Pinpointed: I’ll Say It Once
How avoiding repetition and breaking structures can make a great song
By Bailey Tolentino
Featured songs:
Cool About It - boygenius
How to disappear- Lana Del Rey
Halley’s Comet - Billie Eilish
ceilings - Lizzy McAlpine
While pop songs with the usual verse - pre-chorus - chorus - bridge - chorus structure surely have a certain magic to them, some of the most intriguing songs are those which avoid repetition but still appear to be quite cohesive. For this month’s edition of Pinpointed, I’m highlighting songs that I love by popular artists, pointing out how they are made great by their unique structural rule-breaking, despite still being pop songs. Some of these musical choices are not easily noticeable, or might go over one’s head, which is what I find so enthralling about these songs.
First off, we have ‘Cool About It’ and ‘How to Disappear’, which are unique in similar ways. Neither song has an identifiable chorus, though one might think they do; rather, they both consist of — essentially — three long verses. In ‘Cool About It’, each singer in the band sings one verse, each explaining a different scenario with whatever person the song is about, and how they have to remain nonchalant about how they actually feel regarding said situation. Whether it’s “trying to be cool about it,” “trying to forget about it,” or pretending they “don’t have to talk about it.” Each verse ends with the resolution that the narrator is not assured in their own thoughts, “knowing that [they] probably [aren’t] true”. While the melody of each verse does repeat, the lyrics never do. The separation of each verse and their stories is done by the lack of lyrical repetition rather than by the presence of a chorus. The words ‘cool about it’ are only sung once, but each verse manages to carry a similar feeling while using different words altogether. This exemplifies how lyricism can make a song so great and that a simple melody does not stop it from doing so.
‘How to disappear’ also uses lyrics to its advantage, though it takes the approach of a chronological narrative rather than the one-sided conversation or confessional that ‘Cool About It’ uses. Similarly, the melody repeats with this song, but the lyrics and perspectives change constantly. An instrumental interlude follows the two failed love stories of the past and acts as a transition like one you’d see in a movie, reading something along the lines of “five years later…” ; and it leads to the final verse which is clearly sung by a more mature narrator who now lives a peaceful, white-picket-fence, life. The closing verse makes it clear that the rest of the song was told in retrospect, sharing the story to us listeners of how she disappeared from those previous lives that she could have ended up having with those ex-lovers. In contrast to ‘Cool About It’, however, this song’s perspectives vary in the temporal setting and which man the narrator is currently with, rather than on different random scenarios all happening with the same person. ‘How to disappear’ is more of an external narrative. The choices to never repeat entire sections of lyrics and to change the production style in the last verse are how Lana makes it clear that the story is moving forward in time. That said, the repetition in the melody keeps the story coherent and the flow allows the song to remain moving.
‘Halley’s Comet’ and ‘ceilings’ introduce us to other ways the rules of song structures can be broken to make something beautiful. The prominent feature of the former song is the way it abandons the need to define a chorus. When Eilish sings the words, “Halley’s Comet comes around more than I do,” it’s easy to assume that this is the chorus. However, neither those words nor the melody they are sung to reappear as the song goes on. As a matter of fact, this song abandons the need for melodic repetition whatsoever, as the second verse is completely different from the first. Though it is clearly a verse because it resembles the opening of the song, it is still a new melody. The only repeated melodies are perhaps the “pre-choruses,” if we want to even call them that: “But in my dreams … quite a few” and “I was good … like I do.”
That said, Eilish adds slight vocal riffs and has a different amount of syllables to make the second “pre-chorus” sound at most reminiscent of the first, and then immediately follows it with a small instrumental break and yet another “pre-chorus.” This final one even sounds like it could be the end of the song, when she confesses that “right now, in this moment, I feel more and more like I was made for you” then lets out a heartbreaking sigh before repeating, ‘… for you’. Once again defying structural typicalities, the song fades out to an ending that is not only melodically different from the rest of the song, but is also produced differently and relies more on a piano than a synthesizer. The lyrics sound like a diary entry, as Eilish paints the scene and emotional state in which she wrote and made the song come to life. Though the melody is — technically — all over the place, the song is still cohesive as its melodic confusion, if you will, only goes on to compliment the confusion that comes with trying to accept the heartbreak that the song is about in the first place.
In ‘ceilings’, McAlpine similarly abandons the need for defined verses and choruses. There is also no explicit bridge; instead there is an outro that is drastically different in production and pace, just like that of ‘Halley’s Comet’. The two verses seem melodically identical in their first few lines, the addition of percussion to the second verse being the only contrasting feature. However, the following lines are more heavily syllabic in the second verse than in the first; and the final line in the second verse creates an uneasy feeling compared to its corresponding line in the first, as its final chord is inverted and adds a seventh. Appropriately, it is placed right before McAlpine sings the word “chaos.” The “assumed chorus” then changes from “but it’s so short” to “but it’s over,” adding drama to the story, and this outro adds a whole new melody that did not exist in the first “chorus”. It all closes out with a very singular line, “before”, accompanied by an exhale similar to the one in ‘Halley’s Comet’. This also gives the impression that the song is coming from a place of reflection, just like the ending of ‘How to disappear’.
Where titles are usually the hook or topic of a song, they are only small details in these four songs. The unconventional structures and use of narrative are far more interesting and that’s why the endings of each song attract the most attention, as they close out the stories. Furthermore, small details that are often not considered in a song — such as distinguishable exhales, changes in perspective, the adding of syllables, the swapping out of singular words, slight changes to chord progressions, isolations of certain melodies, and production sounds — make these songs thrilling in their rule-breaking. Yet, they are still catchy in their own way and do not strive so far as to be considered “experimental” or “underground.” These nuances are utilized so well that there is no need for a catchy chorus or any repetition/predictability in their structure, and they are exactly what make these songs as fantastic and unique as they are.