#101, "The Song Machine"

"The Song Machine: Inside the Hit Factory"
by John Seabrook

"The Song Machine" is a truly outstanding book on the history, mechanisms, and backstory of modern pop music. I enjoyed the heck out of reading it and place it in the top 20 of my favorite books of 2017. Seabrook starts in the 1980's and traces the development of pop music through the stories of producers, songwriters, singers, technologies, and businesses through about 2015. The story begins largely in Sweden, where a collective of DJs started combining early hip hop, reggae influenced electronic music, and dance with Swedish production and sensibilities. From there, the confluences grow bit by bit, each group and artist influencing and streaming into the next. Many of the biggest bands and stars of the last 30 years are included in the history; how the success of New Kids on the Block inspired a blimp-owning millionaire, Lou Perlman, to create the Backstreet Boys from scratch; how Britney Spears and *NSYNC got their careers started and/or derailed; how the landscape of music changed with the hits of the last half of the 1990's. Hitmakers and gamechangers like Denniz Pop, Max Martin, and Dr. Luke are examined, their methods of production and writing explained. One of the most interesting parts of the book was on the technical aspect of modern songwriting. In "song factories," classic techniques of songwriting, such as one songwriter coming up with the music and words, or perhaps a composer and a lyricist working together, are now splintered into as many as 6 (or more) different jobs: track maker, hook creator, lyricist, topliner, bridge or vibe guy, producer, artist/singer, and so on. Instead of developing the classic combination of words and melody, current techniques are closer to track-and-hook: the track provides a bed of sound, usually simple chord progressions and a beat, and the hook (or, more likely, hooks) is layered over the top, either in an instrument or in the vocal.

Seabrook even goes into the artist-song-making machines of South Korea, which have multi-million dollar corporations creating artist careers from childhood, using a construct called "cultural engineering" to devise musical products that will hit the most people. This last note is something that runs, rather disturbingly, through the entire book: the commoditization and productization of music. Modern pop songs are hybrid creatures that are curated, compiled, and created in the mad scientist lab of the studio, each note and beat carefully plotted with the help of data, demographics and figures, and always with the goal of a million-dollar "hit" in mind. Artistic intent is secondary--possibly tertiary--to producing a well-packaged product that will sell. Of course it would be irresponsible and ignorant to suggest that that process, the commercialization of art, is new. No, it's been around probably as long as art has. It is, in many ways, the most difficult of all philosophical hurdles an artist must clear: the dilemma of creating something true and from the heart (pure, to use a word of dubious worth), that also manages to satisfy public tastes and get the artist paid. It is very difficult to satisfy both of those criterion, and thus we have broke but brilliant musicians and millionaires making mediocrity.

My philosophical reflections on artistic integrity aside, stories of people making music are always exciting and inspiring. The story of modern pop is, by definition, constantly changing--popular music this year will be out-of-date by next Christmas--and modern hits will, in one way or another, always be with us. Someone has to do it; it may as well be the song machine.