Structure, Formula - Why Or Why Not?
11:11 At Wembley
Rest in peace, Gordon Lightfoot…
Last Week’s Bonus Round: "Lawyers in Love" by Jackson Browne from the album of the same name released in 1983.
Released June 1983[1] Recorded1981-1982 Genre Pop rock, new wave
Songwriter(s) Jackson Browne Producer(s) Jackson Browne Greg Ladanyi
(Ed. I presume without knowing this is the “Ladanyi” immortalized in verse 3 of the lyrics to the Jackson Browne song “Cocaine” - which is track 5 of the 1977 album “Running On Empty”)
"Lawyers in Love" is the first single and title track of Jackson Browne's 1983 album of the same name, Lawyers in Love. Though not as successful as Browne's previous single "Somebody's Baby", nonetheless at #13 it became Browne's fourth-highest peaking hit on the Hot 100 as well as his final top 20 hit on the American pop charts, while in Canada peaking on RPM at #13. Browne wrote most of the songs on the album, including the title track.[2][3][4][5]
Some analysts[who?] later saw "Lawyers in Love" as an evolving "bridge" between Browne's personal works and his 1980s' political works. Others[who?] saw it as dry commentary on American social mores and something of a scathing critique of the conservativism and materialism of the Ronald Reagan era, something that had been present in Browne's work as far back as "Take It Easy". "As probing (and hysterical) a dissection of cold-war politics in the Reagan era as the mainstream will allow," Jimmy Guterman wrote of the song in Rolling Stone in 1986.[6]
Credits are adapted from the liner notes of The Very Best of Jackson Browne.[9]
Jackson Browne – lead vocals, rhythm guitar
Craig Doerge – piano, synthesizers
Bob Glaub – bass guitar, additional guitars
Doug Haywood – Hammond organ, harmony vocals
Danny Kortchmar – arrangements
Russ Kunkel – drums
Rick Vito – lead guitar, harmony vocals
Credit: Wikipedia Link: Lawyers in Love
(Ed. Find the lyrics to “Lawyers in Love” here: Genius Lyrics - Verse 3 - why is it always verse 3? - is surprisingly topical now….)
Written in AMaj, 4/4 time at a sprightly 136 BPM tempo - a 4 chord wonder for sure, but the lyrics and lead guitar are what make the song.
If you’re a lazy, barre chord hatin’ guitarist like me you can always capo on 2 to play in the original key of AMaj but using much easier chords, or leave the capo off entirely and play and sing in GMaj by transposing to that key. It’s an easy process to get a transposed chord chart in UG by clicking the “-1” button twice. Here ya go:
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Michael Acoustic
Thanks new subscribers! As promised here’s a picture of my cat welcoming you all here:
“Mika: The Cat Says Thanks!”…
We’ve talked on here before about song forms and how the the sections of songs in a lot of blues based music (pop, rock, folk, Americana, country) tend to follow the
Intro [Verse Chorus x2] Bridge Verse Chorus Tag/Outro
formula - often with the additional Verse Chorus before the bridge, or sometimes 2 Verses, then Chorus Bridge, or some other combination.
But we’ve also explored some songs that didn’t, at least strictly, follow that approach. In an earlier post we discussed the song “Windmills Of Your Mind” written by Michel Legrand, Marilyn Bergman & Alan Bergman and made famous as a later cover by Dusty Springfield after it’s appearance in the original version of the movie “The Thomas Crown Affair” as an example. There are some lines within the verses that are essentially the “hook” that are repeated in the outro (example: “Like the circles that you find In the windmills of your mind”, and other lines as well), but the structure of the song is Verse Verse Bridge Outro, no choruses, and the bridge doesn’t include the hook at all. Link to lyrics: Windmills Of Your Mind
Fellow Substack writer Chris Dalla Riva has a great take on how the formulaic approach isn’t a rule or even necessary. Link to post here:
Definitely check out the post, and I think Chris is right on here. So much so that if a song is really good, catches both the ear and the emotions of the listener, the familiarity of the form is much less important, maybe nearly irrelevant. The common Verse Chorus Bridge Verse Chorus (and often just repeated Choruses to an outro) is so prevalent, IMHO, that an otherwise good song can get lost in the sea of sameness. Something different can pique listeners interest just by being different, something we as songwriters and performers may want to keep in mind. Even a cover can be arranged differently or performed in a unique style (Ed. My oft repeated nag: Ya still owe royalties!) to change audience expectations and add a new level of interest.
You may even want to go back to some of your own songs or song fragments and refresh them with a different take on the formula you may have been following at the time - maybe even leave out a chorus or bridge (gasps, clutches pearls). It’s always an adventure, isn’t it?
Enough to consider for today, I think! And note, there are a couple of items I want to cover that are interesting and topical, but the banner at the top of this “draft” as I’m editing says I’m near “email length limit”. This is a Google imposed limit and affects Gmail users, but I know many if not most of my subscribers use a .gmail address, so I’ll catch those items in next Thursday’s post. Thanks for sticking with me!!
So here’s what I’m listening to (Ed. Some of these may be on other playlists I’ve posted here. That’s cuz I like ‘em!)
Bonus Round: Creole, creole….
Cheers and keep playing!!
Michael Acoustic