The Structure of California Girls by the Beach Boys

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Organization and Structure of Musical Ideas

The songs organization and form reflect its character and goal to deliver the message and make it easy to remember and follow. The song California Girls by the Beach Boys has a verse-chorus form that is the most famous pop music structure. It has two verses, two choruses, and a refrain in the end. The chorus repeats the hook phrase, I wish they all could be California girls repeatedly.

Lyrics as a Variety of Form

The lyrics in verse set the scene for the song, develop the idea of why California girls are the best and build up the song to the chorus. The lyrics in the verse and chorus are purposefully different to portray the contrast between the girls worldwide. Such a technique ensures that the lyrics are remembered and hit the most in the chorus (Napier & Shamir, 2018). The lyrics about the girls add up to the beach vibe of the song and complement it in its light-heartedness.

Innovation Issue of the Composition

The song is structured in a typical verse-chorus scheme but has a few peculiarities. The introduction has classical feet of a traditional country or western song, which adds a certain jumpy feeling in the verses. The song is also distinctive in its chromatics as it contains swooping chromatic, major chords (Wilks, 2017). The form is unusual as the lines almost do not rhyme, and the number of lines in verses is different, which makes it difficult for the song to come down to one harmonic composition (Wilks, 2017). Thus, the song skillfully combines musical complexity and simple lyrics.

The Essence of Form Emphasis

Verse-chorus is the most common form of the song structure, which many artists use in their hit songs. However, such an overused structure often gets boring, so artists use more creative ways to keep the song interesting. The Beach Boys managed to tailor the song with the cowboy beach melody and repetitive lyrics to make it memorable. It is one of the reasons it became the hit, and many other artists were inspired by it.

References

Napier, K., & Shamir, L. (2018). Quantitative sentiment analysis of lyrics in popular music. Journal of Popular Music Studies, 30(4), 161-176. Web.

Wilks, N. A. (2017). Verse chorus verse: An analysis of repetition in popular music (Order No. 10261417). Available from ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global. (1906270814). Web.

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