Verses, chorus, and how much you actually need
Okay. Plain words last time. Tonight we talk about shape — how many verses, whether you need a chorus, and how you know when to stop.
Short answer: less than you think. Almost always less than you think.
The problem I see most
People bring me a song with five verses because the idea kept going and they didn't want to lose any of it. I get it. But a song isn't a container for everything you thought of. It's a container for the one thing that matters, said a few different ways, and then it's done.
Remember the tractor song. Eleven verses. My wife Jill sat through every one of them, bless her, and when it was over all she said was "that's a lot of tractor." She wasn't wrong. I cut it to three verses and it got better every verse I cut. Same true thing, just less padding around it.
So here's what I want you to think about tonight: verse, chorus, verse. That's it. That's most of what you need.
What a verse does
A verse moves the story forward. Something happens, or something is noticed, that wasn't said yet. Verse two isn't verse one said again with different words — if it is, you don't need verse two.
Two verses is plenty for a lot of songs. Some of the best old songs I know only have two. People think three's the minimum. It's not. Three's just common.
What a chorus does
A chorus doesn't move forward. It's the part that stays still and says the true thing you found back in that "one line" lesson — the line the whole song's really about. Chorus comes back the same each time, mostly word for word. That repeating is the point. It's the part people can hold onto the second time they hear the song, and it's usually the part they remember weeks later even when they've forgotten the verses.
Not every song needs one. Plenty of old songs are just verses, no chorus, and they work fine. But if you've got a line that feels like it wants saying more than once, that's your chorus. Don't force one in where there isn't one.
How much you actually need — the test
Here's a practical way to check yourself, and I want you to actually do this tonight, not just nod at it:
- Write out your verses as you have them.
- For each verse, ask: does this tell me something new, or does it just feel like more of the same thing?
- Anything that's "more of the same" — cut it. Don't soften the cut. Just take it out and read what's left.
- If you have a line that keeps wanting to repeat, pull it out and put it by itself. That's your chorus, whether you knew it or not.
Most people find they had one real verse, a second verse that's mostly padding, and a chorus hiding in there that they hadn't noticed because it kept getting buried under the padding.
The washing-day story
I've told you my mother-in-law Nelda used to hum a washing-day song from when she was a girl. No recording, nobody else knew it. She never could remember how it ended — just trailed off at the same spot every time, like her memory hit a wall there.
I spent two weeks trying to write her an ending. Wrote four different last lines. She turned all four down. Not unkind about it, just — no, that's not it, no, not that either. The fifth one, she said "close enough." From Nelda, that's practically a parade.
What I noticed doing that: the song didn't need a big finish. It needed one line that matched the plainness of everything before it. I kept trying to write something bigger than the song, and every time I did, she knew it wasn't right, even without being able to say why. The right ending was smaller than I expected. That's usually true. People reach for a big last verse when a small one would land better.
Opinion, stated plainly
Nobody has ever complained that a song was too short. I mean that. Cut it down. If you're not sure whether to keep a verse, that's usually your answer already — you just don't want to hear it yet.
One caution
If you're recording yourself to check length — on your phone, whatever you've got — don't judge it while you're playing it. Record it, put the guitar down, walk into the other room, then listen. You hear length completely different when you're not the one holding the instrument. I found this out the hard way with timing a while back and it's true here too.
Before next time
Take whatever you're working on and cut it by one verse, on purpose, even if it hurts a little. Bring both versions next week — before and after — so we can talk about which one's actually the song.