I was going to write this super cool music thread with more songs in there than an Erik Loomis “I took time off writing my 1600th American grave post and 547th this day in labor history series to write a 27-part ‘I chance to have been listening to these songs,'” post where I talked about great bridges in songs, and start off with And Your Bird Can Sing which has the best bridge of all time, and motherf#@ker, that’s not even a bridge! Or rather, it has a perfectly excellent bridge, and that pleasant Paul McCartney fellow can certainly strum a bass and so on, but what it really has is a modified final chorus that causes horripilation every time with its glorious harmonies! And then a nice outro, all coming in at 2:01!
And what about so many other songs that I thought had great bridges, like Radiohead’s Karma Police, which actually has a great long outro.
“Phew for a minute there I lost myself, I lost myself.” My brother in Christ, it was not just for a minute. You lost yourself, well and truly. This is one of the most convincing “I am crazy” songs since Surf’s Up by Brian Wilson, or the full corpus of Syd Barrett. And yet it’s put on, I don’t actually think Thom Yorke is crazy for real. I mean, not that crazy, not like Jeff Magnum braying “I love you Jesus Christ” and then pulling the drumkit and a french horn on a stand over on top of himself while he strums furiously, lying on his back like a struggling turtle someone fed ketamine.
Anyway, here’s a song that really–OK, now, see I would have bet real money that the Raspberries song Overnite Sensation had a bridge, and it maybe kind of does, because they vastly change the instrumentation to make it seem as if their song is really getting played on the radio, which is clever and twee. And I must digress to say the song suggests Eric Carmen will put a bullet in the program director’s head if they don’t get a hit record, probably the least scary musical threat since that time Kriss Kross made people play their awful video game. But given what follows it’s just a long outro?
I mean, I’m imagining verse, verse, chorus, verse, chorus, bridge, chorus. A solo can go in there usually before the bridge (I don’t know why I say usually when I have apparently never heard even one song with a bridge but OK) and intros and, more commonly, outros are where they should be. So, another song which I love and imagined had a great bridge is Tangerine by Led Zeppelin and it really has: verse, chorus, verse, solo, and then a modified final chorus with steel guitar, SO BEAUTIFUL (the whole thing coming in at 3:12, very nice.)
Now, one thing I like is my favourite “rock trick”, where all the instruments cut out and it’s only vocals, and then crunchy guitars and so on return. Very nice. Teenage Fanclub’s I Don’t Care is good on this. But that part isn’t the bridge (there is one and it’s good, but less good.)
You know what has a legitimate, multifaceted bridge is Hey Ya, thank god.
Everything from ‘All right now’ through the ‘shake it’ section is a for real bridge. And I know what you’ve been thinking this whole time, Isn’t James Brown’s Get on Up (among many others) an actual instructional song about bridges, in which people are repeatedly questioned about whether they want to hear the bridge, and once they answer in the affirmative they get to, and it’s excellent?
And there’s an outro as well. Phew. And Billie Eilish’s The 30th has a beautiful, spectacular bridge.
Brick House‘s first “shake it down” section is a bridge? But it’s repeated as an outro hmm. Earth, Wind and Fire’s September has a short bridge that’s nice but I’m not creaming my pants either. (Why are there no waterbenders in their band btw there’s room they have like 14 dudes? Second-to-last airbender hiding from Lord Ozai with a tasteful afro and some kind of sci-fi daishiki made of emergency blankets?) I guess I’ve learned a little something today. Wait, did I though? I learned that this was an elaborate ruse to make you tell me your favourite bridges. You are all educated people, surely.
{ 30 comments }
Belle Waring 09.25.24 at 6:25 am
This is actually an elaborate Voight-Kampff test about why you’re not helping Jeff Magnum. I mean, he was making sound collages under the name Korena Pang, does that sound OK? Could John Darnielle not help him somehow I feel as if he could be super-soothing. idek
Neville Morley 09.25.24 at 7:05 am
The next time my jazz composition class discusses bridges I am going to share this post and sit back and enjoy the meltdown.
oldster 09.25.24 at 9:38 am
ErikLoomis does sometimes list an impressive number of albums, artists, and songs, and I am confident that he derives enjoyment from the impression that this makes.
But nothing that he has written has ever convinced me that he enjoys music.
For classic bridges, why not go to the songbook? Jerome Kern and Dorothy Fields, “The way you look tonight:” the passage beginning “with each word” is a clear (and effective) bridge. The bridge in Irving Berlin’s “Count your blessings” (“I think about a nursery”) works so well that he used it, note for note, as the bridge on “Holiday Inn.”
My favorites? Maybe those aren’t my absolute faves. But they are gold standards to return to if you forget what a bridge should be.
Duke the lost engine 09.25.24 at 10:00 am
I think you have to add Hey Ya to the list of songs that don’t actually have a bridge. That sections more like a breakdown or something? The chords don’t change
oldster 09.25.24 at 10:39 am
Also, EWF’s “Let’s Groove” has a more extended bridge (“you will find/peace of mind”) which does some tricky stuff getting back to the home key at the end. Sing it through acapella and you may get lost.
Which can be a good feature in a bridge! Take us away from the home key, blindfold us, spin us around three times, and then bring us back via an unexpected route. Similar issues with “Cry me a river” — Julie London has help from the band in getting back, but it ain’t easy without help. (I also want to thank Arthur Hamilton for rhyming “told me love was “too plebeian,” told me you were through with me, and….”). That bridge shares some chordal similarities, I think, with the bridge on “My old flame,” (“I’ve met so many who….”).
Belle Waring 09.25.24 at 1:04 pm
Thanks oldster, that’s the good stuff!
“I think you have to add Hey Ya to the list of songs that don’t actually have a bridge. That sections more like a breakdown or something? ”
NO YOU DIDN’T
I mean, I’m questioning all my life choices now, what if it is a breakdown? No, OK, it’s a bridge plus a breakdown consisting of “shake it/shake it like a polaroid picture/you know what to do etc.” You might think there’s too much palaver at the start with the fellas, but that’s just whatever the musical section in which James Brown makes you beg for the bridge is. Or like this classic of go-go by Chuck Brown, Official Godfather of Go-Go, of which 5% total of the song is him demanding the rest of the band give him the bridge. Maybe 7%. And it has a breakdown “git git git git git git on up/git git git git git git on down.” And conga solos. That “freaky-deak” part… also a breakdown? Let’s not try to label go-go. Also the song is 7 minutes long don’t question him he has time.
Alan White 09.25.24 at 4:24 pm
I have to say that Harry Chapin’s “Taxi” contains what I can only call a “suspension bridge”–a radical break from the surrounding story telling of the song introduced by a sort of post-chorus and then a beautiful falsetto bridge that is a wonder all in itself:
https://www.google.com/search?gs_ssp=eJzj4tFP1zcsNjAtKkgqKjZg9OIsSazIVCjOz0sHAGSTCB8&q=taxi+song&oq=taxi+song&gs_lcrp=EgZjaHJvbWUqBwgBEC4YgAQyCggAEAAY4wIYgAQyBwgBEC4YgAQyBwgCEAAYgAQyBwgDEAAYgAQyBwgEEAAYgAQyBwgFEAAYgAQyBwgGEAAYgAQyBwgHEAAYgAQyBwgIEAAYgAQyBwgJEAAYgATSAQkxODMwNGowajeoAgiwAgE&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8
Kevin A. Carson 09.25.24 at 5:46 pm
The “space” in a lot of Grateful Dead songs is amazing — especially in “Wharf Rat” — but I dunno if that counts as a bridge.
Shirley0401 09.25.24 at 6:03 pm
The Smiths were good with a bridge, if their bridges aren’t actually something else. I was listening to the first two albums the other day and realized one of the things that makes them still sound so different from anyone else is the way Morrissey doesn’t seem to care about sticking to the song structure the music is following. His vocal melody on multiple songs completely changes from verse to verse, making it hard for me as a layperson to even know what to call the specific parts…
oldster 09.25.24 at 9:49 pm
I don’t know whether it’s a bridge or a breakdown or some third thing, but there is a figure where the horns make it mellow: it’s a break from the regular chorus-verse structure, typified by the horn section taking a slower melody in a different key-structure.
Here’s Archie Bell and the Drells taking the Tighten Up and making it mellow at 1:45 or so:
And here’s Janelle Monae taking the Tightrope and making it mellow at 3:30:
“We call that, “classy brass”,” says Janelle, and I don’t see how anyone could disagree.
It’s a close cousin of Chuck Brown’s “bridge”, so maybe it is a bridge? And notice that Archie Bell also repeatedly tells his band to make it mellow, a la Chuck Brown’s repeated request for the bridge.
(James Brown’s request for the bridge was parodied at the end of Led Zeppelin’s “Crunge”: “where’s that confounded bridge?”).
Cheez Whiz 09.26.24 at 2:41 am
Not sure how the Tin Pan Alley building blocks of verse/chorus/bridge/refrain map onto the format the Beatles created as a side-effect of destroying the music business. Yeah they were old-school at heart, even Lennon that cheeky bastard. But they wanted Freedom, those hippies, even though Julia, espescially the bridge, showed Lennon at least the equal of Brian Wilson as a melodic and harmonic genius.
TF79 09.27.24 at 3:12 am
Stephen Malkmus singing in a faux-British accent from the POV of a couple’s dog in “Jenny and the Ess-Dog” is certainly a bridge, not sure if it’s my favorite but it’s quite memorable. Was listening to Blondeshell/Bully’s “Docket” the other day and thought “hey! An honest to goodness bridge!” amidst the 90s-esque fuzzed out guitars.
JPL 09.27.24 at 5:09 am
Great question. Just for starters:
You mentioned Earth, Wind and Fire. Here’s one of their best early songs. Not only does it have a verse, chorus and bridge, it has a nice intro and a nice outro.
Janelle Monae: That dance style looks like it’s a development from what we used to call “foot patrol”. A few years ago I was sort of still able to do it; I don’t know about now. You can see what looks like foot patrol in this Whitney Houston video if you look at the girl dancers at various points. (One of the best music videos of all time, and the song also has a bridge, plus intro and outro.)
One of my favourite songs has a verse-chorus-bridge structure, although what I really like is the harmony in the chorus (though there is a bit in the bridge too):
But I’ve always liked the alternate mood lines in the Isley Brothers’s “For the love of you”: “Love to be/ riding the wave of your love enchanted with your touch/It seems to me/we can sail together in and out of mystery”, especially as sung here by Whitney Houston in her silky sublime angelic voice (as opposed to her power voice).
KT2 09.27.24 at 8:43 am
A covered bridge…
“This Guy’s in Love with You”
I’d bet many are hearing the horn in the bridge now.
“The composition had a recognizable Bacharach-David feel, a spot for a signature horn solo in the bridge and in the fadeout…”
“This Guy’s in Love with You” is a hit songwritten by Burt Bacharach and Hal David and released by Herb Alpert in May, 1968.
[Covers;]
– Nancy Sinatra
– Ella Fitzgerald
– Dusty Springfield
– Eydie Gormé’s
– Tony Mottola
– Sammy Davis Jr.
– the Reels
– “On 29 June 1996 at the London Festival Hall, Noel Gallagher of Oasis sang a version of the song with Bacharach playing piano; the following weekend it was aired on BBC Radio 2.”
[Oasis has a picture of Bacharach leaning on a sofa on an albumn cover. Noel saw Burt and said Hi. Burt said “you can sing “This Guy’s in Love with You””. He did.]
– Faith No More [?!]
– Mac DeMarco
– Devang Goud
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/This_Guy%27s_in_Love_with_You
Pick you’re own version.
Plenty to choose from.
oldster 09.27.24 at 4:01 pm
Thanks, KT2!
“Pick your own version.
Plenty to choose from.”
Possibly my favorite is this abbreviated version played by Bacharach himself as a very old man:
His choice of auxiliary chords tells you how he heard it himself, after many decades of playing it.
As with many Bacharach compositions, I find it structurally unsatisfactory: he frequently fails to stick the landing on his choruses, here as with “Always something there”. But the fragments are glorious — we are lucky that he brought bop harmonic sensibilities to pop charts.
For a song with a clear bridge of the Tin Pan Alley kind, here is the recently-deceased J.D. Souther singing his best composition, “Faithless Love,” in 1974 with the assistance of Linda Ronstadt. Bridge at 2:00.
So, how old is this habit of introducing a contrasting melody after a few verses? What are the earliest plausible examples? Does it catch on only after verse/chorus is the standard form?
JPL 09.28.24 at 5:35 am
I only heard this one last year, and it’s been haunting my brain ever since. It’s “Maybe September” (Livingston, Evans, Faith) done as an instrumental here by Tommy Flanagan; it’s more interesting than the original vocal version, and the sentiment as expressed by Flanagan and imagined in response is more interesting than what is expressed explicitly by the lyrics. I’m not an expert, but it seems basically to have two sections, where the second one functions as a bridge, each occurring twice.
The bridge in Ellington’s “Sophisticated Lady” to me is so striking it intrigues me every time I listen to it, so it must be one of my favourites. It has a beautiful weirdness, and I don’t know of another one like it. A lot of people have recorded it, but I like Abbey Lincoln’s version here.
Bill Benzon 09.28.24 at 4:30 pm
I’m not sure what “bridge” means. Up there in #11 Cheez Whiz mentions Tin Pan Alley. In THAT context I understand what “bridge” means. And, FWIW, years ago I attended a regular jam session in Buffalo, I heard some musicians use the term “channel” instead of “bridge.” But that’s the only place I’ve heard that term used.
Now, when James Brown says, “let’s take it to the bridge” (or whatever), it becomes obvious enough what he’s referring to, but he’s not working within the AABA formula of Tin Pan Alley tunes. Just how the usage of the term went from the Tin Pan Alley usage to James Brown’s usage, I don’t know. More generally, it’s common enough to build songs from contrasting sections. In the context of AABA Tin Pan Alley tunes, the metaphorical meaning of “bridge” or “channel” seems obvious enough. Not sure the metaphor carries over when using the terms in other musical contexts.
JPL 09.29.24 at 12:34 am
Bill Benzon raises the question of terminology, which I’m sure is not uniform among musicians of the various genres and traditions. As I said, I’m not an expert, so if anyone knows music theory they can chime in, but at least we can identify the phenomenon we’re talking about. Maybe it can be exemplified in this song by Rodgers and Hart (and in case you forgot: Ella can swing!):
I assume we’re talking about the identifiable contrast between two “syntactic” sections (that people seem to label “A” vs “B”), which are differentiated in terms of their musical (e.g., key, chord changes, melody) and lyrical (esp. tone, often explanatory, which is interesting) properties. Here there are two sections that are similar and end with the title idea (A); then there is a musically contrasting section (@:49) that starts with “Share for share, share alike …” (B). So I assume we’re talking about that “B” section and its role in the structure of the song, whatever that is, and we’re looking for similar phenomena in other songs. (Some songs differentiate the “A” Section into verse and refrain, related to the main idea of the song.)
On the basis of this, I don’t see the problem with “And your bird can sing”, since it does follow this pattern, with the B section starting at :36 (“When your prize possessions …”), and is repeated at 1:06 (“When your bird is broken …”). The A section returns at 1:20 with a change in the chord on “Tell me …”, and “your bird can swing”; then the guitar continues with the A section tune. So does Belle like the B section, or does she like the modifications in the A harmonies at the end? (I love that, and we could have another post on that device.)
With that said, one of my favourite “bridges” (under the above understanding) is in this song by the great Etta Jones, in that “B” section where she says, “The difficult, oh, I’ll do right now; but the impossible will take a little while”. Ooh, an arrow to the heart.
Bill R 09.29.24 at 4:16 pm
WHAT?? no mention of “Bridge over Troubled Waters”?
Bill Benzon 09.29.24 at 10:16 pm
OK, so I listened to “And Your Bird Can Sing” and took notes. I think it goes like this:
1) 4 bar instrumental (parallel guitar lines)
2) A-strain, 8 bars
3) A-strain, 8 bars
4) B-strain, 8 bars
5) 8 bar instrumental
6) B-strain, 8 bars
7) A-strain, 8 bars (“glorious harmonies”)
8) instrumental outro
We start with a parallel guitars line which is used in various ways. Up though 4 it could be standard AABA tune. Now, if that’s what was going on, we’d go back to the A-strain. But that’s not what happens, not at all. Instead we get those parallel guitars, and not for 4 bars, but for 8. Then we get a repetition of the B-strain. And that, in turn, is followed by (a return to) the A-strain, with added harmony line. It ends with an extended version of the parallel guitars line.
JPL 09.29.24 at 10:24 pm
Here is bassist Paul Thompson’s answer to the question. The term “bridge” here seems appropriate because not only does it give the song a symmetry, but, because it’s so highly elaborated wrt the main sections, it stands out and becomes a centrepiece.
Here’s the song in full.
JPL 09.30.24 at 11:18 pm
Just for completeness, here’s a very informative account on the question at hand. (Neither Aimee nor David Bennett look at “And your bird can sing”, but you can apply what they are saying to any Beatles song, or any other song with that AABA form.)
Now people can feel free to chime in with their favourite bridges, or “middle eights”; it’s a perfectly good question, and what I like about these posts is listening to the songs people send in, especially the ones I haven’t heard before, and then checking out the different artists. (I hadn’t really got to mine, but people seem not to be continuing.)
Dave Heasman 10.04.24 at 5:54 pm
Just sayin’ but Surf’s Up is a totally non-bonkers tune by Brain Wilson with some decidedly odd lyrics by Van Dyke Parks.
The laughs come hard on Auld Lang Syne.
Quite a lot of bridges are actually 2 songs merged. Mr Churchill Says by the Kinks is a good ‘un.
And does anyopne remember verses? The intro tune? Paul does one on Here There & Everywhere. Sinatra made a separate recording of the verse to Stardust.
oldster 10.06.24 at 6:20 pm
Dave Heasman–
melodically distinct intros form a great topic! You’re right, Paul’s intro to “Here There” is a great example, since it is melodically distinct from the tune to come (“To lead a better life…”)
They used to be quite common in musical comedies, because they allow segues from one scene to another.
Consider the intro to “Night and Day” (“Like the beat-beat-beat of the tom-tom….”).
And the most famous one of all, which is almost never heard: the opening verse to White Christmas, with its own melody:
“The sun is shining, the grass is green/The orange and palm trees sway.
There’s never been such a day/in Beverly Hills, L.A.
But it’s December the twenty-fourth,—/And I am longing to be up North—”
I never would have heard that one if Mel Torme had not included it on his xmas album.
I don’t know why this feature of composition became less common. People just in a hurry to get to the familiar chorus?
JPL 10.06.24 at 10:27 pm
We need a video example, of course, and since oldster mentions Mel Torme, here’s a good one:
Note that the intro reappears as an “outro”. I associate this form with the context of the Broadway musical play and the need for a transition from dialogue to the bursting into of song, which is so incongruous to real-world dwellers looking on. So how has this device been used in non-Broadway pop music? I thought this one was quite effective:
“I don’t know why this feature of composition became less common.” Here is a beautiful example from recent Broadway musical land (Adam Guettel). The transition here is not sharp, but smoothly integrated. (Is this great song, with a weird melody, a candidate for jazz treatment?)
oldster 10.07.24 at 3:40 pm
Intros and outros — consider Heatwave’s “Boogie Nights” which begins and ends with a moody harp-strumming dream sequence — as though saying, “it’s only a dream, you just dreamed it” — before getting down to the funk.
I can’t imagine why turbans for men never caught on as a fashion look.
Bill Benzon 10.08.24 at 6:18 pm
I’ve just done a post at 3 Quarks Daily where I examine five different versions of “Georgia on My Mind.” And that reminds me that I really like the bridge on the tune. It opens with a bit of a mysterioso vibe and ends with an opening up.
https://youtu.be/ggGzE5KfCio?si=0XbUN-D9PkdHSXUo
Bill Benzon 10.08.24 at 9:59 pm
Sting has some interesting comments about bridges in the middle of this interview. Somewhere around 30 minutes in, maybe a bit before.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=efRQh2vspVc?si=HswvrjSWR7mHyLLq&w=560&h=315%5D
JPL 10.09.24 at 6:23 am
Bill Benzon @27:
How about Oscar Peterson’s version, which seems to be much more explicitly “bluesy”, with what seem to be blues chords and patterns?
Bill Benzon 10.09.24 at 3:25 pm
Yes, on the blusey touches. Also, he truncates the form. The whole performance in 3:43. He ends the first chorus at about 2:10. Do the math. Not enough time to repeat the whole from. So he goes once through the A-strain, and then the bridge at about 2:50. He plays through the bridge, and then once again through the A to finish it out.
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