A Rhythm Hook Is the Baller Hook
I would like to direct your attention, dear reader, to three excellent electronic drum pieces, the first of which you’ll know for sure.
“Shout” by Tears for Fears, which is largely the Linn drum. You have really done something if you have a distinguished rhythmic opening to your song, which everyone can recognize, and everyone can recognize this instantly. It’s such at the heart of anyone who grew up in that time. I honestly could put it on a loop and mow the yard to it. I think I subconsciously reference it, if not daily, for sure weekly.
Making a musical or melodic hook is something, but making a memorable rhythmic hook—it’s mammalian.
The second is more modern. It’s a remix of an Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark song from their first record. It’s called “Almost.” Not one that I was very familiar with until Vince Clarke did a remix. And it may be my favorite electronic song of any kind of modern era, or certainly an era where I can kind of not get my memories and emotions and feelings for what used to be all mixed up, but this one is incredible. The whole track’s sparse, amazing, the sounds are perfect, and at the end you kind of get a brush—you just get the straight rhythm track—and spurred on by the original, the use of noise bursts are beautiful, and I don’t know another song like it.
The third is another one you may all know from the 80s. It’s the opening of “Everything She Wants” by Wham!. What gets me about this is it’s so slow, but it’s such a groove. I think I remember it being an MPC track that George Michael did at home.
And if you want to talk about a guy that doesn’t get enough credit—Tears for Fears gets all the credit in the world, Vince Clarke’s got more credibility than he knows how to monetize—but only in recent times has George Michael risen to where he is now. Wham! was almost a joke over here, and I owe it to the “Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go” video with their huge “Choose Life” shirts, a song that was almost way too sunshiny for its own good. But then we started to get a glimpse of how deep these guys could be.
By the time he was coming out with solo work, everybody was like, okay, maybe.
Post-mortem, there’s no question, including Wham!. Watch the documentary, listen to the records backwards to forwards—meaning from the newest of the catalog to the oldest. Pretty incredible.
And George was the thing. Andrew Ridgeley inspired him in a way that maybe the other guy from Tears for Fears inspired Roland.
But these tracks and these rhythms—a young hipster, maybe not so young anymore—but today they’d call it living rent-free in their head. I don’t think there’s a day that goes by where I don’t consciously or subconsciously think through some of these rhythms.
All of this was brought to mind when I was given the challenge of starting a song rhythmically. And I thought about doing it memorably, and these three songs came instantly to mind.
It’s funny what’s on file when you need it.