Tag Archives: The Beatles
The Beatles Beatled: Utopia, “Take It Home” (1980) and The Beatles, “Paperback Writer” (1966)
Anyone doing an homage or parody of the Beatles needs to nail some known quality of existing Beatles songs, whereas the Beatles themselves, being great, typically sound like they’re conquering new territory. You can’t do something for the first time … Continue reading
Infectious #2: Thunderclap Newman, “Something In The Air” (1969)
Bosch’s butt music in hell Music is airborne, which means a lot of things. Music makes an amazing air journey to your ears from any kind of source and it’s virtually unstoppable, because your ears (along with your nose, skin, … Continue reading
Infectious: The Isley Brothers, “Twist And Shout” (1962)
Chubby Checker spreading the Twist [Post for a pandemic.] Hook experience is “infectious,” we so often say, because musical content can easily enter your system (getting past the membranes that sheathe your old preferences) and change your state while changing … Continue reading
The Joy Surprise: The Beatles, “Here Comes The Sun” (1969)
Easter 2018 This is a movie hook post that wants to become a music hook post. I’m starting with an image from Tarzan and His Mate (1934), one of a number of production stills in which Maureen O’Sullivan looks very happy indeed … Continue reading
Am I Early? XTC, “Earn Enough For Us” (1986)
You can’t always assume you’ll be welcome if you arrive earlier than expected. In music, at least, there are some generally good ways to grab your audience by showing up early, some of which have been discussed on this site: … Continue reading
The Main Thing that Happened in Hook History in 1967
I wish there were annual conferences, or music festivals, with rival presentations on what most importantly happened in hook history in a certain year. Since I’m conducting a festival of sorts for 1967 here in these last months of 2017, … Continue reading
Outro #4: On Paying Tribute
What good does it do to pay tribute? What does it accomplish to declare to the world that you see the worth of something, that you thrill to it? The question seems pressing to me after my last post, which … Continue reading
Advanced Riffs: Radiohead 1997-2011
“Riff” is a term of uncertain origin and very loose usage. The theory that it’s an abbreviation of “refrain” (as part of a song) is plausible, given that repetition is the premise and in some sense the goal of riffing.[1] … Continue reading
The Connector Hook
Late have I discovered that David Bordwell proposes his own distinctive hook concept for purposes of analyzing movie continuity. A Bordwellian hook is an image or sound idea at the end of a scene that is picked up again at … Continue reading
Intensity Ruse: Joan Osborne, “Right Hand Man” (1995)
Music is intense, it just is—it’s an intensification of tone and felt time—but a paradox of music is that its intensity ploys generate their own defeaters. That especially pure or loud tone just is the recognized idiom of that singer … Continue reading
Hooks 