Do we really need songs to be over 3 minutes? Two months ago, a UK-based alt-pop/drum n’ bass singer-songwriter and producer PinkPantheress went on ABC News and discussed her work with journalist Ashan Singh. In the interview, the artist touches on the length of her songs, which are infamously known to be short and averaging around 2 minutes and a half. Just on her Spotify alone, you can see that her top song Pain from her album to hell with it is 1 minute and 38 seconds long with her 10 track mixtape summing up to only 18 minutes long. The artist defends this, by saying “a song doesn’t need to be longer than 2 minutes 30, in [her] opinion” and that “we don’t need to repeat a verse, we don’t need to have a bridge, we don’t need it - we don’t need a long outro.” Her comments led to a chaotic discourse on the internet as many wonder what led the production of music to range from 10 minute long progressive rock to the current Billboard Top 100 standings which feature songs that are generally under 3 minutes. What does this shift in music output mean for the future of music production?
Have songs always been this short?
It is important to understand that a value over short song lengths has not just become in vogue in recent times. In the 1960s, Vox reports that the average length of songs was also two minutes and 30 seconds. This was likely due to vinyl production as 12 inch 78 rpm vinyls were only able to store up to 3 minutes 30 seconds of music, almost forcing artists to fit their music into that timeframe. As the vinyl constraints loosened, the music industry arrived at Extended Plays (EPs) and Long plays (LPs) which held up to 7 minutes and 22 minutes respectively. This allowed artists to experiment with track lengths more, coinciding with the rise of the progressive rock genre when long intros, guitar solos, and bridges were abundant. However, for more radio friendly tunes, time constraints were still considered seeing that shorter songs were preferred by DJs since they catered more to the radio’s ad requirements. In short, shorter songs meant more time for ads and more revenue.
In recent times, radio has become less important in terms of promoting music since music streaming services such as Spotify and Apple Music gradually grew to become the main consumption medium. Yet despite this change, the length of musical tracks continued to decrease, which was particularly evident in engineer Michael Tauberg’s 2018 study. The results showed that the average length of songs in the Billboard Hot 100 decreased from 4 minutes 10 seconds in the early 2000s to 3 minutes 30 seconds in 2018. Music from artists such as PinkPantheress or just a quick glance at the current Billboard Hot 100 standings will show that most songs on the top of the list do not even break 3 minutes and 30 seconds.
What is missing?
A typical pop song structure would normally feature two or three loops of a verse, pre chorus, chorus, sometimes an instrumental solo or break, and a bridge. On top of that, there are some instances when intros and outros would sometimes also be featured in a typical pop song. You might think that with all those components, songs would surely find themselves having a longer running time. The growing dismissal of bridges and instrumental breaks in not only pop songs, but modern hits in general shift importance to the track’s chorus. See Sabrina Carpenter’s recent summer hit Espresso, a 2 minute 55 second song which opens immediately to an earworm of a chorus. This chorus repeats another 3 times throughout the entire song, cementing the melody into the listeners’ brains.
With the expanding importance of TikTok in music promotion, many artists are often captured lip-syncing to the same 15 second snippet of their new single with the 15 second likely being the song’s chorus. This form of marketing has made it so that artists are no longer given 2 minutes and 30 seconds to promote their music, but a mere 15 seconds to capture the audience’s attention. In this new form of music consumption, the chorus becomes the priority, so why would an artist need to add a guitar solo or a bridge before the final chorus when all it does is delay the gratification of hearing the 15 second snippet that is trending on Tik Tok? To add to this problem, Spotify only counts streams after the first 30 seconds of the song is played, so it is likely that more songs launch into the chorus instantly or cut the intro altogether in order to hook the listener instantly.
Loss of creativity?
In an interview with Youtuber Rick Beato, British musician Sting mourns the loss of the bridge in music. He says “the bridge has disappeared. For me, the bridge is therapy … the structure is therapy. In modern music, most of it, you’re in a circular trap … You’re not getting that release.” This is clear in Chappell Roan’s 2024 single Good Luck, Babe! which features a rather traditional pop song structure with a verse, pre chorus, chorus, and a bridge before the final cathartic chorus. You can find Roan’s mix of singing and shouting about the subject of her song in the song’s bridge, building anger and tension which increases before the instruments drop out of the mix. She whispers “you know I hate to say it, I told you so.” Then in a moment of release like the one referenced by Sting, she belts out the final “I told you so.” before launching into the final chorus. Not only does this create for a satisfying grand finale, but the lyrics in the bridge adds depth to the nuanced story Roan tells throughout the song, as she paints a scenario of the subject waking up to her husband in the future filled with regret. This bridge went viral on Tik Tok as users found themselves drawn to Roan’s emotional and hard-hitting lyrics, reminding everyone how useful bridges can be when creating a good song.
Another example of this, we look at a different Sabrina Carpenter song with her earlier hit Nonsense. The track’s outro features Carpenter singing rhymes in an almost improvised manner, rhyming together the last word of each line. On the surface, this outro seems to be nothing but a fun ending, with a melodic reprise of the chorus. However, Carpenter’s performance of this song has become viral throughout her Emails I Can’t Send Tour along with her other live show performances as Carpenter improvises the outro each night, singing a new set of lines which relate to the venue she is performing in.
Where do we go from here?
Throughout music history, bridges, pre choruses, intros and outros have proved to be opportunities for artists to show off their creativity, and at the same time adding interesting layers to their song. While it is true that the music industry has become increasingly difficult to make a living off of, forcing artists to succumb to marketing schemes that would boost their music streams and sales. Chappell Roan and Sabrina Carpenter are two clear examples of artists who create catchy hooks and earworms with more interesting song structures. This shows that you don’t need to follow the new norm of music structure but instead have an interesting adaptation of your own style. Optimistically, the organic growth of artists with innovative musical approaches such as Chappell Roan show the market’s value of creativity which we can only hope will grow in the future.
Works Cited:
Daher, Joe “Trends: Artists Tactfully Shorten Songs to Increase Chance at Virality” The Dartmouth 18 Sep. 2023, https://www.thedartmouth.com/article/2023/09/trends-shorter-songs
Davies, Hannah J “Is TikTok killing off the pop music bridge?” The Guardian 9 Dec. 2022, https://www.theguardian.com/music/2022/dec/09/pop-music-is-tiktok-killing-the-bridge
Singh, Ashan “Prime Playlist: PinkPantheress reveals why her songs are so short” ABC
News - Youtube 24 May. 2024, https://youtu.be/jvJ_sBxv5rw?si=by5aQhIs0JG5-KVv
Beato, Rick “The Sting Interview” Youtube 19 Nov. 2021, https://youtu.be/efRQh2vspVc?si=NcrmQMMXmbN67ch3
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