A nice trick to make your listeners come back for more (as I described in the analyses of Hotline Bling and Blank Space). The song just feels as it should continue and someone just hit the stop button too early. Again this draws attention, but it also helps to create that open ending feeling. This little trick cuts the song at an unexpected point and drops us into the ending vamp. The 6 bar interlude then feels cut short, because we expect to hear 8 bars. It also increases tension by staying on the dominant chord 2 bars longer. The effect of breaking this symmetry is interesting! The 10 bar chorus is longer than expected and draws the listener’s attention.
The 6 bar interlude feels like an 8 bar interlude cut short.The 10 bar chorus does not only appear in a different key, but is also a little longer than expected.The songwriters played with deliberately disrupting the symmetry twice: 8 bars just feels natural and symmetric to listeners and is an element of comfort. This length is very common in pop music, but also in other genres like blues, soul or EDM. You will notice, that almost all sections have a multiple of 4 or even 8 bars. Section LengthĪnother aspect of the form is the length of each section. It is often used in jazz, soul and gospel music. It works well here, because the whole song as a “gospelly” feeling and it fits the songs message, allowing everyone to join and keeping the end open.Ī vamp is a short section (2-4 bars) repeated almost indefinitely.
It is an element the two songwriters borrowed from jazz and gospel music. A vamp is a short section (2-4 bars) that is repeated almost indefinitely. This song also demonstrates an ending that is not that common in pop music: the vamp. You don’t always need a contrasting B section or bridge But in the case of Man in the Mirror, the B section uses a lot of material from the A sections – so the song really has no need to repeat anything yet again.Īnd by that we already found an important song writing lesson: These songs have to repeat stuff at the end, because their B section (also called “bridge” in songwriting) is usually quite different from the A section. They repeat some of the A section material at the end instead of having a coda (resulting in A A’ B A”). Having said that, most pop songs actually use a slightly different recipe. Then we comfort the listener again by repeating material and reducing tension. But repeating it yet again would be boring and so we present some new material or interpret the material from a new point of view. By repeating the A section, we comfort the listener and familiarize her with the musical material. (Coda is a term for ending.) Why does this work so well? The human brain likes a balance between surprising new stuff and comforting known stuff. If you want to see that clearer, you only need to generalize it further and write it like this: A A’ B Coda It is a basic form found in many songs and musical pieces. You can take the above recipe as is and apply it to your own songwriting.
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