Songs with an all time verse that the chorus doesn't come close to delivering upon

Don't Stop Believin' has an all time verse that the chorus doesn't come close to delivering upon

― niels, Thursday, September 21, 2017 12:54 AM (seven years ago) bookmarkflaglink

I think about this post sometimes.

What are other examples of front-loaded songs with an underwhelming chorus?

Funky Town

Closing time
Hard to explain
Gaucho

Serve the Servants

Lucy in the sky with diamonds

God Save The Queen

gaucho is majorly notm

"do it again" is closer

Your Love by the Outfield

Drop Dead Legs

Love Is The Drug

The Boys Are Back In Town

Heat of the Moment

How does the DSB chorus not deliver?

Love Shack

Return of the Mack might be one of these, though maybe an example of a song so good it doesn't actually need a chorus

Your Love by the Outfield

The Prep MC would beg to differ

Love Is The Drug

Are you calling the chorus "oh oh, get that buzz" etc. or the wordless "oh oh oh" parts? Cos I agree with the latter.

How does the DSB chorus not deliver?

I get the feeling a lot of people here don't like choruses that repeat titles over and over.

Message in a Bottle? awesome riff, great verses, insane drumming, real catchy prechorus, then the actual chorus is just "Message in a bottle...whoa....message in a bottle"...also the slowest part of the song

actually a lot of the Police's choruses on their hit singles just sound like placeholders. Can't Stand Losing You, Don't Stand So Close To Me, Spirits in the Material World...they all sound like they were written in 15 minutes

Are you calling the chorus "oh oh, get that buzz" etc. or the wordless "oh oh oh" parts? Cos I agree with the latter.

actually a lot of the Police's choruses on their hit singles just sound like placeholders. Can't Stand Losing You, Don't Stand So Close To Me, Spirits in the Material World...they all sound like they were written in 15 minutes

― frogbs, Wednesday, January 29, 2025 1:26 PM (fourteen minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

no, they put a lot of thought into "de do do do, de da da da." and "so lonely."

i don't necessarily think that repetition is necessarily a bad thing. the chorus to "roxanne" is repetitive, but it's also an incredible chorus.

also, i would say the chorus of "message" includes the "i'll send an s.o.s. to the world" part

damn this is the thread everyone goes to to be wrong

return of the mac is a bizarre choice here, must be one of the catchiest choruses of the last few decades, all those little flourishes. you don't attempt and successfully execute a 'once again' mid-chorus in a shitty chorus.

let alone a "pump up the world"!

Every Little Thing She Does is Magic might be the ultimate shitty Police chorus following an awesome verse

he's nearly crammed a second chorus in there. that's the effect of the rehabilitation programme at her majesty's prison leicester.

xpost

i'm not complaining about the Return of the Mack chorus more in that i'm not sure if it really has one, it's very similar to the verse, maybe this is a lot more common than i think, it's just top of mind because I recently did a mashup with it

Every Little Thing She Does is Magic might be the ultimate shitty Police chorus following an awesome verse

hah, I was thinking of this as one of the examples where they actually do work in a good, distinct chorus

damn this is the thread everyone goes to to be wrong

just think it's a little, uh ... precarious to go on a message board and disparage the choruses of big hits and songs that have endured for decades. by definition, those choruses are quite effective, regardless of anyone's good/bad assessment.

Who Let the Dogs Out

what does 'endured for decades' mean in this context? if every song i can remember is good then why are we even here?

The Beatles suck, actually

they were good before Ringo joined

Someone convince me the chorus of the Lovin' Spoonful's "Summer in the City" lives up to the verse

It was a big hit that has endured for decades QED

Actually I like that the chorus is in two parts, with different chord changes, and it doesn't rhyme "city" and "gritty".

Baby You're a Rich Man

Drain You by Nirvana

It's not like it was an anticipation-baiting buildup but following

Don't you remember, you told me you loved me, baby?
You said you'd be coming back this way again, baby

with

Baby, baby, baby, baby, oh baby

felt like homer simpson crayoned over the lyric sheets.
https://frinkiac.com/video/S14E02/k7dNYKljiPciQtf17ezpecC6Fh4=.gif

damn this is the thread everyone goes to to be wrong

Looks that way.

Technically the chorus comes first, and Weird Al kind of has no choice once he's committed to doing song-length parodies, but the remainder of "This song is just six words long" is just filler.

The Boxer is the only one I can immediately think of, especially knowing that the li-li-li chorus is literally a placeholder.

Summer in the City is perfect, come on now.

"This song is just six words long" annoys me for another reason, it's seven words, the song it's parodying has seven words in the chorus, I think he should not have done it

The Boxer's chorus is perfect

Heat of the Moment

― unboxing helena (Matt #2), Wednesday, January 29, 2025 12:48 PM (seven hours ago) bookmark flag link

Right album, wrong song. The correct answer is "One Step Closer."

Dido - Thank You

Dua Lipa - New Rules

is it even a chorus?

I think Ariana Grande has a bunch of these tbh…

Also

Alicia Keys - Try sleeping with a broken heart

Lyrics aside, the verses sound like Prince and the chorus sounds like subpar Prince.

I'll second Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds. Always felt the verses deserved more than just shouting the song title in the chorus

don't necessarily think that repetition is necessarily a bad thing. the chorus to "roxanne" is repetitive, but it's also an incredible chorus.

Police were masters of the repetitive chorus. Personally I dug it, but live when every song incorporated Bob Marley’s “eee-aaa-oooh” thing it was insufferable.

Led Zeppelin - All My Love

Agree w/ Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds

Hard disagree w/ "Return of the Mack" and "Who Let the Dogs Out"

Mylo's In My Arms is a total rescue operation

Vast Halo OTM re: Steppin’ Out… I think it works beautifully

I also agree about that Belle & Sebastian song

As my contribution to this thread, I’ll submit R.E.M.’s “Can’t Get There From Here”

(great bridge in that song, too)

in it for the money by supergrass is chock full of really great verses with lackluster choruses that sound more like middle 8s. i want to believe that they just ran out of time.

oh and dog latin otm, re wandering days!

I like the "Can't Get There From Here" chorus, but mainly for Mills's "I've been there, I know the way" backing vocals. Stipe's parodic fusion of Mainer and Southerner is right on the edge of being annoying but it works for me more than some of his other efforts in that vein.

ut then the chorus is all about a circus boy and a "disenchanted poney”

when your favorite lyrical trope is 'the story of a beautiful underachiever’s embarrassing minor failures' you’d better really deliver, this is not a forgiving genre

but just when you thought the song was completely ruined, it dissolves into a dubiously jammy outro.

it was a good verse, they just couldn’t find a way out.

I mean... whenever I try to play it on guitar I get a frog in my throat (really!) during the "you said you were in hell" because that line is so bathetic and narratively unreliable and sort of sad, then I get to the chorus and realise I've got to just do this lousy silly thing for ages and I just peter out. "Michael and the rest of them...", that is amazing work. It's such a shame. Other than that it's among my faves of theirs

sometimes the verse is over and you just gotta make a break for it

The Libertines' Can't Stand Me Now, a stock choice for 'good song by an otherwise terrible band'. In fact I've rolled back round to enjoying it as much as I did at the time (important summer 2004 memories you see) but the chorus is still nothing. Which is distracting because there's a melancholy to most of the track which holds an extra weight with me.

I don't expect anyone will agree with me, but "Day Tripper". The key change into the chorus is fine, but each bit of the melody is weaker than the next, and every single time I hear "and I found out" I picture Lennon doing a Groucho Marx impersonation, wiggling a cigar and waggling his eyebrows.

the vocals on the verses of "Day Tripper" aren't exactly great either. that's a song that's carried pretty much entirely by the guitar riff and ringo's drumming.

I don't expect anyone will agree with me, but "Day Tripper". The key change into the chorus is fine, but each bit of the melody is weaker than the next, and every single time I hear "and I found out" I picture Lennon doing a Groucho Marx impersonation, wiggling a cigar and waggling his eyebrows.

― Halfway there but for you, Monday, April 28, 2025 10:06 AM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

i have no strong disagreement with your adding this song to the thread, but tbrr i can't imagine how that groucho imagine doesn't make you love it! i hope to call it to mind next time i hear day tripper

another point against the chorus, as i have noted elsewhere a day tripper would definitely buy a return ticket.

Rihanna's "Hard" might qualify here - absolutely overflowing with ideas except when the chorus kicks in. It keeps the momentum up but that's about all I can say for it.

another point against the chorus, as i have noted elsewhere a day tripper would definitely buy a return ticket.

― constant gravy (ledge), Monday, 28 April 2025 15:53 (five hours ago)

no but thats because they are talking about drugs

I was gonna say..

I can't say I agree with Day Tripper because it's pretty much an ABAB song where the verse and the chorus are connected in a way that make them parts of the same thing. Man, the Beatles were so on form at that part of their careers

it also has the virtue of having a very short chorus so we can get right back to the awesome guitar riff

If we're going to say anything about it, it's the riff that dominates the song and everything else just kowtows to it

I can't say I agree with Day Tripper because it's pretty much an ABAB song where the verse and the chorus are connected in a way that make them parts of the same thing.

Yes, a funny thing about the Beatles is how few songs with genuine choruses they have, and when they do have proper choruses they're often cheesy/terrible. Mostly their songs have the bit that functions as a chorus at the end of and in essence part of each verse, a kind of verse/chorus structure really, rather than a verse and a separate chorus. She Loves You is a famous example of a great chorus, but if I try to think of other songs with sections that are undeniable, standalone choruses, the ones that come to mind are Lucy (again) but then also Maxwell's Silver Hammer, Bungalow Bill, Ob-La-Di etc. Just glancing at the White Album tracklisting here for a representative sample and the only other pure choruses on that apart from the songs I just mentioned are in Don't Pass Me By and Cry Baby Cry. Case closed.

True, never thought of it that way. What is the chorus of Strawberry Fields, for example? It's just a line tacked on the end of a long, meandering verse. Mind you, Penny Lane, which is a lot more of a traditional song, definitely does

do blues songs have genuine choruses? do led zeppelin songs have genuine choruses? do cole porter songs?

Lucy in the sky with diamonds
Lucy in the sky with diamonds
Lucy in the sky with diamonds

is, by any definition I know, a chorus.

that doesn't come close to delivering

a funny thing about the Beatles is how few songs with genuine choruses they have

True, but "Day Tripper" and "Strawberry Fields Forever" absolutely have explicit choruses. The verse of the latter is "Living is easy with eyes closed...".

yeah but "strawberry fields" is still that a-b-a-b pattern that dog latin was describing

Yeah I was wondering how SFF could be considered chorusless

Xpost ah I see the idea

I'd agree if we were talking about "I Want to Hold Your Hand", I don't feel it in the two I mentioned above. I mean of course a verse and chorus should dovetail naturally, that's one of the skills of songwriting.

Yeah the Lucy chorus is kind of not great compared to the verse...

What is the Strawberry Fields Forever chorus? Is it just the bit where he sings the title of the song? Or is it the "Let me take you down..." part? Maybe because the song starts with that part I have difficulty thinking of it as a chorus. But I guess there are a few Beatles songs that go straight in with the chorus

don't love that this thread like all others has become a beatles thread. but...

there are a lot of beatles songs with traditional choruses: "can't buy me love," "yellow submarine," "i am the walrus," "here comes the sun," "come together," "get back," "with a little help from my friends," "drive my car," etc. etc.

a funny thing about the Beatles is how few songs with genuine choruses they have

lol wtf

“Octopus’s Garden” (everyone’s fave)

"I'd Have You Anytime"

Led Zeppelin - "Out On The Tiles"

andy williams "can't get used to losing you." a nice chorus, just not the chorus the amazing tense jittery verse was setting you up for.

My contribution to this be "Something for the girl with everything" Sparks.

My answer to this question is always "Photograph" by Def Leppard. And then I get hollered at.

So go ahead, kick this ass. I'm not asking, I'm telling.

I don't know how to break these things down in terms of proper music theory, but Photograph seems to have 4 distinct melodic sections:
A) First part of verse ("I'm outta luck, outta love...")
B) Second section of verse. Or maybe pre-pre-chorus? ("I see your face every time I dream...")
C) Pre-chorus ("Oh, look what you've done to this rock 'n' roll clown...")
D) Chorus ("Photograph / I don't want your / Photograph....")

I'd rate these as C > D > B > A

B >>>>>>> A > C = D

Possible contender: Appleton - Fantasy
Mostly for the contrast between weird juddering in the verses and the airiness of the chorus. It feels like the former is going to set up something that kicks a lot harder than what ends up coming. It's the change in drums I think.

Perfect example of this i can't believe i never said it before

The Beach Boys - It's Gettin' Late

with all due respect to Steve Shasta, there is no universe in which enochroot's "A" section of Photograph is better than the "D" section. that is an absolutely mind-boggling opinion.

I gotta say, after hearing "Rock of Ages" on the radio over the weekend, there's another song with a pretty tight verse/bridge, and a fairly lumpen-by-comparison chorus.

depends which choir is singing it

I heard "Young Folks" playing in a restaurant a couple of days ago and it immediately made me think of this thread.

No Action by Elvis Costello and the Attractions.

Not quite the same, but whenever I get the song "O, Dana" by Big Star stuck in my head, it's always the verse "I got busted across the bridge / they rounded up every soul / now I'm on the East Side," which has this plaintive weirdness to it that I find much more memorable than the fairly generic rock chorus (also good though).