Justin Timberlake’s smash ’Can’t Stop The Feeling’ delivers 4 minutes-plus of happy happy joy joy pop dance music. It was written and produced by Timberlake with the colossal hitmakers (it’s hard to overestimate their prowess in this area) Max Martin and Shellback.
We’re going to concern ourselves here with one relatively small but not insignificant element of this juggernaut song – its Pre-Chorus.
Other than in the Pre-Chorus, the chords of the song consist entirely of four bars with one chord in each:
||: C | Aminor7 | F | Aminor7 :||
This progression is repeated many times with different vocals and vocal harmonies in the Verse and Chorus. The Pre-Chorus, though, introduces a fresh twist to this fairly typical pop chord progression
Here are the chords for the whole Pre-Chorus section:
|| Bb/C | C | Bb/C | C | Ab/Bb | Bb | Fminor7 | Ab/Bb ||
And then it jumps back to ‘C’ and starts the regular 4 bar progression.
As you can see above, the Pre-Chorus is 8 bars long. The first 4 bars (Bb/C | C | Bb/C | C ) introduce a suspended chord (Bb/C), which is somewhat unexpected, but still… it’s over the same ‘C’ root we’ve been hearing all along. But then it goes to | Ab/Bb | Bb | Fminor7 | Ab/Bb ||, which really jumps out of the key (all of this utilizing chords that are reminiscent of ‘70s Soul and R&B, a la Earth Wind And Fire, which used a lot of suspended chords, particularly as a V chord – for example, in this case, Ab/Bb instead of Bb or Bb7).
Check this out in the video below (which itself is great, by the way). The unexpected harmonies of the Pre-Chorus give a chordally repetitive song a real shot in the arm, not to mention providing some slickly soulful harmonic colors.
The Pre-Chorus can be a great place to mix it up as well as build excitement, especially if the Verse and Chorus chords are the same or similar. Other good examples are Michael Jackson’s ‘Billie Jean’ and Al Green’s ‘Take Me To The River’ (see here), though their Pre-Choruses are less harmonically adventurous than that of ‘Can’t Stop The Feeling’.
There are many others songs that use Pre-Choruses this way. Can you think of any?
Please let me know your thoughts in the Comments section below:
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Thanks, Tony, for yet another insight into this simple yet amazingly complicated world of songwriting. Keep up the good work.
Thank you, Joyce! Well said (about songs).
Tony
Instead of Dance Dance Dance this song should be called Snooze Snooze Snooze. I fell asleep shortly after the first verse.
How to write a hit:
1. Decide you want to write a hit
2. Realize the surest way to do this is to write about dancing
3. Set up a strong DANCE beat
4. Say the word Dance. A lot.
5. Repeat
6. Make sure the pre-chorus drops way out so that when the chorus comes in it really seems like something huge
7. Try to repeat the same chords in the chorus that you have in the verse. Oh, and say ‘dance’ a lot
8. (and this is important) Add one artistic element of surprise as when Justin says ‘stop’ and halts the verse line momentarily
9. Keep it simple when it comes to lyrics. Remember: people shouldn’t be thinking – they should be DANCING.
And finally
10. Repeat repeat repeat.
Of course, I could be wrong about all this. After all, I did fall asleep.:)
xo
Can’t share your feelings on this one, Charity! But always glad to hear your opinion.
Best wishes,
Tony
Hi Tony, I’m quite surprised no one has answered, but I will, 3 years later:)
Almost everything by Rod Temperton uses this kind of pre-chorus, in fact I think the songwriters were paying homage to him, since he was very sick at the time, he died later that year.
Songs:
Rock with you
Thriller
Off the wall
Disco inferno
After the love has gone
….