The hook is usually found in the chorus as a short riff or lyric. It’s the part of a piecethat stands out and practically screams, if not literally, as in Springsteen’s “Baby, we were
born to run.” Other times the hook can be instrumental as in Deep Purple’s Smoke On the
Water. A simple riff, but utterly memorable.
Now comes the tough part–putting all this together, lyrically. Beyond verse, chorus,
bridges, hooks and the likes, the lyrics need to flow, make sense and, most importantly,
be singable. Your idea might be great, but if it’s choppy, contain difficult words or
phrases, it’s going to be a difficult task for the singer. Words should roll off the tongue.
Avoid too many stops. The listener might lose interest. You certainly don’t want listeners
confusing your hard-worked lyric, or worse, the singer. Consider folks who mistook
Madonna’s, Like A Virgin. Many thought the lyric was, “Like a virgin, touched for the
thirty-fourth time.” Or consider the Queen fans’ faux pas from Bohemian Rhapsody, “I
see a little silhouetto of a man, scare a moose, scare a moose, will you do my fan Van
Gogh? Others thought it was, “Scallaboosh, scallaboosh, will you do the banned tango?”
And who could forget the Purple Haze mess up, ‘Scuse me while I kiss this guy.”
Sometimes it’s a good idea to use words or phrases with the rhythmic sound youwant, but you don’t have the right words yet. Paul McCartney did that with Yesterday (al-
though credited as Lennon/McCartney). The working title was Scrambled Eggs. That
makes sense since, rhythmically, it sounds like “yesterday.” As a matter of fact, McCart-
ney is noted as saying, “I did the tune easily and then the words took about 2 weeks."
Actually Writing Lyrics