Does every single have the chorus come in before 1:10?

[heckxx]

For "Hey Jude", the following two parts sound like choruses to me:

Chorus1
And any time you feel the pain, hey, Jude, refrain
Don't carry the world upon your shoulders
Well don't you know that its a fool who plays it cool
By making his world a little colder
NaNaNa...

Chorus2
So let it out and let it in, hey, Jude, begin
You're waiting for someone to perform with
And don't you know that it's just you, hey, Jude,
You'll do, the movement you need is on your shoulder
NaNaNa...

And the first one comes in before 1:10. Being a 7-minute song, it certainly is hard for that to be a single without some sort of abbreviation somewhere, anyways.

[Kolstad]

It's a very catchy refrain IMO
In the AABA form, the refrains should be catchy as hell and bridge should be big and soaring like the best chorus you've ever heard. That's the basics of that form. It really is a great form to write in, and some hits slip through with it every year. In country we'd had Keith Urban's "Somebody like you" and Billy Curringtons "People are crazy" to mention two.

Beatles were masters of working in small sections, with lots of melodies to hook you in. I think the short sections they were in the habit of constructing were a big part of their success, and the reason their songs don't wear you out as a listener.

As a consequence, they had to let loose and write some long ones once in a while

[mazz]

I'm no Beatles scholar, but we can't talk about them like they sprung fully formed from nowhere. I rarely hear folks discuss what music they were influenced by in their youth and how they survived those gigs in Hamburg by playing just about every style of pop music of the day! To say they internalized song forms well beyond the ones popular today is an understatement. They were so good precisely because they had absorbed the rules and could manipulate them more masterfully than most others in their day. They also understood the business side of music enough to write for radio play and by the end of their career, they were in a position to experiment because they were guaranteed to sell whatever they came out with.

Popular music only becomes popular if lots of people listen to it, and if the chorus is the "hook" that makes it popular, then why waste time getting to it? If you want to create art, them by all means, do so. If you want to create art that sells, then the game changes a bit.

Get to the hook. If I like the hook, I'll go back and listen to the verses more closely.

[mojobone]

Brutal honesty warning; the lads survived Hamburg on scotch and cokes and fistfuls of bennies. They certainly did put in their thousand hours. (both individually, on their instruments and as a group) Mazz is absolutely correct, the Beatles Anthology series and BBC recordings bear this out; they were a great and massively popular cover band before they became a great and massively popular boy band. By the time they started experimenting, they'd more than earned the right.

I'm fascinated by the different ways we've analyzed Hey Jude; it's like the blind men and the elephant. Think about that next time you get a return, eh?

[davekershaw]

It is a chorus in the truest sense of the term. If you perform this song at a gig (which I have before) the whole room starts to buzz with every one singing together (i.e. in a chorus).

I've sung that chorus WITH PAUL several times
Even done it in Liverpool
Well, OK, there were about 20,000 others there too!

"All the people on the right, all the people on the left,
just the men, now just the women"

MAGIC!!

[mazz]

Brutal honesty warning; the lads survived Hamburg on scotch and cokes and fistfuls of bennies. They certainly did put in their thousand hours.

I think you mean ten thousand hours! That's from the book "Outliers". Great book!

http://www.amazon.com/Outliers-Story-Su ... 505&sr=8-1

[mojobone]

A misprint! (my story, and I'm stickin' to it)

[Len911]

Since we're talking the Beatles, which I suppose are in every reference on songwriting books ever published,lol, why not the biggest hit they ever had in the U.K., "She Loves You,Yeah, Yeah,Yeah"?
(the earliest childhood memory I can recall, is me standing in the front seat of the car (probably a Pontiac), singing along with the radio and my mother.)

I'm surprised, in this age of over-analysis and nostalgic sentimentality, someone hasn't written a book already on this song,lol!

[Casey H]

Since we're talking the Beatles, which I suppose are in every reference on songwriting books ever published,lol, why not the biggest hit they ever had in the U.K., "She Loves You,Yeah, Yeah,Yeah"?
(the earliest childhood memory I can recall, is me standing in the front seat of the car (probably a Pontiac), singing along with the radio and my mother.)

I'm surprised, in this age of over-analysis and nostalgic sentimentality, someone hasn't written a book already on this song,lol!

Another example where the chorus is so damn strong it can open the song...

[davekershaw]

Another example where the chorus is so damn strong it can open the song...

And the strongest of all - You Know My Name (Look Up The Number)
So strong, it's all the song needed!

Good Evening and welcome to Slaggers!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UMmpJSJfeT8