Stealing songwriting techniques from Cole Porter’s Anything Goes
I briefly mentioned this song in a recent post. This isn’t the best performance of it, but it will do for our purposes (here’s another recording).
There are some songwriting ideas worth pointing out (and stealing).
1. The lyrics
In olden days, a glimpse of stocking
was looked on as something shocking,
now heaven knows
Anything goes.
Do I really need to say anything about these, other than to mention that they’re brilliant?
2. The choice of scale
That verse melody only uses a Major pentatonic scale. That, combined with a three note pattern over a 4/4 time signature, followed by a high-note climax and you’ve got a killer eight bar melody
3. The Structure.
Notable structural elements include an extended introduction and the use of what was a standard form in the ‘Great American Songbook’: the AABA, or 32 bar song structure.
What is that? Simple: take an 8 bar melody, like the one that fits the lyrics above, repeat it with different words ala Strophic form, then throw in a middle 8 bars that contrast in some way, before finally repeating the first 8 bar melody.
None of them are new ideas, and Cole Porter didn’t invent them (though he did use them particularly well), so why not see if you can use them too?
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About the Author
Tom IndieSongwriter.net is a website about songwriting. It is written by Tom Slatter, a musician and teacher who can also be found at tomslatter.co.uk. IndieSongwriter, used to be called Songwright.co.uk.
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What is also interesting is that the notion of the sung intro has also disappeared from popular songwriting. I wonder when that was.
Good question, Michael.
Let’s see… Bohemian Rhapsody had one, so sung intros lasted at least until the mid 70s.
Plenty of songs have an introductory verse before the song proper starts, but a proper sung intro needs different material than the main verse doesn’t it. Off the top of my head, I can’t think of a more recent one at the moment.
I finde it very clever and I use it for my dissertation about Cole Porter, if you don’t mind. Thank you and go on! Smiles Marcellina