Table Of ContentHooks in Popular Music
Tim Byron
Jadey O’Regan
Hooks in Popular Music
·
Tim Byron Jadey O’Regan
Hooks in Popular
Music
Tim Byron Jadey O’Regan
School of Psychology Sydney Conservatorium of Music
University of Wollongong University of Sydney
Wollongong, NSW, Australia Sydney, NSW, Australia
ISBN 978-3-031-18999-9 ISBN 978-3-031-19000-1 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-19000-1
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For Wendy O’Regan
We hope this would have made you proud
Acknowledgements
We would both like to thank our loved ones for their support of us and
this project. We would especially like to thank our friends in our ‘Hook
Hangs’ group who discussed many of the examples in this book with
us—Paul Andrews, Casey Atkins, John Encarnacao, Amber Rules, Cass
Scully, and Tom Sowonja. Additional thanks to our friend and research
assistant, Ivy-Jane Browne, for her help assembling the extensive discog-
raphy. We would also like to express our gratitude to the organisers of
two opportunities that enabled us to discuss our research before the
publication of this book. Firstly, thank you to Ralf von Appen and the
students at MDW (University of Music and Performing Arts, Vienna),
and secondly, to Rachel Campbell, Chris Coady, and David Larkin from
the Musicology Department at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music for
allowing us to present this research at the monthly Musicology Collo-
quium. We also greatly appreciate the efforts of Bill Thompson and Ralf
von Appen to send us some kind words we could use on the back of the
book. Thanks to Naveen Dass, Liviyaa Sree, Nobuko Kamikawa, and the
vii
viii Acknowledgements
team at Palgrave Macmillan for their support and advice in stepping us
through the process of writing and publishing this book.
Tim Byron Thanks:
My colleagues at the School of Psychology at the University of Wollon-
gong for their support. In particular, I would also like to thank Professor
Peter Caputi, as Head of School for providing me the space and time
for this book during a difficult time, Emma Hamilton, a 2021 Honours
student, for her hard work and determination embarking on a complex
study into the way people perceive hooks, and Dr. Frances De Blasio, for
her help in cleaning the data generated by Emma’s project.
Jadey O’Regan Thanks:
My friends and colleagues in the Contemporary Music Practice
faculty and beyond at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music—Charles
Fairchild, Toby Martin, Paul Mac, Rainbow Chan, Heather Shannon,
Jerome Blazé, and Nell Yeo. Without their support, this book wouldn’t
be possible. Many thanks to the Sydney Conservatorium of Music for
providing me with a short research leave which allowed me the time
and space to think and write during 2022. Thank you to my friend Liz
Giuffre for her continuous support of this project. Finally, thank you
to my students in the Contemporary Music Practice program for their
interest in and support of this work. This book grew from the conversa-
tions we had in our classes, and in many ways, this book is for you.
Contents
1 The Intro 1
1.1 Defining the Hook 1
1.2 The Hook as Discussed by Music Journalists
and Critics 7
1.3 The Hook as Discussed by Producers and Musicians 12
1.4 The Hook as Discussed in Songwriting Texts 20
1.5 The Hook as Discussed by Songwriters 22
1.6 Hooks and Pop Music 26
1.7 Conclusions 35
References 37
2 Can’t Get You Out of My Head: Hooks and Psychology 41
2.1 Hooks as Implicitly Psychological 41
2.2 The Psychology of Standing Out 46
2.3 The Psychology of Memorability 61
2.4 Hooks in Relation to Earworms 70
2.5 Attention, Memory, and Emotion in Music 77
2.6 Conclusions 79
References 82
ix
x Contents
3 Thank U, Next: Hooks in Popular Music Studies 89
3.1 Burns (1987) 90
3.2 Musicology Wrestles with Pop 92
3.3 Hooks in Popular Music Studies 97
3.4 Conclusion 112
References 113
4 This Is How We Do It: An Approach to Hooks 117
4.1 Our Conceptualisation of Hooks 118
4.2 Our Taxonomy of Hooks 131
4.3 Conclusion 146
References 147
5 Sing It Back: Melody and Topline Hooks 151
5.1 Topline Pitch Hooks 152
5.2 Topline Rhythm Hooks 163
5.3 Topline Performance Hooks 177
5.4 Topline Production Hooks 193
5.5 Topline Lyrical Hooks 209
5.6 Conclusion 227
References 228
6 D-D-Don’t Don’t Stop the Beat: Backing Track Hooks 231
6.1 Backing Track Pitch Hooks 233
6.2 Backing Track Rhythm Hooks 245
6.3 Backing Track Harmony Hooks 255
6.4 Backing Track Instrumentation and Arrangement
Hooks 263
6.5 Backing Track Production Hooks 274
6.6 Conclusion 287
References 289
7 Don’t Bore Us, Get to the Chorus: Structural Hooks 293
7.1 Repetition in Pop Music 294
7.2 Verses and Choruses 299
7.3 Prechoruses, Postchoruses, and Other Elements
of Verse-Chorus Form 305
7.4 Tension and Release 307
Contents xi
7.5 Novel Elements and Novel Combinations
of Elements 310
7.6 Modulations in Time and Key 316
7.7 Conclusion 320
References 321
8 Parallel or Together?: Compound Hooks 323
8.1 Hook Stacks 325
8.2 Multi-Hooks 331
8.3 Riffs 341
8.4 Samples and Interpolation 351
8.5 Conclusion 358
References 359
9 The Outro 363
9.1 Song Analysis: Hooks in Context 370
9.2 What’s not a Hook? 378
9.3 The Role of the S tudy of Hooks i n Music
Psychology 380
9.4 The Role of the Study of Hooks in Popular
Musicology 386
9.5 Unresolved Questions and Future Research 391
9.6 Bonus Track 395
References 397
Discography 401
Index 457
