Are We Hostage to the Hook? How Narrative in Today’s Commercial Pop Music Has Been Lost

‘Love’ – the greatest of stories ever told in song. It’s a familiar narrative and one frequently employed in popular song. Love and sex sell, particularly when hosted in an accessible, multi-marketable format such as a song. However, in this current market of disposable musical content, this is no longer the case. We are now missing the vital constituent of traditional song; a story which provides the conduit for emotional expression. The argument is whether songs still hold validity without a narrative, acting as repetitive vessels of musical motifs that appeal to the base sense of human emotional engagement. Songwriters are now being asked to focus on shorter, more memorable melodic lines known as the ‘hook’, in more restricted ranges, while sacrificing an attention to structure. The expected structure is now ‘Hook A’ and ‘Hook B’, which are repeated until the closing bars of the song. This therefore, is eroding musicality and variety in the commercial Pop arena. By making songs too accessible, too ‘easy’, we are creating a homogeneous conveyer belt of ‘disposable’ songs. The future catalogue of songs will potentially all sound the same due to sonic referencing, vocal utterances (not even words), and the use of production sound libraries. Songs are no longer considered ‘classics’. Generation Z has turned to hypnotic and technological gratification within the listening experience, bypassing the engagement in narrative and the associative emotional resonances and reflections. The propensity to include nursery rhyme melodic idioms and childlike sonic referencing has destroyed the artistic credibility of songwriting. This can leave audiences ‘cold’ when engaging with music in the Top 40, with some turning to the music of previous generations to find an emotional connection. This study aims to define the commercial pop song and its function, and assess the effect of homoginization of songwriting as it meets the current digital consumer marketplace.