A Queer Orientation to Pop: Song Form in the Music of Laura Nyro

Pop songs take listeners on a journey through formal sections, drawing on conventions to conjure sections we recognise as verses, choruses, and bridges. These sections present enough features to make them recognisable, and tend to fall in the same sequence within any given song. But what happens when this succession is interrupted, or takes a different course entirely? Forms that pursue non-standard paths become marked, drawing attention to the song’s structure and its relationship to these conventions. Examining songs by American songwriter-performer Laura Nyro (1947–1997), and engaging with Jennifer Rycenga’s provocation to consider song form from a queer perspective, I pursue queer aesthetic analysis to make sense of these wayward paths through song form.