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One Weird Trick For Telling If the Second Stanza Got Moved Up
It almost seems impossible, doesn’t it? To know if a song’s second stanza got moved to first place? (Even if there’s linear storytelling in the song, it’s still hard to tell, because the second stanza could swap with the first as a foreshadowing teaser.) But there is one weird trick for knowing with certainty. And I’m now prepared to reveal all (for one can keep important secrets like this only so long before the yearning to share simply becomes unsupportable). The first stanza of a song surely tends to contain the first lines written by the songwriter — the germ, the heart of the song — and that first stanza tends to be the best written, strongest section. The second stanza tends to be filler, compelled by the laws of structure to mirror the first stanza while being slightly different. The second stanza is extraneous at worst, artificial surely, and oh-so-rarely brilliant. The issue is that the listener, not necessarily quite hooked into the song yet, tends to gloss over the first stanza. Horror — for one’s best stanza to go unappreciated! (And damn those catchy choruses for being the only thing most anyone recalls at a moment’s notice! Those gaudy choruses with their feather boas and their flashy sequins. All glitz and glamor, but where’s the substance?) The only hope is to swap stanzas 1 and 2. (If there’s a third stanza, the laws of ultimogeniture dictate that it stay behind and take care of the parents.) Let the weaker second stanza get glossed over, and as listeners find themselves hooked, hit them with the strong first stanza and really blow them away. Unnecessary proof of practice: Ratt’s “Round and Round.”
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