power of a great chorus!

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Creating Great Songs and Apple Pies

Posted on by IJ


Apple pie with lattice upper crust
Image via Wikipedia

I recently polled some of the members of a songwriting newsgroup to see what a songwriter thinks makes a “great” song. When we listen to a song for the first time and it hits us smack in the face, what is it that gives us that “shiver down the spine”, as one member put it?



Some interesting responses that came out of this went something like this, in no particular order:

  • passionate performance
  • it’s got to do something to my head, heart or feet
  • catchy intro
  • feel
  • emotion
  • easy rhymes
  • story songs with a twist
  • good groove
  • strong hook
  • melody I can hum along with
  • I like the words to surprise me
  • good arrangement and lyric depth
  • a song has to breech my defenses with a good melody (I loved that one 🙂
  • I think my taste is a product of my own circumstances (that was good too 🙂
  • artistic integrity
  • overall sound, mostly melody driven
  • prosody (how perfectly the lyrics match the meter of the music)

Most people who are NOT songwriters would likely express the same things, with perhaps less use of the lingo that we songwriters often use. And still, there is this indefinable “wow” that we can’t really put our finger on, which might also be very different for each of us. How do you define it?

We are, each of us, capable of writing a song. In fact, I’d even go as far as saying that writing a song is really the easiest thing in the world. But writing a GREAT song is what we are always chasing and that mystery ingredient (or combination of ingredients) is often eluding us when it comes to our writing. Anyone of you out there who doesn’t want to write a great song? When we study the craft of songwriting, sometimes we fool ourselves into thinking that all we really need are the perfect ingredients, and how hard can that be? Just look at the list above, and go from there!

But there are a couple of things missing from that list. I think they are things we overlook more often than not. First of all, even if you put all of the “right” ingredients into an apple pie, there’s always a cook who can bake a better one. Is it possible for someone who hasn’t baked an apple pie before to create the perfect one first time out? Well, anything is possible. But it’s more likely that the person who has been baking apple pies for a long time has a better chance of coming close to the perfect pie. So the first missing ingredient is “experience”. With enough experience, enough trial and error, I believe that just about anyone could write a really good song. The thing is that you also have to love doing it enough to put in the time to get good at it. Many would likely never take the time or have the patience to actually learn the craft. Not all of us want to study the craft of baking apple pies either 🙂

Apple pies are also individual…nobody can make one exactly the same as mom does. And that is also true about songwriting. So along with the experience factor, there is the element of uniqueness. What is it about a newer artist that makes them stand out? These days, there are a lot of cookie cutter songs out there. I recently listened to a top 10 list of songs and five of them were hip hop or rap. I have nothing against those genres, but what I noticed about each song was that they had almost exactly the same drum sound and the same BPM (beats per minute or tempo)! Rap and hip hop have been really big in the last few years. What is going to kill the genre, if anything, is that they are all going to start sound the same after awhile, and the audience’s ear will tire of that. You can’t just throw the same song out there over and over and expect people to have the same enthusiasm for it for long.

SO…having a unique sound or perspective (or even production for that matter!) may take you a long way in this business of songwriting. And writing enough songs to develop a track record and get some experience will do the same.

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Song Forms and Terms – A Quick Study

Posted on by IJ
music_and_lyrics
Image by Rickyuan via Flickr

© I.Woloshen

None of us likes to think that we require any “structure” to our writing…that we just pour out our thoughts and feelings, resulting in a perfect song. That may be true on a personal level…however, chaos is a pretty difficult thing for others to listen to! In listening to newer writers, I occasionally come across a song that seems to have no structure at all, with little or no thought paid to what the listener might be going through 🙂 So as much as you might want to rail against the idea of “rules”, there is one thing to consider. A house still needs a door to go in and out of, it still needs a window or two and some solid walls so it won’t fall down. This, metaphorically speaking, is what song form is all about. It is a framework, a sense of meaningful structure, that makes the song listenable.

Before we tackle the subject of song form…let’s talk about different songwriting terms and what they mean. Most people understand the idea of a verse and a chorus. In an earlier article entitled Song Structure, I discuss in more detail the purpose of each part of a song. But I will briefly go through them here again in order to introduce the idea of song form.

The purpose of a verse is to tell the story or describe the feeling, etc. The chorus is the focal point of the song, the central theme, if you will. A bridge is a kind of fresh perspective, a small part that may consist of only music, or both lyrics and music, usually placed after the second chorus. These are the main parts that are used when describing song form. Song form is no big mystery, just a new term to some people 🙂 You may have seen or heard about a song having an ABAB form, or ABABC, etc. What does this mean?



The oldest song form, is often referred to as folk, where there was no chorus, or any other part, for that matter. Verses are always labeled A. So, in describing a folk song form, or any song that has only verses, the song form is AAAA.

A lot of songs these days follow the next type of song form, which includes a chorus. The chorus is labeled B, so a verse, chorus, verse, chorus type of song is ABAB. Simple, isn’t it?

Now we come to song forms including a bridge, which is labeled C. So here’s a simple form with a bridge: AABABCB. What we have here is a verse, verse, chorus, verse, chorus, bridge, chorus.

You will likely find that there are many variations of these forms. For instance, some songs start with the chorus, some have more than one bridge, etc. If you evaluate songs by some of your favourite artists, you’ll find all kinds of variations. But most songwriters don’t start writing by coming up with a song form first…this usually reveals itself as the song is being written. It is, however, a quick and easy language to use when discussing the process with other writers.

Understanding song form is an interesting way to further your education on the craft of songwriting…if you sit down and experiment with different song forms, you may find all kinds of possibilities you didn’t know existed before. Are you stuck in a song form rut, and even more importantly, did you know you were? 🙂 As songwriters, we are always on the hunt for fresh ideas, and changing song forms can be a way to accomplish that.

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