Billy Sheehan explained how Bon Jovi made its songs more “hitly,” and how Led Zeppelin avoided using the same trick.
In a conversation with Heavy Interviews, Sheehan spoke about the various ways bands & artists construct their songs. The Mr. Big bassist noted that many bands use an old trick employed by The Beatles, putting in the pre-chorus at the start of the song (transcribed by Ultimate Guitar):
“A lot of bands do a pre-chorus before the song even starts, which was an old Beatles trick, and the chorus is usually the title of the song. So when they sang ‘Paperback Writer,’ you knew what song it was before it even started. That’s how you have a hit record, or Bon Jovi’s ‘Shot through the heart, and you’re to blame, you give love a bad name.'”
“Okay, now we know the name of the song before it even started, and we already can sing along with the chorus the first time it comes. There’s ways of making songs accessible and more hitly, if you will. And then sometimes you avoid that stuff completely because you don’t want to seem like you’re following the pack, or pandering to the audience.”
“Some stuff is designed to be a hit. I mean, people are writing songs to have hits. That’s what songwriters do. There’s all kinds of ways of doing that. There’s all kinds of mechanisms they use to bring that about — the chorus right up front, and the title of the song being the chorus.”
