Written by Pete Townshend
Recorded by The Who
 
While it may not be the most definitive Who song, Squeeze Box has a great bridge, and when I first heard the song, the thinly veiled double entendre was music to my fourteen-year-old ears.
 
On the surface, this song is about a child's mom who plays the accordion, also known as a “squeeze box.” One wears the accordion on their chest and, if so inclined, they can play it all night. Right?
 
Mama's got a squeeze box
She wears on her chest
And when Daddy comes home
He never gets no rest.
 
But the song is clearly about the kid's parents going at it all night and every night. So much and so often, that the children aren't being fed, and nobody, including the dog, can get any sleep. And while it's true that this song illustrates the mechanics of an accordion, it does get a little graphic when describing that she "goes in and out, and in and out." This is the kid’s mom!
 
But it’s not just about the sex, because something special happens in the bridge. The innuendo is left behind and the bridge focuses on the love between two people:
 
She goes, "Squeeze me.
Come on and squeeze me.
Come on and tease me like you do,
I'm so in love with you."
 
-which is quickly followed by a reminder that, "Momma's got a squeeze box, Daddy never sleeps at night" While his mother's verbal expression of love was beautiful, it's the physical act his parents like most. Because after a banjo break, we're back to going in and out again!
 
The Who's Who By Numbers is an otherwise, less remarkable record. The band was struggling with their demons and each other, and it shows. I’ll be back with another Pete song soon. Until then, go squeeze the one you love. 
 
-MJK
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Written and Recorded by Aimee Mann
 
Many of us were first introduced to Aimee Mann as the lead singer of new wave band ‘Til Tuesday. And while many one-video-wonders from MTV’s heyday faded, Aimee’s “voice carried” into the nineties and beyond, blessing us with some amazing songs. Many of these songs are about bad love and feature great bridges.
 
In “Save Me,” we meet a lonely narrator ​who feels incapable of loving anyone and unworthy of anyone else’s love. But maybe this new guy is different:
 
You look like a perfect fit
For a girl in need of a tourniquet.
 
Can he stop the bleeding? Can he save her from “the ranks of the freaks who suspect they could never love anyone?” The bridge may have the answer! The Beatles-esque instrumentation and production come to full fruition with the rip of guitar leading the way from chorus to bridge and throughout the reveal of her feelings for him:
 
You struck me dumb
Like radium.
 
The guitar steps aside to allow a more playful, fairytale-like piano part to accompany her ambitious request:
 
Like Peter Pan
Or Superman
You will come
…to save me
 
I love it when a bridge directly connects to another part of the song through a line of lyric. In this case, the return to the chorus signifies the fleeting moment of fairytale love.
 
We never find out if he will save her. In fact, we never hear much from him at all. But that’s ok because instead, we are gifted with a verse shared between a melodica and a guitar, that while sad, offers the listener a sense of peace and hopefulness. And then she asks again, “Come on save me, why don’t you save me, if you can save me…”
 
-MJK

Written and Recorded by Lou Reed

Satellite of Love was originally written for the Velvet Underground but that version didn’t make the band’s swan song LP, the aptly named Loaded. Two years later, Lou reimagined the song with help from friends like David Bowie and Mick Ronson, and it was included in his superb collection, Transformer. 
 
Inspired by the excitement of the space age and the satellites launched in the late ‘60s, this song introduces a narrator who likes watching satellites on TV. But this song is about a satellite of love, and love, like a satellite, has a way of orbiting around our hearts and often, never landing – but it is not until the bridge that this becomes clear.
 
I've been told that you've been bold
With Harry, Mark and John
Monday and Tuesday, Wednesday through Thursday
With Harry, Mark and John
 
It’s heartbreaking. Just a moment ago we were watching TV and contemplating parking lots on Mars, but the focus quickly goes from heavenly bodies to the earthly bodies being explored by our narrator’s lover.
 
While the three chords used in the bridge are all played in the verse and chorus, it’s all about the arrangement and execution here. The music becomes simpler, more playful, and theatrical, even childlike. The phrasing is staccato compared to the more patient vocal delivery in the verses and chorus. The bridge’s tonal change seems to mock the narrator’s discovery of his lover’s infidelity. It’s uncomfortable, and a little weird, but this is how someone feels when a lover steps out: isolated and anxious while everyone else is having the time of their life. From here, the narrator can only accept this fate and goes back to watching those satellites on TV.
 
Lou Reed is one of my heroes. A fellow “Coney Island Baby,” we were born in the same Brooklyn hospital and raised two Long Island towns apart. While I grew up a few decades after Lou, I’ve always felt connected to his worldview and musical approach to expressing it. Long Island is right next to “the city” but there is enough of a distance where even the coolest of us Nassau and Suffolk kids still felt like outsiders. And that was Lou, a definitive figure in late 60s and 70s coolness, but always the voice of an outsider.

-MJK