I’ve been watching videos breaking down various rock and pop songs (Rick Beato’s What Makes This Song Great series to be exact), and I’ve heard certain terms that seem to blend together and aren’t clear to me. As I understand it, rock and pop songs can have verses, choruses, a bridge, a pre-chorus, and a middle eight. There may be more principal parts to a song; I don’t know. What do those terms mean? About the only one I’m sure I know is the verse.
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Moving thread from GQ to Cafe Society.
A verse is a section of the song (the story, what the song’s about), followed by a chorus.
A chorus is usually much the same every time, so, verse/chorus verse/chorus.
A pre-chorus is not necessarily the same each time, and usually appears between the verse & the chorus, when it does appear.
A bridge is a contrasting chunk of music that separates two parts of the story, then brings you back to the main melody.
The middle eight is (usually) eight bars of music (usually) in the middle of the song to change things up a bit and introduce you to new parts of the song.
This Wikipedia article on song structure may help.
Simple rock/pop songs may only have verses and choruses.
A “middle eight” is apparently considered to be one type of bridge; bridges are a section that contrasts with the verse (usually through a different key, different chord structure, etc.)
It might be easier to explain if you have a specific song (that you’re familiar with) as an example?
Here’s a fairly simple example, using a very well-known song: the Beatles’ “I Want to Hold Your Hand.” I won’t write out the entire set of lyrics, as I don’t think that’s allowed under board rules.
Verse 1:
Oh yeah, I’ll tell you something
I think you’ll understand
When I’ll say that something
I want to hold your hand
Chorus:
I want to hold your hand
I want to hold your hand
Verse 2:
Oh please, say to me…
Chorus:
(slightly different wording this time)
Bridge (note that it sounds noticeably different from the rest of the song):
And when I touch you I feel happy inside…
Verse 3:
Yeah, you got that something…
Chorus:
(Back to the original wording)
Bridge:
(Same as first time)
Verse 4:
Yeah, you got that something…
Chorus:
(with one extra repeat of the line)
Example, Don’t Stop Believin’ by Journey. This site breaks it down somewhat https://www.google.com/amp/s/genius.com/amp/Journey-dont-stop-believin-lyrics.
Why is the “Strangers waitin’ up the boulevard” section the pre-chorus and the “Don’t stop believin’” part the chorus? And is there a bridge or a middle eight or refrain in there somewhere?
That’s a good example. Lennon, in fact, is the first person I heard talk about a middle eight. I didn’t realize that there may be multiple bridges.
Yes, I believe writing too much of the lyrics may present legal issues - one reason I didn’t start with lyrics out of the gate.
I think I need to read that Wikipedia article. I’d really like to understand song structure better. The last music class I took was in 8th grade.
It’s a weird one, because the “chorus” only occurs at the very end of the song. It may well be that the “Don’t stop believin’” part is the chorus because the band said that it is. 
Also, I wouldn’t necessarily take the way that the parts of that song are labeled on that page as gospel truth, unless whoever wrote it up was taking things directly from a labeled lyric sheet from the original album, or from sheet music. What that site labels as “Verse 1” and “Verse 2” seem, to me, to be the two halves of Verse 1, broke up by a brief instrumental break.
Eh, it’s basically right, but as you say, it’s a weird song form-wise. Verse 1 and verse 3 match in length and structure, but what is labeled “verse 2” on that lyrics site is really just half a verse.
Also, with respect to Rick Beato, he’s an entertaining guy to watch noodle around on different instruments while he points out random things about songs he likes (“this song goes like this: meedelemeedelemeedele”), but he’s far from a good teacher when it comes to song analysis.
With rock music it all gets tricky, as those traditional song forms are often just a starting point for more divergent or complex modern forms. Plus, you’ve got other basic shapes (like various blues forms) that can avoid things like verse/chorus all together.
The term “bridge” has a more specific meaning in the jazz world. Most standards have 32-bar choruses, and in a lot of them the melody is in AABA form. That is, it’s divided into four eight-bar segments, and the third one is different from the others. In these cases, the B part is the bridge.
In “Over the Rainbow,” the bridge is the part with the lyrics,
Another example of a bridge is in Body and Soul, with the lyrics,
Some standards don’t have a bridge. 12-bar blues songs don’t have a bridge. “Indiana” has no bridge. Neither does “Stardust.”
Yeah, and the definitions can get murky. For example, I would call the “I Wanna Hold Your Hand” part a “refrain” rather than a true “chorus.” To me, a refrain is a repeated short section of words, whereas a chorus is a more fleshed out part that is typically eight bars.
The musicologist Alan W. Pollack, who is somewhat known for his analysis of the Beatles catalogue, just lops that refrain into the verse and calls the structure of that song verse-verse-bridge-verse-bridge-verse.
Some people also use the term “bridge” for what I would call a “pre-chorus” and argue that most of what we call “bridges” are really “middle eights.” See this musicians argument about what a “bridge” and “middle 8” should be. What he describes as a true “bridge” sounds to me more like he’s describing what most of us would call a “pre-chorus.”
So if you’re confused, you’re not alone. Not everyone agrees exactly on the meaning of these terms.
All good info above. Let me just add that the British often use “middle eight” to mean what most American call a “bridge,” and some British use “bridge” to mean what many Americans call a “pre-chorus.”
(Source: Ian MacDonald’s book Revolution in the Head.)
(ETA: More or less ninja’d by pulykamell — for about the fiftieth time over at least a decade ;))
I would have said one difference between a pre-chorus and a bridge or middle eight is that a bridge/middle 8 only occurs once in a song, while a pre-chorus is typically repeated.
I’m a musical ignoramus, so I’ll let the music geeks confirm and/or correct my impression as appropriate.
One recent example I’m thinking of is lovelytheband’s 2018 song, “broken.” The refrain/chorus (not sure whether/what the difference is) is the part that starts with “I like that you’re broken, broken like me” which follows every verse.
After the first and second verses, but not after the third, there’s that short bit that goes
these aren’t my people, these aren’t my friends
she grabbed my face and that’s when she said…
which I’d consider a pre-chorus, and feeds nicely into the refrain proper.
There’s nothing about a bridge that says it can’t be repeated. In most typical pop songs, yes, it’s only played once, but it can appear multiple times. Note the breakdown of “I Want to Hold Your Hand.” Whether you consider that first section a verse, a verse-refrain, or a verse-chorus, the bridge section (“And when I touch you I feel happy inside”) shows up twice. Many early Beatles songs have this type of verse-bridge structure. Take “A Hard Day’s Night,” for instance. The “When I’m Home Everything seems to be right” section is generally regarded as a bridge, and appears twice.With “I Saw Her Standing There,” it’s the “Well my heart when ‘boom’ when I crossed that room” part, which is repeated in the song. And so on.
and in the jazz context, the term “chorus” here does not mean “the part that is repeated after each verse.” It means “one time through the entire song.” So if you have a piece of music that is 32 bars, a soloist might take a solo that lasts two choruses (unless you are Paul Gonsalves).
Most jazz standards do have something called a verse, but it doesn’t alternate with the chorus. It’s an introduction, and is usually played only once, if at all (it’s common to omit the verse entirely). When it’s included, it’s the verse may be performed casually, without a fixed tempo.
Stardust has a great verse:
So does Night and Day:
I found this BMI article on songwriting that goes over popular song forms. One of the standard ones is verse-verse-bridge-verse, and there is a note that says:
“In songs that use the A—A—B—A form, a common variation repeats the bridge after the third verse, followed by an additional verse (A—A—B—A—B—A). In these instances the second bridge is almost always the same as the first—melodically and lyrically. The last verse sometimes repeats the lyrics of the first verse, but not in all cases.”
So repeated bridges are not all that unusual, though that article notes that the A-A-B-A song structure has been falling out of fashion since the 80s, so we don’t hear it as much anymore.
And, as a bonus to this thread, that article does also explain the various parts of a song: verse, chorus, bridge, pre-chorus, post-chorus (and just lops in the “middle eight” as being another term for “bridge” most often used outside the US. But there is some argument about that as one of my earlier posts shows.)
And, to be clear, those “jazz standards” were not written as jazz tunes . . . . that opening verse followed by a few repetitions of a chorus is a very common structure of music from the Great American Songbook composers and Tin Pan Alley before them.
Since the chorus of all these songs is really where the main instrumental and lyrical ideas are expressed, in the jazz world often the verses get dropped (particularly in instrumental versions), and jazz musicians just perform the chorus of the songs.
A fun party game would be to sing or recite the lyrics to the verses of popular songs, and see if folks can identify the chorus it belongs to.
A really lovely verse that didn’t make it into the original and iconic version of one of the great songs of the 20th century is the verse to Somewhere Over the Rainbow:
When all the world is a hopeless jumble
And the raindrops tumble all around
Heaven opens a magic lane
When all the clouds darken up the skyway
There’s a rainbow highway to be found
Leading from your windowpane
To a place behind the sun
Just a step beyond the rain
“We don’t need no singer. I don’t have to accompany no stinking singer!”