How to Write a Hook People Remember

A hook is the part someone hums in the shower. It is not necessarily the chorus, and it is not necessarily sung.

What makes something stick

Repetition. The single strongest factor. A hook that repeats within itself teaches the listener on first hearing. Most famous hooks state a short phrase, then state it again with a small change.

Few notes. Great hooks are often three or four pitches. More notes means harder to remember and harder to sing.

Distinctive rhythm. Rhythm is more memorable than pitch. You can recognise a hook from its rhythm alone, clapped. If the rhythm is generic, the hook won't stick regardless of the melody.

Singable range. A hook spanning an octave and a half excludes most listeners from singing along, which kills the mechanism that makes hooks spread.

Contrast with what surrounds it. A hook works partly because of what came before. Sparse verse into dense hook, low melody into high melody, busy into simple.

Melodic contour

The shape of a melody — up, down, arch, descending — is what people remember before the exact intervals.

Common shapes:

• Arch — rises, peaks, falls. Satisfying, natural, extremely common.
• Descending — starts high, falls. Resigned, resolved.
• Ascending — builds. Hopeful, lifting.
• Static with one leap — repeats a note, then jumps. The leap becomes the signature.

Pick a shape deliberately. Melodies that wander without a clear contour are the ones people can't recall.

Hooks that aren't vocal

Plenty of the most recognisable hooks in music are instrumental or production elements:

• A synth or guitar riff
• A vocal chop or sample
• A distinctive drum fill
• A bass line
• Even a specific sound

If you're writing instrumental music, the hook question is the same: what's the short, repeating, distinctive element?

Practical test

Play your hook once for someone. Then ask them to hum it an hour later.

If they can't, the hook is too long, too complex, or not distinct enough from its surroundings. That's a more reliable test than any amount of theory.

Where hooks go

Modern pop often puts the hook in the first fifteen seconds, because streaming skip rates punish slow builds. The intro hook, the pre-chorus hook, and the chorus hook can all be different — and using all three is common.

Related reading: why some melodies are memorable, song structure by genre, and how to write a melody.