How to write a chorus that laughs at you (and with you)

The chorus is the part of the song people take home with them. Verses get forgotten, bridges get skipped, but the chorus stays stuck like chewing gum on the sole of your shoe. That's why I take it very seriously, even when what I want is for it to be funny. Especially then.

I've spent two years writing the lyrics for PLANETA GAYFOLK and I've learnt something that sounds silly: there are choruses that laugh at you and choruses that laugh with you, and the difference between them is tiny on paper and enormous to the ear.

The distance of mockery

A chorus that laughs at someone needs distance. Whoever's speaking in the song, and whoever's listening, stand outside, pointing. That works very well for an ex who's earned it, for example. But there's a problem: if you repeat it four times, the way a chorus repeats, the mockery turns cruel. What was funny the first time round looks like bullying by the fourth.

A chorus that laughs with you does something else. It puts the listener inside the joke. The ridicule is shared. You've done that too, you've said that too, and you know it, and that's why you laugh. Repeating it doesn't wear it out; it strengthens it, because every time round is like a knowing nudge.

My trick, when I'm unsure, is to read the chorus out loud and ask myself who comes off worst. If it's someone else and nobody else, I revise it. If we all come off a bit badly, me included, it's usually fine.

I nearly always put the title in the chorus. It's hardly an original rule; half the radio and half a century of pop obey it. But in funny songs it has an extra advantage: the title works as the punchline. The verse sets up and the title lands. It's the structure of a good old-fashioned joke, set-up and final line, only with music and on repeat.

That's why it matters so much to me that the title sounds good said quickly. «Tan Cateto» is four syllables that fit anywhere, and that helps. A longer title forces you to build the chorus around it, like pitching a tent around a tree you can't move.

What can't be forced

There's a mistake I made many times at the start and am still tempted by: wanting the whole chorus to be funny. A joke on every line. That's exhausting. A listener can't laugh four times in ten seconds, and if you try, in the end they don't laugh once.

What works better is a chorus with a single comic idea and the rest almost neutral, even a little serious. The seriousness acts as a mattress. When the funny line arrives, it lands on something soft and bounces. If everything is funny, there's no mattress and the joke smacks into the floor.

I've also learnt to distrust rhymes that are too clever. A dazzling rhyme draws attention to itself, and in a chorus that's a distraction. I prefer simple rhymes, almost nursery-rhyme simple, that leave the idea in the spotlight.

The music test

I write every lyric, and I produce the music with artificial intelligence tools that I direct. That has a very specific effect on choruses. I can hear several versions of the same lyric with different melodies, and right away you can tell whether the joke holds up. Some lines made me laugh on paper and go flat with music. Others didn't seem like much and, put in exactly the right spot in the bar, suddenly have a wit I hadn't noticed.

It's a lesson in humility. Humour on the page and humour with a melody aren't the same thing. The second depends on rhythm, on the syllable that falls on the strong beat, on a half-second pause before the key word. Often the important decision isn't what I say but where I put it.

I choose, I discard, I try again. Some choruses have been through so many versions that I no longer remember the first one, and that's probably for the best.

The chorus I most enjoy writing is the one that laughs at the narrator himself. The one that says, more or less: look what I've done, what a disaster, and here I am telling you about it. It's self-defence humour. You get in before whoever was going to laugh at you and leave them with no ammunition.

But it has a limit. If you laugh at yourself all the time, you end up looking like someone with no self-respect. So even in the most self-critical chorus I try to leave a bit of dignity standing. A small flourish of pride at the end. Yes, I got it wrong, but look how well I tell it. That mixture of embarrassment and poise is, for me, the house style.

Shouting it together

In the end, a chorus is written for other people to repeat. In the kitchen, in the car, at a party in the small hours. And when a group of friends bellows a line that's laughing at all of them, something lovely happens: the mockery becomes an anthem. It's no longer a joke about you. It's a joke that is you, with your friends, celebrating it.

I don't always pull it off. But when I write a chorus I think of that scene. If I can picture four people shouting it arm in arm and it doesn't make me cringe, I keep it.

All the lyrics, with their full choruses, are at mikesaintlouis.com.