This thread'll put the 'anal' in analyzing
I spent the afternoon musing over this and a snippet of a particular song in mind, but of which I can't remember it's name nor how it goes, just the oddness of certain change. I ended up going through various 70s albums (kind of aided by a new codec on my Fire which allows wma playback) and got multiple-y sidetracked.
Anyway, as most often goes, I ended up on The Housemartins/The Beautiful South because of both the 'standard pop formats' and quirky-complexity formats that Paul Heaton writes.
Obviously, it was fun, fun, fun.....
There, the standard format (ABABCB) in evidence, as per,
It’s not always a necessity to create a bridge for your song, it’s one of those optional things like salt or sugar in a recipe.
www.tunedly.com
So, 'late' is a bit of a grey area, especially when talking about more complex arrangements (and also the editing-for-commerciality).
Heaton's songs tend to follow a pop format, but he also often writes for two or three singers/roles in a song (and some of his solo-sung songs also have a duality within verses). Fitting all that into a two or three minute song doesn't leave much time, nor give any need for refreshing contrast (I took note of the time in Michael Jackson's Happy and it was easy to see that he didn't have time to go off on a musical tangent). Some of Heaton's longer songs/recordings can also be two songs in one, but they're blended well and can make it hard to tell if he's ended on [what could be called] a 'bridge'.
Which leaves us,
