Verse versus Chorus

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So here's my take right: The verse and the chorus share responsibility for the power of a song obv. Most folks (i think) see it this way:

1. verse sets up chorus

2. chorus rocks house

3. back to verse because we want to reproduce the effect of 1->2 again

etc.

I think this is wrong and misses a major portion of the verse function. Now as a person who has spent most of his life listening to and performing strictly instrumental music, I may just be coming on to an idea the rest of you have down pat, but I'm throwing it out here anyway:

1. verse provides details that make the chorus seem relevant to you specifically

2. chorus provides generic message that could practically apply to anybody

3. verse provides more details etc. etc.

To me this seems to be the basic structure of most of the truly successful pop songs I enjoy on a regular basis. The chorus obv is the underlying theme, but it's generally either 1. generic enough that you could train a goat to share yr sentiments 2. specific and therefore a novelty tune - while the verse retains the right to be specific, almost to a fault in some cases. In fact a verse that's too generic just turns the song into pap, really, unless of course you disagree, in which case I suspect you are wrong. So the moral of the story is: chorus/verse have a more complex relationship than I originally suspected, beyond the dynamic and melodic purposes of the change-up from A to B. I felt this was an insight worth writing down. Sorry if I remind any of you of yourself in 10th grade, as I said, I was all abt techno and jazz for most of my life.

Thoughts?

― Millar (Millar), Saturday, 3 May 2003 02:25 (twenty-two years ago)

Yeah, you've put your finger on part of what I was trying to work out here. (But that particular theme never took off on the other thread, which instead turned into a debate about the difference between a Bridge and Middle Eight and which of these can repeat, blah blah blah.)

― Paul in Santa Cruz (Paul in Santa Cruz), Saturday, 3 May 2003 02:35 (twenty-two years ago)

Chorus pedals are great. I've never heard of verse pedals-- maybe you mean reverse delay, like those Danelectro BackTalks?

― Nick Mirov (nick), Saturday, 3 May 2003 04:11 (twenty-two years ago)

I bet there are songs where this is reversed, the verse like the koan or the moral of story like you say, and the chorus has a telling detail?

― Tracer Hand (tracerhand), Saturday, 3 May 2003 04:28 (twenty-two years ago)

(Not the case normally, though, I agree with you.)

― Tracer Hand (tracerhand), Saturday, 3 May 2003 04:29 (twenty-two years ago)

The verse details / generic chorus formula, boiled down to its essence:

Sad Day
(Jagger/Richards)

Someone woke me up this mornin'
and I lit a cigarette
Found myself when I stopped yawnin'
started getting myself dressed
Then I felt I had a dream
I remembered the things I'd seen
I could still hear the things you said
with that bad dream in my head

It was a sad day
bad day
sad day
bad day

So I called you on the phone
and your friend said "she's not home"
So I told her where I'd be at
and that you should call me back
Then I looked at the morning mail
I was not even expecting a bill
Your letter a-started "Dear"
and it left me with these tears.

It was a sad day
bad day
sad day
bad day

Think of the times that we had rows
but we patched them up somehow
Think of the times I tried to go
but you screamed and told me no
There is only one thing in this world
that I can't understand, that's a girl
I keep a-readin' the things you said
like a bad dream in my head

It was a sad day
bad day
sad day
bad day

Oh, what a sad, sad, old day - a sad, old day
It was a sad, old day
A sad, old day, was a bad old day...

― Kenan Hebert (kenan), Saturday, 3 May 2003 04:34 (twenty-two years ago)

Yup, sounds pretty much right. Though of course there are songs that pervert either part of your definition.

― Chris P (Chris P), Saturday, 3 May 2003 04:35 (twenty-two years ago)

Something like... the chorus is the text, the verses are the context (and the bridge is the subtext?). So, yeah, the chorus is general (i.e. universal), the verses are specific (i.e. personal/individual). Yin and yang, the self and the world, the hook and the crook.

― JesseFox (JesseFox), Saturday, 3 May 2003 04:56 (twenty-two years ago)

The meat and the potatoes.

― Kenan Hebert (kenan), Saturday, 3 May 2003 04:59 (twenty-two years ago)

I know I often write songs in which verse really is versus chorus. I like it when the chorus completely pulls the carpet out from under the verse. F'rinstance, on my current album, 'Is It Because I'm A Pirate?' has verses which set up the character as a baddun, a cut-throat in the classic 'Mac The Knife' tradition, then a chorus where the character turns round and says 'But if you hold all that stuff against me it's just because you're prejudiced against pirates, which would be an ugly sentiment for such a pretty girl to harbour'.

The verse and the chorus are 'mutually ironising'.

A typical Momus song would have a chorus that went 'I don't care what people say, you're still beautiful to me' and a number of verses that spelled out horrific physical deformities, getting worse as the lines piled up inexorably.

― Momus (Momus), Saturday, 3 May 2003 12:51 (twenty-two years ago)

Bah! Down with Choruses and Verses! Its all about Intro's, Outro's and Bridges!
I await the day when someone composes a song that is just an intro and outro and a brudge. In that order. Or even better...but the intro at the end. That'd be special.

― Lord Custos Epsilon (Lord Custos Epsilon), Saturday, 3 May 2003 12:58 (twenty-two years ago)

One of the beautiful things about the beatles is that they
wrote intros and outros which were completely independant -
see Hey Jude, We Can Work It Out, Happiness Is A Warm Gun
etc.

― Squirrel_Police (Squirrel_Police), Sunday, 4 May 2003 01:32 (twenty-two years ago)

4 of the 10 songs on my band's album don't even have proper "choruses". We've got breaks, breakdowns, switches, middle eights, jams, turnarounds, even a couple geetar solos, intros, outros. A great deal of my favorite musics (from the Indian traditional "Doh Bahar" to Amon Tobin's "Nighlife" to Kool Keith's "No Chorus" etc.) don't follow a verse/chorus pattern. Sometimes I think the reliance on this format can completely ruin pieces of music, as though "well, this is good, but it needs a chorus" when it might actually NOT.

― nickalicious (nickalicious), Sunday, 4 May 2003 14:45 (twenty-two years ago)

Who would have suspected that Christina Aguilera was just Momus without the eyepatch?

― Tracer Hand (tracerhand), Sunday, 4 May 2003 18:06 (twenty-two years ago)

(I suspect, based on recently linked photoXors, that there are other, anatomical differences!)

― Paul in Santa Cruz (Paul in Santa Cruz), Monday, 5 May 2003 03:08 (twenty-two years ago)

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