Where's that confounded bridge?!
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At the theoretical level, song hooks are imbued with clever twists like harmonic modulations, chord 'borrowing' and turnarounds. Now these devices have devolved from the songwriter's toolkit in much the same way Cole Porter Moon-June rhyming schemes became obsolete by the 1960s in favor of new compositional devices that made them frumpy and old hat. The classic bridge is now in this category. Nonetheless I still love to put them in songs.
Bridges (sometimes used synonymously with middle-eight) are difficult to do well because not any musical transition can qualify as a bridge device. They typically appear only once in a composition: If a section is repeated, it technically is not a bridge. Some regard the "life is very short..." phrase in the Beatles' "We Can Work It Out" or the "why she had to go..." phrase in "Yesterday" as bridges, but since they are repeated more than once, they only lead back to verses. Bridges are a kind of one-way trip to the end of the song. (In films it is called the denouement)
Here are some examples. The list was actually longer than this, but as I re-listened to the songs, many of what I thought were bridges were really just transitional material, or B-phrases.
Be Still My Beating Heart - Sting ("Never to be wrong, Never to make promises that break...")
Help Me - Joni Mitchell ("Didn't it feel good?")
Last Train to Clarksville (Boyce/Hart) - It possibly has two bridges--one a middle "middle 8" (the "do do do" part) which is more of an instrumentalverse, then the actual middle 8 (or 16) (the G-F vamp with vocal aahs), which leads back to the chorus, which is where bridges typically go.
One Way or Another - Blondie (Guitar solo leads to key and feel change culminating in the looped outro)
Under The Spell Of The Handout - Cody ChesnuTT (Meter/feel change from shuffle to cut time)
Take Me to Church - Hozier. (No masters or kings when the ritual begins...)
The High Road - Broken Bells. (It has a bridge but it falls off of it at the end. It needs a reprise perhaps.)
Back On The Chain Gang - The Pretenders (The powers that be...)
Pretty Good Year - Tori Amos (Well, what's it gonna take 'til my baby's alright)
Someone Saved My Life Tonight - Elton John ("And I would have walked head on to the deep end of the river...") This is one of the longest bridges, with another extension at the end of it.
Towers of London - XTC ("I've seen it in a painting...")
Real By Reel - XTC ("Now I lay me down to sleep ...")
Holding On For Life - Broken Bells ("Well you might belong to another time...")
Hold Me Now - Thompson Twins (synth arpeggios)
40 Mark Strasse - The Shins
Soul Cages - Sting (And he dreamed of the ship on the sea...)
Tomorrow We'll See - Sting (I know it's just not in my plan for someone to care who I am) [Sting also uses the bridge as a way to modulate to another key]
Let It Grow - Eric Clapton (Guitar Solo)
Love Me Again - John Newman (Meter change from 4/4 to 2/2)
Clocks - Coldplay (Verse is in Eb Mixolydian and the bridge is in Eb Dorian)
Veronica - Elvis Costello ("On the Empress of India..." section)
King For a Day - XTC ("You're only here once so you gotta get it right..." section)
At The Other End of the Telescope - Elvis Costello ("Lie down baby now don`t say a word...)
Don't Dream It's Over - Crowded House (Finn's guitar solo)
Chocolate Cake - Crowded House ("And the dogs are on the road, we're all tempting fate...)
How Will You Go - Crowded House ("And you'll know I'll be fine...just don't ask me how it's going."
Englishman In New York - Sting ("Modesty, propriety, leads to notoriety...") In this live version, the bridge truly leads to somewhere else except back to a verse)
It's Alright For You - The Police (This actually has one long bridge with a little step in front of it: an abrupt modulation at 1:24 leading to a call-response solo by Andy Summers followed by a slide solo. The small step then becomes the outro vamp.)
No Reply - The Beatles ("If I were you I realized that I...")
I Can't Stand Up For Falling Down - Elvis Costello/Sam & Dave (The vow that we made...)
Psycho Killer - Talking Heads ("Ce que j'ai fais, ce soir la...")
Dock of the Bay - Otis Redding (Looks like nothing's going to change...)
I Can See Clearly Now -Johnny Nash (Look all around there's nothing blue sky...)
Love, Reign o'er Me - The Who (On the dry and dusty road...)
Oliver's Army - Elvis Costello (Hong Kong is up for grabs...)
Summer Breeze - Seals & Crofts (And I come home from a hard day's work...)
However Much I Booze - The Who (Then the night comes down like a cell door closing)
Feel free to send in your bridge examples.
