We Covered a Legendary Croatian Song :: Short Guide How To Create a Pop Song 101

You don't. You just hope for it. You can only see it in retrospective, when your Song has withstood the test of time, when generations of people drank to it, cried to it, when it gave shelter and comfort to oh so many broken hearts. This all sounds inconclusive, but you will realize it when, and if, it happens. 

Enough with the metaphysics, let's get down to the structure. The structure of a pop song is banal, really. The simplest formula is this:

INTRO > VERSE > CHORUS > BRIDGE (or the C PART) > CHORUS > END

You can add a couple of verses, or a couple of choruses, but the result is the same. In our case, the structure was as following: 

INTRO > (light)CHORUS > VERSE > (mega)CHORUS > (guitar solo) > BRIDGE > HUNDRED MORE CHORUSES

As with Vladimir Prop, who discovered that folk tales always follow the same sequence, although they might have a pair of extra choruses, we are in the same kind of situation. Essentially, the most important thing is that you have THREE PARTS:

1. A - the VERSE
2. B - the CHORUS
3. C - the BRIDGE

I have consisently ridiculed the C throughout the years, but finally I succumbed and realized that binarity doesn't cut it. You need to have a C part in order to give the listener the time to breath, to let his attention relax for a period of time, let him forget about the chorus. That's the most important thing, because the last chorus needs to be as grandiose as possible. That's why composers (by this I mean producers of mainstream radio music) often write really shitty C parts - because the worse it is, the chorus will come out better. Yep, it is counter-intuitive and paradoxical, but you really can get away with it. Because it doesn't matter what happened, it matters what happens next.

So, to get back to our song, we followed all of the above-mentioned rules of structure. The gods of pop are pleased for the ritual we followed, for sure. We introduced the song, then cut it to a low-level chorus, followed by a first real verse, then a stadium chorus. That's where we switched to the C part. First the solo, then silence and a slow build-up to the final choruses. The song itself is pretty long, I'm aware, but I don't see it as something necessarily grabbing your attention every second of the song. It moves forward, and if you lost track, you will get it back, because it was designed that way. 

As for the three P's, at the beginning, we were sure we got a Song, that one wasn't on us. It was written by one of the greatest pop composers in Croatia, Djordje Novković, and sung by the ultimate pop legend, Mišo Kovač, who makes stadiums roar with a flick of his finger. Songness, check. The same goes for the melody. So the most important thing for us to do was to give the song a dancy groove and to dot our I's regarding the structure and the dynamics of the song. That's what most of the arrangement was focused on. We built a nice backbone with only bass and the drums and then just stacked layers upon layers, closely examining what the effect on the each respective part will be. I was recording back vocals and guitars, while Mišo added synths, which in the end turned out to be crucial for the dynamics and the flow of the song. It must not get boring, unless you want it that way (see the infamous C part). So, every moment you think there's not enough going on and the you're losing the listener, you come up with some kind of a riff, a sound, a lick, to kind of shake him back to the song. And if you do it well and consistently, it should work out fine.

And that's what we did. After this lengthy theorethical part, I invite you all to listen to the song (upstairs) and let me know how it works for you. Because, in the end, you don't really know the original. But if you're that interested, here it is. 

Thanks a lot for reading and do comment on the song, I have no clue what your feelings might be. Take care!