“Great melody over great riffs is, to me, the secret of it all.” —Steven Tyler
If your ambition is to write hit singles for today’s pop market, it is important to build as many different types of hooks into your songs as possible to keep listeners interested.
While a chorus-based hook is the most common and most effective device for making your song easy to remember, you can also grab the ear of the listener by including several secondary hooks, or ‘sub-hooks’. They usually take the form of short instrumental phrases or riffs that are placed in the intro, between lyric lines, between verses, or after each chorus.
These infectious ‘riff hooks’ can be repeated several times throughout the song to reinforce the all-important lyrical and melodic hook in the chorus. Hit songs that have used this approach include Jay-Z’s ‘Can I Get A…’, ‘Beat It’ by Michael Jack- son, Stevie Wonder’s ‘Superstition’, and ‘Something’ by The Beatles, amongst many others.
Sub-hooks can also take the form of rhythmic chord movements or a catchy extra chord change.
You can also create mini-hooks for the singer by repeating short melodic phrases within the verse melody.
Lyrics can also be used to create a sub-hook. For example, the repetition of sounds within the same line can make a lyric catchy, memorable and pleasing on the ear – and listeners will be waiting for it when the next verse comes around.
Alliteration—the repetition of a particular sound in the stressed syllables at the beginning of adjacent words or phrases (such as “Mary, marry me in the morning”) —is a highly effective device that can make a lyric line stand out as a memorable hook in its own right.
Other tools that can help to catch the listener’s attention include assonance (the repetition of vowel sounds to create internal rhyming within phrases—e.g. “without you I’m blue”), and consonance (the repetition of the same consonant two or more times in short succession—such as “pitter patter”).
While lyrical and melodic hooks are your responsibility, don’t make the mistake of leaving it to the musicians or the producer to create instrumental, rhythmic or other sound hooks. You should try out ideas for secondary hooks yourself while you’re writing the song. It will save valuable time at the demo stage.
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