Originally Posted by Noel96
Hi Ron.

I thoroughly enjoyed this. You and your brother certainly are a songwriting powerhouse!. As others have mentioned, the title really engages a person's imagination. It made me wonder what the song was going to be about. I often read the lyrics to songs before I listen. With this one, however, I didn't want to spoil the effect of the title and its meaning. I'm glad I chose that approach. I did not anticipate this story line at all. Your music, performance and production along with your brother's lyrics kept me fully engaged throughout smile Loved it!

--Noel

P.S. Regarding those repeated lines... As J&B and Alan have noted, this is called a refrain. And as Anne-Marie has said, it's usually attached to a verse somewhere. It's a term that comes from poetry and it's easy to find information about it on the internet. In songwriting, it is a lyric technique that has been used by many famous composers in many famous songs. Somewhere Over The Rainbow has a refrain at the beginning of each A-section. In this case, the refrain doubles as the title and hook. A couple of famous songs that come to mind as I'm typing this that use a refrain at the end of each section are Dream Lover and Close To You.

I've actually used variations of the "Close To You" approach to lyric writing in my own songs a number of times. The basic principle of Close To You is that each A-section follows a similar pattern to the one shown below.
Quote
"Close To You" by Burt Bacharach and Hal David
Lyric format in each A-section

verse information line 1
verse information line 2
refrain line 1
refrain line 2
refrain line 3

Personally, I've found it to be a very productive way to write lyrics while minimising the angst caused by writing lyrics. By keeping the refrain constant in each of the three A-sections, only 6 lines of verse lyrics are needed to complete all three A-sections. By adding an extra 4 lines for the B (bridge, middle 8) section, a complete song can be written with 10 different lines of lyrics! I like this (not counting the refrain) smile It's a technique that I often use when I write lyrics without any instrument present. My song Summer Moon used this approach. You'll be able to see the words on Soundcloud. I used a 2-line refrain. This technique let me write the lyrics for this song while I was in hospital getting over complications caused by prostate cancer back in 2018.

Wow, Noel, THANK YOU for the very detailed response and examples on my innocent little question. All this makes perfect sense to me. My brother's "lyrics" were provided to me as "poems" for many, many years before I realized they were lyrics, or could be. I've since learned he knows more about formal poetry than I ever will, and I wouldn't be surprised if his use of "bridge" was just to bring it down to my level. But you've brought me back up, so...THANKS again!

Am also really pleased you did not read the lyrics in advance. Personal bias, but I always enjoyed discovering lyrics while listening, and never liked reading them in advance myself. Nice to have as a check though!

DC Ron
BiaB Audiophile
Presonus Studio One
ASUS I9-12900K DAW, 32 GB RAM
Presonus Faderport 16
Too many guitars (is that a thing?)