Structure of the Lyrics in the Chorus: Alternative Pop Songs

Video Transcript

"Hi. My name is Cody Kimmel. I am the lead singer of the band Eliot Fitzgerald and I'm here with Expert Village to teach you how to write an alternative pop song. Let's talk about the lyrical structure of the chorus. Like I said before, the chorus is the most important part, especially in an alternative pop song. It's the part that will get the radios to play it, it's the part that will bring people back to it, it's the part that they'll be singing over and over again in their head until it gets obnoxious. This is the chorus. Now, lyrically, you're going to have a lot more freedom. The actual poetic structure of the chorus is not going to be as important because the chorus, some of the best choruses are just one phrase or even one word. So as far the poetic structure of the chorus, it's not nearly as important as it is in maybe a verse or a pre-chorus or a bridge or something like that. What I mean by the poetic structure is like the ABAB format or the ABCB format we talked about in the verse and for the pre-chorus. However, the very important thing, as far the poetic structure, is to involve your hook. For example, "The Last Night on the Town". When I first heard it, honestly, I thought it was kind of a cheesy catch phrase and I didn't want to include it in the song but there's ways, if you can get creative about it and you can work at it, there's ways of even including clichés like "Last Night on the Town" into a chorus or into a song without it coming across overly cheesy or trite. So the chorus, lyrically, structure-wise, you really want to be able to focus it around that hook, around that line. And whether that means you come up with an ABAB format, just like you did with the verses, or whether that means you just repeat one word or a phrase of words, that's the more important part. Whereas in the verses, the actual poetic structure is going to be more important. In the chorus, the way the structure forms around the catch phrase is going to be the most important part, especially in an alternative pop song."