Songwriter U: On Constructing The Bridge

An exploration of that section that The Beatles called “the middle eight.”

Although the art and craft of songwriting has evolved profoundly over the past decades, one aspect which has remained constant is song structure itself. Although Dylan and others exploded the song in terms of lyrical expression, never did they invent a whole new form of song. Instead they used the fundamental forms which songwriters have used for decades, the traditional song structures of verse, chorus and bridge.

Of these three parts, the bridge is unique in that it rarely, if ever, repeats. True, in certain songs by The Beatles and others, the bridge is repeated. But in the majority of songs it is heard only once, which distinguishes it from the chorus and verse, both of which are designed for repetition. They repeat several times in a song, while a bridge is usually crossed once only. (Usually!)

Called often the “middle-eight” by The Beatles and others who often created eight-bar bridges, it’s a delightful aspect of song structure, in that it can carry a song to a whole other place, both musically and lyrically, for a brief passage of time before returning to where we began.

Musically, this allows the songwriter to compose a bridge melody that is more complex and unusual than the rest. Lyrically, the bridge can pull back, not unlike a camera in a movie pulling back from a close-up to a big wide angle shot that suddenly shows much more than we’ve seen.  It allows the songwriter to provide and overview or separate perspective on the proceedings. The bridge then returns to the chorus, or to another verse, bringing us back where we started. As discussed in recent essays, it’s easy to go to a new place musically, but the challenge remains always how to get back, how to return to the melody in a way that seems inevitable and uncontrived.

Great examples abound, such as the “Love Hurts,” by Felice & Bouldleaux Bryant, recorded by The Everly Brothers, Gram Parsons & Emmylou Harris, Nazareth and Roy Orbison. Lyrically it fuses a first-person reflection on the pain of love:

I really learned a lot, really learned a lot
Love is like a flame
It burns you when it’s hot

From “Love Hurts”

The bridge, however, shifts the focus and the music simultaneously to create a new place. The lyrics deepen here and switch from the first-person to third, reflecting on way love leads often to self-delusion:

Some fools think of happiness
Blissfulness, togetherness
Some fools fool themselves I guess
They’re not foolin’ me

Musically, the bridge shifts from the major-key to the minor, founded on the VI chord. A beautiful ascending melody grows from the use of the VI chord with its secondary dominant chord, a chromatic flavor that intensifies the effect. (In G, for example, the chorus shifts to the VI, E minor, and revolves around it and a B7, the major version of the III chord, hence creating the secondary-dominant result.)  To return to the tonic – the I chord – the songwriters end the bridge with the V, D major, which leads back to the I, and a new verse in first-person.

Similarly, the bridge in The Beatles “We Can Work It Out” shifts lyrical and musical tone by injecting an alternate attitude. While the verses and chorus, written by McCartney, are optimistic, the bridge – written by Lennon – is not, and this opposition creates a poignantly human expression, the balance of hope and reality.  After McCartney’s cheerful promise of being able to work this thing out, Lennon interjects “life is very short and there’s no time for fussing and fighting my friend…”

Many other Beatles bridges served this same function of musical and lyrical shift, from early hits such as “I Want To Hold Your Hand” which shifts in this G-major context to the minor V –D minor –  a sophisticated chord shift not unlike something Cole Porter would do. In later work, such as “A Day In The Life,” the song famously shifts cinematically from the G major verse progression written by Lennon, into an E major bridge by McCartney painted in wholly other colors: “Woke up, got out of bed…”   

Tom Petty had a method he called “modular songwriting,” based on the principle that each section of a song be equally strong. It would not be acceptable to have a great verse and chorus, but a weak bridge. He had what he considered his “A-songs” and his “B-songs,” and would work on songs as long as necessary to turn the B-songs into As. That often required working on the bridge for a long time, to find the perfect modular piece. 

Sometimes, though, the bridges would simply appear, as with “Southern Accents,” in which the beautiful verse containing a vision of his mother came to him complete, both lyrics and music. “The first time I played those chords on the bridge,” he said, “I had it. Those were the perfect chords. Sometimes it takes a long time to find a bridge.” 

The bridge of Paul Simon’s “Still Crazy” uses a method he’d never used before to ensure its individual musical tone. He wrote down each note from the 12-tone scale already used, and created the bridge entirely from notes which had yet to be heard. It was a “mathematical game,” as James Taylor put it, “which worked.” Written mostly in G major, the bridge lifts to A major, before returning to G for the final verse.

Lyrically, the song also shifts from its narrative to the songwriter feeling anxious in the middle of the night:

“Four in the morning
Crapped out, yawning
Longing my life away…”

In these and other examples, we see the powerful potential of the bridge to remove us from the moment to a different perspective, both musically and lyrically distinct from the other sections, always with the same function: to create a momentary deviation from the action before returning to the fray.