3 Structure Techniques to Write Better Songs

This article talks about three structural techniques to write better songs. Specifically it looks at intros, choruses, and hit song structure.
INTROS

A car pulls up next to you at a stoplight. The drive revs the engine, so you look over. It’s on. The light turns green. You slam your foot on the pedal. Billows of white smoke trail behind you in a drag race of adrenaline and exhilaration.
Intros are a rev of the engine meant to set the mood of your song and pique the interest if your audience. They do that by establishing the song’s groove, its melodic hook, or both. A key feature of successful intros is that they’re short and sweet. What does that mean exactly?
Up tempo songs should have intros no longer than eight bars. Down tempo songs should have intros no longer than four bars. That’s enough time to orient your audience and get them excited for the actual song to start. Intros that are longer than four to eight bars run the risk of losing your audience’s attention.
A car pulls up next to you at a stoplight. The engine revs, so you look over. You know this game. The light turns green, but the engine keeps revving. How annoying. You leave the driver in the dust.

Long, nebulous intros — the ones that ramble on anywhere from a minute to a minute and a half — do more to harm your songs than help them. Chalk it up to shortened attention spans or a lack of artistic vision, but people check out. Don’t waste their attention on an elaborate setup. All you need is a concise statement.
Bonus: That statement can take many forms: it can be an instrumental pass through the verse that lays down your groove; it can be a pass though the chorus with a solo of your melodic hook; it can be a distinct musical part with a unique groove or hook that leads into your verse. Whichever way you choose to go, four to eight bars are enough to grab your audience by the throat.
CHORUS
The chorus is the heart of your song. It articulates your message in a lyrical and melodic hook, which often is the title of your song. How do you make sure it’s effective?

The chorus heightens the song. The music, the melody, and the meaning all reach their peak here.
As such, the chorus should contrast in structure, melodic register, and lyrical expression with the song sections that surround it. Structurally, that means change the chord progression, the lyrical density, and the rhythm. Melodically, it means write the chorus in a higher register than the verse, pre-chorus, or bridge. Lyrically, it means write your most powerful ideas, images, and phrases in the chorus. Your song continually builds up to this moment. The chorus is your time to deliver the message of your song in the form of a hook.
The hook is the most memorable line in your chorus. The two most effective places to set the hook are in the first line and the last line of the section. When you write your pre-chorus, try to set it up so that your choruses can open on the hook. If you need three lines in the chorus to lead into your hook, that can be as effective. If you’re able to write the hook into the first and the last line of your chorus, it will clarify your song’s meaning and make your title all the more memorable.
Bonus: Recoloring the meaning of your hook will give your song dimension. Think about what else the hook can mean from a literal or a metaphorical standpoint. What’s another aspect of the idea that you can draw out in the second verse or the bridge? What words in the pre-chorus can you rhyme with words in the chorus to highlight a new shade of meaning? As an example, let’s look at the hook “my favorite shade of love”:
The wings of a dove,
You’re my favorite shade of love.
The woman I crave,
You’re my favorite shade of love.
I’m sorry I strayed,
You’re my favorite shade of love.
See how the rhyme highlights a different aspect of the hook? It creates nuance in the hook and engages the audience’s attention more actively. Recoloring your hooks will prevent your songs from being predictable and from going stale.
HIT SONG STRUCTURE
Hit songs take a different form today than the popular AABA songs of the 1940s and the AAA folk hits of the 1960s. Today’s hits are written by and large in a variation of the verse-chorus structure:

SECTION LENGTHS
Intro (4 or 8 bars)
Verse (8 bars)
Pre-Chorus (4 bars)
Chorus (4 or 8 bars)
Intro (4 or 8 bars)
½ Verse (4 bars)
Pre-Chorus (4 bars)
Chorus (4 or 8 bars)
Bridge/Solo/Break (8 bars)
Chorus (4 or 8 bars)
Outro: Intro/Instrumental/ Chorus Repeat (4 or 8 bars)
Verse-chorus songs typically feature three verses. However, many hits will omit the third verse because of the drop in energy between the bridge and the last verse. The advantage of this omission is that the song has more energy as it moves from a heightened chorus to a heightened bridge, to the final chorus. The disadvantage of this omission is that songwriters have less room to tell the story. The hit structure takes this challenge a step further and often cuts verse two in half.
Why do hit songs do this? Why cut the sections that set the scene, that tell the story, and that propel the movement of the song? Hits are about hooks. Story songs are wonderful and necessary to the songwriting canon. However, the verses in hit songs are meant to set up the chorus and provide just enough context to understand the hook.
Bonus: Since most popular songs are written in 4/4 time, each song section tends to be four or eight bars in length. This creates structural balance and enhances the integrity of the song. As you work out your next hit, pay attention to the length of each section to see how it contributes to the song’s balance and unity. If sections run over or under, try to re-purpose their content in other sections to balance out the song’s structure.
