SongwritingHooks

Drum Week, Part 3: Everybody Bo Diddley on the Count of 4

First, work out this rhythm, emphasizing the bolded hits:

ONE and two AND three and FOUR and

one and TWO and THREE and four and...¹

Got it? That's the hook of the day. Now let's work our way back on the pop charts to see it in action, starting at 1982:

Hear the hook: I Want Candy MP3 (Bow Wow Wow version), Bo Diddley beat #3             Copyright info

Now let's try 1957:

Drum Week, Part 2: The Unstoppable Beat

There are some drum hooks that are absolutely simple, and are powerful because of one thing: they just don't stop. Here are two examples from the 80s (which is as good a time as any to point new visitors to the FAQs -- especially the part about why the music at songwritinghooks.com tends not to be the current Top 40).

Hear the hook: Icicle Works, Whisper to a Scream MP3, driving drum beat             Copyright info

Hear the hook: Frankie Goes to Hollywood, Relax MP3, the unstoppable pounding             Copyright info

Drum Week, Part 1: "Sweetest Taboo" by Sade

This is drum week at songwritinghooks.com, and we're going to feature hooks that are percussion-based. First off, a song from Sade's breakthrough album:

Hear the hook: Sweetest Taboo MP3, killer drum hook             Copyright info

Ah, so sweet, and incredibly addictive. I love how distinctive this hook is, and it's the very first thing you hear. (Actually, there's about 8 seconds of near silence on the track before the drums come in -- just a faint hiss -- which I think, based on the video, is supposed to be the sound of rain. Playing on the lyric in the chorus about a "quiet storm." Oh cheesy '80s, I forgive you.)

Beethoven's Greatest Hit

Its full title is "Symphony No. 5 in C Minor, Op. 67." The bit that everyone can hum is from the start of the first movement, and it's supposed to represent Fate come knocking on your door.

Everyone knows it as "da-da-da-DUM."

Hear the hook: Beethoven's 5th MP3, rhythm of da-da-da-DUM             Copyright info

I was trying to think of the best hook in classical music, and I think it's this one. Then I tried to figure out how to catalog it. What makes it hook-y? I've decided that it's the rhythm, and not just how the rhythm is used in the first eight notes of the symphony, but how the pattern becomes a small building block that Beethoven uses in layered ways later on.

The rhythm is "short-short-short-long." In prosody (the study of poetic rhythm), this would be a quartus paeon and would be written like so: ˘ ˘ ˘ ¯ .

The intervals Beethoven uses between the third beat and the fourth are all over the place, so it's not really a melodic hook. In some cases, the interval is four steps down; in others it's three, or seven, or two steps up, and there are others. So the notes change, but the rhythm is everywhere.

Then Beethoven gets playful:

Hear the hook: Beethoven's 5th MP3, rhythm on rhythm

Lively, fast, and the violins are going all over the place, but always the same short-short-short-long rhythm, regardless what the notes are doing. Totally memorable, totally catchy, totally hook-y, even in 1808.