HOOKS and RIFFS: How They Grab Attention, Make Songs Memorable,

and Build Your Fan Base

Copyright © 2015 by Pantomime Music Publications

All rights reserved. Printed in Canada. This book is protected by
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Table of Contents
The  Basics  of  a  Good  Hook ................................................................... 3  
   It’s  Hard  to  Resist  Free  Food.............................................................. 4  
   What  a  Good  Deli  Owner  Knows....................................................... 5  
   Grabbing  Attention ............................................................................... 6  
   Making  Memories.................................................................................. 7  
   Defining  “Hook” ..................................................................................... 8  
   Two  Important  Hook  Characteristics .......................................... 10  
   The  Many  Ways  to  Hook  An  Audience......................................... 11  
   Waving  the  Flag................................................................................... 14  
   The  3  Components  of  Most  Song  Hooks ...................................... 15  
   Sunshine  Of  Your  Love...................................................................... 16  
   Summarizing  the  Five  Standard  
       Characteristics  of  Song  Hooks...................................................... 19  
   Is  That  a  Hook…  Or  a  Motif? ............................................................ 19  
   Layering  of  Hooks............................................................................... 25  

Great  Hook  Examples.......................................................................... 27  

Writing  a  Song  Hook  –Three  Step-­‐By-­‐Step  Procedures............... 37  

   Composing  a  Hook,  Melody  First................................................... 40  
   Composing  a  Hook,  Rhythm  First.................................................. 43  
   Composing  a  Hook,  Chords  First ................................................... 45  

Some  Concluding  Thoughts............................................................... 47  

   The  Brevity  of  a  Good  Hook ............................................................ 47  
   Adding  A  Hook  to  a  Finished  Song ................................................ 48  
   Dealing  With  Writer’s  Block ........................................................... 50  

2
The Basics of a Good Hook

3
It’s Hard to Resist Free Food
You’re walking down a street in your city, and pass by the
local deli. As you can imagine, it’s the smells you notice
first: the cured meats, mainly. Your salivary glands kick
into action, and now you’re like a drooling dog on the
prowl. You stop to look in the deli’s large display window,
and it’s a feast for the eyes. Hanging hams, sausage
links, sliced meats and cheeses on display. But… those
prices. Who can afford these things anymore?

And then you see it – a tray with chunks of gorgeous

pepperoni just inside the entrance, with a very inviting
“help yourself” card perched on the edge. Well, who can
resist free food? You can help yourself, and you don’t
even have to buy anything. In fact, it would be wrong to
not take advantage of that, you convince yourself.

Now you’re inside, chewing on morsels of pepperoni and

glancing around the store. Just standing there eating
makes you feel a bit self-conscious, so you move about
the shop, pretending to be trying to make up your mind
what you’re going to buy. But for you, you’ve got what
you’ve come in for: free pepperoni.

4
Oh, look at those sausages. Well, it can’t hurt to buy a
few. And look at this way: for a few dollars, you’d be
getting a package of sausages and a few pieces of
pepperoni. Surely that means you’ve snagged a pretty
good deal. You buy the sausages, sneak one more piece
of pepperoni, and you head out the door to continue on
your way. And you make a mental note to return again
soon; who knows what will be being offered on the “free”
tray next time?

What a Good Deli Owner Knows

I’ve just described what a storeowner might do to attract

potential buyers through thedoors. And here are the

things we learn from this experience:

1. Customers love good pepperoni, but are OK if it’s of

mediocre quality. Since it’s free, they’re already
pleased.
2. Customers find it easier to buy something from a
store offering free pepperoni, since it makes them
feel that they’re getting a good deal even before
spending a penny.

5
 3. No matter how good anything else in the store is,
the free pepperoni is likely what they’ll remember
long after they’ve forgotten everything else.
4. No matter how good the pepperoni is it won’t solve
the bad paint job on the store sign. (But the
pepperoni is still good, so…)
5. Customers will return occasionally to see if free
pepperoni (or free anything else) is still being
offered.

Since this is a book about songwriting, and specifically

about song hooks, let’s pull this discussion about
pepperoni into something more relevant.

Grabbing Attention

The pepperoni that the storeowner is selling is a hook.

It’s what got the customer interested in entering the
store, and that’s also what a good song hook does.
Regardless of anything else, a good hook grabs
attention. A listener may have heard of you, and may
have even heard a song or two that you’ve streamed
online. But a good hook will make them commit as a
possible fan.

6
A song hook may not be overly clever, but its nature (and
indeed its very importance) is to be first and foremost
catchy. An effective song hook builds up trust between
the listener and the performer-songwriter. Even if the
listener is still trying to get used to your music, they’ll find
the hook to be catchy, and they’re more willing to listen
to whatever else you’ve got to offer.

Making Memories

Once the audience is done listening to your song, it’s the

memory of that powerful hook that will keep bringing
them back. Long after everything else about the song has
been forgotten, memory of the hook will remain. And
remember, it’s the aspect of trust that’s important with a
hook. Give the audience a nice, solid, catchy hook, and
you’ve gone a long way to making a pleasant memory,
one that will make it more likely they’ll come back.

A good song hook has the ability to make listeners ignore

other potential problems with a song. A good example of
this is the out-of-tune singing on the Beach Boys’ version
of “Barbara Ann.” Of course, the whole song is done in

7
fun, at a studio party. That hook is every musician’s
dream. Just start singing “Bar bar bar bar Barbara Ann”,
and everyone knows it, and everyone loves it. The bad
tuning in the vocals would never usually have been
tolerated by any good musician, or in any other recording
session, except for that hook that makes everything else
seem less important somehow.

Once you’ve snagged an audience for your hook, you’ve

got them “in the door”, so to speak. Listeners will come
back to hear what else you have to offer, and that’s the
beginning of building a fan base. So as you can see, it’s
not really much different in the music business than it is
in the cured meats business: get people through the door,
and you’ve done the most important thing.

Defining “Hook”

It appears you can’t have a decent conversation in the

pop music world (and all of its related genres) without
mentioning the word hook. For many songwriters, and
most certainly for producers, the hook is what music is all
about. The hook is that catchy bit that people can’t stop
humming. It’s what brings audiences back, makes them

8
buy, and generally keeps everyone happy. If your song
doesn’t have a hook, it would seem, it is doomed to be
tossed on the garbage heap of failed music.

And of course that’s not true. Not all songs have that
iconic element that rivets itself into a listener’s brain.
Some songs just seem to succeed for reasons other than
having that catchy little riff to pull listeners in.

But then again, it really depends on what you mean by a

hook. For some, the word hook is used interchangeably
with the word chorus. For others, a standout intro, like
the guitar riff at the beginning of Deep Purple’s “Smoke
On the Water,” is the hook. Other great songs have
strong melodies or lyrics, their success not relying on
anything obviously “hooky.” “Blowin’ In the Wind” is a
good example. It’s not that there’s something about that
title that rises to the level of being a hook. It’s a great
melody, lyric and chord progression. The tune has a
gorgeous contour, where each phrase seems to build on
the musical energy of what’s come before it. The refrain
line, the one containing the title, allows all that musical
energy to dissipate in the most attractive way possible,
and so when it ends, it sounds like we’ve just experienced
a short but wonderful musical journey. And we’ve

9
experienced that journey without much of what could be
called a hook. It’s just all… good!

But hook aside, there are aspects of “Blowin’ In the Wind”

that are certainly attractive, bits that beg us to listen. As
one example, the fact that each line starts “How many
raods/seas/times…” is a kind of hook, albeit a subtle one.
We’re going to discover that we use the word hook to
refer to anything that stands out a bit from everything
else in a song.

Two Important Hook Characteristics

There are some important hook characteristics, and we’ve

already mentioned them when comparing song hooks to
the kind of hook a delicatessen owner might use. But in
addition to those, a song hook does two very important
things:

1) It keeps a listener fixated on a song, both while

they’re listening and long afterward when they’re
only remembering.
2) It tends to draw listeners back to a song.

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Without a doubt, those are the two most important
qualities of a song hook, and producers love the second
quality: the ability a good hook has to bring listeners back
to a song. That’s the start of building a buying audience,
and so why wouldn’t they love it?

I mentioned earlier that there are several different kinds

of song hooks, and several of them can appear in the
same song. In a way, you can think of every section of a
good song as having something hook-like, something that
compels the listener to keep listening.

The Many Ways to Hook An Audience

Here’s a list of seven songs that use hooks that have

become icons of modern day popular music. You’ll notice
that just the title alone will get you humming the song,
though it’s not always the title that provides the most
memorable hook:

1. “Superstition” (Stevie Wonder)

2. “Smoke on the Water” (Deep Purple)
3. “Born in the U.S.A.” (Bruce Springsteen)
4. “Billie Jean” (Michael Jackson)

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 5. “Ho Hey” (The Lumineers)
6. “Moves Like Jagger” (Maroon 5)
7. “Royals” (Lorde)

With “Superstition” and “Smoke on the Water”, it’s the

intro that immediately grabs attention. With “Born in the
U.S.A.” and “Billie Jean”, it’s the title that appears in the
chorus that’s the hooky bit. With “Moves Like Jagger” and
“Royals” it’s a combination of effects that amounts to
several hooks that all interact. And with “Ho Hey”, it’s
using the voice like a sound effect that is its most
memorable feature.

And though the writers and producers of each of those

songs snag listeners in different ways, they all achieve
the same thing: they put a short, melodic/rhythmic
fragment out front and in sharp focus, making it likely
that it will be remembered long after everything else
about the song is forgotten.

Most hooks can be categorized to be one of the following:

1. A chorus hook. The song works its way through

the verse and optional pre-chorus. Musical
momentum/energy builds, and we finally get a

12
 strong chorus hook that almost invariably involves
the title of the song. Chorus hooks can be thought
of as a “title hook” for songs that don’t actually
have a chorus, but the idea is the same: build
musical energy until you sing the song title.
2. An instrumental hook. The song typically starts
with a catchy instrumental under-layer that serves
both as a grab-the-ears instrumental riff, as well as
a solid backing for the melody above it. It then
typically continues beyond the intro, serving as a
foundation for the verse.
3. An intro hook. This is often an instrumental riff,
like the guitar in “Smoke On the Water.” Once it’s
been established, it tends to disappear and then
reappear as a connector that joins the chorus to
the next verse.
4. A sound effect hook. This typically shows up as a
spoken or yelled word (“Tequila”), a tuneless
instrumental effect (like the guitar-shot effect
during the instrumental chorus of “Baker Street”
(Gerry Rafferty), or even something like the
percussive clave effect in Elton John’s “I Don’t
Wanna Go On With You Like That.” It’s anything
distinctive that isn’t comprised of a
melodic/rhythmic idea.

13
Waving the Flag

Why is a hook so important? That’s a tricky question to

answer. It would be an easy one if all songs needed
strong hooks, but as we know, some songs have become
hits without anything that stands out as an obvious hook.
Whether it’s the previously mentioned “Blowin’ In the
Wind” (Bob Dylan), or perhaps “Good Night” (John
Lennon, attributed to Lennon & McCartney), “Only
Sixteen” (Sam Cooke) or many others, some songs just
don’t seem to need a big hook to be good. And those
songs are all very successful, and have been covered
hundreds of times by some of the world’s greatest
performers.

But many songs do have at least one or two things about

them that we consider “hooky”. Think of it this way: A
song is a musical journey. It has a starting point, a
middle point, and then it ends. And in the pop music
genres, that journey is relatively short: three to four
minutes and you’re done. If you were going to take a
visitor on a walk around your city and do it in three to
four minutes, you’d better hope that something really

14
interesting happens – preferably a flaming kite with
sparklers falling out of the sky. The shorter the walk, the
harder it is going to be to have that walk be at all
interesting, and so the more important it is for something
– anything – to stand out from everything else.

That’s where hooks come in. They take a short song and
give it a flag to wave. Hooks make songs interesting.
Hooks have a way of standing above everything else and
grabbing attention. Some really grab attention (the
chorus hook of Eric Clapton’s “Layla”), while others do it
in a more subtle way – “The Lazy Song” (Bruno Mars,
Philip Lawrence, Ari Levine, K'naan) – in which the whole
song is hooky with no one element standing out. Hooks
don’t guarantee commercial success, but because they
give the listener something to focus on, they can be very
important.

The 3 Components of Most Song Hooks

Because a hook can appear in many forms, you might

think that it’s impossible to describe that feature in a way
that universally applies. But setting aside the kind of hook
that is more like a sound effect (“Ho Hey”, or “Wipe

15
Out”), there are three characteristics that apply to most
of the hooks pop songs ever use:

1. The enticing melodic shape.

2. The catchy rhythm.
3. The strong chord progression.

Practically every hook ever written is an interesting,

short melodic idea – usually 2 to 8 beats in length –
wrapped up in an attractive rhythmic pattern, all
sitting atop a simple, short chord progression.

Sunshine Of Your Love

Let’s take a look at Cream’s “Sunshine Of Your Love” as a

great example of what a hook does. This is an
instrumental hook that lies underneath a good chunk of
the song. The letter names of the various pitches are
shown below each note.

16
Intro:

The two crucial elements – melody and rhythm – are

obvious right away when you listen to the intro of the
song. It’s a melody with a general downward shape.
When it repeats, it leaps up an octave, and so you have
to consider that leap to be part of the importance of the
idea, since it repeats often. The rhythm shows an element
that is common in many hooks: syncopation. Syncopation
means that notes have been moved off of the beat, and
that’s a common feature in pop music. Combined, the
melody and rhythm of this hook is a hands-down winner.
The chords are the melody played an octave lower. The
hook makes a brilliant intro, but it also serves as the
background (and in fact the melody) for the verse.

This hook does something that many instrumental hooks

eventually do: it moves off of its starting note, starting on
a different one. In many songs you hear a hook
happening in the chorus, where the same notes are used
time and time again. Lennon & McCartney’s “She loves
you, yeah, yeah, yeah” is a great example; when a hook

17
is as attractive as that one, you want to keep repeating it,
as is, over and over.

In “Sunshine Of Your Love”, the hook gets moved off of

its original pitch of D, onto G. But the original shape (and
of course the rhythm) is maintained. It’s so distinctive
that it wouldn’t matter which pitch the hook got moved
to; it does its job anywhere it goes.

Most instrumental hooks – the kind that sit underneath

the main melody, chords and lyrics – will move around to
a different starting note, because as the chord
progression underneath it changes, so too does the
melody that sits atop it. And when the chords change, the
starting pitch of the instrumental hook that’s attached to
it will change as well, to fit the chord of the moment.
Regardless of where it gets moved, if the hook is likable,
it will get recognized no matter where it finds itself, and
remains every bit as attractive.

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Summarizing the Five Standard
Characteristics of Song Hooks

So let’s summarize what we notice about most good song

hooks:
1. They have an interesting rhythm.
2. They are comprised of a short, catchy melody.
3. They use simple chords.
4. They sound fun to play and sing.
5. They usually appear and disappear several times
throughout the length of a song.

That last point is important. It prevents the audience from

getting hook-overload. In “Sunshine Of Your Love”, the
chorus abandons the hook and gives a few bars based on
a new rhythm and a new melodic idea. That ensures that
every time the hook reappears, it sounds fresh and
interesting.

Is That a Hook… Or a Motif?

There is another musical structure that needs to be

described at this point: the motif. In music, a motif

19
shares similarities with a hook, but there are some crucial
differences.

Like a hook, a motif is a short musical idea that gets

repeated throughout a song. But while a hook gets
repeated more or less the same way so that we easily
recognize it each time it happens, a motif often serves as
a background idea that gets developed and then modified
to suit whatever section of a song it appears in. Hooks
and motifs can appear in the same song, and often do.

If you notice, for example, that a song seems to feature a

certain rhythm (like the jaunty “dotted” rhythm at the
beginning of “The Star-Spangled Banner”), you’re noticing
a motif. If you notice that many phrases in a song start
with upward leaps in the melody (like those upward leaps
in the verse melody of “Somewhere Over the Rainbow”),
you’re hearing how a motif can glue music together and
strengthen the overall structure. Those examples aren’t
hooks, because they aren’t catchy on their own. But they
are great examples of how a short, musical idea can
make everything in a song sound related to each other.

20
Let’s look at another good example of a motif in action. In
Alabama Shakes’ “Don’t Wanna Fight”, there are several
motifs that help to glue this song together. The song
starts with a very appealing guitar hook, but let’s take a
look at the verse melody. It’s several short fragments
joined together to form a longer melody:

“My lines /Your lines/ Don’t cross them lines.”

You’ll notice right away that each fragment is a

downward-moving idea:

My lines, Your lines, Don’t cross them lines…”

This downward moving melody gets used again for the

following lines (“What you like, what I like/ Why can't we
both be right?”)

For the next lines, the melodic shape gets a slight

modification, one that now incorporates a small upward
motion at the start.

21
“Attacking, defending/ Until there's nothing left worth
winning”).

When we get to the chorus, we hear that the original

descending line idea is used.

That’s what a motif does. It provides a kind of musical

glue because the listener keeps hearing that same idea
being used over and over again, even though it keeps
changing slightly in shape. And it’s not a hook. That
original two-note idea that happens on “My lines” just
isn’t strong enough on its own to warrant describing it as
a hook. But the fact that it keeps happening, even on
different pitches, sometimes stretched out to be longer
(“…Until there’s nothing left worth winning”), sometimes
inverted so that it sounds upside down… these are all the
hallmarks of a good motif.

And like a good motif, it does its work in the background.

While hooks stand up and scream for attention, motifs

22
work in a way that draws almost no attention to itself: an
ego-less musical structure. But don’t equate that benign
quality with unimportance. In fact, motifs are often crucial
parts of good songs that also rely on a hook. And for
songs that don’t seem to have an obvious hook, you’ll
usually find a motif (or often several motifs) working hard
in the background. In Sam Cooke’s “Only Sixteen”, you
get an important rhythmic motif on the words “only
sixteen…” that keeps recurring and changing, revealing a
modified version of itself on the line, “and I was too
young to know”.

Motifs are practically unnoticeable by the listening public,

in much the same way that they also don’t notice how the
curve of the front bumper on their car matches the curves
you find everywhere else on their car. They also don’t
notice that the pale yellow colour on their house’s
bathroom wall matches the pale yellow of the floor tile.
And they may not notice that someone’s shirt looks
amazing today because some aspect of the pattern on the
fabric partners with some aspect of the pattern on the
sweater they’re wearing. And even if they do notice, they
don’t always get the full significance or importance. But
those are all examples of motifs, and they play an
important part of making things look or sound amazing.

23
A hook differs from a motif by virtue of the fact that a
hook is big and obvious, standing out front and waving a
large flag. In fact, a catchy hook can make problems with
a song’s structure seem less of a problem: the fact that
perhaps you haven’t used motifs enough, for example.

In “The Essential Secrets of Songwriting”, 3rd edition, I

mention that the famous “da-da-da-DUM” from
Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony is more a motif than a hook.
That’s because that melodic/rhythmic idea, which is 3
notes quickly played followed by a lower note, is
something that gets used, developed and modified as the
symphony goes on. It pulls everything together, and
makes it all sound like it belongs to the same piece of
music. But that grand statement at the beginning – the
BIG “da-da-da-DUM” – is very much a hook, and it
reminds us that hooks and motifs can occur in the same
piece of music, and that often happens.

So hooks are nothing new. They’ve been around for

centuries. Practically any good piece of music, whether
it’s pop, R&B, hip hop, classical, folk, country, or EDM… all
often make use of musical fragments that can be best
described as a hook. And though classical composers
never traditionally have referred to their ideas as “hooks”,

24
it is very much the same basic idea: to present a short
melodic/rhythmic fragment in such a way as to be
enticing and attractive, and to bring audiences back.

Layering of Hooks

I mentioned a bit earlier that some songs, like “The Lazy

Song”, contain several ideas, all of which might be
described as hooks. And as you listen to songs that are
universally described as great by most people, you start
to notice that many songs consist of several hooks. In
such songs, one hook often stands up and waves the
largest flag, often in the chorus. But other sections within
the song will exhibit some quality or characteristic or
element that can be best described as a hook in its own
right.

A great example of a song with two strong hooks in

friendly competition with each other is Aerosmith’s “Walk
This Way” (Steven Tyler, Joe Perry). It starts with a
fantastic guitar riff (an intro hook) that sets up the song,
then reappears and disappears several times throughout.
Then of course there is the big chorus hook (“Walk this
way…” repeated four times). In many songs, you can find

25
at least two hooks, possibly more. One usually stands out
from the others.

Whether a song has one, two, or several hooks, they are

always serving the same purpose: to pull listeners in,
keep them listening, and bring them back.

It’s time now to do a bit of song analysis. The next

section of this book examines fifteen songs, most of which
are or were sitting at or near the top of a Billboard chart,
and which use a prominent hook of some sort. And
because these are all successful songs, it becomes easy
to hear what effect the hook has had on its success.

26
Great Hook Examples
So let’s take a look at several songs from the past 6
decades, ones that contain a strong hook, and see what
the hook does to make those songs so powerful. In the
process, we can hopefully learn a thing or two about how
to make hooks an important part of your songs.

TITLE: “Money Honey”

WRITER(S): Jesse Stone
PERFORMED BY: Clyde McPhatter and
The Drifters
RELEASE DATE: May, 1953
HOOK TYPE: Chorus hook
DETAILS: There’s actually a couple of hooky elements in
this song. It starts with a drone-like hum at the start, but
it’s that “Money honey” chorus that really grabs attention.

TITLE: “Lucille”
WRITER(S): Albert Collins, Little Richard
PERFORMED BY: Little Richard
RELEASE DATE: February, 1957
HOOK TYPE: Chorus hook

27
DETAILS: Every verse and in fact most lines start with
that falsetto-infused word “Lucille.” Like many songs,
especially in the early rock & roll era, you get a catchy
instrumental riff/hook that gets laid down by the guitar,
bass, drums and horns, a riff that injects incredible
energy into the music all the way through. That
instrumental is so strong, the song would likely have
succeeded even without the vocal line! It’s a great
example of layering two different kinds of hook.

TITLE: “Sugar Shack”

WRITER(S): Keith McCormack, Jimmy
Torres
PERFORMED BY: Jimmy Gilmer and the
Fireballs
RELEASE DATE: September, 1963
HOOK TYPE: Chorus (title) hook/ instrumental hook
DETAILS: There’s no arguing that most people will
remember the quirky organ lick (played on a Hammond
Solovox Model J) more than the title hook. It’s the
alliteration of “sugar” and “shack” that draws attention.
The organ riff is a strong contributor to the power of this
song, because it’s not clear that the title hook would have

28
been enough to make the song as successful as it became
for Jimmy Gilmer and the Fireballs.

TITLE: “I Want To Hold Your Hand”

WRITER(S): John Lennon / Paul
McCartney
PERFORMED BY: The Beatles
RELEASE DATE: November, 1963
HOOK TYPE: Chorus hook/ Instrumental hook
DETAILS: Another song that layers a catchy instrumental
opening with a fantastic chorus hook. The chorus hook
appears in a couple of different formats. First, just at the
end of the verse, with that leaping Perfect 5th on “hand”,
and and then as part of the song’s refrain.

TITLE: “These Boots Are Made for Walkin’”

WRITER(S): Lee Hazlewood
PERFORMED BY: Nancy Sinatra
RELEASE DATE: February, 1966
HOOK TYPE: Intro hook/ Instrumental hook

29
DETAILS: There is a lot going on in this song that rises
to the level of being a hook, but no doubt the double bass
sliding downward in that weird microtonal way is the flag-
waving feature of this song. It uses two basses, one
electric (Carol Kaye) and one acoustic double bass (Chuck
Berghofer), and it’s the picked double bass that plays the
iconic slide.

TITLE: “Brown Sugar”

WRITER(S): Mick Jagger/Keith Richards
PERFORMED BY: The Rolling Stones
RELEASE DATE: April 1971
HOOK TYPE: Chorus hook
DETAILS: In a similar fashion to Little Richard croaking
out “Lucille,” Mick Jagger yelling out “Brown Sugar” is the
most noticeable hook of this song. But like most songs, it
all gets set up with an infectious guitar-based riff at the
beginning.

30
 TITLE: “You’re No Good”
WRITER(S): Clint Ballard, Jr.
PERFORMED BY: Betty Everett
(1963)/Linda Ronstadt (1974)
RELEASE DATE: November, 1974
HOOK TYPE: Chorus hook
DETAILS: You’ll notice that the verse is made up of short
melodic fragments, most of which move in a roughly
upward direction. As the verse approaches the chorus,
energy and momentum builds. Then the chorus hits, and
the downward motion of the hook provides ear-catching
contrast. It’s a fantastic chorus hook.

TITLE: Theme from “Barney Miller”

WRITER(S): Jack Elliott/Allyn Ferguson
PERFORMED BY: Chuck Berghofer et al.
RELEASE DATE: September, 1975
HOOK TYPE: Intro/Instrumental hook
DETAILS: Back in the mid-1970s, there wasn’t a bass
player alive who wasn’t trying to play this tune’s opening
funky bass riff. It continues beyond the intro as a backing
lick for the guitar solo, later for the sax solo, and
morphing into a standard bass line when the brass take

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over the melody. It’s a fantastic tune for a television show
theme song.

TITLE: “Saturday Night”

WRITER(S): Bill Martin/ Phil Coulter
PERFORMED BY: Bay City Rollers
RELEASE DATE: September, 1975
HOOK TYPE: Chorus hook/ Sound effect hook
DETAILS: The Bay City Rollers were a band that people
either loved, hated, or loved to hate. Their hit song
“Saturday Night” had a unique kind of hook: the word
“Saturday” chanted out loudly as if cheering for the local
football club. It’s basically a sound effect hook, and it
worked. You didn’t have to get any further than “S – A…”
for everyone to know what song you were singing.

TITLE: “Who Can It Be Now”

WRITER(S): Colin Hay
PERFORMED BY: Men at Work
RELEASE DATE: June 1981
HOOK TYPE: Chorus hook/ Instrumental hook

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DETAILS: The chorus of this song is simply the title sung
four times. Each time it’s sung, there’s this catchy little
echo figure that replies in the saxophone, played by Greg
Ham using what sounds like a wooden stir-stick for a
reed. It’s a good demonstration of how you can pair up a
chorus hook with an instrumental hook.

TITLE: “Livin' On A Prayer”

WRITER(S): Jon Bon Jovi/ Richie
Sambora/ Desmond Child
PERFORMED BY: Bon Jovi
RELEASE DATE: October 1986
HOOK TYPE: Chorus hook
DETAILS: In this song, the chorus hook “Living on a
prayer…” acts as an answering phrase, always preceded
by “oh, oh” in high-pitched 3-part harmony. But the odd-
sounding talk-box effect in the verse is a vital part of
getting and keeping listeners hooked.

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 TITLE: “I'm Gonna Be (500 Miles)”
WRITER(S): Craig Reid
PERFORMED BY: The Proclaimers
RELEASE DATE: August, 1988
HOOK TYPE: Chorus hook
DETAILS: This song has the distinction of using what
could be termed a double chorus hook. The first doesn’t
use the chorus words, but is based on the phrase “I would
walk 500 miles/more”, where the word “I” distinctively
jumps up a 6th or 7th. But that’s followed by what might
be more accurately called the “real” hook” – a short,
hooky melodic fragment sung on those “Da lat da”
syllables. The song is fun and quirky, and without the
second, main hook, one wonders if the song would have
been noticed at all.

TITLE: “Informer”
WRITER(S): Edmond Leary, Darrin
O'Brien, Shawn Moltke
PERFORMED BY: Snow
RELEASE DATE: January, 1993
HOOK TYPE: Chorus hook

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DETAILS: This song is a great demonstration of how
something as simple as changing the rhythm on the
chorus hook can be the element that helps draw attention
to itself. Words get sung quickly in this tune, but the
rhythmically slowest notes are saved for the chorus hook,
“In-for-mer…” That does much to set the word up as the
most important part of the song. It’s easy, sounds fun to
sing, and keeps listeners coming back.

TITLE: “Bad Day”

WRITER(S): Daniel Powter
PERFORMED BY: Daniel Powter
RELEASE DATE: January, 2005
HOOK TYPE: Chorus hook
DETAILS: The chorus hook is infectiously attractive. One
of the features that makes this hook work is that the song
is laid out in 2-bar phrases, so you get a certain feel
common to mid-tempo ballads. But in the chorus,
everything tightens up, and the hook leads off a
succession of short, 2-beat long phrases. This helps to
intensify the musical energy of the chorus, and begs for
people to listen.

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 TITLE: “Single Ladies (Put a Ring On
It)”
WRITER(S): Christopher "Tricky"
Stewart, Terius "The-Dream" Nash, Thaddis Harrell,
Beyoncé Knowles
PERFORMED BY: Beyoncé
RELEASE DATE: October, 2008
HOOK TYPE: Intro hook, Chorus hook
DETAILS: Here’s a song that uses several hooks, and
that’s become the industry norm for pop music: each
section of a song has something hooky about it. So you
get a strong intro hook (“All the single ladies”,
accompanied by a peculiar whistle effect). After a verse,
you get a kind of first chorus hook (“'Cause if you liked it,
then you should have put a ring on it…”), followed by a
second hook (“oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh…”). As mentioned
earlier, it’s a situation of having several hooks, all in a
kind of competition to work out which is the most
important. It ensures that every section of your song has
something important to contribute to the final product.

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Writing a Song Hook –
Three Step-By-Step Procedures

Let’s be truthful: you like when things like hooks just

occur to you naturally. We tend to be mistrustful of
musical ideas that don’t come quickly to us. That’s
because pop music, at its very core, is an improvised art.
The trick, at least most of the time, is to make everything
you write sound as though it’s come out of the blue, as if
we’re merely the conduit through which already-existing
music passes. And when it doesn’t happen that easily –
when it seems to take time and work – we wonder if it
counts as an authentic musical experience.

We love the story that Paul McCartney tells of how he

literally dreamed the melody for “Yesterday.” We love it,
not just because we live in hope that the same thing will
happen to us someday, but also because we feel there’s
something musically honest about songs that just appear
out of thin air.

But the fact is that most music, after appearing in our

imagination, goes through a lengthy editing process

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before it ever sounds right. That’s to be expected, and it’s
not an indication of a problem with your compositional
process. So if you’re in the course of writing a new song
but nothing resembling a hook comes to your mind, it’s
time to put a procedure in place that helps you construct
a hook. It still requires your musical instincts, but it
allows you to break the process down into several steps,
each step of which takes something from the previous
step and improves on it.

There are countless ways to do this, but let’s come up

with three that are based on the three characteristics
common to most song hooks: 1) an attractive melodic
fragment; 2) a catchy rhythm; and 3) a short, strong
chord progression.

And just to say again what I said before, but in a slightly

different way: you may find that turning the creation of a
hook into a step-by-step process will feel odd and
insincere. Don’t let that instinct bother you. If you really
can’t come up with anything hook-like that sticks, the
following procedures can get you moving in the right
direction. In that regard, don’t be surprised if you find
yourself abandoning the process and continuing on your
own once a hook starts to take shape.

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You may also find that you can modify the steps that you
see written out for you, and that’s completely fine – in
fact, advised, if that’s what gets you creating. For
example, the first process, “Composing a Hook, Melody
First” requires you to start by humming a random note in
your mid-range. You may find, however, that the process
works a little better for you if you start by humming parts
of a scale. Go for it! The reason why these procedures are
written out for you at all is that you feel stuck, not
because they are the one and only way to create music.
As always in songwriting, use your imagination, stay
positive, and keep an open mind.

39
Composing a Hook, Melody First

This will work nicely for composing a chorus hook.

1) Hum a random note in your mid-range. You’re

eventually going to add chords to this, and our process
here is going to keep those chords in the key of C major,
so let’s keep it simple; for the purposes of this activity, to
try either a G or E.

2) Experiment with rhythmic patterns on that one

note. Keep a beat by tapping your foot to establish a
tempo, and then improvise some random rhythms on
your starting pitch. This shouldn’t be complex at all,
because though most song hooks will feature a
syncopation or other kind of rhythmic device, it should be
easy enough for anyone to do.

3) Start adding extra pitches to your improvisations.

Continue to improvise patterns, and repeat the ones you
like. Remember, repetition is a crucial part of what
entices listeners back to a musical idea. Add a second,
and then a third pitch. You should notice that your hook is
gaining a sense of shape, a characteristic contour.

40
4) It’s time to add some guitar chords. Your first
melody note was an E or G, both notes in a C chord, so
try strumming the C as your first chord, follow it with
something else, and then return to the C chord again.
You’ll want to come up with a rhythmic approach that
partners well with the rhythmic idea of your melody.

5) Add lyrics to the melodic ideas you’ve created.

You’ll notice when you think of the great chorus hooks
through the ages that the chorus hook lyric tends to be a
bit on the corny side, but don’t let that bother you. On its
own, the line “livin’ on a prayer” may sound a little trite,
but it has the benefit of being a common phrase in our
culture. So come up with something that’s going to stick.
Some quick suggestions:

“You could have fooled me;”

“Hop to it;”
“Needle in a haystack;”
“Call it a day;”
“I don’t buy it;”
“Out of the blue;”
“I feel burned;”
“In my humble opinion;”

41
That final step is when you feel things really coming
together. Not only do you have a musical hook, but
adding a short lyrical line starts to give the whole thing
some direction.

Though this process is geared to the melody-first

songwriter, it’s easy enough to modify it to be a lyrics-
first hook. Those lyrical suggestions have a rhythmic
element, and then you start to notice the melodic
possibilities, especially if you say the line in a
melodramatic voice. So it’s a simple matter of doing those
steps a little out of order: try step 5 (create a line of
lyric), add a rhythmic approach, think of melody and
chords, and away you go!

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Composing a Hook, Rhythm First

This will serve as a good method for composing an

instrumental or intro hook, and will lead into composing a
verse melody.

1) On a guitar, percussion instrument, using rhythm

loops, or even just on your lap, invent a short 2- or
4-beat rhythm. The kind of rhythm that really makes
hooks come alive usually involves syncopation. (The intro
to Taylor Swift’s “Shake It Off” is a good example of a 4-
beat rhythmic pattern).

2) Create a short 1-to-3-chord progression for

guitar or keyboard. Add a rhythmic treatment to your
chords. It’s good to create a rhythmic interplay between
the chording instrument and the rhythmic backing you
created in step 1. In other words, it’s good if the rhythms
aren’t exactly the same. (The Stone’s “Brown Sugar” is a
good song to listen to; you can imagine them putting that
intro hook together this way.)

3) Improvise a melodic idea that could serve as the

start of a verse melody. You’ll want to remember to

43
keep this melody low-ish in your vocal range, because
chorus melodies often move higher, so you’ll need room
to allow for that. Keep the rhythmic ideas going as you
try several possible melodic shapes. One will eventually
grab your ear and musically excite you. Notice that as
melody and chords change, your original hook will need to
move up or down to accommodate the new starting
pitches.

4) Add lyrics. Remember that since this is likely to be a

verse melody, keep your lyrical choices more along the
lines of describing things, as opposed to emoting.

The idea here is to create something catchy that can work

at the start of your song, in the intro. If it’s a true intro
hook, you’ll plan to drop it as verse 1 starts, but then
bring it back as a connector between the end of the
chorus and the next verse.

If what you’re creating is an instrumental hook that keeps

playing as the verse continues (as in Stevie Wonder’s
“Superstition”), it needs to be catchy enough to be a
hook, but also something that can sit a bit in the
background without upstaging the verse melody.

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Composing a Hook, Chords First

You can use this as a hook for pretty much anywhere in

your song. It works best if you enjoy the chords-first
process in general. Also, you’ll notice that chords first
may also mean the almost immediate invention of melody
to go along with it. (You could imagine Peter Gabriel using
this process for coming up with the opening to “Solsbury
Hill”, for example).

1) Create a short chord progression consisting of 1

to 4 chords. This should act as a kind of turnaround – a
chord progression where the end attaches nicely back to
the beginning. For a hook, four chords is a lot, so keep it
more on the short side.

2) Apply rhythmic ideas to the chords. Remember

that a catchy hook needs a rhythmic treatment with some
kick and spirit, so experiment with various kinds of
syncopation mixed in.

3) Hum some melodic ideas over the chords.

Depending on where in the song you think this hook
might wind up, you’ll want to place the hook low or high

45
in pitch. And keep in mind that this process can be used
to create several hooks that exist within the same song.

4) Add lyrics. If you plan to use this approach for both

your verse and your chorus, you may find yourself
working on both those hooks at more or less the same
time. It will offer you a chance to make sure that they’re
pairing up well.

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Some Concluding Thoughts

The Brevity of a Good Hook

The longer a musical element is, the more difficult it is for

someone to remember it. That’s why repetition is such an
important organizing feature of good songs. Repetition
ensures that a long melody is often composed of shorter
ideas, repeated several times. For longer melodies that
don’t feature repetition, like perhaps “Hey Jude”, you’ll
find that the chords offer a clearly lit path that move the
music away from, and then back to, the tonic in a
musically satisfying way.

With hooks, brevity is an important feature. They need to

come to the listener as a package, something they can
“take in” in one listen. Remember, if it’s not short and
catchy, it’s not a hook.

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Adding A Hook to a Finished Song

You’ve likely been in this situation before: you write a

song, and though you can’t really identify anything wrong
with it, it’s just not doing it for you. It doesn’t have
anything you’d call a “spark”, and it’s just lying there.
You’d be tempted to think that you’ve just created a dud,
but don’t toss it yet. It’s possible to add something hook-
like to an otherwise finished song.

In that regard, a hook can be part of the musical

arranging that you do during the recording process – part
of production as opposed to composition. Besides
composing music, part of my own writing involves doing
arrangements for vocal and choral groups of songs that
have been already composed by someone else. In a
sense, a lot of what I do to create a unique treatment for
the music I arrange is to come up with something that
resembles an intro or instrumental hook. I establish a
short idea that could in truth be the intro for almost any
song. When I use it as an intro, and then bring it back in
to lead into verse 2 (the way Peter Gabriel uses his intro
of “Solsbury Hill” to connect choruses back to verses), it
strengthens the musical structure of the song.

48
And it can do more than that. If your song is lacking that
bit of spark, you can create an intro hook that provides
one more element of interest to a song, and can lift it
from being ordinary to being something much more.
Stevie Wonder’s “Higher Ground” has a very simple
instrumental opening, but that opening has such a strong
groove that it makes it an even better song than it
already is. There is no denying that Chicago’s “25 or 6 to
4” would work well without the guitar riff at the
beginning, but that riff became the defining feature of
that song.

Having said all that, while it is true that a hook can save a
song that is lacking sparkle, it doesn’t fix whatever is
causing a song to be weak. I think that’s an important
principle of songwriting. Hooks can divert attention away
from structural, compositional issues with a song, but it
doesn’t directly address the problem. It can mask other
problems, and there is some value in that. But don’t
confuse masking with fixing. If a song on its own doesn’t
stand, you may want to dig in to find out what the
problem is, and that becomes a compositional process
that may require you to put a microscope on every aspect
of the song.

49
Dealing With Writer’s Block

If you find that everything about songwriting – not just

the hook – is getting difficult for you, it may be time to
look writer’s block
in the eye and deal
with it. I’ve written
a book called
“Beating
Songwriter’s
Block: Jump-
Start Your Words
and Music” as a way of helping songwriters understand
what’s going on when they can’t come up with good
songwriting ideas. Most creative blocks come from a fear
of failure, and it can be very debilitating.

The book is a hard-cover text that you can purchase from

any online book seller:

Amazon
Barnes & Noble
Powell’s City of Books

50
If you’re struggling to get back on track with your music,
you may want to give that book a try. It describes the
psychology behind writer’s block, gives you melody-
writing and lyric-writing exercises for you to work
through, and then puts a magnifying glass on your
songwriting technique as a way of sorting out any
technical issues.

All the best with your songwriting projects!

51
ABOUT GARY EWER

Gary Ewer received his B.Mus degree in Music Composition from

Dalhousie University in 1982, and then continued studies with various
composers at McGill University. His career has been mainly in the
teaching of music at all levels of education from grade school through
to university: music theory, ear training, composition, arranging and
orchestration.

Gary also has conducted choirs,

orchestras and bands. His compositions,
mainly for choirs and orchestras, have
been composed for, and performed by,
the CBC (Canadian Broadcasting
Corporation), Symphony Nova Scotia,
The Elmer Isler Singers, and many
others.

Through his high school years, Gary’s main interest was in pop music;
Genesis, Yes, and Chicago were his main influences. His university
training was largely Classical, but far from abandoning his interest in
pop, he saw how, on many levels, pop songwriters and Classical
composers were all attempting to do the same thing: compose musical
works (though in very different styles) that takes listeners on a
coherent musical journey.

His interest in the relationship between the pop and Classical worlds
eventually led him to write a text for songwriters (“The Essential
Secrets of Songwriting”) that analyzes hit songs in much the same way
a Classical musician would analyze a symphony: by showing writers
what works, why it works, and how to use those same kinds of ideas in
their own music.

Gary owns Pantomime Music Publications, a company through

which he distributes much of the choral music he writes. He is the
author and developer of “Easy Music Theory with Gary Ewer”, a
25-lesson DVD-based course in music rudiments. He also maintains
the very popular ”Essential Secrets of Songwriting Blog”. That blog
gets well over one thousands visits daily from songwriters looking for
ways to improve their skills.

If you have any questions about any of Gary’s products, he welcomes

your email:

gary@pantomimemusic.com

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