Great songs without choruses?

[u6crash]

This is something I'm curious as I've got a tune I'm really starting to like, but has no chorus and I'm not sure it needs one. I couldn't come up with any on my own so I did a search and found a few:

 

White Rabbit (Jefferson Airplane)

Free Bird (Lynyrd Skynyrd)

All Along the Watchtower (Bob Dylan/Jimi Hendrix)

Bohemian Rhapsody (Queen)

Kashmir, Stairway to Heaven (Led Zeppelin)

Comfortably Numb, Wish you Were Here (Pink Floyd)

 

So, now it's got me thinking that my song is nowhere near good as any of these However, I'd still like to see/hear some others. I guess for the purpose of this thread, I'm thinking popular tunes. I can think of a few Radiohead songs that aren't radio friendly that don't have a chorus, but beyond that I can't think of any.

[Chicken Monkey]

Somewhere over the Rainbow

Silent Night

Fly Me to the Moon

The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald

[Oswlek]

My favorite song ever.

 

[video=youtube;alsUu-MGE9g]

 

If you get really technical about it, there are loads of great songs without choruses. Often times, what the casual listener sees as a "chorus" is purely a bridge with a refrain at the end of it ("Comfortably Numb" is an example of this). There are also many songs that don't even approximate the chorus and simply have a bridge or refrain or even neither.

[Lee Knight]

Great songs without choruses. That whole idea is a bit misleading. There are tons of songs in the AAA form. There is no chorus. But they typically have teh title and hook as the tagline or maybe the opening line of each verse. It was standard fare in Tin Pan Alley day.

[Oswlek]

Probably the two most well known songs written in the 60's and 70's didn't have choruses.

 

Yesterday

Stairway to Heaven

[MDR]

lots of Bob Dylan songs have no chorus, although many of them have a tagline.

[Lee Knight]

 

lots of Bob Dylan songs have no chorus, although many of them have a tagline.

 

 

Early one morning the sun was shining

I was laying in bed

Wond'ring if she'd changed it all

If her hair was still red

Her folks they said our lives together

Sure was gonna be rough

They never did like Mama's homemade dress

Papa's bankbook wasn't big enough

And I was standing on the side of the road

Rain falling on my shoes

Heading out for the East Coast

Lord knows I've paid some dues getting through

Tangled up in blue.

 

 

And on and on...

[dparr]

Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite

 

A Day In The Life

[honeyiscool]

If the exercise were "great songs without repeated motifs," that would be much harder. Chorus is just one of the many ways to introduce a repetitive hook for the listener.

[Lee Knight]

 

If the exercise were "great songs without repeated motifs," that would be much harder. Chorus is just one of the many ways to introduce a repetitive hook for the listener.

 

 

There you go. I couldn't focus my though on that. That's perfect.

[Oswlek]

 

If the exercise were "great songs without repeated motifs," that would be much harder. Chorus is just one of the many ways to introduce a repetitive hook for the listener.

 

 

"Happiness is a Warm Gun" seems like a good place to start. Would "A Day in the Life" count as well?

[honeyiscool]

"Happiness Is a Warm Gun" repeats the same lines over and over and over and over again, so it would fail my test. "Bohemian Rhapsody" probably passes, since it doesn't actually recycle any lyrics that get repeated.

 

A Day in the Life also has the "I'd love to turn you on" line that gets repeated.

 

p.s. OP mentioned "Comfortably Numb" and "Wish You Were Here" as not having a chorus? Am I missing something? "How I wish, how I wish you were here" is a textbook chorus and although it's a very long one, "Comfortably Numb" definitely has a chorus that ends with "I.... have become comfortably numb."

[Oswlek]

 

"Happiness Is a Warm Gun" repeats the same lines over and over and over and over again, so it would fail my test. "Bohemian Rhapsody" probably passes, since it doesn't actually recycle any lyrics that get repeated. A Day in the Life also has the "I'd love to turn you on" line that gets repeated. p.s. OP mentioned "Comfortably Numb" and "Wish You Were Here" as not having a chorus? Am I missing something? "How I wish, how I wish you were here" is a textbook chorus and although it's a very long one, "Comfortably Numb" definitely has a chorus that ends with "I.... have become comfortably numb."

 

 

"I have become comfortably numb" is a refrain, not a chorus.

 

The part you reference in "Wish You Were Here" is simply a more dramatic verse.

 

As for the first part, I forgot about the "I'd love to turn you on" bit, but if Happiness doesn't pass your test, I don't think much will. A repeating motiff usually presents itself earlier and more often.

 

Edit: The middle part in "Bohemian Rhapsody" is really not all that different from the ending of "Happiness". There most definitely are lines repeated quite a few times in there.

[rsadasiv]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ballad

[honeyiscool]

Hmm, it has been forever since I listened to Pink Floyd and actually paid attention to the lyrics, so I didn't realize that the "How I wish" isn't repeated, and that the lyrics leading up to "I have become comfortably numb" are parallel but not repeated. I don't know, though. I mean surely all of us have written choruses that change from verse to verse, and we intended them to be choruses. I can't really define a chorus, but it's one of those things I think I can identify when I hear one, and I think "Comfortably Numb" passes the test.

 

When does a refrain become a chorus, anyway? "Bang bang Maxwell's silver hammer came down upon his head/Bang bang Maxwell's silver hammer made sure he was dead" definitely sounds like a chorus to me, but the words stay parallel (not exact), and it's merely two lines. But I definitely think I've heard one line choruses before. "Come together, right now, over me."

[Oswlek]

 

Hmm, it has been forever since I listened to Pink Floyd and actually paid attention to the lyrics, so I didn't realize that the "How I wish" isn't repeated, and that the lyrics leading up to "I have become comfortably numb" are parallel but not repeated. I don't know, though. I mean surely all of us have written choruses that change from verse to verse, and we intended them to be choruses. I can't really define a chorus, but it's one of those things I think I can identify when I hear one, and I think "Comfortably Numb" passes the test. When does a refrain become a chorus, anyway? "Bang bang Maxwell's silver hammer came down upon his head/Bang bang Maxwell's silver hammer made sure he was dead" definitely sounds like a chorus to me, but the words stay parallel (not exact), and it's merely two lines. But I definitely think I've heard one line choruses before. "Come together, right now, over me."

 

 

The simple test for a refrain is if it is simply one line, usually with a common melody. "Max"'s hook is definitely chorus because not only are the lines different, but the melodies are as well.

 

"Come Together" is a refrain as far as I can tell.

[honeyiscool]

The refrain/chorus of "Come Together" has a line leading up to it, where the instruments cut out (almost like a pre-chorus), with a completely different chord progression and instrumentation to the rest of the song. To me, it's just a really short chorus because of how different it is presented, regardless of length.

[Oswlek]

 

The refrain/chorus of "Come Together" has a line leading up to it, where the instruments cut out (almost like a pre-chorus), with a completely different chord progression and instrumentation to the rest of the song. To me, it's just a really short chorus because of how different it is presented, regardless of length.

 

 

I could buy that. Rethinking the presentation, it actually comes across as 3 lines.

 

Come togther

Right now

Over me

[honeyiscool]

That's a cool way to think about it. Yeah, definitely I think there's a difference between refrains and choruses but then again, the very next song, "Something," really blurs the definition. "I don't want to leave her now/You know I believe and how" is two lines but nothing about it really strikes me as a chorus, just as the natural progression of the verse.

[Matximus]

My favorite is There She Goes by the La's. Bitchin song. Love Hurts & When Will I Be Loved & Till I Kissed You - Everly Brothers.

Good Times & Chain Gang - Sam Cooke; Running Scared - Roy Orbison. Rocky Raccoon & Tomorrow Never Knows & Hey Jude

[u6crash]

 

If the exercise were "great songs without repeated motifs," that would be much harder. Chorus is just one of the many ways to introduce a repetitive hook for the listener.

 

 

Yeah, maybe this is more of what I was after. I think the one I'm working on has a lyrical/musical structure most like The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald (which I can't stand the original tune, but not because of the structure). I've got no refrain and no tagline. The closest repeating thing is the fact that I use the words "Tootsie Roll Pop" in both the first and fourth verse.

 

Thanks for all the other songs! I'm going to have to check some of these out that I'm not as familiar with.

[Cliftonb]

Nine horses - Atom and Cell

 

[video=youtube;mCYr2T01ibk]

 

 

Deerhoof - Must Fight Current

 

[video=youtube;XJsKPKom-b0]

 

 

This Heat - Makeshift Swahili

 

[video=youtube;lzZMhAM2SqU]

 

 

Hazmat Modine - Mockingbird

 

[video=youtube;ADbWpVKBZ6w]

 

Googoosh - Hejrat

 

[video=youtube;lspH0xvULoY]

[grace_slick]

White Rabbit - Jefferson Airplane.

[kurdy]

The dominance in popular music of songs with choruses is a relatively recent trend, isn

[slushpup96]

[video=youtube;aKEu3EmBCzQ]