SONG STRUCTURES

Lesson 5: Use predictable patterns for hooks, verses, choruses and more

How come some songs are instant earworms, as if we know what’s coming before we hear it? The answer lies in ‘binary bias’ – the tendency to predict musical events in pairs, pairs of pairs, and so on. It’s why the most predictable rhythmic forms follow multiples of two (2, 4, 8, 16 etc). It also explains why hooks, verses and choruses in Eurovision tend to be four, eight, 16 or 32 bars long, why 4/4 and 2/4 time are typical meters, and why beats are subdivided into twos (quavers) and fours (semiquavers). However, occasionally, variations on this Euro-pop formula do occur.

The next most natural grouping number is three – e.g., three quavers per beat, or 12/8 time. Russia have twice done well with this: You Are The Only One and Scream finished third in 2016 and 2019. There can also be three beats in a bar, as with Spain’s entries in 2010 and 2018. Italy’s 2017 entry bends the rule with a six-bar pre-chorus (thus divisible by three), as do the six-bar verses in Romania’s 2015 entry All Over Again. And, though there have been no odd-time Eurovision winners, Sweden cleverly implied a changing meter where chord changes don’t line up with the binary structure in 2012 winner Euphoria.