Sucker: A Hit Song Hook Fest

After a six-year hiatus, the Jonas Brothers are back and hookier than ever with their “debut” single, Sucker. The smash hit reached the top spot on Billboard’s Hot 100 in its first week, and at 22 weeks in the Top 10, it’s the group’s most successful single to date, and for good reason – Sucker is a hit song hook fest.

Sucker is chock full of infectious instrumental and vocal hooks that appear both independently and in conjunction with one another throughout the song, taking the song’s memorability and engagement value to a heightened level. Among these hooks are an infectiously funky electric guitar and bass hook that kicks the song off, a whistle hook that is teased and recycled across multiple sections, a playful call and response-style “bonus” vocal hook between the band’s two lead singers in the chorus, and of course, the song’s clever title hook, “I’m a sucker for you.”

In this article, we’ll dive into the many ways Sucker’s writers creatively placed and repurposed these hooks and others across sections, strategically marking the return of the Jonas Brothers with a smash hit that refuses to be forgotten.

Sucker’s Hook Arrangement

This chart reflects hooks that are repurposed in multiple sections. The number in each box corresponds to the number of times that a particular hook appears in a section.

*The song title hook appears in full three times in each chorus and once minus the lyric “you.”

Verse 1 & Pre-Chorus 1

The funky electric guitar foundational hook in the first verse kicks Sucker off in a highly infectious manner. It’s heard twice back to back and remains in effect in the pre-chorus that follows. However, to help keep the hook sounding fresh in the pre-chorus, it’s doubled by electric bass, which provides it with heightened bottom end and power.

Chorus 1

Now that the listener has heard the same funky foundational hook melody four consecutive times across two sections, the writers decide to change things up in the chorus with the introduction of a new foundational hook consisting of a Rock guitar chord progression. It’s heard four times throughout the section and, along with other accompaniment changeups, helps to change the song’s vibe from funky to all-out Rock.

In addition to the Rock guitar hook, the listener is hit with four strategically placed iterations of the song title hook, “I’m a sucker for you,” in both similar and subtly differentiated ways, which helps to keep it both memorable and engaging throughout the section. The hook is initially featured as a pickup without accompaniment in the last bar of the pre-chorus, which further helps it to stand out and connect with the listener. It’s then featured twice in the body of the chorus and returns once again tail end without accompaniment, bookending the section on a structurally familiar note.

Furthermore, there’s a “bonus” lyrically repetitive vocal hook featured smack in the middle of the chorus – the engaging “about you” call and response between Nick and Joe Jonas. In addition to creating a secondary infectious hook for the listener to latch onto, the call and response also sets up an engaging moment between Nick and Joe on stage that could also function as an A.P.M. (Audience Participation Moment) between the Jonas Brothers and their audience if they so choose.

Turnaround

Following the chorus, the song’s hooks are changed up once again in the brief two-bar turnaround through the reinstatement of the funky electric guitar/bass hook, which provides the foundation for the super-infectious whistle hook melody heard here for the first time in the song. However, note that only a short fragment of the whistle hook melody is heard. This effectively teases the listener and wets their appetite for its full return later in the song, thus heightening engagement.

Additionally, note that the whistle hook fragment will already sound familiar to the listener whether they realize it or not, as the hook was previously foreshadowed in both the verse and chorus. Bar 1 of the whistle hook is melodically the same as bars 3 and 7 of the verse, although there are slight rhythmic variations to prevent it from being an exact repeat. This melody is similarly seen in bars 3 and 7 of the chorus:

Whistle Hook Fragment 1

Verse 1

Chorus 1

Verse 2, Pre-Chorus 2, Chorus 2

Following the turnaround, the verse – pre-chorus – chorus sectional progression returns for a second time, featuring the same hooks in each section as the first time through. However, note that in verse 2 there is also an additional funky acoustic guitar that doubles the electric guitar/bass foundational hook with a more frenetic eighth note rhythm, which reinforces this foundational hook with another variation underneath the original. These repetitions and augmentations underpin the song’s foundational hooks in a familiar manner, while the other accompaniment and vocal changeups help to keep the song sounding fresh and engaging as it progresses.

Instrumental Break

Considering that the listener has now traversed two verse – pre-chorus – chorus – sectional progressions that feature the same hook development along with the brief whistle hook turnaround tease in between, the writers change things up once again with a new hook pairing in the song’s main “D” (Departure) section – the instrumental break – which greatly heightens the listener’s engagement two-thirds of the way into the song. Here, the listener finally receives the full whistle hook melody, which is featured twice throughout the section. The first iteration features just the whistle, and the second doubles it with a 1960s-sounding electric guitar, which bolsters the song’s Retro vibe while simultaneously helping to keep the hook sounding fresh.

Additionally, just as the fragment heard in the turnaround, the full whistle hook also bears similarity to a previous vocal melody, this time at the tail end of the hook. Beats 2 and 3 in bar 4 of the whistle hook form a very similar shape to the “I’m a sucker” portion of the song title hook:

Whistle Hook Fragment 2

Chorus

Together, the similarities between the full whistle hook melody and the verse and chorus vocal melodies are a clever and effective way of making a song more memorable in an “under the radar” manner, subconsciously engraining these key repeated melodies in the listener’s head.

Supporting the whistle hook is the funky, frenetic acoustic guitar foundational hook that was previously heard in the second verse and the infectious drum break hook, which makes its first and only appearance in the song (note that the drum groove is also hinted at in the second verse but in a less defined manner). Played by drummer extraordinaire Homer Steinweiss (Dap Kings, Amy Winehouse, and Bruno Mars, among others) the drum groove’s timbre, panning, reverb and pattern harkens back to late 1960s/early 1970s James Brown and the grooves laid down by his funky drummers Starks and Stubblefield, as well as Gregory Coleman’s groove on The Winstons’ Amen Brother. Additionally, note that the drum break is similar to a technique used in early Hip Hop, where many artists such as Public Enemy, N.W.A. and Erick B. and Rakim sampled drum breaks from the aforementioned artists.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_55a_Sje0lY&feature=youtu.be

In addition to the instrumental double-hook punch, the song title hook makes a one off appearance as well, this time featured more in the way of a background vocal. This effectively reinforces the title hook with the listener while not overshadowing the whistle/guitar and drum break hooks, which are the focal points of the section.

Pre-Chorus 3 – Chorus 3 – Outro

Following the instrumental break departure, the song heads back to familiar territory in pre-chorus 3 and chorus 3, which reinforce their respective hooks in essentially the same manner as their counterparts earlier in the song. Sucker then closes out with the outro, which features one iteration of the funky guitar/bass foundational hook along with another iteration of the whistle hook. The “icing on the cake” them comes at the end, where the song title hook is reinforced one last time as the song comes to a conclusion.

All in all, there are 11.5 appearances of the funk guitar/bass hook, 12 appearances of the chorus Rock guitar hook, 1 appearance of the drum break hook, 3 appearances of the whistle/guitar hook melody in addition to the fragment heard in the turnaround, 3 appearances of the call and response “about you” vocal hook, and 14 appearances of the song title hook. Not one section in the song is left hookless.

However, aside from the sheer volume of hook appearances, it’s the expert manner in which the writers effectively pair, reinforce and develop these hooks throughout the song that helped turn Sucker into an infectious and memorable hit that unforgettably marked the return of the Jonas Brothers.