But one thing I noticed, most verses are 35-45 seconds long. Is this a common denominator of Pop songs you think?

Jim replies:

Love the Donays!

Well, if you take a 180 second maximum, and allow for the hook (usually but not always the chorus) to be played at least three times (considered to be the minimum), while allowing for a verse to be played twice, you can see that each segment (all things being equal which of course they rarely are) will be roughly in the 35 second area anyway.

But why 180 seconds in the first place anyway?

As far back as I can remember, the "three-minute song" was the ideal, and I recall trying to persuade several radio stations to play a song which ran 3.35 and having each of them insist it be edited down to 2.55!

Radio had everything to do with the length of the pop song, preferring tracks lasting under three minutes, so as to pack as many tracks as possible into one hour, while at the same time telling the listener that it was hardly worth flipping the dial if the station played something he did not like - it would be gone in about 90 seconds anyway.

I think if radio had its way, all songs would have been about a minute long! Duane Eddy claimed that one of his early hits which clocked in at under two minutes, got far more airplay than most of his others, while Shel Silverstein's joke tune "The 25 Second Song" got far more airplay than the A side of the same single!

The entire words of that song were:

"All the DJs keep complaining,
That my songs are much too long,
So I've just gone and wrote myself
A 26 second song".

When Phil Spector for example, talked to songwriters writing for him, he always referred to the songs as "little three-minute symphonies for the kids".

The three-minute rule was so important than when he recorded "You've Lost That Lovin

Feeling", and Spector realised it was actually 3.50 - he printed the time on the label as 3.05! It was a week or two before PD's on radio stations worked out why their carefully-timed sgements were a minute out whenever they including "Feeling" in a sweep!

• RE: TRIVIA + Gerry & The Pacemakers - I'm The One - 1964 - John 03/02/2008 18:01:38 EST (0)