![]() This helps stress the ‘direct address’ nature of the lyrics: it conveys the sense that the listener is eavesdropping on an actual live conversation. Thus, every verse of Lonesome Tonight resolves on the word ‘tonight’. ![]() They also tended to feature the song title in the last line of each verse (aka a refrain). Structurally speaking, ballads had no choruses, but were instead made up of verses and the occasional bridge. The song is a romantic ballad, a pre-pop genre that dominated early 20 th century recorded music. So, taking Charles Hart’s Are You Lonesome Tonight (1927) as a starting point and ending with Ed Sheeran’s Perfect (2017), let me take you on a stroll through 90 years of songwriters resolving choruses with the word ‘tonight’.Īre You Lonesome Tonight (1927) showcases an early form of the tonight trick. Its fortunes weren’t always thus: it has been rejuvenated at least twice in the last century, and may yet be reclaimed from creative oblivion again. It has by now lost all sense of novelty or impact, and hearing it in new music today comes across as poor songwriting. ![]() However, the last 90 years have seen the tonight trick (as I’ll call it from hereon in) overused, abused and reduced to a grating cliché. As a device, its appeal is understandable: ending on ‘tonight’ gives the events in the story a sense of immediacy and urgency it wraps up the chorus conclusively, particularly when it lands on the root note (as it almost always does) it also adds a sprinkle of PG innuendo with its implication of nocturnal shenanigans. Of all the clichés found in popular music, one of the worst is that of ending a chorus with the word ‘tonight’. – Charles Hart, Are You Lonesome Tonight? (1927) We’ve also compiled some Spotify playlists for reference below the article. In this month’s songwriting article, we take a look at one of the most enduring (and embarrassing) clichés of popular music: putting ‘tonight’ at the end of a chorus.
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