HOOK STUDY

On pop music and lying about reading

“I read this thing,” I tell a friend over a glass of wine, and we both silently acknowledge what that really means “I saw a TikTok,” and plow ahead. “I read this thing about songwriting. The guy said that you need to be asking yourself, ‘Why is this a song and not a poem? Why isn’t this an essay, or a piece of fiction? Why is this a song?’ And it reminded me of something else I read,” (subtext: a clip of a podcast on Instagram Reels). Jack Antonoff, a few years ago, when asked what song he would want to play at his funeral, listed none of his big commercial successes. Instead, he talked about a song called Dakota from an early band of his, Steel Train. He says he had such a hard time keeping things simple in the days of that band, so that song, that hook, cleared a creative hurdle for him.