Bridge (music)

In music, especially western popular music, a bridge is a contrasting section that prepares for the return of the original material section. The bridge may be the third eight-bar phrase in a thirty-two-bar form (the B in AABA), or may be used more loosely in verse-chorus form, or, in a compound AABA form, used as a contrast to a full AABA section.

The term comes from a German word for bridge, Steg, used by the Meistersingers of the 15th to the 18th century to describe a transitional section in medieval bar form. The German term became widely known in 1920s Germany through musicologist Alfred Lorenz and his exhaustive studies of Richard Wagner's adaptations of bar form in his popular 19th-century neo-medieval operas. The term entered the English lexicon in the 1930s—translated as bridge—via composers fleeing Nazi Germany who, working in Hollywood and on Broadway, used the term to describe similar transitional sections in the American popular music they were writing.

The bridge is often used to contrast with and prepare for the return of the verse and the chorus. "The b section of the popular song chorus is often called the bridge or release." For example, the B of AABA in thirty-two-bar form, with the verse surrounding the whole. While the bridge in verse-chorus and other forms is C, for example: ABABCAB. Lyrically, the bridge is typically used to pause and reflect on the earlier portions of the song or to prepare the listener for the climax. The term may also refer to the section between the verse and the chorus, though this is more commonly called the pre-chorus or link. The lyrics of the theme, "The Song That Goes Like This", from the musical play Spamalot spoofs the abuse of the bridge in romantic songwriting: "Now we can go straight / into the middle eight / a bridge that is too far for me". Similarly, in the Axis of Awesome song "This Is How You Write a Love Song", the lyrics humorously map the movement of the song from chorus to chorus using bridges. In the song "Get Up (I Feel Like Being a) Sex Machine", James Brown asks if he can "take the band to the bridge". Led Zeppelin makes an in-joke regarding the use of bridges in popular music in their song "The Crunge", asking, at the end, "Where's the confounded bridge?" The song, humorously, does not have a bridge.

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