2nd verses and bridges

Almost any songwriter will tell you that finding inspiration is easy, finishing songs is the hard part. I keep a running notebook with lyrical ideas and titles to make sure I have material when I need it. I tend to go to this well when I have a great musical idea but I am not quite sure what to pair lyrically with it.

Sometimes though, I wake up bleary and inspired at three AM to grab my phone and put some ideas for a hook or a couple of lines into my phone. When I wake up the next morning sometimes those lines are brilliant (and sometimes they are…not) but they generally give me a launching point.

Structurally those inspiration lines are almost always a first verse or a chorus. Most songwriters have an entire hard drive filled with songs that flounder after a verse and a chorus.

A DIGRESSION

Repetition is critical to our understanding and enjoyment of music. The exception is when it becomes so mind-numbingly dangerous that it threatens to destroy the entire universe in its Cthulu like embrace. Still, a little bit of repetition is actually better than something so completely through-composed that there is little for our desperately pattern-seeking brains to lock on to. While it is easy to admire the intriguing character of a song like Roy Orbison’s “In Dreams”, its structure makes it difficult to learn or even remember.

While song form is really about analyzing what has come before, much of the reality of why we can find these patterns is because they make sense! Generally what we call sections of songs serve distinct purposes and help us focus on what we are trying to accomplish as songwriters. Different popular forms over the years have a tendency to fall into common patterns.

Intro- I mean, how else will the vocalist know what the key is?

Verse- Sketches the narrative and moves it forward

Prechorus- Connects to the hook, generally pushes the melody into a different range (optional)

Chorus- Ideally this section contains the hook of the song. It may not advance the story but it comments on it.

Bridge- Takes a different angle on the action or resolves the conflict

Outro- So the singer can take a drink of water before the next song

Not all of these sections are in all song forms. The simplest song forms may be purely verses (think about children’s songs like “Itsy Bitsy Spider” or “Row, row, row your boat”). Hymns are often a variation of this with multiple verses that feature a repeated last line, generally called a refrain. “I walk the line” by Johnny Cash is an almost perfect version of this form where the refrain (“Because you’re mine, I walk the line”) is the last line of each verse and is only repeated at the very end of the song.

So, popular song form breaks down most normally into these structures:

• VVVV- Hymns
• VCVC- Simple songs
• IVVCV(V)CBC (basic pop form)
• IVVCV(V)CBCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCC (HOW ARE WE GOING GOING TO END THIS?)

When you are stuck with a verse and a chorus where do you go from there? I often talk to young songwriters and their complaint is that they have said what they need to say in verse one and don’t know where to go from there, so they say it again in a different way in verse two. This generally leaves the listener (and the songwriter) unsatisfied.

FORM FOR REPETITION

It can help to start with some analysis of notably good songs to see what people who gone before have done.

Jakob Dylan is a songwriter with a pedigree to die for. If Bob Dylan is your father you kind of have to be good. I love the song “One Headlight” and it is a great example of lyrical, concrete language that moves an idea forward.

Let’s look at one of his verses and a brutal simplification of what he is saying:

One headlight- by Jakob Dylan

So long ago I don’t remember when
That’s when they said I lost my only friend
Well they said she died easy of a broken heart disease
As I listened through the cemetery trees

I seen the sun comin’ up at the funeral at dawn
With the long broken arm of human law
Now it always seemed such a waste
She always had a pretty face
I wondered why she hung around this place

Let’s boil down what he is actually saying in this verse:

Brutal simplification

Guy goes back home after being gone a long time
He visits cemetery where an old girlfriend is buried
Remembers not being able to leave the funeral
Thinks about the girl and why she didn’t try to get out of this town

So let’s assume in the simplified story, the next verse of Dylan lyrics should go like this:

He wondered around the places they had been
It felt old and cheap and broken (or maybe he is broken?)
He can’t go back to the place of his youth
But he has to keep moving even if it feels like it is all over

Sounds like a reasonable progression of the narrative. How does Mr Dylan tell that story in a poetic way?

Well this place is old
It feels just like a beat up truck
I turn the engine but the engine doesn’t turn
Well it smells of cheap wine and cigarettes
This place is always such a mess
Sometimes I think I’d like to watch it burn

I’m so alone
Feel just like somebody else
Man, I ain’t changed, but I know I ain’t the same
But somewhere here in between the city walls of dying dreams
I think her death, it must be killing me
Hey, hey, hey-ey-ey
Come on try a little
Nothing is forever
There’s got to be something better than in the middle
Me and Cinderella
We put it all together
We can drive it home
With one headlight

First of all, notice the use of concrete language. An old truck, wine and cigarettes all set the stage for the old, cheap character of the town that our hero is reacting to. He finally decides that the proper reaction for this is to throw a match on the gasoline. Boom! Can you smell the oil, wine and smoke? Can you feel the heat from the fire?

And then that delightful “midnight is coming and it is all gonna fall apart,” Cinderella reference in the chorus. The writer has earned the right to make that oblique reference by all those concrete references in the verse. Country songwriters call all those nouns “furniture” in a lyric and they make sure the house is well equipped before moving on to those great choruses.

Although this is a sexy version of my boiled down statement, it is doing EXACTLY what I described in my summation. This gives a songwriter an approach to second verses. Brutally simplify what you have said in your first verse. Then ask what you need to say in simple terms in the second verse. Write that in your notebook and start working on a poetic way to say it. This changes the challenge from one of magic to one of craftsmanship. You can work through that!

In essence, you can’t progress to HOW to say something until you decide WHAT to say. Simple and obvious, but a necessary first step. Use word pictures. If a picture is worth a 1000 words than a word picture is worth at least 500. Lean on that. Count the nouns…leave the abstract stuff (love, tomorrow and regret) for the chorus. You earn the right to use those terms.

Elvis Costello is a master of this…look at this verse in “Veronica.”

Veronica sits in her favorite chair and she sits very quiet and still
And they call her a name that they never get right
And if they don’t then nobody else will
But she used to have a carefree mind of her own, with devilish look in her eye
Saying “You can call me anything you like, but my name is Veronica”

Do you suppose, that waiting hands on eyes,Veronica has gone to hide?
And all the time she laughs at those who shout her name and steal her clothes
Veronica
Veronica

The introspective lyrics are disguised by the jaunty character of the music. The reality of this song is hidden until somebody stops to consider what this lyric is about. This is my read of these lyrics:

That woman in the rocking chair used to be my mother before dementia took her away

I see little glimpses of her sometimes

It is like we have traded places and she is the one playing children’s games now

I keep lying to myself that she is coming back

So, where do you go next with this kind of a lyric? Do you talk about saying goodbye to a person that is no longer who you remember them to be? Do you draw out all the comparisons to your own childhood?

I have cheated in this case…but for a reason. I have chosen to print the LAST verse of this song. Costello doesn’t go anywhere after this verse because it is his denouement . In some instances you need to consider that the perfect verse that has been birthed complete out of your subconscious doesn’t want to progress to anywhere because it is THE LAST VERSE FOR YOUR SONG! If that is the case, what is the brutally simple thing you need to say leading INTO this verse?

In any case the process is simple:

• Figure out what to say (simplified)
• Make a list of related ideas and concepts (word association)
• Make references to other related stories
• Say the simple thing in a more poetic way

BRIDGES?

An approach to a bridge is similar. How are you going to say something different? How will you turn the idea in the chorus to something different? In my song “Alone with you”, the purpose of the bridge is to flip the meaning of the title phrase. In the first two verses that align with Spring and Summer the concept of being alone with a lover is bliss. Something happens in the next season:

Like the leaves you’re changing 
And I hear Autumn’s call 
Your love for me is fading 
And I can feel the fall 
The seasons pass in their own time 
And I can’t make you stay behind 

Now “alone with you” takes on a new meaning in the last verse and chorus. The bridge sets the stage for a fading love by establishing that this person now feels depressingly alone with the one person that used to make them feel that no one else mattered. This kind of twist is a great example of a way to use a bridge to progress the idea of a song.

Remember that while a great melody is magic and a brilliant lyric is moving, together they are more than the sum of their parts. Don’t stop working on a song until those pieces come together and make each other better. Simplify the ideas behind your lyrics so you can make the points you want to make powerful in the poetry.

Know that it is hard to move forward with pretty language until the idea you want to print is solidified. Simple can make your songwriting better…even if you add some complexity AFTER you choose the simple ideas!