THIS WEEK IN MUSIC & INDUSTRY
1. Let's start by deconstructing a prototypical Top 40 pop track.
"Most of the songs played on Top Forty radio are collaborations between producers like Stargate and “top line” writers like Ester Dean. The producers compose the chord progressions, program the beats, and arrange the “synths,” or computer-made instrumental sounds; the top-liners come up with primary melodies, lyrics, and the all-important hooks, the ear-friendly musical phrases that lock you into the song. “It’s not enough to have one hook anymore,” Jay Brown, the president of Roc Nation, and Dean’s manager, told me recently. “You’ve got to have a hook in the intro, a hook in the pre-chorus, a hook in the chorus, and a hook in the bridge.” The reason, he explained, is that “people on average give a song seven seconds on the radio before they change the channel, and you got to hook them.”
The top-liner is usually a singer, too, and often provides the vocal for the demo, a working draft of the song. If the song is for a particular artist, the top-liner may sing the demo in that artist’s style. Sometimes producers send out tracks to more than one top-line writer, which can cause problems. In 2009, both Beyoncé and Kelly Clarkson had hits (Beyoncé’s “Halo,” which charted in April, and Clarkson’s “Already Gone,” which charted in August) that were created from the same track, by Ryan Tedder. Clarkson wrote her own top line, while Beyoncé shared a credit with Evan Bogart. Tedder had neglected to tell the artists that he was double-dipping, and when Clarkson heard “Halo” and realized what had happened she tried to stop “Already Gone” from being released as a single, because she feared the public would think she had copied Beyoncé’s hit. But nobody cared, or perhaps even noticed; “Already Gone” became just as big a hit."
2. The homogeneity of substance and style (despite a wide diversity of performers) stems from more than just formulaic composition. A staggering number of hits originate from one place; Max Martin and his fellow Swedish protoges.
"Among the stranger aspects of recent pop music history is how so many of the biggest hits of the past twenty years—by the Backstreet Boys, ’NSync, and Britney Spears to Katy Perry, Taylor Swift, and the Weeknd—have been co-written by a forty-four-year-old Swede. His real name is Karl Martin Sandberg, but you would know him as Max Martin, if you know of him at all, which, if he can help it, you won’t. He is music’s magic melody man, the master hooksmith responsible for twenty-one No. 1 Billboard hits—five fewer than John Lennon, and eleven behind Paul McCartney, on the all-time list. But, while Lennon and McCartney are universally acknowledged as geniuses, few outside the music business have heard of Max Martin.
Presumably this is because Martin writes all of his songs for other people to sing. The fame that Lennon and McCartney achieved by performing their work will never be his, which no doubt is fine with Martin. (He still gets the publishing.) He is the Cyrano de Bergerac of today’s pop landscape, the poet hiding under the balcony of popular song, whispering the tunes that have become career-making records, such as “… Baby One More Time,” for Britney Spears, “Since U Been Gone,” for Kelly Clarkson, and “I Kissed a Girl,” for Katy Perry. The songs he co-wrote or co-produced for Taylor Swift, which include her past eight hits (three from “Red” and five from “1989”), transformed her from a popular singer-songwriter into a stadium-filling global pop star. (The “1989” tour recently passed the hundred-and-fifty-million-dollar mark.)"
3. Lefsetz contrasts Max Martin's legacy with that of the industry's current front runner, Taylor Swift.
"That’s right, I can strongly argue that Taylor Swift is what’s wrong with music today. She took a huge country career, built upon her personal story married to hooks and melody, and turned to the world’s greatest hitmaker, Max Martin, to make her into a pop star. Pop stars come and go, the legends are forever. And today there’s really only one pop star, Mr. Martin, his fingerprints are all over not only Taylor Swift’s music but the Weeknd’s too, never mind… Furthermore, Martin has a coterie of apprentices who churn out more hits, and you’ve got to give him credit, but if you’re looking for honesty and innovation from a fortysomething Swede, you’re looking in the wrong place. We’ve never had a Swedish Bob Dylan, and if you’re a legend, you write not only your own music, but your lyrics too."
4. Now it should be evident why SPIN tasks the creators, not the performers, with telling us in what direction the future of pop music is going. They are the ones with the hands firmly on the steering wheel.
"Nobody decides the sounds of the future quite like the producers and songwriters of the present. We saw the standard for present-day pop set last year with the synths and production depth of Taylor Swift’s 1989, which used a dream-team of producers and writers (Max Martin, Ryan Tedder, Shellback) to blend familiar sounds and emotional beats with modern-day lyrics and studio advancements. It captured the world’s imagination with a very 2015 blending of nostalgia and current innovation — throwback pop no longer has to sound plainly “retro”; even the past can pick up future sheen."
MARKETING FACTORY NEWS
MFI & Honda have been nominated for a Billboard Touring Award in Concert Marketing & Promotions for the 2015 Honda Civic Tour!
Rob will be speaking at a FestForward panel, "Activating Sponsorships at a Festival"
More info here.
OTHER GOINGS ON
Ken M., internet comment troll maestro.
More on Nielsen's new ad metric system.
The sound and the fury; Florence Welch.
Different paths from post-Disney stardom.
The scourge of the peer rating boss.
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