“Neanderthal Man” by Hotlegs
The same four lines sung three times.
How about The Passenger by Iggy Pop (with some covers)? That seems to be an unending stream of the same chord changes and vocal parts.
Yeah, that would function as a chorus – I’d more call it a “refrain” than a proper chorus, but there’s tons of Beatles songs like that, where there’s no proper repeated chorus part. Like, look at “It’s a Hard Day’s Night.” It’s all just verse and bridge, or A section and B section, depending on how you want to label it. “Tomorrow Never Knows,” “Things We Said Today,” “Back in the USSR”, etc. It depends on what you call a chorus for some of those. “Back in the USSR” definitely has a repeated part, but it’s not a full-fledged chorus to me, more a refrain. But, yes, they had a lot of songs where each verse ended with a short musical line that repeated (what I call a “refrain”) but never was a full sing-a-long 8- or 16-bar “chorus” part.
Right. “I Want to Hold Your Hand” is the classic prototype.
Beatles musicologist Allan Pollack calls these songs with a “verse/refrain” (in addition to a bridge, a.k.a. “middle eight”), as opposed to songs with a “verse” and “chorus.”
Despite what the singer claims in the song itself, that one’s technically chorus-only, not verse-only. (This we know because it’s an abridged version of a much longer song that does contain verses.)
Green Day’s Brain Stew is just verses and instrumental bits all with the same descending chord structure.
I’ve always just considered Brain Stew as the intro to Jaded, but back in the day, I heard Brain Stew by itself on the radio most of the time.
What about songs with each verse repeated over and over again?
Example 1 (repeated 5 times): A Stranger (In Your Town) - The Shacklefords - YouTube
Example 2 (repeated 5 times): Tony Burrello - There’s A New Sound (The Sound Of Worms) - 1953 - YouTube
In what sense is it a “verse”, then? If the music and lyrics are the same, then as with “I’m Henry VIII, I Am” mentioned above, then it’s a repeated chorus, not a repeated verse.
That may be a subject for another thread, but I think that Killing In the Name by Rage Against the Machine would qualify in what you’re suggesting.
Not a hit, but Raining Blood by Slayer doesn’t have a chorus.
I beg to differ. Maggie May does have a Chorus (or is it a Bridge?).
You led me away from home
Just to save you from being alone
You stole my heart and that’s what really hurts
It also ends with a Coda.
Maggie, I wished I’d never seen your face
I’ll get on back home one of these days
Ooh, ooh, ooh
Well, yes, and no. In the original yes. In the Rock version the Chorus has become the Verse. But that is a weird song.
I vote that the repetition is NOT a chorus, because it is the 4th line of each stanza.
The structure of verse verse etc but no chorus is common (but by no means universal) in folk songs, both traditional and modern. Another example is, Traffic’s arrangement of John Barleycorn (Must Die).
Someone recently pointed out that “There She Goes” by the La’s was basically a verse in search of a chorus…or maybe it’s a chorus in search of a verse?
Definitely not Hit, and ceratinly not mainstream. But most songs by Jandek are chaotic and primal and follow no classical construction.
I think I have heard many monotonous “prayer chants” or meditations- Germanic, Mongolian, Indian, Semitic, Chinese, Japanese, Inuit, Native North and South American, African, Aboriginal, and Oceana. These, seem to conform to some kind of meter but not really melodic, the chant bends to the musical.
I’m going to nominate Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This) by Eurhythmics.
I think that in order for a repeated segment to be considered a verse, the lyrics need to change substantially across repetitions. This distinguishes it from a chorus, where the lyrics are more or less the same on each repetition. So even in Herman’s Hermits’ abridged version of “I’m Henery the Eighth, I Am”, the eponymous segment is the chorus.
It’s true it has no chorus, but it has a fairly long bridge where Lennox repeats “Hold your head up”, “Keep your head up”, and “Movin’ on” over and over. So definitely not a verse-only song.