When I first began learning a new language, I assumed that my understanding of the new language would happen overnight. Or so I was told.
“One day, it will just click,” said the Turkish clerk at the sandwich place in Copenhagen. But Danish never clicked in the three months I was there. When I began learning Estonian I thought the same. But it wasn’t until I took an active interest in acquiring new words and vocabulary that I began to truly learn.
So is it with songwriting as I found out yesterday, in my 26th year on the planet. When you learn something so simple, you are desperate to know how you could have lived your life in the darkness for so long. I took my pad, pen, and selected a few of my favorite songwriters – Renato Carosone, Jorge Ben, Chico Buarque, Björk Gudmundsdottir, and James Brown – and tried to deconstruct their songs into verses, choruses, and bridges.
What I found was that of all these songwriters, James Brown was the most orthodox – 2 bar intro, verse, bridge, chorus, solo, chorus, verse, chorus etc. I took apart songs like “Cold Sweat” and “Let Yourself Go” – some of his classic 60s material. It made me happy to see it was so simple.
Renato Carosone was a bit similar, a musical intro, verse, chorus – but then he would throw in a second theme to the chorus, a second chorus if you will, then return to the original chorus before hitting an instrumental section and heading back into a verse. He hit this section everytime he did the chorus, but it was stylistically different enough that it could be deemed it’s own section. He does this in a number of songs – “Mambo Italiano”, and “Tu Vuo’ Fa’ l’Americano”. He didn’t necessarily write all of these songs, but I think they are representative of Neapolitan songs.
Jorge Ben followed a pattern I’ve noticed in Brazilian music – two bars of musical instrumental, straight into the chorus, then verse 1, then verse 2, back into the chorus, then an instrumental break, then just verse 2, then repeat the chorus to the end. He does this in “Mas Que Nada.” Chico Buarque pursues a similar strategy in “A Rita.” That song is different though because “A Rita” starts with the instrumental section, followed by the chorus (like “Mas Que Nada”) then verse 1, 2, 3, then the chorus, then the instrumental outro – all clocking in under 2 minutes.
Björk really was the most unusual. She’s famous for being different and these songs – from her album Medulla did not follow any of the songwriting conventions of Jorge Ben or James Brown. Instead songs like “The Pleasure is All Mine” started with musical intro, followed by the verse, followed by what appears to be a bridge, back to the verse and then the musical outro. The same thing happens on “Oceania” – she dives right into the verse – or is it the chorus? It is the name of the song! – and then hits the bridge just to go back into the verse/chorus hybrid and repeat until end. Earlier songs – like “Bachelorette” and “Joga” from Homogenic, show a similar pattern.
So what does this all mean? It means that when I went back and listened to my songs from Ragazza (or whatever I am calling my album these days) and found out that they consisted of verse, chorus, verse, chorus, solo, verse, chorus, I was really disappointed in myself. For all those years listening, I had never really listened. But, dear readers, all is not in vain.
When I arrived home, I started tinkering with new ideas and rearranging some of new new songs – and for the first time in awhile, I felt I was getting somewhere. Soon I will tell you where.
