Hit songs with very short melody lines...

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...and what accounted for their being hits.

I say "hit" songs because if not, well, there are surely infinite examples of songs with short melody lines.

Was thinking about this after rereading the "Geir Hongro challenge" in which Mark S. asked us to propose a good melody and what makes it good, and the conversation that followed included some interesting comments on what might make a song interesting, if the melody itself was fairly banal.

Creedence Clearwater Revival's "Who'll Stop the Rain" is an extremely short melody. It gains much of its power from the shifting relationship of the vocal melody to the drum patterns. Also one could say that the short melody has an almost hymnlike purity, appropriate to a song which organizes itself around a simple but insistent question.

More examples?

― ||amateur!st|| (amateurist), Sunday, 8 August 2004 16:16 (twenty-one years ago)

FYI: At last the Geir Hongro Challenge!!

― ||amateur!st|| (amateurist), Sunday, 8 August 2004 16:21 (twenty-one years ago)

"Let's Go Crazy" by Prince has an extremely short melody. The first three lines of each verse are sung in the same approximate rhythmic pattern (adjusting to fit a syllable or two) and contain only two notes. ("If you don't like/the world you're livin' in . . . ," "I'm excited/don't know why . . . ") The pre-chorus is different -- but again only contains three melody notes -- then the chorus is the same rhythm and melody as the verse. Nearly the only time there's a reach beyond those two notes in verse or chorus is in the last line of each: "At *least* you got friends," "We're *all* gonna die." The only real stretch of the melody is on, "You better live now, before the Grim Reaper come knocking on your door."

It's all about the rhythm and the arrangement in that tune. Melody's got nothing to do with it.

― phil d., Sunday, 8 August 2004 18:45 (twenty-one years ago)

Kraftwerk -- Autobahn. "Wir fahren fahren fahren auf der Autobahn" is the (extremely simple) standout melody, in part because a) it's the lead line in the song, and the "chorus" repeatedly sets up the verses instead of the other way around, b) that line sounds very similar to English (the Beach Boys and all that), which draws even more attention to it from the perspective of an Anglophone audience who may not understand anything else in the song.

― Barry Bruner (Barry Bruner), Sunday, 8 August 2004 21:13 (twenty-one years ago)

I'm not very good on the technicalities of music, but if I've understood correctly:

"Sweet Dreams" - The Eurythmics
"When Doves Cry" - Prince

Loads of massive hip-hop smashes barely have a melody at all. Does that count?

― Wooden (Wooden), Sunday, 8 August 2004 21:19 (twenty-one years ago)

Regarding "Let's Go Crazy", the song wouldn't have been the same if it wasn't for the one contrasting "I'm not gonna let the elevator break us down" part, which is NOT the same as the rest of the song.

In the case of "Sweet Dreams" it may be more dependant on the arrangement, considering that's where all the modulations and harmonic changes are, in the instrumental parts, I mean.

Anyway, how about "Ca Plane Pour Moi"?

― Geir Hongro (GeirHong), Sunday, 8 August 2004 21:22 (twenty-one years ago)

You've lost me.

― Wooden (Wooden), Sunday, 8 August 2004 21:24 (twenty-one years ago)

Btw. Prince does this a lot. The most typical example I can think of is "Girls And Boys"

― Geir Hongro (GeirHong), Sunday, 8 August 2004 21:26 (twenty-one years ago)

Herbie Hancock's "Chameleon" would be a good candidate, if you're willing to accept other than "pop" hit songs (it was a big hit in seventies).

― Tuomas (Tuomas), Sunday, 8 August 2004 22:09 (twenty-one years ago)

"the" seventies

― Tuomas (Tuomas), Sunday, 8 August 2004 22:09 (twenty-one years ago)

Wasn't Josh Wink's "Higher State of Consciousness" also a moderate hit? I remember seeing the video for it on MTV several times.

― Tuomas (Tuomas), Sunday, 8 August 2004 22:13 (twenty-one years ago)

*NSync - "Pop" (it's pretty bold to apply the lyric "we got the gift of melody" to a vocal line that has like 2 notes)

― Curt1s St3ph3ns, Sunday, 8 August 2004 23:00 (twenty-one years ago)

i guess we should distinguish--as i sort of failed to do in the first post here--between simple melodies (with few notes and variation) and short melodies (in terms of number of bars of a melody whose repetition constitutes the body of the song)....

― ||amateur!st|| (amateurist), Monday, 9 August 2004 01:33 (twenty-one years ago)

WHIP IT!!!!!!!

― jake b. (cerybut), Monday, 9 August 2004 03:03 (twenty-one years ago)

trio - da da da

― mason butler, Monday, 9 August 2004 21:55 (twenty-one years ago)

i guess we should distinguish--as i sort of failed to do in the first post here--between simple melodies (with few notes and variation) and short melodies (in terms of number of bars of a melody whose repetition constitutes the body of the song)....

oh bugger!

Well then: Enya's "Only Time" (the verse and the bridge each have a repeated 4-bar melody line IIRC)

― Curt1s St3ph3ns, Monday, 9 August 2004 22:48 (twenty-one years ago)

amateurist: "who'll stop the rain" has a bass melody, guitar melody, and a vocal melody all of which are far from "short". yes, there is an economy at work but i don't think i'm following what you mean given this example. are you talking about just the chorus?

― gygax! (gygax!), Monday, 9 August 2004 22:52 (twenty-one years ago)

I suppose "Smells Like Teen Spirit" has a very short 2-bar vocal melody in the verse, and a 1-bar melody over the same chords in the chorus. The verse melody is then mimicked note-for-note in the solo.

― joseph cotten (joseph cotten), Monday, 9 August 2004 23:20 (twenty-one years ago)

Kansas, "All I Wanted" (their semi-comeback hit from 1985). Or am I misunderstanding the thread as well?

― Joseph McCombs, Tuesday, 10 August 2004 01:16 (twenty-one years ago)

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