Most people use Suno's lyrics field for one thing: lyrics. That's the biggest missed opportunity in the whole tool.
That field is also where you direct the structure of a track — and structure is what separates a song that's been arranged from a loop that just keeps going. After 50+ released albums, structural metatags are the single trick I'd hand a beginner first, because they change results immediately and almost nobody discovers them on their own.
What metatags actually are
Metatags are structural markers you place in the lyrics field, in square brackets, to tell Suno what part of the song is happening. [Intro], [Verse], [Chorus], [Bridge], [Outro] — they're an architectural map. Without them, Suno decides the arrangement for you, and "decides" usually means "averages." With them, it executes the shape you laid out.
You're not writing more; you're directing more.
The two tags that punch above their weight
A few structural tags do a disproportionate amount of work.
[Instrumental] gives the track room to breathe. Drop it between two chorus sections and you get a real instrumental break — space, dynamics, a moment that isn't wall-to-wall vocals. It's the difference between a track that feels arranged and one that feels crammed.
[Choir] layers texture onto a hook. Used on the main hook, it adds a sense of scale and lift that a single vocal line can't reach on its own. It's a small tag with an outsized effect on how produced a track feels.
These two are the ones people light up about once they try them, because the improvement is instant and obvious.
A worked example
For an electronic track, a structured lyrics field might look like this:
[Intro]
[Verse]
Short repeating lyric or hook
[Chorus]
[Choir]
Main hook
[Instrumental]
[Verse]
[Chorus]
[Choir]
[Outro]
Read what that map does. The intro establishes the sound before any vocal enters. The choir layers texture on the hook. The instrumental gives the track space between the two chorus sections. The outro resolves cleanly instead of fading on a guess. The result is a track that's been directed, not just generated.
Why this works at all
The reason structural tags improve results is the same reason specific prompts beat vague ones: they give Suno less to decide and more to execute.
When the arrangement is vague, Suno fills it with average decisions — the most statistically likely option at every fork. When you specify the structure explicitly, Suno executes your structure, and the output reflects choices instead of defaults. The tags are how you move a track from "the machine's best guess" to "the thing I actually meant."
Start simple
You don't need an elaborate map. Even just [Intro], [Verse], [Chorus], [Outro] on a track that previously had no structure will sound noticeably more intentional. Add [Instrumental] for breathing room and [Choir] on the hook, and you've got most of the benefit with five tags. Build from there as your ear tells you what the track is missing.
That's the heart of it: the lyrics field isn't a place to type words and hope. It's a console for directing the architecture of the song — and once you use it that way, your tracks stop sounding generated and start sounding arranged.
Free: The complete metatag reference — all the structural tags explained, plus the 6-part prompt anatomy and 5 full genre recipes — is in my free Prompt Starter Kit: The Suno Prompt Starter Kit
What's the first structural tag you'd add to a track that currently just loops? For me it's almost always [Instrumental].
