A Hook Is Not A Song
©2025, George J. Irwin. All rights reserved.

Given my deep affection for if not addiction to what is generally known as Popular Music, I’ve been asked once in a great while whether I’ve even considered taking my writing talents (ha!) and applying them to songwriting.

Well, actually, I have done some of this, back in the Previous Century. Mostly, however, they have been what my friend and I call "goof songs" which are more in the mode of Weird Al Yankovic than Taylor Swift. I have personally gotten a good laugh out of the creation of what Mr. Yankovic calls "style parodies," which our "goof songs" somewhat resemble. These are songs written in, well, the style, of a particular artist—think his brilliant "Dare To Be Stupid" which intentionally sounds like the band Devo—as opposed to a direct takeoff on a particular record—think "Eat It" from Michael Jackson’s "Beat It," or "Smells Like Nirvana" from the song "Smells Like Teen Spirit" by Nirvana. I hasten to add that Weird Al has absolutely nothing to worry about from me. The chances that any such tune that I’ve written or co-written will become known to more than a few people are about the same as my winning Powerball… and I’m putting my money on Powerball.

Full disclosure: There was an actual "album" (!) of some of these "goof songs" produced and "released" to a few friends via the miracle of cassette tapes (look it up, kids). Later, several were re-recorded at an actual studio (!!) with actual musicians (!!!). But others I’ve penned or collaborated on still await a first real demo. I’d love to find a few musically talented people and cut "Hot Rod Grandma," a style parody of early Foreigner hits, but the key requirement is locating a singer with a suitable sense of humor who can hit the notes that Lou Gramm did on "Hot Blooded" or "Rev on the Red Line" (which were largely the "inspiration" for "Hot Rod Grandma"). And should I even bring up "Why Do So Many Girls Want To Be Stevie Nicks"? No, I suppose I shouldn’t.

I did mention mostly "goof songs." Yes, I have tried my hand at composing something more mainstream. There are even fewer people who have heard the results of those efforts. And that’s a good thing.

I have a tremendous amount of admiration for those who can write songs really well. People that come to mind immediately include Billy Joel, the Beatles, Bruce Springsteen, Simon LeBon of Duran Duran, and the aforementioned Stevie Nicks ("Why Do So Many Girls" basically consists of stuffing as many song titles and lyrics of hers into a few verses).

There are lesser known songwriters that I admire as much or more. For example, there’s the late Pat DiNizio of The Smithereens, a band that deserved to be so much bigger than they were; Nirvana counted them as an influence. Colleen and I independently became fans of Vonda Shepard, who is perhaps best known as the piano lounge player on the television show Ally McBeal. When my daughter and I saw her live—the same day my daughter appeared on the very same stage earlier that day as part of her school choir!—I told Shepard how clever a song from her first album, called "A New Marilyn" was. She was very surprised that I noted that particular recording! It’s not nearly her best known work—setting aside her Top Ten duet with Dan Hill, "Can’t We Try," which she didn’t write, that would arguably be "Searching My Soul"—but "A New Marilyn" is worth a listen.

And I’ve already written about Gretchen Peters, who is an all-time favorite for both Colleen and I. Songwriting isn’t just vocal music, either. Gretchen’s husband Barry Walsh is a talented instrumental composer. Through Gretchen we met Mary Gauthier, and through Mary we met Jaimee Harris. We appreciate their work as well. We won’t travel to a relatively remote location in Northern New York for just anyone, but we did for Mary and Jaimee.

I find the thread that runs through all of these songwriters, and many others I have not mentioned, is that their compositions are well-crafted. This may not be a term that comes immediately to mind—including to the songwriters themselves—but for me, it fits. So does the idea that songwriting is a craft as well as an art and a calling. It speaks to the incredible amount of work required to write a really good song. Yes, there is no question that the occasional lightning bolt of inspiration strikes. I’ve been lucky enough to experience that myself, and yes, with a song, specifically, my favorite "goof song" called "Plastic Money" (you can guess what that’s about: one line is "I paid my MasterCard with my Discover"). However, there is also no question that is the rare exception, and I suspect that many actual songwriters would agree with this.

My limitations had already become painfully obvious all the way back in high school. By this time, I’d already been writing Irwin’s Journal—all prose—for more than five years. The ambition to become a Major Radio Personality had plateaued, which meant I was really, really into Pop Music that I couldn’t wait to play for you on a Top Rated Station. For some inexplicable reason, some of my classmates with more musical talent than I will ever have—which is a low bar—thought I could write something for their nascent hard rock band. The results were, let us say, suboptimal, I had lots of ideas, and even a clever line or two, but they didn’t like them ("Show this to Kenny Rogers" was kind of a hint) and even if they did, that’s all I had anyway. I had what I thought was a "hook," defined as "a short riff, passage or phrase that ‘catches the ear of the listener’" (thank you, Wikipedians). And I thought that they were pretty good, although looking back I could understand why no one agreed with this assessment.

Despite what my classmates thought of my attempts at songwriting, I kept trying to put something together that built on the few disjointed lines in my head. It didn’t happen. I should have understood that I was not inclined in that direction based on my wholly mediocre performance in Instrumental Music in Elementary School. (I did better in Vocal Music, but that’s another story.) And perhaps the fact that I could not read or write music was a major barrier to success? At any rate, I had become sufficiently self-aware to know that one key rule of composing is that A Hook Is Not A Song. This is not unlike another conclusion about my limitations: A Short Story Is Not A Novel. It’s Not A Play either, for that matter.

But what I have learned is that, if I say so myself, I’m a pretty good storyteller. I make no apologies for my confidence in this. Sometimes it’s important to experiment to see what you can do, and sometimes that means that you need to learn what you can’t do. So, "goof songs" aside, I’ll stick to what I can do, and more importantly, what I enjoy.

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