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Structure in songwriting is all about the sections your song is made out of – how those sections repeat
and fit together according to some kind of grand masterplan.
And while there are lots of structures a song can take, some are more popular than others. This article is
about one of the most popular – Verse-Chorus Structure.
We’re going to look at the different parts that come together to form a Verse-Chorus Structure: what
they are, how they fit together, and what the point of writing a Verse-Chorus Structure is anyway.
If you’re a regular reader of my articles here at The Song Foundry, you’ll know I’m not really into
giving you quick tricks and tips that might make you feel good in the short term but don’t really help
you understand how to be a better songwriter in the long run. But if you’re a regular reader of my
articles, you’ll also know that I’ll throw in a handful of cheap gags to keep you going right to the end.
That said, if you’re short on time because you’re out and you just realized you left your hair
straighteners on, or you just read a ‘Life Is Short’ meme on Facebook once and took it a bit too
seriously, that’s OK. You can check out our short video on Verse-Chorus Structure on the video
page instead, or just skip to downloading the one-page summary of this article here.
Otherwise, if you’re still with me and ready to dive head-first into this comprehensive guide to Verse-
Chorus Structure, let’s do it.
Verse-Chorus Structure in a Nutshell
Soon enough, we’ll talk about the pieces that make up a Verse-Chorus Structure and look at the various
ways you can fit them all together.
But first, let’s start with a big idea – the simple game that every Verse-Chorus Structure plays in one
way or another.
Because here’s the thing: there’s a reason your starter is less exciting than your main course. There’s a
reason we have Advent. There’s a reason we have foreplay.
Verse-Chorus structures are their own game of anticipation. Your Chorus is the main event of your
song, the bit where you put your song’s hook and the bit where you really hammer your song’s message
home. And every other section is about building anticipation or providing contrast to your song’s
Chorus.
Hold on to that idea, because it helps explain everything else we’re going to talk about in this article.
As you know already, the Chorus is the song’s main event. In a simple Verse-Chorus Structure that
makes the Verse the Chorus’s wingman: it’s the section that sets the musical world of the song, sets the
scene in the lyric and starts to build in anticipation somewhere in its second half – maybe with a busier
instrumental texture, more adventurous harmony and/or a lyric that starts moving somewhere new.
That means the Chorus is usually more intense than the Verse: its instrumental texture is usually busier
(either more instruments or the same number of instruments playing more notes), the vocal register is
often higher on average than in there verse, and the lyric is probably more repetitive than in the Verse.
(In fact, sometimes the Chorus is just the song’s hook phrase over and over, like in Aerosmith’s ‘Dude
Looks Like a Lady’.)
Speaking of repetition: you probably know the big idea that 99% of the time a song’s Choruses are
identical (or more-or-less identical) every time they come back, but the Verses have identical (or more-
or-less identical) music but different lyrics. Your song would get pretty boring pretty quickly if the
game of anticipation was exactly the same every time – so each Verse talking about something else is
one way your song gets to tell more of its story and one way you keep your Verse-Chorus Structure
interesting.
Sometimes the extra chorus is just an ordinary repeat, though if you’re writing a 90s pop classic it
might come in with a key change, and if you’re writing an 80s power ballad it might be a repeat and
fade, where the chorus comes round again while it fades out.
For a straightforward example of this straightforward structure, you can check out Dolly Parton’s 9 to
5: two simple cycles of Verse and Chorus. In this case the Chorus is twice the length of the Verse, and
the Chorus is repeated twice the final time (while it fades).
For an example where the second verse is half the length of the first, check out Pasek and Paul’s Before
It’s Over. Cutting that second verse in half gives the song a bit of extra momentum and keeps things
moving forward.
It’s as if the moment the Verse-Chorus cycle becomes predictable (one cycle is a one-off, two become a
pattern, three become a routine), the Bridge comes in to throw us off the scent. (Parallel to how AABA
form works.)
Notice also how in this most common variant there is a Bridge but no third Verse. Though it’s not
unthinkable to come out of the Bridge into a third chorus (often shortened) before the final Chorus:
The Bridge is typically a complete departure from the material heard so far. Bridges commonly have
entirely new melodic and harmonic material, and the texture is often new too. (Cutting out the bass or
drums is a typical way to create anticipation for their return in the final chorus.) Lyrically they’re also
usually a departure: flashing forward or back in time, providing a more philosophical perspective or
adding something otherwise totally fresh to the song. The Bridge fulfils a similar function to the Verse,
though it’s like the rebel third-child in being proudly different from the Verse as well as the Chorus.
But unlike the Verse, whose role is more about anticipation, the Bridge is more about diversion: being a
clean break from the Chorus and anything heard so far. Hence its evocative alternative name, the
Release. This might account for why some songs have a Bridge and third Verse – a chance to
breakaway then build back to the Chorus. A have-your-cake-and-eat-it-too situation.
The simpler archetype without a third verse is really common in mass-market pop. It’s a direct and no-
fuss way to structure a song. Katy Perry’s I Kissed A Girl is a classic example.
Jennifer Lopez’s Waiting for Tonight includes half of the second Verse (with a slight lyric change)
going into the final Chorus.
Another common variation, much more common when there’s a Bridge than when there isn’t one, is to
put a Chorus before the first verse. One example is Cee Lo Green’s Forget You. Notice how that extra
repetition helps plant the Chorus in our brains before the first proper cycle.
The Pre-Chorus may also appear after the Bridge to build into the final Chorus:
For a real-life song with a clear Pre-Chorus (but no bridge) you can check out Oasis’s Wonderwall:
hear how the lyric changes subject and the texture moves up a notch at ‘All the roads…’.