Paste a chorus and see whether the hook actually repeats, sits where a listener will find it, and holds one rhythmic shape.
Most choruses fail for boring reasons, not mysterious ones. The hook phrase appears once instead of three times. It sits in the middle of the block instead of at the top or the end. The lines are eight syllables, then fourteen, then nine, so the melody has to keep changing shape to carry them. None of that is a matter of taste — it is measurable, and this tool measures it.
Run the test and the report shows up here.
Why repetition is the whole game
A hook is not a good line. It is a line the listener can produce themselves before the song finishes. That requires hearing it more than once, and it requires hearing it in a position the ear goes back to — the first line of the chorus, or the last one. A hook that appears exactly once, halfway down the second line, is not a hook. It is a good line that got lost.
Take eight lines with the phrase “hold the line” appearing three times: at the top, at the end, and once in the middle. That scores well here. Move the same phrase to line four only, and the score drops by roughly a third even though not a single word changed. The wording was never the problem; the placement was.
What the syllable spread is telling you
The spread is the difference between your longest and shortest hook line, counted in syllables. A spread of 0 to 2 means every line carries the same rhythmic shape, which is what lets a producer set one melodic phrase and repeat it. A spread of 7 or more means each line needs its own melody, which is fine in a verse and usually fatal in a chorus — the listener is learning four different tunes instead of remembering one.
How to use the result
- If the title repeats only once, do not write a new hook. Move the one you have to the first line and the last line of the chorus and run it again — the score usually jumps without a word changing.
- If the spread is high, cut syllables from the long lines rather than padding the short ones. Padding adds words that are not doing anything; cutting usually reveals the line.
- If the vocabulary overlap is above 60%, you have written one idea twice. Delete the weaker of the two lines and replace it with a consequence — what happens because of the hook, not the hook again.
- Over 14 words in a hook block is a paragraph. Most memorable hooks are between three and seven words, and the ones that survive karaoke are at the short end of that.
Questions people ask
- Does the hook have to be the title?
No, but they should usually match. If the phrase you repeat three times is not the title, a listener who searches for the song will type the hook and fail to find it. This tool picks the most-repeated phrase as the title precisely because that is what people will search for.
- How many times should a hook repeat?
Three is the working number inside a chorus, and more once you count the other choruses in the song. Two is the floor. One is a mistake in almost every genre. The exception is a hook built entirely from a melodic gesture rather than words — this tool cannot see melody, so for those trust your ears over the score.
- The syllable counts look wrong on some words.
They will be. English spelling is not a pronunciation guide: “fire”, “hour” and “orange” all break the vowel-group rule this uses. Treat the counts as close enough to compare lines against each other, and fix the few that are obviously off by reading them.
- Why flag repeated words between lines?
Because a chorus that reuses 60% of its vocabulary across lines is making one point several times instead of making several points. Repetition of the hook is a feature; repetition of everything else is what makes a chorus feel like it is treading water.
What this tool does not do. It counts syllables and words; it cannot hear your melody, your rhythm or your delivery, and a great chorus can break every rule on this page. It guesses the title from repetition, so if your chorus deliberately never repeats a phrase it will report a low score that is not measuring what you are trying to do. Nothing is uploaded — everything runs in your browser and works with the internet off. See the site disclaimer. Written by Nico, who builds these tools and writes about writing at WrittenTone.