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This article is about a bridge section in a piece of popular or classical music. For the part of a musical instrument which transmits the vibrations of strings to a soundboard, see bridge (instrument).

In popular music, especially occidental, a bridge is a contrasting section which also prepares for the return of the original material section. The bridge may be the middle-eight in a thirty-two-bar form (the B in AABA), or it may be used more loosely in verse-chorus form, or, in a compound AABA form, used as a contrast to a full AABA section, as in "Every Breath You Take". Very commonly the "bridge" is in a contrasting key to the original melody. More often than not, the "bridge" is a perfect 4th higher. For examples, see Richard Rodgers' "Mountain Greenery" and Antonio Carlos Jobim's "Meditation".

Lyrically, the bridge is typically used to pause and reflect on the earlier portions of the song or to prepare the listener for the climax.

The term may also be used to refer to the section between the verse and the chorus, although this is more commonly referred to as the pre-chorus. The hit Beatles song, "In My Life" has a pre-chorus that is simply referred as the "bridge".

The theme "The song that goes like this" from the musical play Spamalot spoofs in its lyrics the abuse of the bridge in romantic songwriting: Now we can go straight / into the middle eight / a bridge that is too far for me.

Bridges are also common in classical music, although they are much freer in form and length. Often referred to as a bridge-passage, they are used to delineate separate sections of an extended work, or to smooth what would otherwise be an abrupt modulation such as the transition between the two themes of a sonata form. A more formal way of describing this transition between two musical subjects is by referring to it as the "transition theme"; indeed, in later Romantic symphonies such as Dvořák's New World Symphony or César Franck's Symphony in D minor, the transition theme becomes almost a third subject in itself, occupying some thirty bars in the Franck.

The latter work also provides several good examples of a short bridge to smooth a modulation. Instead of simply repeating the whole exposition in the original key, as would be done in a symphony of the classical period, Franck repeats the first subject a minor third higher in F minor. A two-bar bridge achieves this transition with his characteristic combination of enharmonic and chromatic modulation. After the repeat of the first subject, another bridge of four bars is needed to lead into the transition theme in F major, the key of the true second subject.

A famous example of a bridge-passage used to separate two sections of a more loosely organized work occurs in George Gershwin's An American in Paris. As Deems Taylor described it in the program notes for the first performance: "Having safely eluded the taxis ... the American's intinerary becomes somewhat obscured. ... However, since what immediately ensues is technically known as a bridge-passage, one is reasonably justified in assuming that the Gershwin pen ... has perpetrated a musical pun and that ... our American has crossed the Seine, and is somewhere on the Left Bank."

• Song structure (popular music)
• Break (music)
• Interlude