Musical patterns

Back when I was a freshman, Professor J. E. Lendon lectured us about how high schools taught students to write very structured essays -- three sections, each with three paragraphs, each with three sentences -- and how reading these very formulaic writings got a bit boring. Listening to R.E.M.'s Reckoning, I'm noticing a very similar pattern: pretty much every modern song is in 4/4 time and matches verse verse? chorus verse chorus bridge verse? chorus chorus. (Consider, for example, "My Dinner With Laurie" by Honest Bob and the Factory-to-Dealer Incentives, which explicitly calls out the bridge.)

This isn't necessarily bad. On the whole, I like Reckoning. And much of classical music is similarly formulaic. The modularity is evident if you listen to the difference between broadcast and recorded versions of songs (the Dave Matthews Band's "Crush" and Sunny Day Real Estate's "Seven" both have a verse/chorus deleted in the radio version). Still, there are some opportunities to get away from the pattern; this may explain why I'm a sucker for things in 6/8 ("they're different").