Given that the last decade of hits can be hugely attributed to only 2 people in the industry, I have a hard time buying this one.
Max Martin (https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Martin) famously manufactured hits for Britney Spears, Taylor Swift, Justin Bieber, Katy Perry, Ariana Grande, Justin Timberlake, Maroon 5, Pink, Avril Lavigne, Christina Aguilera, Kesha and The Backstreet Boys. Between 1999 and 2016 alone, he was responsible for 21 hits. That's more than one a year without any pause.
Couldn't those guys' track of success be due to cronyism in the music industry?
Their songs are formulaic. I'm sure many of these 2 guys' songs are played in this video that cycles through a long list of hit songs which have the same progression (transposed into the same key so the similarities can more easily be noticed) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oOlDewpCfZQ
So perhaps anyone can write the songs, but not everyone has access to the pop stars (or access to these 2 guys).
I'm not an expert song writer myself, but I am a musician and lover of music.
Based on the fact that there's awesome music noone's ever heard of or that doesn't get as much play as some lesser quality music, I have to echo the common sentiment that the music industry is a fashion show/popularity contest with gatekeepers (still). Not saying it's not all a sham, I think the difference that comes from the human performing is huge, and I love to see and hear that.
I have to admit I find many of those Martin & Gottwald tunes "catchy" for whatever reason. Cronyism alone can't create catchiness. Hard to argue with success. Bring on the cheese! Note that many tunes which use the common pop chord progressions also fail.
A) Fantastic producers -- the production from these guys is phenomenal, and IMHO this is what really "makes the song".
B) Great at writing to a formula. The tunes are "catchy" but I cannot think of anything that would be considered really innovative musically.
There's no sin in that necessarily... it certainly takes talent to "know what works" and "know what doesn't"... and for the type of pop music they do (largely teen pop and other pop formulas), formula is fine.
I will say that pop producers like these guys tend to be really solid in the groove / rhythm department, in particular.
C) Great at artistic collaboration... big pop outfits now write in large groups. Knowing the way many musicians are, that's an accomplishment in itself. :) This probably contributes to the "solid song that isn't innovative" aspect... all the left-fieldisms of an artist are probably smoothed out. But again, this pop.
Overall the music product is a professional creation, designed for a market that always was and always will be half song-and-dance youth fashion show as one of the posters alluded to. :) Not a music style I care for personally.
But a popular one, and it takes something to do it as well as these guys do.
I agree with your point about the producers being talented and most times the driving force behind these hits.
What really isn't that clear with these songs, and I believe that's why so many people dislike them (altough they agree they sound catchy) is because the performer of the song isn't necesarilly the creative force behind the song; as it was proven with the video of how the song "Middle" came to be. The girl that sings the song actually played little part in the creative process, and is part of the song because of her voice and probably looks.
A good comparison could be with Hollywood movies. No one can argue that they are extremely produced and market focused; so, when you hear a song by Katy Perry or by <replace_with_trendy_name> is the performer a good actor or a good director, or both?
I never understood why people care how many people are part of the creation of music. The overall product should be better if every part of it (writing, producing, perfoming, ...) is executed by an expert in the field and not by a single person.
Innovation is hard to objectively measure. I judge most music by whether I enjoy it, not how "innovative" it is. Innovation is nice, but "like" is much better. Most styles are cyclical and borrow from the past. Disco-esque music has come back twice. Anything "new" is probably just borrowing bits and pieces from different eras.
If it were easy, anybody with money would make a hit. If they make a catchy song, I give them kudos regardless of how they made their sausage. To quote a pop song: "Shuddup and dance!"
I sometimes go to amateur music sites, and most of it sucks. Gems are really hard to find. Better distribution wouldn't make it un-suck.
True, it could take multiple factors, such as the best writers plus the best arrangers/producers plus the best musicians plus the best distribution channels. But all those prerequisites still means it's not trivial to do right. It's like the NBA: the best players and best coaches and best owners tend to find each other and gather.
It is easy to argue with success if you could prove it was due to cronyism. :)
>Cronyism alone can't create catchiness.
I don't see how cronyism could create catchiness at all but cronyism could account for the perception that only two people can do it when the actual number could be a much highe.
I think there may be some gatekeeping but also I think there really is a formula that more people like- and by taking ideas and tweaking them to sound sweeter and more energetic you get more sales. The bigs guys are just walking around and either signing talent to produce ideas for the pop-filter-Machine, or stealing their riffs wholesale.
Where is the gate keeping? Anyone can get their music on iTunes, Spotify, etc. by going through a company like CD Baby. Getting noticed on the other hand is harder.
I don’t know how it works with pop music, but hip hop artists have a long history of selling CDs out of a trunk, marketing through barber shops, etc. and going around the establishment until they get noticed.
That's a bit unfair of a comparison, both McCartney and Lennon have more hits than Max Martin. It's only when you look at the Beatles specifically does Martin have more success in terms of "hits".
And technically talent _could_ account for it. If there were some kind of formula, it could be discerned from the songs they wrote and you'd have a more even playing field as more people could figure out the formula.
> Talent alone can't account for this, as they are, all in all, more successfull than the Beatles or Michael Jackson.
Yes it can. They could simply have more talent than the Beatles or Michael Jackson when it comes to manufacturing hits.
Why couldn’t it be a combination of talent and formula? If it was solely a formula then more people would be having their success by following the same exact formula. Unless only they have the required ingredients. And whose to say their hit-manufacturing genius isn’t part of that recipe... in addition to the access to capital and access to market and brand recognition that makes popular artists choose to work with them for their best songs?
Absolutely, imo the article missed who the pop music factory is copying. It isn’t always other pop artists, it’s other artists doing well in niches, that get pop-ified.
“””
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The constant iteration of tracks, all produced by the same formula, can result in accidental imitation—or, depending on the jury, purposeful replication. Seabrook recounts an early collaboration between Max Martin and Dr. Luke. They are listening, reportedly, to the Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ “Maps”—an infectious love song, at least by indie-rock standards. Martin is being driven crazy by the song’s chorus, however, which drops in intensity from the verse. Dr. Luke says, “Why don’t we do that, but put a big chorus on it?” He reworks a guitar riff from the song and creates Kelly Clarkson’s breakout hit, “Since U Been Gone.”
“””
Pop music is a folk music, fundamentally dependent on its own history, but it just as fundamentally has to cannibalize the music underground in order to stay relevant.
I think there's more to the world than "formula" vs "talent".
Skill would be one possible explanation. As would focus. So too could be having an emotional distance from the performances.
Perhaps if Max Martin and Lukas Gottwald had formed a band in 1998 they wouldn't have a single top hit because they would have been putting their attention into performing, touring, and being celebrities. Instead somebody else might have been the producer whose narrow focus was tracking pop music, taking popular artists, and figuring out how to write a song that would take them to #1.
They may have thought so. One approach to creativity is to invent a formula and then try to follow it -- perhaps to the point of failure. This is a way to get past the "too many possibilities" mental block.
And of course they're welcome to try a new formula when they get sick of the old one.
Yes but defining things this way seems to totally breakdown a distinction between 'art' and 'science'. To the point about whether an individual dominating his field is proof that his technique is science it's lacking. Dr. Luke may be Euler or he may be Picasso.
Yeah, the presentation here is just fantastic. I love the combination of essay and dynamic illustration. It's the kind of thing that might be done as a video, but giving the user the control over the flow of time makes it vastly superior for me. I'm totally stealing this approach.
Off topic, but while digging through the hits explorer at the end, I noticed a steep dropoff in the number of songs I knew. I expected it, of course, but it was much sooner than I expected. I could hear nearly every song in my head from my middle school years, and the first half of high school. But my junior and senior years there's a whole lot of songs that I don't immediately recognize. The fall off is fairly steep and continues to the present.
I think what happened is that midway through high school I started liking specific genres and diving deeper into those rather than just listening to the radio, because my music consumption only increased during that time.
2. copy 90% of that song in terms of sound, structure, base melody etc..
3. just change a little of most parts so it doesn't sound like a straight copy
4. have a smart producer who can do this
5. have a great mastering studio to let it sound big
6. use the right channels for promotion (publishing, (radio)dj's, television, social media, etc)
7. have heaps of luck, right timing etc..
Most people in this world have no clue at all that this is what actually makes a hit. It's very rare to see a 'Hit' to come out of nowhere, although it does happen. It's an illusion that a talented musician can achieve this on his own without insane amounts of luck.
It's a great little book. I had a copy which I gifted to a friend, thinking I'll just buy myself a new one... Turns out they go for over 100 pounds a pop...
I spotted a copy at the local Half-Priced Bookstore the other day, behind the counter with all the other expensive stuff. It was priced over $100. I wish I either had the money or an elaborate scheme to distract the guy at the counter and make off with it. I've read a nice chunk of it in TXT form, but to have the physical copy would be very nice.
While 1-7 is a pretty clever tongue in cheek perspective, it's not at all what Max Martin does. Arguably he's the king of modern Pop music hits - I mean, he's orders of magnitude more successful than second place. It's rare to find interviews with him but he does drop some hints at his methods and approach (balanced lines, extreme vocal comping detail work) which takes a lot of the mystery out of it.
Basically though #6 explains how acts like Cardi B can chart, because Pop music is a commodity, it's not art. Something like Gotye's hit definitely falls into #7 in that regard. "What's good isn't always popular, and what's popular isn't always good."
What goes behind the process of creating a hit is something that fascinates me, but, something I never had the time to really research.
Also, I've always been kinda bipolar on this subject; sometimes I'm 100% convinced that most popular hit songs are fabricated and sometimes I want to believe that there is real talent and creativity behind them; not formulas.
I find the following to be true most of the time for hit songs:
- The singer (male or female) is young, and most of the time good looking.
- The first time you listen to the song you hate it, but after they play it multiple times on the radio you start to like it.
- At a given time, you can see the radio/popular mediums pump up a given singer. For example, I noticed a rise in Cardi B songs, previously it was Camila Cabello. This makes me think there is actually a force pulling the strings.
- A lot of time they are one hit wonders, new "artists" appear and dissapear all the time.
- They usually sing about current hot topics: feminism, be yourself, love thyself, don't worry if you're fat, let's enjoy life. And usually with very bland messages to appeal the masses.
- The music: of course the beats are familiar and following a known structure that arouses emotions.
Don't get me wrong, I love music. I love listening to all types of music, from Merzbow to the #1 hit they're playing on the radio.
But as a geek, I love to also analyze the pop music phenomenon. I'm not really familiar with the process behind them, and would love if someone who knows could share it! I mean the process behind actual hit pop songs: Post Malone, Katy Perry, Ariana Grande, Drake, Cardi B, Dua Lipa, etc.
- Do they write their songs? How much they get censored?
- Are they good singers? I know some of them are really talented.
- How to they rise to fame so quickly? Casting? Personal contacts?
- Do they really have a say on the structure of their songs and the music behind them?
These are some of the things that don't let me sleep at night.
There's a video by the NYT chronicling the creation of "The Middle" by Zedd, Maren Morris, and Grey. [1]
It began with a girl who recorded a short demo on her phone. After a year of workshopping and 15 different vocalists, they finally had their radio hit.
It's like a blockbuster movie. Big money goes in, big returns are expected, and lots of suits are involved. It's fun entertainment that needs to sell, but there's real talent there too.
I think it’s a little bit more complicated (and perhaps more “authentic” too) than you’re making it out to be. Labels definitely have strong influence in what gets played on the radio, but in your Cardi B example, Bodak Yellow was extremely popular on SoundCloud before it got any radio plays.
For your other questions, you can see in the credits of a song how many people are involved in radio hits. Labels invest money in creating hits so they can make money. The involvement and talent of artists varies from label to label and artist to artist but it’s generally not the organic process you seem to be hopeful about. At the end of the day, these artists have to perform not only in the studio but while touring, so they can’t be talentless hacks since some talent is required to be a profitable artist.
I agree completely, but what you say about my comment does not reflect the spirit of it, I'm sure I expressed myself wrongly. I understand, because it may seem that I'm criticizing pop music/artists when I'm really not. Also, I'm ignorant on the subject of music production, I just enjoy listening to it a lot.
I'm geniunely curious about the process. Because the level of production behind these songs and artists makes me believe that a lot of it could be orchestrated and pushed to us.
I could be totally overthinking it yes, and probably they follow the same rules as any business: decent product + marketing + a bit of luck.
I don't think Gangnam Style is a good match for the formula, but the video was well produced and just weird enough that people would want to share it. I'm convinced it only became popular because of the video.
You'll find a lot of the songwriters are the same people, and the producers - who literally birth the entire song - are also the same people again and again.
As the say in the composer world, we rather have good plagiarism then bad composing. ( freely translated from dutch, beter goed gepikt dan slecht gecomponeerd)
You could have vocals on 0%, of the song, 10%, 50%, 95%. It seems pretty easy to imagine a making up a continuous value called 'instrumentalness' to help describe a song.
Given that the last decade of hits can be hugely attributed to only 2 people in the industry, I have a hard time buying this one.
Max Martin (https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Martin) famously manufactured hits for Britney Spears, Taylor Swift, Justin Bieber, Katy Perry, Ariana Grande, Justin Timberlake, Maroon 5, Pink, Avril Lavigne, Christina Aguilera, Kesha and The Backstreet Boys. Between 1999 and 2016 alone, he was responsible for 21 hits. That's more than one a year without any pause.
Lukasz Gottwald (https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Dr._Luke) did the rest
So unless karma made them really lucky, there is some kind of formula, and they figured it out.
Talent alone can't account for this, as they are, all in all, more successfull than the Beatles or Michael Jackson.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oVME_l4IwII