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 real test of a man is not how well he plays the role he has invented for himself, but how well he plays the role that destiny assigned to him.”
—Jan Patocka (1907–1977)
“All of the assumptions once made about a parent’s role have been undercut by the specialists. The psychiatric specialists, the psychological specialists, the educational specialists, all have mystified child development. They have fostered the idea that understanding children and promoting their intellectual well-being is too complex for mothers and requires the intervention of experts.”
—Elaine Heffner (20th century)
“In today’s world parents find themselves at the mercy of a society which imposes pressures and priorities that allow neither time nor place for meaningful activities and relations between children and adults, which downgrade the role of parents and the functions of parenthood, and which prevent the parent from doing things he wants to do as a guide, friend, and companion to his children.”
—Urie Bronfenbrenner (b. 1917)