How top songwriters craft the perfect pop song | Think Like A Musician
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DownloadThere's so many different things that a song is meant to do,
but I think that when you’re honest about what a song is for people,
the intent is to connect.
Hey, you. Yes, you! What's that light inside of you?
Is it a dream, a beat, a beautiful sound, a heartbreaking song?
Whatever it is, we're here with working musicians
to help you grow and share that gift with this wild and wonderful world.
Pop songs tend to follow a structure that goes:
verse, chorus, verse, chorus, bridge, chorus.
You want the first verse melody to pull you in immediately.
You want someone to know what that song is in the first
4 seconds it even starts.
Because that's your first impression.
I will sometimes spend literally days and weeks
working on just the first line of a song.
I can call out basically every Queen song within the first beat.
Not bar— beat.
The verses set the conversation tone,
and you're involved in the story each moment after the next.
It's the setting, it's where we are, it's who I am.
It's how I feel about this person or myself.
Your verse might be split up into the main part of your verse
and then what we call pre-chorus.
It connects the dots between your verse and your chorus.
The prehook is introducing— a lot of the times— the conflict.
That has to feel different than the setup.
And then you have your hook.
I really like the phrase:
write the verse for yourself, and write the chorus for the audience.
So in the chorus, focus on something universal.
And in the verse, just write something really personal.
For me, a great chorus will have symmetry,
and a clear lyric that is easy to sing along with.
Does it sing well? Is it easy to understand?
When you're writing a melody, there's a certain rhythm to it,
in the same way that a conversation has a rhythm.
Sometimes the phonetics help me write the lyrics.
So if I'm writing a melody, I'll just sing nonsensical lyrics.
What vowels feel good?
The marriage of great phonetics, with a unique but familiar lyric,
and a catchy, symmetrical melody are kind of like the perfect marriage
to writing a great hook.
The goal when you write a song in pop music is to be able
to sing along with the chorus by the second time you've heard it.
If you're Max Martin, it's going to be always the rise of the song.
He says whatever note that you start on the verse of the prehook,
that hook needs to be higher.
Now, that's a psychological trick,
a feeling like now we're going somewhere that we haven't gone.
But if you ask Billie Eilish, we're going to do the drop hook.
And the drop hook means we're not going to do the typical and obvious.
And now we're going into the chorus, and it's the big moment.
When the chorus hits, it's like a release of all of this tension and anticipation
that is set up in all the verses.
If the song has to leave you with one thing or one memory or one thought,
that's where the chorus does it.
It's about the way it makes you feel and the thing that you remember,
and where you were the first time you heard it.
They hold tremendous significance.
Usually the standard is you want to get to the chorus at about the 1 minute mark.
The term "don't bore us, get to the chorus" is very real.
So, practice writing choruses.
Remember they can be simple.
And really more importantly, make it something you believe,
because if you believe it then probably someone else will.
So, verse one is what happens to explain why we're going to sing this big chorus.
Verse two is elaborating on that.
Now we know what the chorus is, let's elaborate on the thought.
And usually verse one and verse two are going to be different
as far as the lyric and also sometimes the melody.
And if you're feeling a little bit crazy, you have a bridge.
The bridge, or the middle eight, is the last little bit of information
before we launch back into our memorable chorus and our outro.
If the listener has made it to the bridge, they love the song.
The bridge is 2 minutes in, minimum.
So if you make it there, amazing.
The hardest thing is to get them to the chorus— it’s all about that chorus.
So I think that bridges are sort of the first thing that people scrap.
I love them— there's always a place for a section that is not anticipated.
Bridges are always an exciting challenge as a songwriter
to lift the song to heights it wouldn't have gone without it.
But it's equally as compelling to write a song with no bridge
and have it communicate directly and not need a bridge.
So I never let structure get in the way of a good song.
As far as song structure and my relationship to song structure
in the modern era,
I'm not beholdened to it because I think that's what makes music and artists
in particular stand out when you are going against the grain
of what is popular at the time.
There are a lot of songs where they don't have a super clear structure
and it might just be a series of hooks that kind of tell the story.
A lot of Afro beats music operates with that structure,
where you really just have sections of the song that are undefined
and it's all hooks.
I know the structure down and I can do that all day,
but then once in a while you go, I'm going to forget the structure
and let the music go where it wants.
My favorite song is "Fast Car" by Tracy Chapman.
She doesn't have the normal structure of each verse being the same length.
It takes like a minute before you even hear the chorus in the song.
But it works.
I have songs, they don't even have a chorus,
it's just one long verse.
And I feel like a lot of funk songs are like that,
where they'll just hang on like one phrase and that for like 8 minutes,
and that's the song— which I love.
But other songs may have three verses before they get to the chorus.
I feel like Bob Dylan has a couple of songs like that,
where it's just so many verses and then finally the payoff.
A lot of the times when it comes to song structure, I stick with it,
but I’ve had songs that have been hit songs
that completely break those rules as well.
It really, really depends.
I try not to get too caught up in what the rules are,
because I’ve built a career on also breaking the rules.
I would say a song is great
when it describes something that’s really relatable and really universal,
but in a really specific way,
that either you haven’t heard before lyrically,
or melodically, or production-wise.
Like some sort of fresh take on a human experience,
I find to be the most interesting music
because I think we're constantly looking into music to help keep us company
and make sense of what we're experiencing.
A great song is not necessarily the same ingredients
as what makes a song great.
So you can have a great song that's a very momentary flash.
You know what I mean? Oh, that was a great song.
But, what makes a song great? What also might make a song timeless?
Relatability, ease of singing, and ease of memory.
It just sits in your brain easily.
The songs that stand the test of time have a great melody,
have a great, unique lyric, memorable lyric,
and there has been care put into the production.
And don't be afraid to be vulnerable.
Songwriting is a really, really intimate experience.
You’re creating something,
you’re pulling something out of thin air— it’s magic.
And so, you have to be willing to be vulnerable and honest
to make something authentic.
Key Vocabulary (50)
toward
"Go to school."
belonging
"Cup of tea."
also
"You and me."
inside
"In the house."
specific
"That book."
A third-person singular pronoun used to refer to an object, animal, or situation that has already been mentioned or is clear from context. It is also frequently used as a dummy subject to talk about time, weather, or distance.
A function word used to express negation or denial. It is primarily used to make a sentence or phrase negative, often following an auxiliary verb or the verb 'to be'.
A preposition used to indicate that something is in a position above and supported by a surface. It is also used to indicate a specific day or date, or to show that a device is functioning.
A preposition used to indicate that people or things are together, in the same place, or performing an action together. It can also describe the instrument used to perform an action or a characteristic that someone or something has.
A conjunction used to compare two things that are equal in some way. It is most commonly used in the pattern 'as + adjective/adverb + as' to show similarity.
Used to refer to the person or people that the speaker is addressing. It is the second-person pronoun used for both singular and plural subjects and objects.
A coordinating conjunction used to connect two statements that contrast with each other. It is used to introduce an added statement that is different from what has already been mentioned.
The word 'we' is a first-person plural pronoun used to refer to the speaker and one or more other people collectively. It is used as the subject of a sentence or clause.
A coordinating conjunction used to connect two or more possibilities or alternatives. it indicates that only one of the options is likely, required, or true.
1
"One dog."
Description
Professional musicians share what makes a great pop song, and how to grow your songwriting skills to make your music stand out. -- "Think Like A Musician" connects you with working musicians...
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