Below are approximately 70 hook/titles I have lying around waiting to be written by someone. Maybe one of these will stir something for you. Help yourself to what works, leave the rest.

Skip


Hook Heaven

When Billy’s Up to Bat
God is Up to Something Good
Going Postal
Living Steel
Last Saint in Sin City
Night Train
Black Rose
Chick Flick
Memorize Her Perfume
I Dream of Tigers

A Pocket Full of Stars
The Girl on the Other Guy’s Arm
(How I Miss) Who I Used to Be
Hard to Remember, Impossible to Forget
Show Me in the Bible
Stone Flower
Whisper My Name
Atheist’s Prayer
Hard Candy
The Corpse Looked Familiar

Life in High Heels
Beautiful Baptist Babes
Sisterchicks
Bringing Up Boys
Only Angels Can Wing It
God’s Leading Lady
The Last True Cowboy
Winterwood
Lady Yesterday
Roses are Dead
(Violets are Too)

Jimmy’s Girl
Five Smooth Stones
Finding Faith
The River Why
Dandelions in a Jelly Jar
Dr. Death
Desperate Dreams
Slightly Pregnant
Once Upon a Summer
Kiss Me While I Sleep
Water Melon for Breakfast

Gone Too Far
A Long Line of Dead Men
(I’m Related to…)
Then You Came Along
A Purple Thread for Sky
In the Electric Mist With the Confederate Dead
Singing in the Comeback Choir
The Wealthy Widows’ Club
Bride to the King
Where I’m Calling From
Trolling for Sharley (Sharley's our McCall, Idaho rendition of the Loch Ness Monster. This refers to skiing on the lake where our church summer camp is located.)

Milk Glass Moon
Live From Golgotha
Lovely Bones
The Last Camel Died at Noon
Woman Without a Past
Masterpiece of Murder
Unless You Die Young
Breakfast in Bed
The Christmas Cat
Who Pissed in Your Cheerios? (from my neice’s friend’s comment to an overbearing teacher)

Lady Boss
Love Storm
Quite a Year for Plums
Bloodlines
Kill the Dinosaurs Before They Hatch
Quickie
Overloaded Ark
Where Eagles Die
Birdmobile (snitched this one from a Stan post)
Lookers Welcome(Men Too)
Come Get Me

Save Me From Myself
A Time for Heroes
Within the Nuclear Plant Kill Zone
Naked Space Cowgirl's (Giddy Girl's daughter's contribution to this growing list...)

P.S. I'll also post below a piece recently appearing under a lyric concerning how I go about looking for hooks. I'd like to hear where some of the rest of you find them. Please talk back to me about this...


Finding Hooks

Fresh hook/titles are a lyricist's first order of business. Not that you can't use one someone else has already used, but because your hook/title's aptness and distinctiveness is hugely important to your song getting noticed among the jillions others are also writing. I'm always on the lookout for new hooks and titles that catch my eye or ear and create an emotional response of some kind in me--regardless of what that emotional response is.

Places to intentionally "mine" unused, or little used hook/titles:

1. CONVERSATIONS. My wife Judi's got a fine way with words and reads widely. I've gotten many good hook/titles from simply listening to her speech patterns. A couple examples of her phrases that became lyrics that come to mind include: "You Make Me Laugh", "Do You Want My Cherry?" and "Dr. Kevorkian's Flying Machine". Last summer I got "Preacher Stew" from a phrase of a woman who had grown up in a church I had once pastored where the folks had a three-generation habit of being particularly nasty to their pastors. She was sympathizing with me for having spent four years among them. They'd been so difficult previous to my arriving that our denominational leadership had simply not sent them any pastor at all for the previous five years. The local leader asked for my resignation within a year of my arrival. I declined to accomodate. Well written movie script conversations can also be a good source of song hooks.

2. TITLES OF BOOKS AND NOVELS. These folks are also creative word weavers, and their titles are as crucial to someone reading their stuff as our hook/titles are to someone listening to our stuff. I've spent many an afternoon simply walking the aisles of libraries and used book stores with a pad and a pencil brousing for hook/titles, some of which I later wrote into lyrics. It is plain those writers of prose sometimes borrow their titles from existing songs, so this cross pollination between the two writing disciplines doesn't all go one way. A few of the many titles I've taken, or altered, from book titles include: "Mom's Marijuana", "Mama's Been to Sorrow's Kitchen (And She's Licked Out All the Pans)", "No Ordinary Man", "That Nurse on the Night Shift", "Dracula's Dentures" and "A Pirate of Her Own".

3. BUSINESS NAMES AND NAMES OF BOATS. People tend to consider carefully and creatively what they will call their own business (whether on land or sea). I've gotten some great titles for lyrics from business names, and have spent time walking boat harbors with pen and pad simply to jot down the clever names people give their ocean craft. Some hook/titles from business sources that later became lyrics include: "Bubble's Bikini" (from a bikini shop on Maui), "Miss Lucille's Gossip Parlor" (a business name down along the Gulf where Katrina hit) and "She Was Eaten by the Escalator (At the Bon Marche)". One I've got my eye on currently is from a new mailing supply and shipping venture in the next town down. They call it "Going Postal".

4. THE WORDS OF THE BIBLE AND OTHER WELL WRITTEN LITERATURE. The Bible is probably my best source for hook/titles, way of viewing the world, and plot twists. Curiously, a great deal of what would ordinarily be considered to be purely non-religious lyrics that I write have their hidden roots in its pages. Some hook/titles and ideas for lyrics from the Good Book include: "You are an Eagle", "Fishing for Leviathan", "I Choose You", "Bubble's Bikini" (I got the hook/title from the business sign in Maui, but the content about the brevity of beauty is directly from the final words of the book of Proverbs in the Bible). Other well-written literature is also a source of lyric ideas. I got "Cowboys Are My Weakness" from a lady writer's comment in a book up in Cambridge, Idaho. I'd written the lyric to match before I got home that weekend.

5. LOCAL CULTURE AND SLANG. There's an incredible variety of marvelous phrases and ideas woven into the local culture of about any community one would wish to explore world wide. I began intentionally exploring local cultures during our five years in the international cultural mixing center of Hawaii, and have kept at it following our return to what they call "The Mainland"--here in the 48 states. Some hooks that have arisen from this include: "Strawberry Moon" from the festival by this name near where my parents live along the Mississippi in Missouri--referring to the first full moon in June when the strawberries come ripe; "I Think Chinese Food is Great" after a visit to the Chinatown live critters meat market in San Francisco; "Gospel Seed" from the seed-growing region of Idaho where I currently live; "Moon Dust" from the phrase used by my Samoan neighbors in Hawaii to refer to the bits of glowing organtic matter that washes up on the dark sands, and is supposed to mark the place where ancient lovers once lay. "Man Killer" came from the club scene colliding with Proverbs 5 and 7 one evening in Santa Rosa, California when I was invited to hear a local band by a guy I don't think realized was a pastor in disguise. (I wrote that lyric on the back of a napkin while dancing that ranged somewhere between dirty dancing and public foreplay happened all around me.)

Some other great places to seek original hook/titles include:

6. PLACE NAMES AND HISTORICAL AND CURRENT EVENTS. "When Two Brothers are Soldiers", "Deep South", "Lady San Francisco", "Orchard", "Mardi Gras", "My Heart is in Hawaii", "Island Dreaming", etc.

7. NEWSPAPERS AND MAGAZINES. "She's Dancing on the Top of the Bar" and "She Wants to Sell My Body on the Internet" (from check out counter newspaper rags, they've got to sell magazines, and what catches a customer's eye can catch a listener's ear); and "Silently He Paints the Sky" (a description of a gorgeous sunset scene on the cover of a magazine).

8. OTHER LYRICISTS. This is a tricky one, since you don't wish to snatch their creative work and claim it as your own. But another writer may say a thing that sparks something similar, but somewhat different in your own thinking process. A line from a verse, twisted in your unique direction, may result in an entirely new hook/title with no obvious connection to its source. While hook/titles cannot be copyrighted, using one that's been used many times before lessens your chances for having your lyric stand out in the pack much. You'll know you've done this right if you can post your own lyric on the same page here at JPK as the hook/title you borrowed from and not even the author is aware of what you've done. "Harbor of Her Heart" was one such altered snitching that turned into a lyric for me. It employs alliteration with those three H's, which can also make your hook/lyric stand out if used with care. My basic rule is to always improve on anything I borrow. If I can't do that, I leave it alone.

9. JUST ABOUT ANYPLACE. The old miners used to say, "Gold is where you find it." Song hook/titles can be waiting to be noticed just about anywhere as well.

Since your hook/title is the seed from which your lyric will be written, the search for such seeds, the intentional collecting of them, and their careful use in writing are absolutely crucial to the craft of lyric writing. Personally, I've had multiple "Hook Heaven" notebooks and folders on my computers down through the years for the sole purpose of gathering this kind of raw material for writing.

If I go back to teaching lyric writing again at some point in the future, each student coming up with three or four good, original hooks each week in their own notebooks would be a required assignment. I'd up it to a hook a day once they got going.

What are some favorite hooks you've come across and written into a song? Where did you find them? Did you alter what you found in any way in the process of using it?

------------------------

Joe's suggestions for hook hunting locations...

A. Generally keeping your eyes and ears open all the time.

B. Bumper Stickers

C. Getting friends and family to feed you hooks and interesting and unusual storylines that might become songs.

D. Web site names, URL's, ect. (I think the "Within the Nuclear Plant Kill Zone" I saw by one person's post here at JPF has possibilities...)



[This message has been edited by Skip Johnson (edited 11-07-2005).]