Was driving this weekend and Twisted Sister came on the radio playing “We’re Not Gonna Take It.” A rock classic, for sure, but I noticed that the guitar solo was really nothing more than the songs chorus played on guitar. Sure it sounded cool, but it wasn’t your traditional guitar solo where the lead guitar player just has fun and rocks out for a minute or two.
It got me to wondering if there are other examples you can think of where the solo in the song is just the chorus of the song played instrumentally.
Are you specifically looking for choruses? The first song that came to mind for me was “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” but that’s an instrumental restatement of the verse, not the chorus. (And yes, I know you said “chorus” in the OP and subject, but I’m just wondering if you just meant an instrumental interlude that repeats a vocal melody of the song, as opposed to a traditional improvised instrumental solo.)
Actually, the Twisted Sister song is a mix of the verse and the chorus in the guitar solo. The first half of the solo is the verse; the second half (the harmonized part) is the chorus.
Two quick ones. (One that came to mind and the other I heard on the radio.)
“Tonight She Comes” by the Cars. The very excellent Elliot Easton is repeating and building off of the song’s main melody but stretching it out as only he can.
The instrumental of the Grateful Dead’s “Casey Jones” is basically the main verse repeated. Nothing wrong with it. It works.
That was just Jerry dumbing it down for the squares. My MOM even liked the Workingman’s Dead version of “Casey Jones,” except for the “cocaine” part.
In early live versions Jerry kept to the melody (see the 1971 version on YouTube…the girls in the red tops do DEFINITIVE Grateful Dead dancing!) but by the late '70s he’d gotten bored with that and was expanding into more fun stuff.
Yeah, just to clarify for the people who may not know: the chord progression (the backing chords the melody is played or sung over) of the instrumental is 99.99% of the time going to be the same as either the verse or the chorus. It’s not going to be a new progression out of nowhere; that’s the bridge. So the instrumental verse is just about always going to be nothing more than a variation of the melody we’ve already heard.
For an example, listen to Elton John’s “Daniel”, and when it gets to the instrumental verse, sing the verse over it (“Daniel is traveling tonight on a plane…”). It’ll fit perfectly, because the chords are the same as the verse. The flute/reed synth is just playing a variation of the melody over it.
That’s just the first example that came to mind; like I said, almost every song is like that. It would be an interesting thread to find songs that aren’t like that, though, as it would be a short(er) list!
Not sure if this would be considered a solo or if it’s simply a reiteration (twice over) of the guitar intro, but it’s definitely a carbon copy of John’s vocals in the verses.
The OP means an instrumental solo in which the solo is basically just a melodic restatement of the verse or chorus with little improvisation. Most solos take off on their own melody lines. The solo from “We’re Not Gonna Take It” is basically the verse melody played played on guitar, and the chorus melody played on guitar. Yes, there is some ornamentation, but not very much and it’s not what you think of when you think of a traditional guitar solo, which may or may not slightly restate a melody in the song but then takes off on its own melodic path. Beyond that song and “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” I’m having a difficult time thinking of any song that fits the OP. I know there must be more, but those are the only ones that come to mind.
There are more than .01% outliers. Sometimes the solo is over a vamp that doesn’t appear in the song. Light My Fire would be a good example. Can’t you hear me knockin’ would be an extreme one. You Really Got me might be one.
It was a figure of speech, not a mathematical computation. Having said that, I hardly think naming three examples puts you anywhere near .01% of the billions of songs out there.
“Myth” by Beach House was playing on the car radio when I arrived home a few minutes ago. Its solo is the same as its verse, except simpler – for example, where the verse has a eighth note* followed by a dotted quarter note, the solo has two quarter notes.
*Off-topic: It’s an eighth note if you treat the song as having 142 bpm, which seems to be what various web sources say. However, that puts the stressed drumbeat on 3 each measure. Doesn’t that mean the song would be better off written at 71 bpm with the beat on 2 and 4?
My point was, and is, that I don’t agree that it is a vanishingly small number. I gave a few examples of many, to illustrate, not a comprehensive list. They are not obscure and it was meant to illustrate that well known songs are that way. Depends how ambitious and skillful a band/composer is, how ornate the changes are, and a lot of other things. “Rikki don’t lose that number” is another. There are tons. Some songs would sound pretty dumb if they didn’t.
I’ll Never Find Another You by the Seekers just reprised the melody with no embellishment at all. I always felt like they were trying to pad the song without working to come up with another verse.
I’m more of a fan of this. There are some great solos out there that don’t do this, but I like having a variation of the melody. It always bugged me as a kid,as it just sounded like a different song to me.