The Young Rascals - "I've Been Lonely Too Long" (1967)

So, here we have a song that starts with the chorus but you don't really notice it. That's because it sounds like a verse!

It starts with the refrain line repeated twice, followed by two rhyming lines, for a total of eight bars. When the refrain lines come back afterwards, it sounds like the second verse is starting. It cuts off after the two repetitions of the line, though, and then the actual verse of the song ("As I look back/I can see me lost and searching" etc.) finally begins.

The contrast you get with this verse, however, feels more like the contrast you normally get from a bridge. That's attributable to the fact that the chorus that preceded it sounded like a verse, of course, but the whole thing strikes me as being super clever and, perhaps, very unique.

The other thing I really like about the structure is that the verse has two parts, with its twelve bars divided up as eight plus four. This exactly mirrors the way that the chorus, which is eight bars, is always followed by the extra four bars of the refrain lines being repeated twice afterward. These repeating twelves (all eight plus four) throughout the song makes for some really pretty symmetry.