II. Justice for the verse (ft. Audrey Hobert)

Introduction

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Episode Overview

1:06slash spotify okay charlie in our last episode you subjected me to a quiz aka a humiliation ritual and you know i wasn't very happy with my performance but today if i may quote the bard if you prick us do we not bleed if you tickle us do we not laugh if you poison us do we not die and if you wrong us shall we not welcome to switch down pop i'm musicologist nate sloan and i'm songwriter charlie harding and for those

1:53listening or watching on netflix we are in the second part of our series on the art of the song last week we covered the intro today it's the verse and did you see what i did there charlie with the verse because the shakespeare quotation was in verse you know had pentameter that's like the classical version of verse i caught that you were quoting william shakespeare yes who wrote really

Defining Verse

2:21great verses but i'm not sure i fully understand what you just told me okay we'll get into it because we are going to have a little history lesson here but the verse that as we know it today in the modern pop song it might be the most underrated part of a song you know i think the chorus gets a lot of the attention maybe even the introduction like we were talking about last week there's some super memorable ones that we discussed but the verse doesn't get a lot of love i feel like the super fans are going

2:54to quote verse lyrics but most people are singing the chorus okay but before we go any further we need to define this term like what is a verse and i think one way to describe it is it's the first lyrical section of a song it sets up the narrative of the song it sets up the chorus of the song and usually it reoccurs throughout the song with the same music and new lyrics it's like the um the exposition of a song if you want to think about it in cinematic terms yeah it's the plot that gets

3:27you to the really fun climactic moments yeah it's the voiceover that that explains uh you know how the protagonist got where they are and there are literally millions of examples of verses we could choose yeah and yet i find myself undeniably drawn to one example in particular as a young father i'm guessing like baby beluga i mean that is a rafi banger but i'm gonna play you this instead

3:58looking out on the morning rain i used to feel so uninspired and when i knew i had to face another day one of the best voices of all time reetha franklin full orchestra supporting it there's

4:29nothing better and the song is you make me feel like a natural woman indeed and you do charlie you always have thank you this is like a paradigmatic verse to me you know it immediately puts us in the world of our narrator looking out on the morning rain i used to feel so uninspired and when i knew i had to face another day lord it made me feel so tired oh this person is weary and pondering like looking out for answers it gives the song a great place to start because where are we going to go from

Verse Examples

5:03here we're going to ascend through a pre-chorus until we arrive at the iconic chorus i thought you were trying to bring justice to the verse i mean you just played the best part that's all i wanted to hear well we we have to i have to provide the counter argument first you know i have

5:33to help you understand why the verse is so neglected unfairly perhaps okay because you're right you know this the the chorus of this song is like oh it's everything it's perfect and the verse is just kind of like doing the work to get you there it feels more like the road you take than the destination perhaps and i gotta say it really is a great chorus because you have this repeated line which is so common right where you just get the same thing over and over repeated yeah but here it's like you make me feel you're like oh how do you feel you make me feel i really want to know how you make me feel

6:08you make me feel like a natural woman so they're actually delaying the gratification of yeah the the chorus line the title of the song until the very end even though there's a high degree of repetition yeah it's very suspenseful but we're not here to talk about the chorus charlie we're doing that next week that's next week yeah but but you're inadvertently you know making the point i want to initially offer here which is the verse is largely forgotten in fact it's time for my quiz i'm gonna put you under the gun this time charlie i'm gonna get my merchant of venice style revenge oh no i want to

6:42play some pretty famous songs for you but i'm not gonna play you the chorus i'm just gonna play you a little bit of a verse instead and you tell me if you can recognize them okay this is so not fair you know that we launched our netflix series the day after our peer unexplainable launched their series where i was a guest on their show specifically talking about how i am not able to remember lyrics it's like i have this long issue where lyrics don't stick with me i know you have that same problem

7:17so i am very worried about how i'm going to perform today well just listen to the melody then charlie if you're so good at melodies and music you know just uh pay attention to the melody and it'll give you a clue all right here's your first mystery verse i amongst the two of us am not a scholar of early american popular music

7:53this is gonna be like the unwritten verse to yankee doodle dandy or something i have no idea you're not far off in that this is a super famous song that presumably everyone knows and if i hit play you'll probably recognize it instantly that's just cruel i've never heard that verse yeah it is cruel that's the whole point of this exercise is for me to exact my revenge

8:29my pound of flesh okay uh okay so you're 0 for 1 let's try another one uh we'll jump forward in time that's semi charm life by third eye blind he got it against all odds but to be clear i had to go forward in time in my brain and hear the melody of the chorus before i was certain

9:01all right one one for two here's another mystery verse for you i kept saying i'm staying in touch but that thing went bust so i gave it a no tricks no bluff i'm just better i have absolutely no idea what song that is i mean it's like from 2017 no earlier this is like 2013 i have no what is this can i give you a hint yeah you

9:38interviewed this artist very recently on our podcast is this zara larson this is zara larson it's called lush life that was a toughie oh i'm sorry zara i am so sorry i mean it's wonderful but i am a midnight sun fan all the way through and through and that's why i couldn't give you one of those tracks because it would have been too easy but you know you hear that chorus you instantly know it you might not know the verse all right uh where are we at now one one

Quiz Time

10:13for three where we're at is i'm realizing that nate sloan is musically completely out of touch and playing music that is uh you know nearly a decade old or older play me the hits um i'm trying to keep you on your toes this this is not a recent hit but it is a hit i know this one this is country roads thank you for giving me an easy one i did a whole story on country roads interviewing

10:51in fitchick and recently in the world cup the whole stadium broke out after a win where everyone started saying country roads take me home beautiful thing yeah again these are tailored for you they're there to to give you maximum shame if you miss them all right one more i think we're like half and half this is so annoying this is rick astley's ever gonna give you that because i rick rolled you

11:27last time except for this time you played me the verse which is not the meme moment that everybody knows what you can give to us now what have i learned about the verses other than just being mildly embarrassed we've learned that the verse has kind of a prosaic function you know even even when you know it it's not maybe the first part of the song you think of this is a harder quiz than the one i gave you maybe not i mean i played you tiny snippets of the shortest introduction of a

12:02song but yeah the verse is not meant for memorability in the same way that the chorus is where there is a high degree of repetition often a melody which is you know incredibly inviting to sing along to yeah the verse is almost like glue it's not the sexiest part of the song but it holds everything together okay and this function of the verse is actually buried in the meaning of the word itself charlie it's time for a little bit of classical masters oh fun the word verse comes from the proto-indian european root were that's like w-e-r originally that's like

12:45you know millennia ago were becomes ver becomes verse all right and were means to turn that's weird what does that have to do with writing or music or anything turn the page i don't know close it's actually the idea of turning a plow and stick with me here like you are plowing lines of words they're laying seeds for some kind of refrain yeah exactly and you turn from one to the next and that's kind of the idea of the verse you go from one to the other the verse is the plow of the

13:20song form charlie it's doing the hard work it's tilling up the soil so that the chorus can blossom okay and then we have this other kind of offshoot from these early days and that's the kind of verse that i recited to you at the beginning shakespearean verse you know metered rhyming couplets that you'd find in sonnets or plays yeah verse has this kind of crazy wandering history in 16th century religious choral music the verse refers to the line sung by a soloist before the whole choir

13:57response let me give you an example verse response oh verse and then chorus i've got it verse chorus verse chorus even in the 1500s the verse was you know not getting

14:28a lot of love what were we listening to that was opening versicles and responses by composer william smith performed by the choir of new college oxford it's very nice singing if we fast forward to the 19th century opera composers take this same idea and they translate it to the dramatic world of opera like most operas work in this way moving from verse to chorus except they call it recitative and aria take a famous opera like bezet's carmen here's the equivalent of the verse

15:06it's kind of setting up the action high drama and we probably don't recognize that all it's not like super memorable it's not even trying to be it's

15:38just trying to move the plot forward yeah but you probably know what comes next that's the aria or the chorus and it's the famous habanera from carmen so kind of the same idea one of the great opera melodies moving to the 20th century composers of

16:13early american pop music took this idea and extended it to their songs they would write a verse that was kind of a little slower a little freer really setting up the world of the song and then the chorus kicks in and that's the part of these songs that we typically remember one of the myriad examples that i happen to love is a tune by richard rogers and laurence hart called bewitched bothered and

16:43bewildered indulge me if i uh play this one on my tiny little keyboard charlie all right here's the verse it's it's a classic heart verse it's really witty and a little bit dark he's a fool and don't i know it but a fool can have his charms i'm in love and don't i show it like a babe in arms wow a little bit more i mean it's great stuff but it's not like super hooky necessarily loves the same old sad sensation lately i've not slept a wink since this half pint imitation put me on the blink

17:23that's such a good line half pint imitation and now we get to the chorus i'm wild again beguiled again a simpering whimpering child again bewitched bothered and bewildered am i like that is a hook right there now i feel serenaded that was very nice song form has evolved since then but it's kind of the same playbook the verse does the hard work it plows the field it

17:59sets up the exposition and then the chorus hogs all the glory and i'd argue you can have a massive hit song with a relatively forgettable verse oh yeah i mean i don't want to name names here but there's a lot of songs and to be clear that's not a bad thing right it's not like the verse has to be great it just has to get you where you need to go some songwriters even acknowledge this in their music here's a really fun example from the indie band built to spill check out the second verse of

18:34their 90s song joyride this part of the song is called the second verse it sounds just like the first verse but the different word i feel like describing what you're doing

19:07in the second verse is almost like a magician being like okay so here are the cards you're gonna take this card i'm gonna tell you what card that is i'm gonna describe my entire trick as i'm doing it to you it's a rewarding thing i like that they told me the chords that they were playing as they were playing them and frankly i think it's significantly more creative than the second verse of mr brightside i'm coming out of my cage and i've been doing just fine gotta gotta be down because i want it all it started out with a kiss how did it end up like this i said play the second verse that was the second verse but i see what you're

19:42doing the second verse same as the first verse word for word almost note for note yeah i think we had a little drop out there that wasn't in the the first verse i think when he says it was only a kiss so far in this episode we have made the case for why the verse doesn't deserve our admiration and respect but at the beginning i made a claim that the verse is underrated yeah and i think

Underrated Verses

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21:17campaign and get a 250 credit go to linkedin.com slash campaign terms and conditions apply hear that that's now crispy and mccrispy strips meeting creamy caesar sauce sounds extra crispy caesar sauce at mcdonald's for a limited time there is a new generation of artists who are putting just as much work into their verses as into any other part of the song and one of the poster children for this movement is one of our favorite songwriters

21:53right now audrey hobart oh yes i asked audrey to make the case for the verse verses it's funny because everyone talks about bridges everyone talks about choruses but i just also think like in this day and age where oftentimes a song can be known for like one single line which is thanks to like a it's a viral tiktok sound and i only know this one single line that doesn't have to be the chorus that doesn't have to be the brick that can be the verse i love that when i last book with audrey she talked about

22:24how she would sit at a cafe and like grind on her verses not just for like one coffee we're talking about going back to that cafe every single day day after day for two weeks to get that verse right she's such a good writer many people became acquainted with audrey hobart through her collaboration with gracie abrams she co-wrote gracie's hit that's so true and then without having very much experience in music at all she went on to release one of our favorite recent albums called who's the

22:54clown which has some of the most intricate surprising and funny lyrical turns that we've encountered in a while when she was talking about you know how different parts of a song can have their own afterlife in our digital world it made me think of a song of hers that is having a moment right now there's a phrase used in playwriting that i learned from one of my professors in college

23:46the incredible jonathan seneseros who is now my next door neighbor incredible how the world works like that wow and he said you want to enter late and leave early when you're writing a play yep and i feel like audrey hobart does that the verse starts i knew you'd be at the party it's like who is this where what party we don't need to know it's more important that we just dive into it and we try and kind of pick it up as we go audrey did go to school for screenwriting makes sense and if we skip to the

24:17second verse of sumi unlike what we heard built to spill sing about the second verse same as the first verse it's not it builds our story just me or does he look amazing when he's all in his amazon basics let's rip him off top to bot let's rock we're like coining new phrases here and and you can see what

24:51she was saying like potentially any of these lines could be their own little universe of meaning for a listener that they could hold on to and reconstitute in different ways definitely when she said that it actually got me thinking about another song that became a hit maybe more because of its verse than its chorus because of the the sort of meme ability of the verse it was about damn time by lizzo it's about damn time in a minute i'ma need a sentimental man a woman to pump me up

25:23feeling fussy walking in my balese yes he's trying to bring out the fabulous kind of an interesting track because my sense is that people remember the verses of it better than the chorus like we just listened to the second verse which became a viral trend and the song starts with a really memorable line as well of course it's bad bitch o'clock yeah it's thick 30 it's bad bitch o'clock yeah it's thick 30 i've been through a lot but i'm still flirty so you know that is more memorable than the chorus of

25:59the song in many ways and i think it's a testament to something audrey identified for me like the verses allow you to have a specificity that you can't always get from the chorus my philosophy is specific verses more if you know i'm feeling lucky that day anthemic chorus um just so that like i think

26:29it's like setup payoff but you can't have payoff without the setup verses that i love are in my song drive which is like a sleeper hit in my opinion like i i specifically love that song um and i just think the rhyming of those verses are really fun i i don't know how or i don't remember why or how i was able it's just flow like it can only be described as flow i was flowing another disappointing night don't even want to see it in a nice light what's the girl to do like

27:14play it cool but i'm playing it cool and it's got me nowhere it arrives late like you're already in the scene and beyond just the the vulnerability of this lyric of just constant disappointment she even talks to herself and you can hear the internal narrative of like no i'm doing cool no i'm not i'm not awesome yeah very stream of consciousness very yeah james joyce ulysses of her uh perhaps you know i don't leo bloom stephen dedalus come on charlie you got to keep up with me

27:45the chorus by contrast is super simple it's funny we're putting it in drive we're speeding forward but a certain way these lines in the chorus almost slow us down she's singing slower longer notes it's almost like a moment of just reprieve of letting the thoughts no longer take over this song is a great example of the verse

28:18kind of containing a lot of the emotional payoff of the song actually like you said the chorus is almost on cruise control in a way yeah the verse is where we get our conflict and our turmoil and it might really be what draws us in and i think for songwriters like audrey you know this is really conscious now when you're writing a song you we talked about the intro last week that's the first thing you hear musically yeah but lyrically the first thing you hear is typically a verse so audrey

28:50really deliberately tries to grab your attention with her opening verse like tries to kind of grab you by the collar and say pay attention and this is actually something she learned from maybe a surprising place i actually remember feeling that way a lot in school like not even college but like my public school like because we'd have to write essays all the time and they had to be in a certain academic voice and i remember thinking of my english teachers and going i know that they are reading like

29:22hundreds of essays a day like i want to uh subvert this academic voice of mine um and just infuse some kind of personality or hook my teacher you know with that first line to kind of like brighten their day i want them to like be like huh this essay stood out in this stack of hundreds of essays um and that's kind of how i i've always felt that way about like even in college when i was writing in college like first lines and last lines it's like you want to grab them and then you want to leave them breathless i guess as an educator i thought you would appreciate this charlie right you know this is

29:57yes uh someone who as a student was thinking about her teachers reading all these essays and being like i want i want to give them something that's going to kind of perk perk up their attention let them escape the monotony of a bunch of homogenous papers and it's a powerful analogy to songwriting right there's so many songs being churned out constantly you have to make yours stand out and that's something audrey is good at take her song bowling alley so it went like this i finished work and then i drove home

30:30pissed oh god what's worse than when your shit's all twisted everything's off immediately relatable uh feeling bummed out after work and also some really abrasive language like feeling pissed the piss is not a beautiful word to put into a song right yes you almost don't want it there but you've got my attention it's the kind of verse where you press play and you can't press stop because you need to know what happens next it's really smart songwriting and i think it's

31:01one of the reasons why audrey is kind of making the case for the verse being an integral part of

Modern Verse

31:10the pop song in the 21st century there are songs that i put on when i'm doing other things audrey's music is like watching a movie i have to be fully attentive because the lyrics are sending me on these journeys totally and i'm so grateful that audrey took time from uh her tour to check in with us from her hotel room in el paso and break down some of the mystique of the verse with us thanks audrey yes i love you guys thank you thank you for having me all right charles have i made my case for why

31:43the verse is perhaps one of the most underrated parts of the classic pop song structure uh you did recite some shakespeare to me i did you played me some great jazz old standards you're welcome you brought me one of my favorite contemporary songwriters with some hard evidence you've appealed to my nature as an educator and i think i think you have done a decent job of making that case decent because you did try to also offend me with your your quiz so i just can't oh yeah yeah i can't

32:14i can't give you too much no you'll recall it was revenge charlie it was revenge okay so okay so we are equal something that has changed in my life where as a young musician first i loved solos you know i'm a guitar player first i'd plow right past the chorus past the bridge find the solo section that was my spot but then like solos kind of died out in the 80s so there was no more solos to pay attention to and i got attached to melody and hooks in production but recently call it middle age i love a

32:49good story and the verse is the story and it has to set all the expectations has to take me on a journey and i want to arrive somewhere on the other end transformed viva la verse charlie viva la verse what's coming up next in our series on the art of the song charles intro verse chorus chorus we're gonna the biggest part of the song we're gonna make you sing and we have some very special guests

33:21oh wait let me do my vocal warm-ups outrageous alice running a business shouldn't feel like surviving a software group project one app for accounting another for inventory another for sales and somehow none of them talk to each other that's where odoo

33:56comes in an all-in-one business management software that brings every part of your business together from sales and accounting to inventory and marketing all in one powerful platform no messy integrations no bouncing between tabs and best of all no spreadsheets stop managing software and start managing your business with one unified system try for free today at odoo.com slash vox that's odoo.com slash vox slash vox