Blues Traveler - Hook (Official Music Video)
Why Hacker News recommends it
HN mentions it mainly as a music example in threads on shared melodies and on how to craft a compelling hook, with a few jokes.
What it is
The official music video for Blues Traveler's song Hook, remastered in HD. The song is known for using the melody of Pachelbel's Canon while its lyrics comment on how hooks work.
Recommended by 0 HN commenters across 0 different months, 2016 to 2026.
What Hacker News said
Cites dumbotron · 2023-05 · on “Cantonese Font with Pronunciation”
> I suspect what's going on here is that in music, it doesn't matter if you understand it right the first time. So there's this [this video] and more interestingly [LINK]
Cites nyrikki · 2025-04 · on “Shared DNA in Music”
The same applies to risk-adverse, high profit genres and/or producer heavy ones like pop country. Obviously zeitgeist and even conventions and music theory play a role. Sir Mashalot had a few videos a while ago. [LINK] The Blues Traveler trolling with the song Hook using the melody from Pachelbel's Canon with lyrics explicitly calling this out wasn't noticed by almost anyone. [this video] Obviously Pop heavily samples too, E.G. Tom Tom Club Genius of Love being used by Mariah Carey's Fantasy, but it goes beyond sampling. The Rolling Stones pulling from artists like Fred McDowell and Led Zeppelin settled copyright suits on Lemon Song, Whole Lotta Love, Bring it on Home and Dazed and Confused etc..
Cites cortesoft · 2026-04 · on “A compelling title that is cryptic enough to get you to take action on it”
Blues Traveler wrote a song in this format in the 90s: [this video] It is especially effective because he is doing all the things he is describing at a high level.