This post is about avoiding something that I think can hurt a song – I watch out for it in my own writing and I notice it in many songs of writers I’ve worked with. To cut to the chase, the ‘antidote’ to this potential damage can perhaps best be summarized this way: Don’t give away your main Chorus ideas in the Verse or Pre-Chorus.

Generally speaking, I think it’s good to save your best for last, if you will. Keep your important Chorus ideas, lyrical or musical, in reserve until the big moment. Even if you start with a Chorus, which of course many good songs do, you can dilute its power by using Chorus ideas in other sections.

More specifically, what does this mean?

* Lyrics: In parts of the song other than the Chorus, try to avoid using the most important Chorus words . As a random example, if the song is called ‘Message Of Love’, stay away from using, or at least overusing, the words ‘message’ and ‘love’ (‘of’ is OK!). Use synonyms if necessary, but save those crucial Title words for the Chorus.

(As an aside, I’ve noticed that in effective songs, if the Title itself is used outside the Chorus, it’s usually in the first line.)

* Melody: Obviously, don’t use the same melody in the Chorus as in the Verse. Maybe less obviously, if there’s a note that really gets hit hard in the Chorus, avoid lingering on it in previous sections. You may not need to avoid it altogether, but be careful… that’s the ‘money note’. Save it for the big moments.

* Harmony: This applies not so much to the chords – many great songs have the same chords in the Verse and Chorus, or even through the whole song.

It does apply to what note is sung over what chord. There may be a certain moment when the harmony between the melody note and chord makes the Chorus of a certain song really stand out. For example, say at a crucial point in the Chorus, the major seventh of the chord is the note in the melody.  If this is something that really helps make the Chorus unique, it’s probably best to stay away from that particular harmonic moment in the rest of the song.

Part of what makes a particular Chorus unique is not just that it has qualities in it that differ from other songs. It’s also that the Chorus has qualities in it that differ from the rest of the song it’s in.

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