JPF Home Page Forums General Messages Songwriter Message Forum Experimenting with Song Structure

Well, in my case I usually always have some music in mind. But one way to get there just lyrically in the way you mentioned--last line containing the hook--is to write an AABA song. That's a classic old structure that has been used for lots of songs, from "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" to "Something". Just write four parts, with 1, 2 and 4 being structured the same, and 3 being somewhat different. The hook can be in the first lines, like "Blue Moon", or in the last lines, like "Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow".

I'm going to be really presumptuous and post two AABA lyrics by Couchgrouch, one with the hook in the first lines and another with the hook in the last lines. Hope this helps or sparks some ideas. -mk

Moonlight Skater

Moonlight skater
On your little ice pond hidden in the pines
Stars above are silver fruit on heaven’s vine
Cool wind in your scarlet curls
O lonely moonlight skater twirl

Moonlight skater
Finding sweet escape in leaps and figure eights
Floating into dreams with wings upon your skates
Spinning upward toward the sky
O lonely moonlight skater fly

You slip past your mother out into the bright moonglow
She holds her wine just like she once held you long ago
O you’ve lived a lifetime for one of your tender years
Are those snowflakes on your cherry cheeks or frozen tears

Moonlight skater
Safe there in the mist of midnight evergreens
Stars upon the ice are mirrors of your dreams
Faith has found your weary eyes
So lonely moonlight skater rise

©2008 Robert George


Fields of Forever

Ghostly mist and gates of iron, silver wreath around the moon
Shovel leaning on a backhoe, match struck in a midnight gloom
There’s a bond among the shadows even sunshine can’t sever
They surround that lonely digger tending fields of forever

Men who laid like dust and litter just below an overpass
Share with all a final shelter made of short and pampered grass
Then there’s others who once sweated over hammers and levers
While a tick-tock time clock marched them into fields of forever

And November leaves are brittle, sad and brown
Hanging low like the ears of some old hound
Fallen ones are swept away by unseen brooms
Where tonight a breeze can find some breathing room
Yet a higher wind will carry leaves of righteous endeavor
And they reach into the starlight up from fields of forever

Now there’s smoke among the spirits from the digger’s cigarette
As he kneels beside his shovel for a man he never met
For success does not lay claim to people wealthy or clever
But the faith of one who’s knelt down over fields of forever

©2008 Robert George