Powerful hooks that overshadow the song

  • Thread starter Thread starter grimtraveller
  • Start date Start date
Nah, father. One kid, one on the way. I started making genetic copies late. But I also married late too. You can read my bio if you like, like I said. I'm not hard to find.
 
lol @ butthurt barry exhausting the email addresses of the internet to continually re-register after every ban.
 
jimmys69 said:
Don't take internet opinions so personally man. It is just script on a monitor.
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Would that apply to any and all internet opinions ?

Greg_L said:
lol @ butthurt barry exhausting the email addresses of the internet to continually re-register after every ban.
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Whoever does make a good point though, especially when you state
Greg_L said:
It's my own fault. I have a bad habit of entering discussions when I really don't care about what anyone else has to say.
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To my mind the hook makes a song memorable, not all of the time to be sure, but often enough to illustrate its importance. Many of the songs that I have written, I came up with the hook first then built the song around it. Then again, and I just realized this while reading this thread, I have written songs without a hook at all. I guess the bottom line is that a hook works or it doesn't, and if it does work most of the listening public don't care what the rest of the lyrics are.
 
the hook in a song can just as easily be a riff or instrumental melody too, not necessarily vocally driven
 
The artist has something to do with that hook as well. "What's Love Got To Do With It" probably would not have been so memorable, but for the way it was phrased and the phonetics of her singing. "Watts Lu uv gought to dooo with it" wouldn't have made a memorable title, but it sure blew it into your head as a phonetic expression.
Lots of artists out there that purposefully mis-pronounce words to make them memorable.
 
BroKen_H said:
The artist has something to do with that hook as well. "What's Love Got To Do With It" probably would not have been so memorable, but for the way it was phrased and the phonetics of her singing. "Watts Lu uv gought to dooo with it" wouldn't have made a memorable title, but it sure blew it into your head as a phonetic expression.
Lots of artists out there that purposefully mis-pronounce words to make them memorable.
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That's a really good point.
In those threads that periodically come up about the importance or non importance of lyrics, for those that attach no importance to lyrics, they'll often point to the delivery of the words within their melodies being the important element as opposed to the lyrics themselves.
Personally, I think they're both right.
 
grimtraveller said:
That's a really good point.
In those threads that periodically come up about the importance or non importance of lyrics, for those that attach no importance to lyrics, they'll often point to the delivery of the words within their melodies being the important element as opposed to the lyrics themselves.
Personally, I think they're both right.
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Hooks are completely subjective, though some have broader appeal than others for sure. It depends on the listener's willingness to be hooked as much as anything. Put the catchiest hook in a genre that a person doesn't find appealing and it means nothing to them. Hook depends on context and it all depends on the listener. Pop music has the easiest time with this because most people's ears are not all that discerning and pop hooks definitely have some formulaic science to them, even if it's not exactly rocket science. I-IV-V exists for a reason, eh? :)
 
There are other, less obvious patterns, like VI-V-IV-III(M) where, for example you would play Am-G-F-E. Very popular with this progression was Three Dog Night's An Old Fashioned Love Song...although the chorus was I-II(M)-IV-V. I always was hooked by the sound of the verses on that particular song.
 
The Bohunk said:
Hooks are completely subjective, though some have broader appeal than others for sure. It depends on the listener's willingness to be hooked as much as anything. Put the catchiest hook in a genre that a person doesn't find appealing and it means nothing to them.
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From time to time, I'm one of the speakers at a boys book club in my son's primary school. Once, my son let it slip that I liked the Beatles so the teacher that runs it asked me if I would come in and talk about their songs. I didn't really want to so I thought I'd relate it to reading and I explained to the boys how Lennon, McCartney and Harrison were well read guys that enjoyed reading and how this informed their writing of lyrics, especially later on. I'd brought the album "Revolver" and was explaining how there was a wide range of subject matter among the songs and I played "Taxman" then "Yellow Submarine." During the latter, the boys all sat around with blank, bored faces and I thought I'd blown it ~ until it got to the chorus and suddenly 22 boys aged 5~11, Black, White, mixed race, Asian, Oriental, from Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist and Christian households, with parents from all over the world, some of whom hadn't been in the UK long, all came alive and burst into song. I was flabbergasted ! They didn't know nor care about the rest of the song, but when it came to the chorus again, the same thing happened.
Even at the end they asked for {and got} "Yellow submarine" as they all filed out back to their various classes.
A year later, I was asked to to it again and this time, I used "ABC" by the Jackson 5 and "One Love" by Bob Marley and the Wailers. The same thing happened as soon as they heard the hooks. They just exploded into life.
The thing is, none of them were into reggae or 60s Beatlepop or the Jackson 5 although the Jacksons' stuff was probably the closest to what they listened to.
 
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