How top songwriters craft the perfect pop song | Think Like A Musician

There's so many different things that a song is meant to do, but I think that when you’re honest about what a song is for people, the intent is to connect.

Hey, you. Yes, you! What's that light inside of you?

Is it a dream, a beat, a beautiful sound, a heartbreaking song?

Whatever it is,  we're here with working musicians to help you grow and share that gift  with this wild and wonderful world.

Pop songs tend to follow a structure that goes: verse, chorus, verse, chorus, bridge, chorus.

You want the first verse melody to pull you in immediately.

You want someone to know what that song is in the first 4 seconds it even starts.

Because that's your first impression. I will sometimes spend literally days and weeks working on just the first line of a song.

I can call out basically every Queen song within the first beat.

Not bar— beat. The verses set the conversation tone, and you're involved in the story each moment after the next.

It's the setting, it's where we are, it's who I am.

It's how I feel about this person or myself.

Your verse might be split up into the main part of your verse and then what we call pre-chorus.

It connects the dots between your verse and your chorus.

The prehook is introducing— a lot of the times— the conflict.

That has to feel different  than the setup.