I watched a video of a song producer a while ago (I can’t remember who it was) but something he said got me thinking. To paraphrase: “If a song has a great chorus hook, I don’t care what the verse sounds like. Nobody remembers verses anyway.”
That’s a surprising observation, and I wondered if it might be true. It’s certainly true that songs in the pop genres need something catchy for the chorus, and that when we recall songs, it’s usually the chorus that we’re recalling.
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But I think this producer has it wrong. Sometimes, what makes a chorus sound so great is the nature of the verse preceding it.
And often, the beneficial effect of a song’s verse flies under the radar. To use a metaphor, you can fly a flag in your front yard, and no one notices the pole that makes the flag possible.
That whole issue of the song chorus needing to be great, and the song verse being… well, just time spent until you get to the chorus — is, to me, the difference between good songs and great songs.
If you think of a song like “Hey Jude,” there’s no doubt that you’ll be singing the “Na na na na-na-na na” part at the end. But to say that everything that came before it is unimportant is really off the mark.
So to me, you do need a good verse melody in a song. No great song should have any weak bits.
But while a good chorus melody should have the strong attributes of a hook (repetitious, tonally strong, and rhythmically and melodically interesting), a verse’s melody has the duty of setting up the eventual chorus.
The verse does this in a number of different ways:
- The melody sits relatively low in the singer’s voice (compared to the chorus).
- The melody typically rises at some point to build musical energy that matches the start of the chorus.
- The chords may wander, tonally speaking, but toward the end of the verse, the chords are created to lead seamlessly into the chorus.
So while a chorus melody has no responsibility other than to sound great on its own, and sound fun to sing, a verse’s melody is meant to generate the kind of interest and energy that makes the chorus sound even better than it would on its own.
When that process of verse moving to chorus is working well, it sounds like the greatness of a song all comes down to the quality of the chorus.
But in reality, choruses can and will sound greater if the verse that precedes it does its job and builds musical interest and momentum.
Written by Gary Ewer. Follow Gary on Twitter
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