![]() It is a trend that hasn’t gone unnoticed by those in the know, with none other than Sting calling out the seeming dearth of bridges in a 2021 interview with the music producer and YouTuber Rick Beato. On his heartstring-tugging single Forget Me, Lewis Capaldi offers a redo of the chorus, and even Taylor Swift – often acclaimed as the contemporary queen of the bridge by pop fans (and Time magazine), for tracks such as All Too Well and Cruel Summer – opted for a third verse on her No 1 single Anti-Hero, rather than going into full-on key-change mode. Of all of the UK No 1 singles in 2022, only a handful have a definitive bridge – among them Kate Bush’s 1985 hit Running Up That Hill, which found viral success again thanks to Stranger Things. Bridge-free hits of recent years have included the country-inspired smash Old Town Road by Lil Nas X, Gayle’s pop-punk breakout single ABCDEFU, and Harry Styles’s Late Night Talking, whose muzak-y R&B sound largely loops for its three-minute running time. Where a big, barnstorming section – perhaps complete with an epic key change, a la Céline Dion’s My Heart Will Go On or, er, Avril Lavigne’s Sk8er Boi – may have once been de rigueur, these days you often just get another verse or a moody final chorus. The bridge – that part of the song where verse and chorus give way to an alternate section that ramps up the tension (or the fun) – is seemingly on the wane. Indeed, if you have listened to pop music at all in the past few years, you may have noticed that something is missing.
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