A refrain (from the Old French refraindre "to repeat," likely from Vulgar Latin refringere) is the line or lines that are repeated in music or in verse; the "chorus" of a song.
Poetic fixed forms that feature refrains include the villanelle, the virelay, and the sestina. However, the use of refrains is particularly associated with popular music, especially rock and roll, where the verse-chorus-verse song structure typically places a refrain in almost every song.
In music, a refrain has two parts: the lyrics of the song, and the melody. Sometimes refrains vary their words slightly when repeated; recognisability is given to the refrain by the fact that it is always sung to the same tune, and the rhymes, if present, are preserved despite the variations of the words. Such a refrain is featured in The Star Spangled Banner, which contains a refrain which is introduced by a different phrase in each verse, but which always ends:
- . . . does that Star Spangled Banner yet wave
- O'er the land of the free, and the home of the brave?
Refrains usually, but do not always, come at the end of the verse. Some songs, especially ballads, incorporate refrains into each verse. For example, the traditional ballad The Cruel Sister includes a refrain mid-verse:
- There lived a lady by the North Sea shore,
- Lay the bent to the bonny broom
- Two daughters were the babes she bore.
- Fa la la &c.
- Fa la la &c.
- As one grew bright as is the sun,
- Lay the bent to the bonny broom
- So coal black grew the other one.
- Fa la la &c.
- Fa la la &c.
- . . .
- Heavenborn Helen, Sparta's queen,
- O Troy Town!
- Had two breasts of heavenly sheen,
- The sun and moon of the heart's desire:
- All Love's lordship lay between,
- O Troy's down,
- Tall Troy's on fire!
- . . .