CHAPTER SEVEN

VERSE DEVELOPMENT AND POWER POSITIONS

Boxes represent the movement of ideas. They are form neutral. A series of three boxes can represent almost any formal movement:

• verse / chorus / verse / chorus / bridge / chorus

• verse / refrain / verse / refrain / bridge / verse / refrain (AABA)

• verse / pre-chorus / chorus / verse / pre-chorus / chorus / bridge / chorus

• verse / chorus / verse / chorus / verse / chorus

Boxes only show how the ideas evolve, regardless of the specific form you use. In this chapter, we'll look a little closer at the responsibility your verses have in making your boxes gain weight.

Think of your verses as colored spotlights. They shine their lights on their chorus or refrain. If two verses project exactly the same color, their choruses will look the same. If they project different or deeper colors, the choruses will look different.

When you keep your verses interesting and keep your idea moving forward, you'll have little trouble lighting up your chorus or refrain in different ways. You don't have to use formulas. You don't have to introduce a whole new cast of characters. You just have to pay attention.

Let's look at the verse development in Beth Nielsen Chapman's “Child Again.” Each verse projects a deeper color on its chorus, enlarging our way of seeing it, keeping it interesting. We'll look at two areas of this lovely lyric:

1. Its use of repetition: Because of strong verse development, the chorus becomes a deeper and more interesting color each time we see it.

2. Its power positions light up the chorus with the right color from the right angle to put crucial ideas in the strongest focus.

Here is the full lyric of “Child Again”:

First Verse Focus

The first verse contains three scenes, each one showing the old woman being taken somewhere. She is physically helpless, a focus firmly established right away:

This helplessness is reiterated by the following two scenes:

These scenes color the first chorus with helplessness. We see her helpless in the nursing home, being taken everywhere, but the chorus tells us:

We enter the chorus knowing her situation, and we are swept back to a time when she was running in the summer wind / Like a child again.

Since the verse puts her in a wheelchair, being taken and returned, we can't help but see running as a contrast. We interpret the chorus in the light of the verse.

Second Verse Focus

The second box turns the color of her relatives:

What terrific lines. Four generations are present in her room; no doubt she has little connection with the younger generations, nor do they have much with her:

She tries to pay attention, but her mind wanders off:

When the chorus repeats, we see her as a child with her own mother, a color carefully arranged by the second verse's focus on family. The emphasis is no longer on her running, but on the family (her mama) that she runs to, surrounded as she is by strangers. The second chorus lights up brilliantly, a new and different color made possible by strong verse development.

The bridge (an overlay of old-fashioned children's songs) is the coup de grâce. It shows us the colors of childhood inside her mind, or, more accurately, inside our own minds when we were children:

In our third and final look at the chorus, we see her with new eyes:

We see where she really is, back again with her mama, able to run home. Reality is doubled and reflected, colored by our knowledge that she is destined to follow her own mother all too soon, as inevitably as the generations crowding into her room will follow her. That is part of the point of showing us the children in the second verse, then showing her as a child running to her mama.

Many families visit relatives in nursing homes, and most leave saddened, often thinking, “She's losing it. She didn't even remember us.” But to see their loved one in this new light for the first time running in the summer wind / Like a child again is an emotional revelation. It is this startling insight into the mind of the old woman that lights up radio station switchboards wherever “Child Again” is aired.

POWER POSITIONS

The opening and closing lines of any lyric section are naturally strong. They are bathed in spotlights. If you want people to notice an important idea, put it in the lights of a power position, and you will communicate the idea more forcefully. (For a full treatment of power positions, read my book Songwriting: Essential Guide to Lyric Form and Structure.) Look at the opening line of “Child Again”: She's wheeled into the hallway.

Closing lines are also power positions, another place to light up an important idea. In “Child Again,” the closing line prepares us to enter the chorus. I call it a trigger position, because it releases us into the chorus, carrying whatever the line says with us, and therefore we see the chorus in the light of the idea, They return her to her room.

Look at the first line and the last line of “Child Again” in combination, and you'll see how they focus the meaning of the chorus:

Look at verse one carefully, and you'll see that it really contains two parts. The rhythm is basic common meter (like Mary had a little lamb), alternating first and third long phrases with shorter phrases in the second and fourth positions:

After these four lines, things are balanced. The structure has resolved. This creates a new beginning at line five — another power position. Look how it's used:

Taken is the first stressed syllable. Of the eight lines in the verse, two are opening positions, and two are closing positions. Look at the entire verse and see what messages the power positions communicate:

Chapman makes sure we enter the first chorus from the angle of physical helplessness. She uses her power positions — the first and last positions of the verse, plus the ending and beginning of its subsections — to lock our focus in, forcing us to see the first chorus the color she wants us to. Neat.

Not So Powerful Power Positions

Look what happens with different ideas in the power positions:

Even though the beauty of the original verse has suffered, the ideas haven't really changed, only their placement has changed. Look at the information that's in the power positions now:

Because the power positions focus us elsewhere, the chorus seems to stress her escape from routine rather than her physical disability.

Power Positions in Verse Two

The second verse introduces a different color with its opening and closing phrases:

This verse shifts focus to her room, where she is surrounded on Sunday by family visitors. They are external to her, shown by the brilliant metaphor closing the first subsection:

The family visits, mostly with each other. They are probably sad that she's “so out of touch,” even though some of them are virtual strangers, four generations away.

The family seems almost oblivious as she seems to slip in and out of their reality. They don't have a clue of where she really is. The trigger line sets up the contrast between the external and the internal:

The power positions in this verse force the new color onto the chorus. Outside, the generations chatter on; inside lies a place of peace, memory, and happiness.

Each verse works beautifully to set up its special view of the chorus. The accumulation of the two systems delivers the knockout:

Because her body is helpless, and because she is frustrated by the world her relatives seem so comfortable in, she seeks comfort in a kinder, gentler place away from boredom, routine, and frustration.

After the bridge shows us the colors of childhood again with her, old age becomes accessible; finally, we understand. That's the power of a perfectly developed song: It changes our way of looking at our lives and our surroundings.

More Power Positions

Opening and closing phrases are not the only way to create power positions. Wherever you create a special effect with your structure, you call attention to what you are saying. This extra focus gives the position its power. This one creates several power positions:

The opening phrase, as usual, is a power position. So is the fourth phrase, since we expect it to close the section. But it gains extra punch by rhyming early, at the second rather than the third stress. Phrase five is unexpected, adding special interest. The final phrase is the most powerful of the bunch.

Look at all the power generated in this pretty structure in “Slow Healing Heart” by Jim Rushing:

When the third phrase ends short, the acceleration gets our attention. Then the fourth phrase chimes in, and the fifth phrase closes with a rhyme. Six is another opening and calls extra attention to its length. I could argue that seven is a power position as well, but I won't. Five out of nine is plenty of action, a tribute to interesting structures. We'll see more of this in later chapters.

Moral: First be aware of where your power positions are: opening positions, closing positions, and surprises, like shorter, longer, or extra lines. Pay attention as you create them, then put something important there. Everything will come up rosy, seafoam green, Tangiers blue, sun yellow …