Role
The bridge is often used to contrast with and prepares for the return of the verse and the chorus. "The b section of the popular song chorus is often called the bridge or release." For example, the B of AABA in thirty-two-bar form, with the verse surrounding the whole. While the bridge in verse-chorus and other forms is C, for example: ABABCAB. Lyrically, the bridge is typically used to pause and reflect on the earlier portions of the song or to prepare the listener for the climax. The term may also be used to refer to the section between the verse and the chorus, although this is more commonly referred to as the pre-chorus or link. The theme "The Song That Goes Like This" from the musical play Spamalot spoofs in its lyrics the abuse of the bridge in romantic songwriting: Now we can go straight / into the middle eight / a bridge that is too far for me. Similarly, in the Axis of Awesome song "This Is How You Write a Love Song", the lyrics humorously map the movement of the song from chorus to chorus using bridges. Additionally, Led Zeppelin makes an in-joke regarding the use of bridges in popular music in their song "The Crunge", asking, at the end, "Where's the confounded bridge?" The song, humorously, does not have a bridge.
Read more about this topic: Bridge (music)
Famous quotes containing the word role:
“The traditional American husband and father had the responsibilities—and the privileges—of playing the role of primary provider. Sharing that role is not easy. To yield exclusive access to the role is to surrender some of the potential for fulfilling the hero fantasy—a fantasy that appeals to us all. The loss is far from trivial.”
—Faye J. Crosby (20th century)
“A few [women] warrant our attention not because they have the answer but because they have rejected the mentality that insists there must be one answer. What makes them role models is not how much or how little they work, how many or how few hats they wear, but rather how well they understand, and accept, that for all rewards there will be commensurate sacrifice; for all gains, some loss; for any pleasure, some pain.”
—Melinda M. Marshall (20th century)
“Where we come from in America no longer signifies—it’s where we go, and what we do when we get there, that tells us who we are.
The irony of the role of women in my business, and in so many other places, too, was that while we began by demanding that we be allowed to mimic the ways of men, we wound up knowing we would have to change those ways. Not only because those ways were not like ours, but because they simply did not work.”
—Anna Quindlen (b. 1952)