CMT Blog: Archive

It may all start with a song, but sometimes it ends with a start. The very first time I heard Taylor Swift’s “Teardrops on My Guitar,” something about the end sounded familiar: “Drew looks at me/I fake a smile so he won’t see.” I just knew I’d heard it before. But where? Then it came to me — in the intro. It’s the same exact line she starts the song with. It’s called a reprise, when an artist closes the song with the same lyric it opens with. Ever since, I’ve been keeping my ears open for more, and wondering what goes through an artist’s mind when they decide to bring back that first line. Is it because that one lyric is so damn good it must be repeated? Or do they lose steam at the end of a writing session and think “You know what? I’m out of ideas. Let’s just put that first line at the end, too, and call it a day.”

Taylor Swift’s not the only one doing it, although I did just hear it on her song, “Our Song”: “I was riding shotgun with my hair undone/In the front seat of his car.” In Garth Brooks’ “More Than a Memory,” he comes back to the opening line: “People say she’s only in my head/It’s gonna take time but I’ll forget,” closing out the song with his penchant for melodrama. In Luke Bryan’s lament for another fishing trip with his grandpa, “Tacklebox,” he starts and ends with the vivid description: “It was two shades of brown, scratched-up plastic.” Little Big Town does it too, on “I’m With the Band,” opening and closing with: “Last night in Memphis, tonight in New Orleans/Tomorrow I’ll be miles from here, ain’t nothin’ to me, nothin’ to me.”

When Alan Jackson released “Drive,” he ended the song not with the intro lyric but with one close to the top when he closed with this: “It’s just an old plywood boat/With a ‘75 Johnson, and an electric choke.” In Joe Diffie’s “That Road Not Taken,” he reprised this: “Yesterday I missed my exit on my way to Sears.” Another example is Tim McGraw’s “Don’t Take the Girl“: “Johnny’s daddy was taking him fishing when he was eight years old.”

Is the reprise merely making a comeback? Is it being, well, reprised? If I was a songwriter, I’d make sure the first line was a great one before I brought it back around again. Two wrongs don’t make a right, and all that. If it’s a trend that’s here to stay, I’m all for it. Because it may all start with a song, but sometimes it ends with a start.