Great Songs With Untypical Structure

[brandondrury]

Hey dudes/chicks,

I'm looking for examples of songs that don't fit the standard verse, chorus, verse, chorus, bridge, chorus, chorus structure that have been fairly big hits.

I'm not looking for good songs that no one knows. It won't help me with my article I'm writing. These need to be songs that people actually know already. If you have a song that you think deserves attention, create a thread called "Unknown Great Songs With Untypical Structure" or something.

Off hand, only two are jumping out at a me although I know there are tons of them out there.

Foo Fighters - The Best of You
Martina McBride - Safe In The Arms of Love

Brandon

[Brock]

bohemian rhapsody

[Louigi Verona]

Well, there is a whole range of songs that follow a scheme verse, verse, verse, verse. Those are not too typical for the pop scene though, but they are very typical for folk music. And if you take American Folk music, which is really not folk music, but poetry over guitar, you can name "Tom's Diner" by Suzanne Vega which follows the verse-verse-verse scheme.
All in all, with vocal works there is hardly any other scheme possible. You either have two themes interchanging or you have a single one.
There are of course, double songs - when one song has verse-chorus, then other song has verse2-chorus2, and then we're back to the first verse-chorus. The best example of this is Beatles song "A Day in the Life".
Other than that however I can hardly remember other examples. Only if it counts when singing is interchanged with large blocks of solo instrumentals and then you should go over jazz classics.

In conclusion, I'd say that other theoretical forms would be melody1-melody2-melody3-melody1, for instance, that is that the number of blocks is not two - verse, chorus - but much more. I think that it is most likely to occur in opera, since opera melodies tend to be more developed melodically and less blocky by nature.

[Vulconizer]

Check out " Change The Locks " by Lucinda Williams as recorded by Tom Petty.

I think it's a bit atypical and fairly well known.

Where would " Happy Birthday " come into all of this?

[jclampitt]

green day- brainstew, that song's still on the radio from time to time and the whole song is just the same five chords over and over again.

[brandondrury]

The Police - Every Breath You Take