At my grocery store today, I was pleased to hear “Positively 4th Street” by Bob Dylan. As I was listening, I noticed that the song has no true chorus. Are there any other hit records that had no chorus or obvious refrain? For that matter, has any hit record been just the chorus?
Unchained Melody jumps quickly to mind.
ETA:Unchained Melody
Rod Stewart’s Maggie May was the first one I thought of.
Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody comes to mind.
Black Sabbath - Paranoid
Stairway to Heaven
Money
And to flip it around completely, Pink Floyd had “Another Brick in the Wall (part 2)” which was nothing but a chorus.
Rappers Delight Sugar Hill Gang
Space Oddity - Bowie
Well, a hit in the UK at any rate. I don’t think it did so well in the States.
Bonus trivia; like Bohemian Rhapsody, it’s one of those songs whose title does not appear in the lyrics.
Actually, neither do Positively 4th Street, Rapper’s Delight, Unchained Melody nor Maggie May (Maggie is mentioned, but not Maggie May I believe)
Hmmmmm
Beatles, “Love Me Do”
Like “Another Brick in the Wall,” it could be parsed as having a very short chorus (the title, sung at the end of each verse), but many would say it lacks a chorus.
(“Love Me Do” does have a “middle eight,” though – some call this a “bridge,” while others use the word “bridge” for a short phrase between the verse and chorus in some songs – but most just consider such phrases as part of the verse.)
Sound of Silence Simon and Garfunkel
Not sure if it’s a “hit” but “Tom’s Diner” by Suzanne Vega was the first song that popped into my head.
Jefferson Airplane’s “White Rabbit.”
Same here although I wasn’t sure if the "Do do do do"s between verses counted as a chorus
“Nautical Disaster” by the Tragically Hip was and remains a popular song in Canada, and has no chorus at all, never repeating any line.
And the title doesn’t appear in the lyrics. Maybe there’s a pattern here.
Would it be accurate to say that “Hey Jude” saves the refrain for the end of the song?
The great** Up The Junction** by Squeeze was deservedly a big hit in the UK. Doubt it did so well in the US. Very British song.
TCMF-2L
“Ringo,” a spoken-word number one hit by Lorne Greene. Granted, every time he says “Ringo,” there are background singers that echo the word, but that’s not really a song chorus.
I would say a good portion of the Beatles’ output, off the top of my head I’d say the vast majority, does not have a traditional “chorus,” but rather some kind of melodic hook like “Love Me Do.” But that depends on what one’s definition of a chorus is. A lot of Beatles songs have repeating lyrical content at the last few measures of a verse, for instance, but don’t have the typical 8 bars versse/8 bars chorus (or whatever the length is) that is common to most pop songs.