Not every good song becomes a hit, and hopefully if you’re a songwriter you know this already. In many ways, what determines whether or not a song becomes a hit has to do with what the industry of the day has to say about it. Hit songs, regardless of the decade, usually need to adhere […]
A hook – that short, catchy, memorable moment – is an important feature of many hit songs. Hooks don’t just show up in pop music; classical music also makes use of hooks. But classical composers are far less likely to discuss it or consider it a make-or-break element within their music. That’s because classical works are often […]
Most songs, if they are one of several possible verse-chorus formats, usually start with a verse, and before the 1-minute mark will move on to the chorus. The timing involved with this — i.e., the fact that we usually hear the chorus at or before the 1-minute mark, as you hear in a song like […]
As a songwriter, your hope is usually that once people have heard your song, they want to hear it again. That usually translates into sales, so the more clicks your songs generate, the more potential there is for monetary reward. It’s unlikely that anyone will want to listen to your song again if there’s nothing […]
You might think that songwriters who create a lyric first are likely to be poets, but that’s not always the case. Some poetry works well as song lyrics, but only if: the poem has universal appeal: it speaks of issues and situations that most people would identify with on some level; the poem taps in to […]
In pop songwriting, the word hook is often used synonymously with chorus. “I’ve just written a hook” usually means that you’ve got the main part of your chorus done. But in fact, that concept we call the hook is more complex, and overlaps with other elements we typically call riffs, motifs, maybe even loops and other types of repetitive patterns. […]
