The Anatomy of Songs

Here's a rather light-hearted look at the anatomy of songs in different genres. There's actually a lot of truth in it though, as I found when doing research for my Deconstructed Hits series of books. If you analyze the hits of a particular genre (and their eras, which is equally as important), you find that there are numerous similarities.

For instance, in some of the most loved classic rock songs, there was no set song form formula, where sometimes a song took a wild turn in the middle that was totally unexpected ("LA Women," "Magic Man," "Free Bird," and "Don't Fear The Reaper" for example). Today most pop songs are built around the magic triad of verse, chorus and bridge. And today most songs have an ending, since that makes it tend to play better in a digital format, while in previous eras the fade was a lot more common.

That said, there's more than a grain of truth in the following graphic. Enjoy.

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