So often, I’ll listen to a song and think the hook, usually the chorus, is so powerful and amazing, and then I’ll listen closely to or read the lyrics to the verses and feel completely let down.
I’ll give you an example of a song that’s been my guilty pop pleasure lately: A song called “Fireflies” by an outfit called Owl City, that’s been running high on the Billboard charts lately and is played over and over again on every city’s mainstream music station.
The chorus is one of the sweetest and stickiest I’ve heard in a while, with silly, fun lyrics and a yummy, sugary hook, but the verses, to my ear, are lame — a complete afterthought with poor word choices that don’t live up to the complete confection it could be.
What does it matter, you ask? Particularly for a hit pop song that will probably be snagged for a commercial or a movie, it’s the hook that matters the most.
But that’s not the kind of songwriting I love. I want verses that move me, that make me think, that make me go “wow” in the same way that the chorus does.
Take a old hit like Fleetwood Mac’s “Go Your Own Way” — it was also a pop hit, with a sticky hook that gets in your head for days.
But the verses kick off brilliantly, right at the start of the song:
“Loving you isn’t the right thing to do” is an amazing first line, followed by “How can I ever change things that I feel? If I could, baby I’d give you my world. Open up, everything’s waiting for you.”
It’s a balancing act, but my belief is that you need both the verse and the chorus to make a song work.
How do you strike that balance?
