The chorus is the part of the song where everybody sings. The verse is for the singer. The chorus is for the room. The verse tells the story. The chorus is the story. The verse is the argument. The chorus is the verdict. You can forget the verse of any song you have ever heard and still remember the chorus. Because the chorus is the part that was written for your mouth. The songwriter wrote the verse for their voice. They wrote the chorus for yours.

I watched fifty thousand people sing Hey Jude in a stadium and not one of them was thinking about the Beatles. They were thinking about the person they wanted to say hey to. That is the chorus. The chorus takes a personal feeling and makes it communal. Fifty thousand strangers singing the same word at the same time and every single one of them means something different by it. The chorus is the only moment in a concert where the audience and the performer are doing the same job.

On the corner the chorus was how I knew the set was working. If a stranger sang the chorus I had them. If a stranger knew the words to a song I wrote in my apartment on a Tuesday night then the song had traveled farther than I had. The chorus is the part of the song that leaves the building. The verse stays in the room. The chorus walks home with the audience. The chorus gets stuck in your head on the subway. The chorus is the part of the song that does not need you to be there to keep playing.

The protest song lives in the chorus. We Shall Overcome. Give Peace a Chance. Fight the Power. The verse explains why. The chorus says what. The chorus is the chant. The chorus is the march. A thousand people walking down a street singing the same four words is a chorus that has left the song entirely. The song is gone. The chorus survived. That is the test of a great chorus. Can it exist without the song. If the chorus can stand alone on a street corner with no guitar and no band and no amplification and still mean something then the songwriter did their job.

Write a chorus. Not a song. A chorus. Four words that a stranger can sing after hearing them once. That is the whole assignment. The verse is for poets. The chorus is for the street. The verse takes talent. The chorus takes honesty. Have a marijuana. That was my chorus. Three words. Everybody in Washington Square Park could sing it after one time through. That is not because I was a great songwriter. That is because the chorus was true and a true thing is easy to remember and easy to sing and impossible to forget.