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How to write a hook — 37 Comments

1. While I did have an 8 track in my car for me it was all about “live music.” Lived and grew up in an area that had abundant of live music venues all the time. Does Janis Joplin ring a bell? How about Johhny Winter? With ZZ-Top right down the road a piece. Those are some of the bigger names but there were dozens of local bands playing every weekend.

   There was a local bar (really an old 2 story house) the owners lived upstairs and ran the bar downstairs. Johhny Winter would show up unannounced and play with whoever was playing that night until early in the morning often. It was magical. There were more people outside than inside the venue when the word got out Johhny was there.

   Also was only hour or so away from Houston that all the big names would play. Those were the good times of my youth!

2. I think that “He’s So Shy” is a great song. I also thought when it came out that there were some similar sounds in “What a Fool Believes” (Doobie Bros.) and “Steal Away” (Robbie Dupree).

   Mac Davis was once told he needed to write a song with a hook in it, so he wrote “Baby Don’t Get Hooked On Me”.

3. I don’t think it has that much to do with drive and training. Some people just innately have it and others don’t. There are very accomplished musicians who went through their whole careers without writing anything close to a hook, and others who were playing at caveman level and wrote songs that everyone knows, and most love. I can STILL remember, thirty years later, the catchy part of a song written by a coworker of mine who was just learning to play guitar and sing.

4. Neo: I can’t write music or dance, but BOY do your words resonate. The creative process is a mysterious gift —and so are earworms. Right now, digging through old favorites, my earworm is Mark Knopfler’s guitar riffs in “Brothers In Arms.” A more than human cry; unique and wonderful.

5. The best place to read about songwriters is at Mark Steyn’s place.
   He interviewed all the old Tin Pan Alley guys that he could while they were alive, and many of the more modern popular musicians as well.
   They talk a lot about what inspired particular songs, and how they “came together” – inspiration and perspiration both.

   https://www.steynonline.com/section/18/steyns-song-of-the-week

   He also has a couple of great books on the subject.
   https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/5946723-a-song-for-the-season

   https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3024847-mark-steyn-s-american-songbook

   That’s in addition to all his political analysis and fiction!
   The man is amazing.

6. Great memories, Neo, thank you. I bought my first stereo in 1972 on my 16th birthday in a Durham, NC discount department store – 2 speakers, turntable, and receiver/8 track for $40. I was one of those 70s teens who was absorbed in the music of the day. Bought my first “real” stereo on my 21st birthday in 1977 in Chapel Hill for $1000, when my mother co-signed my 1st bank loan to welcome me to financial adulthood. Those were good days to be young.

7. AesopFan,

   I think I’ve read all of Steyn’s songs of the week as well as purchasing and reading both books you mention. I agree with your statements on them and him and I find reading the stories behind the creation of songs fascinating.

8. GOngtao,

   I think you’re right. Some people have it and some people don’t and it doesn’t seem to correlate with education, or training. Keith Richards is famous for being a “riff machine,” or hook generator. If you read about the Brill Building it was a sort of incubator for hook creation. I hope to see the Carole King musical based on her career. She was a fixture in the Brill Building and generated many pop hits with great hooks.

   I heard an interview with Rupert Holmes the creator of the song, “Escape,” more commonly referred to as, “The Pina Colada Song.” He was a classically trained musician and a very talented one at that. He noticed there seemed to be good money in pop music so he sat down very intentionally to write a pop song. He listened to what was popular and broke the songs down in a scientific matter. Then he penned, “Escape,” which quickly became a huge hit. I have heard other accounts where people have done similar things. I believe Todd Rundgren has said he did something similar at a point in his career when he was in search of a hit and it also worked for him. I think the guy who wrote the recent hit, “Uptown Funk” did something similar.

   So it does seem that some good musicians can do this intentionally by examining the structure of other hits.

9. As I continue to learn more songs as I strain my left thumb muscles in my covid hobby of guitar playing, I certainly can relate to the hooks from the songs of the 60s, 70s, and 80s. I know Neo has highlighted it before, but those two opening chords of Bm and F#7 in Hotel California are an example of an immediate hook that catches just about everyone. I played just those two chords in the background when my brother and SiL were visiting a month ago and to it was amusing to see both of them just stop and turn their heads.

   “Keith Richards is famous for being a “riff machine,” or hook generator.”

   Just this past week while perusing guitar videos I came across one where the fellow shows how Richards built many of his riffs straight out of simple variation of standard chords. While he certainly can play lead, his strength for those of us who are more the rhythm guitar types (Guitar George in Sultans of Swing 🙂 ) is coming up with incredible hooks.

10. Pete Townshend of The Who has said that ABBA’s “SOS” was the greatest pop song ever created. I can see the hook in it, but I’m not sure what Townshend means. ABBA’s songs are full of hooks, but they’re all in the music, not the lyrics. I’ve read that in the early years the girls, Frieda and Anni, memorized the lyrical sounds because neither spoke English.

    Pete is quite the hooker himself. The Who catalogue is full of earworms.

11. “And I’m very susceptible to earworms and to hooks.” Me too… But I’ve found a way to effectively eliminate any and all earworms. Just listen to the song in this clip… works every time.

    At 1:15 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sBIE9d35J20

12. The Wall Street Journal runs an occasional piece on the origins of a popular song. Among the recents, “Peg,” by Steely Dan; “True,” by Spandau Ballet; “What a Fool Believes,” by Michael McDonald and Kenny Loggins. I’d link directly if the WSJ’s content were easier to search.

    For me, the song in my head is a clue to an emotion I may be trying to ignore. I had an on-off romance with a girl in college, and every time she left I’d hear SB’s “Only When You Leave” all day long.

13. Yet another great post with wonderful comments.
    Thanks Neo!

    I have absolutely no ‘fine motor’ skills. My handwriting is close to indecipherable. Except for stick figures I can’t draw
    a thing. I can, sometimes, very slowly play an 8 note scale correctly on a keyboard.

    So it came as a shock to me that I could produce recognizable chords on a Ukulele. We were in Hawaii and the resort we were at had an activity ‘Learn to play Ukulele in 1 hour’. Skeptical we went. And gosh, me of the ‘tin ear’, and the wife with over a decade of piano lessons, both could play something familiar sounding in an hour!

    The instructor pointed out that – most of us 🙂 – had four fingers – and the Ukulele has 4 non-metal strings. It was almost magical to me.

    Ukuleles are inexpensive and the free materials available on the internets is close to overwhelming.

    Now the guitars that physicsguy plays do have much more musical range and are way more expressive.

    Still, if you want to play some recognizable music simply and cheaply during the COVID, ‘ask your Doctor if Ukulele is right for you!’ VBG

14. George Harrison used to travel on the plane with two ukuleles (possible because they are small). The reason he gave was that he might run into someone who needed to borrow a ukulele.

15. Blues Traveler has an entire song devoted to “the hook” and it is very persuasive….

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pdz5kCaCRFM

    It doesn’t matter what I say
    So long as I sing with inflection
    That makes you feel I’ll convey
    Some inner truth or vast reflection
    But I’ve said nothing so far
    And I can keep it up for as long as it takes
    And it don’t matter who you are
    If I’m doing my job then it’s your resolve that breaks

    Because the Hook brings you back
    I ain’t tellin’ you no lie
    The Hook brings you back
    On that you can rely

    There is something amiss
    I am being insincere
    In fact I don’t mean any of this
    Still my confession draws you near
    To confuse the issue I refer
    To familiar heroes from long ago
    No matter how much Peter loved her
    What made the Pan refuse to grow

    Was that Hook brings you back
    I ain’t tellin’ you no lie
    The Hook brings you back
    On that you can rely

    Suck it in suck it in suck it in
    If you’re Rin Tin Tin or Anne Boleyn
    Make a desperate move or else you’ll win
    And then begin
    To see
    What you’re doing to me this MTV is not for free
    It’s so PC it’s killing me
    So desperately I sing to thee
    Of love

    Sure but also of rage and hate and pain and fear of self
    And I can’t keep these feelings on the shelf
    I’ve tried well no in fact I lied
    Could be financial suicide but I’ve got too much pride inside
    To hide or slide
    I’ll do as I’ll decide and let it ride until I’ve died
    And only then shall I abide this tide

    Of catchy little tunes
    Of hip three minute diddys
    I wanna bust all your balloons
    I wanna burn all your cities to the ground
    I’ve found
    I will not mess around

    Unless I play then hey
    I will go on all day. Hear what I say
    I have a prayer to pray
    That’s really all this was
    And when I’m feeling stuck and need a buck
    I don’t rely on luck because

    The Hook brings you back
    I ain’t tellin’ you no lie
    The Hoooooook

16. Pingback:Delete “Hook.” Insert “Heart”

17. And that reminds me, raising own horn to lips, that I’ve written about the hook back in 2009 and now have brought back. Thanks, Neo.

    http://americandigest.org/delete-hook-insert-heart/

18. There’s an old TV series called “Classic Albums.” They take these mega-hit albums and go back in time to the studio recording sessions with the original recording engineer and the master multi-track tapes and discuss how it all happened. I’ve only seen a few episodes, but they may be available on Amazon Prime.

    I shared a suite for one year in college with 3 other guys and we had 3 or 4 yards of rock and pop albums.

    I vaguely recall a conversation related by a then successful Glenn Frey, that he had as a young man with his mentor Bob Seeger about song writing. I’ve forgotten the details, but essentially Seeger told him that the only thing he knew about writing a hit song was to spend a year or three writing dozens of lousy songs first.

    The lead guitarist (Billy Gibbons) for ZZ Top talked about how their first hit album was recorded. The recording engineer wanted to “double” his guitar tracks. Playing the exact same thing twice and overlaying it, to make the sound fuller or fatter. The producer was adamant that he didn’t want doubling.

    After a week or weeks of struggling, the engineer twisted Gibbons’ arm and they did the doubling, but for the second take the engineer grabbed all the guitar strings and stretched them a random bit. So all the notes on the second track are just a bit flat compared to the first.

    I was enamored with the No Doubt album “Tragic Kingdom.” One of the hits is the song Just a Girl. The song is sort of a feminist lament originally written as a very slow dirge. They practiced for many days and it just didn’t work. Perhaps out of frustration Gwen Stefani said let’s double the tempo. Bang, hit song.

19. Hahahahaha Wipe Out! 🙂

20. Gerard,

    Blues’ Traveler’s “The Hook” is genius because it works on at least three different levels:

    1. Self-reference (it’s a song about songwriting).
    2. Vacuousness (as you pointed out, it confesses to saying nothing).
    3. It’s all built around Pachelbel’s Canon in D.

    So on one hand, there’s nothing original about it—on purpose. On the other hand, it’s wildly original!

21. Jeff Lynne of the Electric Light Orchestra is on the record as having written a whole album, realizing the album didn’t have a single, and writing “Evil Woman” in just a hair over three minutes.

    By contrast, I believe it was bassist Dave Hope of Kansas who said of guitarist and writer of many of Kansas’ hits, such as “Dust in the Wind,” Kerry Livgren, “Kerry was great at writing hits, but terrible at knowing when he had.”

22. My first audio system was a semi-portable, foldout Motorola turntable-amp-speakers combo. (for those in the know, an all-in-one unit) something very much like this but in cream: https://i.pinimg.com/736x/94/64/29/946429236679894d29bfd5254d2332aa.jpg

    In 1969, the drinking age was 21 and immediately upon waking on my 21st birthday, I played the song “Birthday!” off the Beatles “White Album” https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Cs5vUfddkT8 .

    I imagine we’re all susceptible to hooks.

23. GOngtao,

    I too think you have the right of it and the more of it one has, the easier and more prolific I suspect it is to write noteworthy music.

    In college, I was privileged to take a Music Appreciation course by one of the two finest instructors I ever had, a teacher by the name of Orbie Ingersoll. Besides being a fine musician and conductor, he had a deep knowledge of music. But what made him particularly effective and memorable is that he was a natural stand up comic. He’d spend the first 15-20 minutes of his lecture doing his thing and literally have students collapsing in laughter. By the time he segued into his lecture, everyone was so relaxed and in such a good mood that we just ate up what he had to share. The class was in an auditorium of about 150-200 capacity and every class was standing room only.

    In his lecture on Mozart, he shared a story of Mozart’s attendance at a big party the night before he was to conduct his first premier of an opera for the King of Prussia, Friedrich Wilhelm II whom Mozart hoped to impress as a means to obtaining patronage from the King. Mozart was the life of the party, telling jokes, dancing and carousing. Later in the party, a friend approached Mozart and questioned when Mozart planned to write the as yet unwritten opera? Mozart replied that he had been composing the piece in his head during the party… the moral of the story being that musical genius is simply someone to whom musical inspiration comes easily.

    Another example is Bach, who reportedly could play well every instrument in the orchestra. When questioned as to how he could possibly do so, Bach said it was simply a matter of “putting the right finger, in the right place, at the right time… ÷)

24. Love the music with this song

    https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Sc6SSHuZvQE

25. “It wasn’t until I was in law school that I bought my own record player, the simplest model made by KLH and which I seem to recall cost $99 at the time.”

    KLH equipment was very good audio gear, even their portable stereos. The company was founded in part by Henry Kloss, who also was a co founder of AR, and later started the Advent, and Cambridge Audio brands. Few people have done as must to make audio equipment better as Kloss.

26. Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones was known as the Human Riff for his ability to come up with great riffs. It wasn’t something he just let happen, though he did at times describe his creative process as a matter of being tuned into something beyond himself. No, Richards worked to put himself in the way of inspiration.

    Perhaps his most famous song is “Satisfaction.” He had gone to bed one night with a riff in his head he couldn’t quite nail down. He awoke in the middle of the nigh finally hearing the riff. Fortunately he had his guitar and and a tape recorder beside the bed. He grabbed the guitar, peeled off the riff into the recorder, mumbled, “I can’t get no satisfaction,” then fell back asleep and the rest is history.

    There’s an interesting story about how he got the sound of that riff on vinyl, which one reviewer called that of a “sour buzzsaw,” but I’ll save it for another time.

27. More Keith…

    In his memoir, “Life,” Richards explained the Stones creative process in more detail. He said that most people had the impression that the Stones went into the studio, spent hours jamming, and finally a song would emerge. Certainly, much of their process looked like that. However, Richards said that missed an essential part — it was always Mick or Keith who had to supply the initial spark:
    ________________________________________

    You’d be surprised when you’re put right on the ball and you’ve got to do something and everybody’s looking at you, going, OK, what’s going to happen?

    You put yourself up there on the firing line—give me a blindfold and a last cigarette and let’s go. And you’d be surprised how much comes out of you before you die.

    Especially when you’re fooling the rest of the band, who think you know exactly what you’re going to do, and you know you’re blind as a bat and have no idea.

    But you’re just going to trust yourself. Something’s going to come. You come out with one line, throw in a guitar line and then another line’s got to come out. This is where supposedly your talent lies. It’s not in trying to meticulously work out how to build a Spitfire.
    …
    And you sometimes start to panic when you realize you have nothing to offer them. It’s always that feeling when these guys are expecting material as if it comes from the gods, whereas the reality is it comes from Mick or me.
    ________________________________________

    Keith Richards is a complicated fellow with an unwholesome past. But he was devoted to his art and his development was astonishing. In five years he wrote a dozen top 10 hits. His work covered the waterfront from “As Tears Go By” to “Satisfaction” to “Gimme Shelter.”

    If one is curious about how to write a hook, Keith Richards is a must to consult.

28. The beauty of music from my teens, 20’s, and 30’s is that 40 or more years later I can still recall the lyrics and remember where I was in my life when I first heard the song. Whenever I hear Badfinger’s “Day After Day” I recall the Autumn of 1971 when I started my Freshman year in college.

29. I never got into pop music, not to mention digging into it.
    Our school system had a required General Music semester in eighth grade which was reasonably interesting.
    Used to be a syndicated radio show, “Carl Haas”, where he explained classical music, discussed the place of one or another instrument, history of composers, and play examples. He could overpronounce a proper noun in seventeen European languages.
    He was on the WJR 760AM in Detroit forever and I’d listen to him when driving.
    That was interesting but, iirc, he never got into hooks or riffs.

    I was in a bar once, overheard some guys talking about finding and extending the perfect hook. I think the place was called the White Hart.

    A local musician of prodigious talent played a baroque hymn on a flute as part of a service some time back. I ran into her and asked if she recalled which it was. She did not recall. I told her I could predict every note coming next from the start. But I didn’t know the name, either.
    So I wondered, but figured she may not be pleased to be asked, if somebody strung together a bunch of conventions and called it good.

    When I hear Glen Campbell’s Gentle on My Mind, I get into a reminiscent mood but I can’t remember what to reminisce about.

30. Geoffrey Britain,

    Regarding the arts; I think some folks have natural ability and some folks have drive and desire and work at it; and many are some combination of both.

    Mozart seems to be the very rare individual who had extremely rare natural ability along with being raised in a household with a father who was a very good musician, a good instructor, and very determined to raise his son and daughter as musicians. So Mozart had the ability and the access, encouragement and instruction.

    An incredible talent.

31. I’m one of those people who took up the guitar in his teens and, being not greatly talented and also quite lazy never got better than adequate primitive. But I’ve written a dozen or so songs that are not bad. Mostly they start with me fiddling around on guitar and suddenly finding something that sounds kind of good and that some words have attached themselves to the rhythm in a simple tune. Then I build from there.

    I have one song which I wrote forty years ago that kind of amazes me for its complexity. I had half forgotten it and dredged it up out of memory not long ago. I was astonished that I had written it as it’s a pretty unusual chord progression that goes on for a while. I know essentially zero music theory and my songs tend toward three-chorders. I just remember that I had this two-chord nucleus with a slightly unusual A variant (see, I don’t even know the right names) followed by E in a catchy rhythm. Then I just remember thinking “what if I went to this instead of the obvious”, and kept going till I arrived back at the original pattern, and had a song which seemed beyond my ability.

    So…a combination of inspiration and just messing around.

32. I knew that Mozart died young (35) and in poverty, but I didn’t realize how tough a life he had — constant ill-health, a slave-driver father, smallpox at 11, four out of six of his children died. frequent periods of financial trouble.

    Yes, Mozart was a genius, but I wouldn’t have traded lives with him.

    https://www.grunge.com/194140/the-tragic-real-life-story-of-mozart/

33. There’s talent, then there’s genius, then there’s flat-out freak of nature. Mozart was the third. Maybe Bach and Beethoven were, too. There is a story about Bach improvising a fugue in something like six or seven voices, which was something he could do, but in this case it was made more complex by some transformation of the subject which made it a musico-mathematical response to some kind of theological point. Sorry, even if I could remember more details I wouldn’t be able to explain it.

34. huxley,

    I read Marcia Davenport’s biography of Mozart decades ago. I recommend it. You’ll definitely get the facts of his life, if you are interested in learning more.

    My main take away was, “Stay in Prague! Why don’t you stay in Prague?” The city of Prague and its royalty recognized his genius early, always treated him fabulously when he was there, and made several offers during Mozart’s life for luxuriously endowed positions as a court composer. But Mozart had it in his head that one had to be big in a Germanic city (present day Austria and Germany) in order to be taken seriously. There are several different occasions where he is suffering and he either travels to Prague and is offered ease and wealth, or an offer comes from Prague via messenger. Even though I knew the basics of his life I still kept hoping I’d be surprised, and he’d move his family to Prague.

35. It’s possible we, having had the Elbe between us and barbarism for most of our grown lives, don’t see Prague as a great city but, having toured–at government expense or our own dime–Germany and Austria underestimate Prague’s history and culture.
    But Mozart wanted to be big in the Germanies?
    There were three hundred little–or not so little–princelings with his own little castle, his own little army, and his own little baroque chamber orchestra after the Thirty Years War. It wasn’t until 1870 that Bismarck managed to unite the whole mess.
    Like to know what Mozart was thinking.

36. “So it came as a shock to me that I could produce recognizable chords on a Ukulele.” – Tuvea

    I took up the uke last year and have enjoyed it.
    There are loads of tutorials on-line, but this one kind of fits the topic of Hooks and Pop song creation.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SjPAeTrF1zg

    How Paul Simon wrote the PERFECT chord progression

37. }}} We’re talking earworms, folks.

    No. a GOOD HOOK IS not an earworm. That is a BAD hook. A hook that gets in your ear and sticks even when you are not just tired of it, but SCREAMING SICK TO DEATH OF IT…. 😉

    A BAD hook is “The Lion Sleeps Tonight”. It’s “Come On, Eileen”… GET OUT OF MY HEAD YOU BASTARD!! (These two are the kind that make me hear them on some @#%#$%@ muzak incidental station [you ratf**k POS that put it on these things!!! I hope you catch some loathsome disease that requires an extensive and exceedingly painful series of expensive operations just to hold it in situ!! :-P] and put my fingers in my ears and start humming random notes just to block the piece of crap out of my hearing.)

    A GOOD hook is Beethoven’s Fifth: “Duh-Duh-Dah-Dah…Dum-Dum-Da-DUUUMMM.”
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_4IRMYuE1hI
    It’s Smoke On the Water: “Dow-Dow-Dow…Dow-Dow-Duh-Dow…”
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ikGyZh0VbPQ
    It’s Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D Minor
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ho9rZjlsyYY

    (Yeah, I didn’t deliberately pick classical, but those are hooks everyone can Get, they’ve withstood the test of time…)

    I’ve heard all three of them a ridiculous number of times — easily as much as the two listed evil hooks… but I still welcome them, because they are GOOD hooks.

    BTW, FWIW — in my OWN personal experience, I have found one song which can get rid of an earworm:
    Us3, “Cantaloop (Flip Fantasia)”
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JwBjhBL9G6U
    It usually works within a play, or at most, two. I think it’s a little weaker now, that I’ve used it a few thousand times… I sometimes have to play it 3 or 4 times… But it’s been pretty reliable for that purpose, to the point where I learned the song so I can “play it in my head”, which does the job. And yeah, it’s not a trivially easy song to sing along to, even in your head…

    I’ve mentioned this to many, but never had anyone confirm it works for them, so… YMMV. It may be like a hiccup treatment, and only work for some people.

    But I swear by it.

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