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Songwriting Guides > Writing a song > Structure Songwriting Guides
Writing a song Structure

The structure of a song is the skeleton that holds the component parts of the music together. It gives the song shape and order and each genre of music tends to follow a given structure or musical convention. For example, most pop songs these days are structured on simple variations of a verse followed by a chorus , followed by another verse , followed by another chorus and so on.

A typical pop song is structured like this:
Intro
Verse 1
Chorus 1
Verse 2
Chorus 2
Middle 8
Verse 3
Chorus 3
Chorus 4
Ending
One of the useful things about this song structure is that you get a natural sense of light and shade between verses and choruses. Verses tend to be quieter than choruses, which are often quite musically intense. Listen to almost any song by Nirvana and you can hear examples of this contrast.
Ideally your chorus should appear before 60 seconds into your song.
Steve Hillier

Some very famous (and successful) songs have no choruses or verses at all. For example, 'Yesterday' by the Beatles follows a quite different structure, consisting of two musically distinct sections:
A section:
Yesterday, love was such an easy game to play
Now I need a place to hide away
Oh, I believe in yesterday
B section:
Why she had to go I don't know she wouldn't say
I said something wrong, now I long for yesterday

Sue Verran Sue Verran
"Look at hits played again and again on the radio"
Listen to Sue Verran, songwriter
Audio help An unstructured song will be messy, difficult to listen to and impossible to remember, so here are some ideas to help you avoid song structure problems:

• If your song is following a simple verse/chorus form, try varying the length of the verses so that the reappearance of your chorus isn't totally predictable.
• Ideally your chorus should appear before 60 seconds into your song. Why not start with a chorus?
• Song feeling a little tired and repetitive? Don't forget to include a middle 8.
• Try listening to one of your favourite songs, mapping out its structure and using it as the skeleton for a new song of your own.

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