Over the last few weeks I've been hunting down as many singles as I can remember from the 50s to the present day and in the course of this, I've become even more aware than I had been before of the power of the hook or catchy, memorable chorus. Time and time again I'd find that I remember a song from my youth, primarily by it's chorus and in doing so, realize that I didn't really remember or know the verse or middle or bridge or whatever.
I'd known this for years without really ever focusing on it until I came to Tina Turner's "What's love got to do with it ?"
For some reason, that one song brought everything into sharp focus because it struck me that I knew the chorus really well but if you'd held a gun to my head and said "Sing the rest of it or die !", my will would be being executed sooner than I'd intended.....
I've found others to be exactly the same, with hymns, classical pieces, rock and pop singles, jazz pieces, album tracks....
So two things, when writing songs, are you consciously aware of searching for and using hooks and what are some of those songs that you actually really like or remember because of the hook rather than the song itself, if there are any ?