Late 2020 I wrote a post on the maiden subreddit specifically about repetitions in the choruses of the title tracks. I thought about starting a thread, but this one fits nicely too
I'll just copy and paste what I wrote, original link and discussion
here.
There is a common complaint that a fair number of Maiden songs have a chorus that consists mainly of chanting the name of the song, accusing the songwriters of lazy writing. The other day I had to think about that fact. The are obviously a lot of modern songs that do that, Blood Brothers, FTGGOG in its bridge, but there's also the infamous SSOASS. So I thought I would take a look at all title tracks and present my brief analysis. English isn't my first language, I hope there won't be too many errors.
We'll go through this chronologically, so we'll start with Iron Maiden. The title comes up a couple of times in the verses and in the second and fourth line of the chorus. Since it is the signature song of the band it isn't egregious, this song is a statement, it showed the attitude this young band brought and stood for. So far so good.
Next up, Killers. This song doesn't really have a chorus, it's more of a continuous story. The word "killer" comes up in the first verse and of course again at the repetition of that verse at the end of a song. No redundancies yet. (Off topic side note: it's such a shame that the live versions that followed skip the "I've done it again!" section, Paul's delivery of that line is badass.)
New singer, different sound, the Number of the Beast! We've got a chorus again and this time it's much briefer than on the debut, consisting of only two lines, the first of which is the name drop. The chorus works wonderfully live and was probably written with that focus in mind. The chorus occurs three times in the song, but doesn't get repeated otherwise, it's always a brief statement and the song continues.
Piece Of Mind was the first album to not have a title track, so there isn't anything to analyze (Headcanon: I see Still Life as a quasi title track, since it has the line "will give me peace of mind". The album name is a pun and there probably isn't any connection, I just enjoy the song a lot).
Powerslave has a title track again and for the first time one that Steve didn't write. The chorus this time around is much longer. While there are four lines again, the amount of words sung and the length of the lines is greater than the previous title tracks. The proper name drop occurs in the first line of the chorus, while there is an indirect one in the final line of each chorus ("I'm a slave to the power of death"). Since we are looking for repetition there's nothing to criticize here, so we carry on.
(Caught) Somewhere In Time. Oh, boy. Here's one of the aforementioned title tracks that's just repeated chanting. The name get's repeated thrice, followed by some ooh's from Bruce. This get's repeated again, completing the chorus. This by itself is pretty bad, but at least in the last chorus the last line has changed, so while it is still pretty bad, it isn't as bad as:
Seventh Son Of A Seventh Son. Already the second of the four songs. This one does it the worst, where it's just 8 repetitions of the title per chorus, without any variations (they could've been cheeky and do 7 repetitions to fit the theme, but oh well). Only one other title track would do it as badly, but we'll get to that later. It must have been weird in the eighties to get two consecutive albums where each title track is of the chanting sort. Weirder still, that both songs are not short rockers like NOTB but 7 and 9 minute long respectively epics.
Enter the 90's: No Prayer For The Dying. I feel this song gets overlooked a lot, but you're not here for my opinions. We have neither a chorus here, nor a name drop. Quick and easy, off to the next one.
Fear Of The Dark. One of the most popular songs of Maiden's career that has a legendary status amongst metal fans. It's success arguably changed how Harris would write his epics following this one. Earlier on the album we have Afraid To Shoot Strangers where the whole second half of the song consists only of its name. FOTD isn't
as bad, yet it still has the most repetition of any title track so far. The chorus is written similarly to NOTB where the name gets stated and another line follows. This time we have the name twice, a line, the name twice again and another line. After a few verses, choruses and instrumental interludes we get 8 more name drops. Coupled with a repeated final refrain and the way the chorus is constructed we actually hit a staggering 28 times the name gets mentioned, besting the 16 times of SSOASS.
Changing the singer again we come the The X Factor, which for the second time in Maiden's career foregoes the tradition of having a title track. The following Virtual XI doesn't have one either (Futureal fits loosely from a thematic point of view). Both albums went for referencing their number in the catalog, being the tenth and eleventh studio album respectively.
Bruce is back and with the reunion we read the new millennium. Brave New World is the third of the songs referenced in the title of my post. Similar to CSIT it doesn't feature straight repetitions, the lines are a bit varied. The second part of each refrain is simply the first part in reverse order. Doesn't help much, since the name occurs 8 times per chorus. It also appears once before each chorus, which nets us a total of 26 repeats of the name, becoming the runner up after FOTD. Funnily enough I didn't think it would be that high before I started writing this post. Can we also take a moment to talk about the rest of the album? The Wicker Man, BNW, Blood Brothers, The Mercenary and OOTSP all simply repeat one line for their chorus, while The Fallen Angel has a proper one, which is repeated six times though. I love the album, but holy shit.
Carrying on we've got Dance Of Death, which similarly to Killers tells a story and doesn't have a chorus. Dancing is referenced a few times, but considering the length of the song and the amount of words I don't see anything to criticize repetition-wise.
For A Matter Of Life And Death I'll allow myself to take a liberty. We all know that there obviously isn't a song called AMOLAD on the album, but we know that, before it changed it was supposed to be called The Legacy. It isn't a proper title track, but I'll entertain the possibility. Just like DOD we've got a long tale again, this time with a chorus present ("Left to all our golden sons"). Eight lines, "legacy" appears once, that's what we want to see.
We reach The Final
oh boy Frontier. The last of the four songs mentioned in the title. I'm only looking at the second part of the song, the first half being Satellite 15. Unfortunately we're back to the SSOASS kind of choruses, 4 straight repetitions of the name per chorus. We've got a total amount of 20 name drops in the song, netting it the bronze medal.
Reaching the most current album we have The Book Of Souls. Another epic, with a chorus, with next to no repetitions remarkably enough. The title appears thrice, once at the end of each chorus, the second one featuring an altered final line, at once more at the very end of the song. So another song that deals well with repetition.
In summary out of 16 albums 11 have a title track (we'll ignore the Legacy here). Out of those 11, three (Killers, NPFTD, DOD) don't feature a chorus. Of the remaining 8, half of them are of the chanting the name variety (CSIT, SSOASS, BNW, TFF), three are a bit more elaborate (IM, TNOTB, FOTD) leaving Powerslave and TBOS with the strongest chorus, repetition-wise. Make of that what you will, thanks for reading!
