The Four Parts of (Great) Pop Songs

**Brian Lehrer** (0:10)
Brian Lehrer on WNYC. So to end the show today, do you know the award-winning podcast Switched On Pop?
They just launched a new series on Netflix. Wait, podcasts on Netflix? Yes, you heard that right. For the uninitiated, Switched On Pop has been described as a witty accessible guide that illuminates the musical concepts behind modern pop hits. Their first two episodes on the intro and the verse are already out on Netflix. This four-part series does break down the different components of pop songs, and that way they've got an episode each on the intro, the verse, the chorus, and the bridge, and they explain what makes each component really great, and they give some fun examples. So we pulled a few for the fun of it that we're about to play, as we welcome the co-hosts of Switched On Pop, Charlie Harding, a songwriter and associate professor at the Berklee School of Music, and an adjunct professor at NYU Steinhardt Music Performing Arts Professions. I almost said that right.
Nate Sloan, musicologist, associate professor at the USC Thornton School of Music. Welcome to WNYC, Charlie and Nate.

**Charlie Harding** (1:18)
Thank you. Thanks for having us on. Great to be here.

**Brian Lehrer** (1:21)
Your four-part series begins by looking at the intro to pop songs, and you chose the 2004 hit, which almost everybody knows. Let's get it started by the Black Eyed Peas that begins on Fergie's lyrics. So here's 19 seconds of that intro.

**SPEAKER_4** (1:45)
And the bass keeps running, running, and running, running, and running, running, and running, running, and running, running, and running, running, and running, running, and running, running, and.

**Brian Lehrer** (1:56)
So good. Charlie, what are you hearing of this intro, and why is it a good example of a song intro?

**Charlie Harding** (2:02)
Well, we needed a way to introduce ourselves to the Netflix audience. And so obviously, let's get it started. Here we are, we're introducing ourselves. This is a song that opens up with the main chorus hook. Let's get it started, kind of sets the vibe. It prefigures the best moment of the song.
And then it tells you what it's going to do. The beat is going to run and run and run and run until the song finally arrives, comes in, and you have had the perfect little amuse-bouche for the song to come.

**Brian Lehrer** (2:30)
Amuse-bouche?

**Charlie Harding** (2:32)
Yeah, something to whet the palate, something to excite you to set the scene of what the song is going to be.

**Brian Lehrer** (2:39)
Now I know what they teach in Music School. You say in your podcast episode that as a music professor at Berklee and NYU, your students know you for not really liking intros. You tell them to keep them as short as possible. What's your beef with intros?

**Charlie Harding** (2:55)
Oftentimes intros can run on really long. Back in the 90s, the average number one hit song had an intro of over four minutes and nearly 30 seconds.
Songs are typically around three minutes now. So I like a song that just jumps right in, gets to the punch, you know what you're getting.
Oftentimes the intro is the last thing that people write, maybe they just kind of play four chords over and over again. If you're going to write a great intro, you have to give it a lot of time. And I think so often intros can be undercooked.

**Brian Lehrer** (3:24)
And the form of a song intro has fundamentally changed since the 90s. You tell us research shows that the average song length peaked in 1998, four minutes and 29 seconds for the whole song. So Nate, before I play an example, how does that compare to the average song length today?

**Nate Sloan** (3:44)
Today, it's closer to three minutes. So we've lost a minute and a half on average from our typical pop song over the last 20 years. And there might be some myriad reasons for that. One of them is certainly the way we listen.
If you're streaming music on Spotify or another platform, artists try and grab your attention right from the start. They don't have time for a long intro. In fact, sometimes they'll even just start with the chorus of the song, which is something we typically encounter in the Billboard Hot 100 today.

**Brian Lehrer** (4:18)
So here's an example you highlighted from the past. This is the intro for the song Sunny Came Home by Sean Colvin from 1996
Yeah, and that's just 15 seconds of a longer instrumental intro, right? I think it's about twice as long. So Charlie, what are you hearing in that intro? And is it a quote unquote bad intro by your standards today? I personally like vocals that have a lot of well-developed instrumental settings like that we're setting up. Yeah, no, exactly.