"Third verse same as the first" is stupid and annoying

I'm fond of Lee Ann Womack's "I Hope You Dance."

That is, I'm fond of about two-thirds of the song. Then Womack repeats the first verse as the third verse, and my fondness is gone. This annoys the hell out of me, and though it's not done all that often, it's still done too much. 

As a storyteller and writer, I would never think of covering the same ground twice. It's the least interesting way to fill a page or time on the stage. And with music, repetition is already embedded in most songs in the form of a chorus. Adding a second layer of repetition seems crazy to me, and yet musicians - great ones, too - do this for reasons I will never understand. 

A few notable examples:

• "Eight Days a Week" - The Beatles
• "Little Lies" - Fleetwood Mac
• "Never" - Heart
• "Walk of Life" - Dire Straits
• "Legs" - ZZ Top
• A whole bunch of Savage Garden and Christopher Cross songs. 
• "Prove My Love" by The Violent Femmes, who actually acknowledge the ridiculousness of repeating the first verse by singing "Third verse same as the first" in the song. 

With the exception of The Violent Femmes, who seem to note the silliness of the repetition and therefore escape my wrath via irony and self awareness, I can't listen to any of these songs (some of which I like a lot) without thinking that they are deeply flawed in some way.

Four lines. That's all that each of them needed. Just two more pairs of rhyming couplets. 

Would it have been so hard to produce something original for the last verse?

Unnecessary repetition. Wasted opportunity.

I will never understand why songwriters repeat the first verse of a song as their third verse. Thankfully, it doesn’t happen often, but when it does, it can completely ruin a song.

Lee Ann Womack’s chart topping song I Hope You Dance is a perfect example of this. It’s a beautiful song and ideal for father/daughter and mother/son dances at weddings, but for reasons I will never understand, the first and third verses of the song are identical.

It’s still a lovely song, but I’m convinced that the unnecessary repetition prevents it from becoming an all time classic.

King Harvest’s Dancing in the Moonlight suffers this same problem. Though I still like a song a lot (and my wife loves it), the first and third verses are identical. The song has managed to remain in the public conscious for almost forty years, perhaps because the repetition is a little less noticeable in this song. While the lyrics play an enormous role in Womack’s song (and are probably the song’s most defining feature), Dancing in the Moonlight is more about the song’s overall musicality. You don’t need to know the lyrics of the song in order to enjoy it. 

Also, every single rhyme in the song is an –ight rhyme. There are only so many of those words in the world.

Not only does the decision to repeat verses strike me as unnecessarily repetitive, but it also represents a lost opportunity. The songwriter and musician had a chance to say more without appearing to say too much, but when given the chance, they opted not to.

I don’t understand it.