Hit Charade

September 18, 2015 10:09 PM

"The biggest pop star in America today is a man named Karl Martin Sandberg. The lead singer of an obscure ’80s glam-metal band, Sandberg grew up in a remote suburb of Stockholm and is now 44. Sandberg is the George Lucas, the LeBron James, the Serena Williams of American pop. He is responsible for more hits than Phil Spector, Michael Jackson, or the Beatles."

Millions of Swifties and KatyCats—as well as Beliebers, Barbz, and Selenators, and the Rihanna Navy—would be stunned by the revelation that a handful of people, a crazily high percentage of them middle-aged Scandinavian men, write most of America’s pop hits. It is an open yet closely guarded secret, protected jealously by the labels and the performers themselves, whose identities are as carefully constructed as their songs and dances. The illusion of creative control is maintained by the fig leaf of a songwriting credit. The performer’s name will often appear in the list of songwriters, even if his or her contribution is negligible. (There’s a saying for this in the music industry: “Change a word, get a third.”) But almost no pop celebrities write their own hits. Too much is on the line for that, and being a global celebrity is a full-time job. It would be like Will Smith writing the next Independence Day.

posted by p3on (151 comments total)

Many of Pearlman’s strategies continue to dominate the construction and marketing of pop acts, particularly in the one pop market more delirious than the United States. Seabrook credits the Backstreet Boys’ 1996 Asian tour with helping to inspire a Korean former folk singer, Soo-Man Lee, to create K-pop, a phenomenon that gives new meaning to the term song machine. Lee codified Pearlman’s tactics in a step-by-step manual that guides the creation of Asian pop groups, dictating “when to import foreign composers, producers, and choreographers; what chord progressions to use in particular countries; the precise color of eye shadow a performer should wear in different Asian regions, as well as the hand gestures he or she should make.”

Found this paragraph interesting. While kpop's boy & girl bands have obvious American / British influences, it's a little surprising to me to see a clear line between a specific pop act at a specific time and the start of the kpop machine.
posted by honestcoyote at 10:39 PM on September 18, 2015

Except Max Martin and Dr. Luke are basically household names (to pop fans, anyway) and producer/songwriter announcements have become a huge part of the hype machine for most artists. I mean, a Selena Gomez fan who thinks she writes all of her own songs? That person does not exist.
posted by acidic at 11:03 PM on September 18, 2015 [23 favorites]

mind blown. thanks.
posted by Busithoth at 11:07 PM on September 18, 2015

"I think there's more to it than that. The labels control the distribution. Do you think Taylor Swift albums fill the shelves at Target or Walmart because they are best sellers? It's the opposite. The labels buy the shelf space to sell the albums and prevent non-targeted artists from diluting their share. And of course, the radio (and now internet) air time is bought and paid for so you can't hear any non approved titles or artists.
The masses buy top 40 music because that's all they can readily get. Unless they go to local shows and scour music sites for music, all they know is what they are fed.
Why do you think so many in the industry fight Spotify? Even though it pays much more per listen (the hoopla about pay per play is bogus - compare to radio - the artist gets paid a coouple of cents for millions of listens in some markets - it only takes a couple hundred listens on Spotify to generate the same money), the industry fights against Spotify because it becomes a source for non-sanctioned music."

Above via the comments. Interesting. And maybe correct?
posted by Keith Talent at 11:09 PM on September 18, 2015 [27 favorites]

This earlier New Yorker column from 2012 by the book's author strikes me as way more interesting. The Atlantic article treads a lot of the same ground, but adds a greasy layer of scandalized moralizing ("ruthless digitization!!!"; "narrowly choreographed!!!"; "where is the artistry???"). The original is much more even-handed about, for example, the role of electronic production tools in pop music, having for example the charming detail that one of the Stargate guys grew up making hip-hop beats on a C64 with sampling equipment stuffed under his bed. The New Yorker article also goes into way more detail about Ester Dean, who seems like a really interesting person and at least as central a player as Stargate; she's also a Black and Native American woman, and not a Scandinavian man, FWIW.

Basically, the NYer article sounds like it was written by someone who enjoys pop music, and this one sounds like it was written by someone who enjoys feeling superior to it.
posted by en forme de poire at 11:11 PM on September 18, 2015 [52 favorites]

< Tips Fedora >
posted by Windopaene at 11:43 PM on September 18, 2015 [1 favorite]

The Swedish Invasion

[Max] Martin had his first impact in the U.S. in 1997, with the Backstreet Boys’ hit “Quit Playing Games (with My Heart).” He also worked with a teen-ager from Sweden named Robyn, whose début album, “Robyn Is Here,” yielded two top-ten hits. He then turned his attention to another boy band of the nineties, ’N Sync, and to a former Mouseketeer named Britney Spears. Martin’s most enduring legacy, still, is his work on Spears’s biggest and best-known hits, such as “ . . . Baby One More Time” and “Oops! . . . I Did It Again.”
posted by a lungful of dragon at 11:44 PM on September 18, 2015

The whole buying shelf space thing just sounds like payola in meatspace, with the added ickiness that it's not much different than selling eleven flavours of Coke and pointing to the dizzying array of consumer choice that exists.
posted by Emperor SnooKloze at 11:52 PM on September 18, 2015 [4 favorites]

Above via the comments. Interesting. And maybe correct?

In here (at least until recently), a label could buy a chart-topper and a gold record by sending a few crates worth of CDs to large surface establishments with no advance payment, put each one down as a sale and submit the numbers for certification. By the time the stores settle the account (return unsold and paid for the ones sold and kept for stock), the artist already got his gold record. A few years ago a gold record was discovered to have actual sales (ie: people taking them home) not even breaking 1000, when a gold certification needed 10 times that.
In reality, this isn't that different from political talking head books being consistently on the NYT Bestseller list - just send a bunch to book clubs at heavily discounted prices and get a few corporate deals where to make a public speaking appearance, they also have to purchase a few hundred books.

(also on non-sanctioned music: I was amused when a song of mine I posted on youtube suggested Biebs and Swift at the end. Fuck me, at least suggest something like Tame Impala or whatever is trendy on the psychedelic end)
posted by lmfsilva at 12:12 AM on September 19, 2015 [6 favorites]

(note: music industry guy here, but my example is tangential)

you can even pay for space at the end of store aisles (aka endcaps) if you manufacture/market certain consumer goods (an old employer did this with their health food products)... customers tend to buy more of what's immediately visible.
posted by raihan_ at 12:41 AM on September 19, 2015 [3 favorites]

No wonder I've been listening to Queen all week.
posted by ELF Radio at 12:48 AM on September 19, 2015 [2 favorites]

also, want a fun example of pop songwriting/production?

the following three songs were produced, written and/or arranged by the same person... and one of them is not like the others. spoilers at the end of each line!

one [hover here for answer]
two [hover here for answer]
three [hover here for answer]

fascinating, innit?
posted by raihan_ at 12:49 AM on September 19, 2015 [3 favorites]

Except Max Martin and Dr. Luke are basically household names

I don't know about the US, but you can listen to a UK pop radio station all week and you'll never ever hear those names mentioned - but it's wall-to-wall Swift and Perry and Minaj songs being played.
posted by colie at 1:09 AM on September 19, 2015 [2 favorites]

Except Max Martin and Dr. Luke are basically household names (to pop fans, anyway) and producer/songwriter announcements have become a huge part of the hype machine for most artists. I mean, a Selena Gomez fan who thinks she writes all of her own songs? That person does not exist.

My wife and son are pop fans and I guarantee they've never heard of Max Martin or Dr. Luke. Most pop fans aren't pop scholars, they just like the music.

Also, the person who thinks Selena Gomez writes all her own songs does exist, and she is 13, and there are millions of her.
posted by mmoncur at 1:57 AM on September 19, 2015 [61 favorites]

Remember a interesting documentary about music in the 90s where they had basically the writers of over half the hits in one room - about half a dozen people. I remember Diane Warren being one
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 2:56 AM on September 19, 2015

I had to check the "Swedish Invasion" link to make sure - it's like, how many years since ABBA and people are still surprised that the Swedes have basically solved pop music?

It seems weird to me, given that American popular music going back to Tin Pan Alley has had song factories, for anyone to be shocked that popular musicians don't always write their own songs. I mean, I know that certain genres of music expect performers to be their own songwriters, but pop has never been in that category or even near it.
posted by graymouser at 3:31 AM on September 19, 2015 [7 favorites]

The shock is not that pop stars don't write their material, it's that it's such a small group of people creating the material. Add in the prevalence of Auto-Tune and that's why a song like Bad Blood could just as easily be on Katy Perry's album as Taylor Swift's, because it all literally comes from the same place.
posted by colie at 3:48 AM on September 19, 2015 [3 favorites]

SAY IT AIN'T SO!
posted by anotherpanacea at 3:53 AM on September 19, 2015

It seems weird to me, given that American popular music going back to Tin Pan Alley has had song factories, for anyone to be shocked that popular musicians don't always write their own songs. I mean, I know that certain genres of music expect performers to be their own songwriters, but pop has never been in that category or even near it.

I don't think this is as true as you think, though. Like isn't a big part of Taylor Swift's appeal the idea that she writes her own songs about dating Harry Styles and so on? I know that there's a sophisticated pop fan culture online that strokes its collective chin and says "Faceless Swedish producer #23, you've done it again!" and admires Tay-Tay more as a chameleonic figurehead than an artist -- but that definitely isn't the standard media portrayal of her career.
posted by No-sword at 4:04 AM on September 19, 2015 [11 favorites]

I'm conflicted about this. As a critique of business practices, I think this is spot on. As a critique of artistic integrity and/or authenticity, less so. To say "impressionable fans shouldn't read this" or "KatyCats would be shocked"...just ugh. STOP paying attention to this fucked up notion of authenticity. It makes ZERO SENSE by any useful measure of the history of performing arts.
posted by Doleful Creature at 4:09 AM on September 19, 2015 [9 favorites]

Max Martin's 20 US Number Ones, ranked.
posted by colie at 4:17 AM on September 19, 2015 [1 favorite]

As others have said, this is how pop music has worked since somewhere around Stephen Foster's time. Performing and songwriting are very disjoint skillsets it's dumb to expect every singer to be a writer or vice versa. Elvis didn't write songs and neither did Sinatra and no one expected them to.
posted by octothorpe at 4:58 AM on September 19, 2015 [14 favorites]

The illusion of creative control is maintained by the fig leaf of a songwriting credit.

Uh, yeah, this is way less about any kind of illusion of creative control and waaaaay more about the money. (Which the author does sort of acknowledge in passing - “Change a word, get a third.”, and later in the article, "The more famous the performer, the wider the audience, and the greater the royalties for the writer.")

Under U.S. copyright and royalty laws, songwriters are basically guaranteed a piece of all of the varieties of royalties and income sources, performers not so much. So getting a songwriting credit is the best route to maximum money from a hit record, especially once you're past the relatively short period of weeks/months where a song is actually selling lots of copies.

And yeah, hit performers have been bargaining for a piece of the songwriting credits since basically forever.
posted by soundguy99 at 5:02 AM on September 19, 2015 [3 favorites]

My love of music began with early 70's top 40 radio. I hate to sound like a standard old guy but pop music sure seemed much more varied and interesting back then. I can't imagine anything like The Staple Singers, Harry Chapin and Badfinger co-existing on radio today.
posted by davebush at 5:09 AM on September 19, 2015 [8 favorites]

As someone who came of musical age in the UK in the difficult-to-name-but-pivotal-decade between 1975 and 1985, the music of me and my peers was exclusively singer/songwriter. People anxiously awaited new albums to see 'what direction' their favourite musicians were going in. The giants of the near-past - Bowie, the Beatles, Stones, all of prog rock - were all self-penned. It was unthinkable that a punk/metal/early synth band would play anybody else's material, except as a cover (and that was fine by us). Ska/Two Tone was recycling Jamaican reggae, true, but that was exotic anyway.

I think that it's only in comparison to those times, which may have been peak singer/songwriter, that the Tin Pan Alley/marketing department led artist-as-confection model seems in some way deviant. In the larger context, it's probably the more usual method for creating and selling product.

And that's fine by me. Some of that music is really good, and I don't need to be a teenager or to make a fan investment to enjoy it. Nor is it a crime to be a teenager and be really into some of that product; if you want to get off on creativity and authenticity, then here's an Internet you can get stuck into.

So, yeah, I can see why this all looks a bit OMGWHUT? But it isn't, not really.
posted by Devonian at 5:13 AM on September 19, 2015 [8 favorites]

he giants of the near-past - Bowie, the Beatles, Stones, all of prog rock - were all self-penned. It was unthinkable that a punk/metal/early synth band would play anybody else's material, except as a cover

This is 100% because of The Beatles
posted by thelonius at 5:34 AM on September 19, 2015 [17 favorites]

how many years since ABBA and people are still surprised that the Swedes have basically solved pop music?

40 years. (Groans.)

knowing me knowing you. I can totally see Taylor Swift and Beyonce doing this.
posted by bukvich at 5:38 AM on September 19, 2015 [3 favorites]

authenticity

Every time someone uses that noun as a descriptor of a good quality for a human being to have I think of those GamerGate MRA types on Reddit whose motto is "I gotta be me." Ignoring for a moment the possibility that essences don't exist and therefore there might not be any such thing as authenticity, just think about: what if one's authentic self is an asshole?
posted by eustacescrubb at 5:38 AM on September 19, 2015 [4 favorites]

authenticity

A Heidegerrian analysis of this kind of pop music should be done. There must be some fountain of death at the core of it.
posted by thelonius at 5:40 AM on September 19, 2015 [5 favorites]

This is 100% because of The Beatles

chuck berry and buddy holly wrote a lot of their own songs, too

the real reason is that musicians figured out that songwriting royalties can be a lot better and more reliable than what the record companies will give them for performance royalties

which is why today's pop stars often make sure they get their names on the credits, even if they didn't do anything
posted by pyramid termite at 5:52 AM on September 19, 2015 [3 favorites]

The biggest pop star in America today is a man named Karl Martin Sandberg.

Martin Sandberg. I know Wikipedia is a lost cause, but it would be nice if fact checkers for american magazines knew that not all countries use the same naming conventions as the US. Grumble grumble.

(well, I guess it would be nice if magazines had fact checkers, but that's another issue.)
posted by effbot at 5:56 AM on September 19, 2015

With the exception of Elvis, all the artists the Beatles most admired wrote and performed their own songs: Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Buddy Holly, Carl Perkins, Roy Orbison, Eddie Cochran, Arthur Alexander, George Formby, Ray Charles...
posted by colie at 6:00 AM on September 19, 2015 [4 favorites]

chuck berry and buddy holly wrote a lot of their own songs, too

yes, but it's The Beatles who transformed the industry, and who created the expectation that pop groups would both write and perform their own music (although The Beatles did plenty of covers early on)
posted by thelonius at 6:04 AM on September 19, 2015 [1 favorite]

With the exception of Elvis, all the artists the Beatles most admired wrote and performed their own songs: Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Buddy Holly, Carl Perkins, Roy Orbison, Eddie Cochran, Arthur Alexander, George Formby, Ray Charles...

I'm not saying that the Beatles were the FIRST artists to write their own songs. I'm saying that, after their rise to prominence, there was an expectation that, to be credible as a pop artist, you had to.
posted by thelonius at 6:06 AM on September 19, 2015

The evolution of the big names through the sixties was a matter of crosspollination and competition. The Beatles, Beach Boys and Dylan were probably the three main players in setting the basics of the templates for popular musical performers that (somewhat) persist (in myth much more than reality) to this day, but we could name another dozen performers that played major parts. While the period itself was incredibly productive, and opened up a broader range of possibilities, a lot of the bullshit notions of authenticity it spawned are so much boring detritus that we can only hope to see forever swept away.
posted by howfar at 6:19 AM on September 19, 2015 [4 favorites]

Taylor Swift is pretty clear about what she writes and what other people do, whether it's totally honest or not, she'll definitely say "I had an idea for a dying using this phrase, so so and so sent me a track and we worked on lyrics together." Maybe she's overstating her contributions, but she did come up as a songwriter. I'd expect her to do more than Selena Gomez, for instance (who I also really like)

I'm sure this is shocking to 13 year old Selena Gomez fans, but what isn't shocking to 13 year olds?
posted by Bulgaroktonos at 6:20 AM on September 19, 2015 [3 favorites]

The flip side of artists like the Beatles writing their own songs was songwriters like Dylan and Willie Nelson becoming recording artists instead of just working behind the scenes.
posted by octothorpe at 6:22 AM on September 19, 2015 [4 favorites]

and people are still surprised that the Swedes have basically solved pop music?

Is Eurovision the answer then?
posted by Mezentian at 6:24 AM on September 19, 2015 [1 favorite]

Is Eurovision the answer then?

Eurovision tends to use Swedish song writers, yes: "for instance, in the 2010 the songs from Denmark, Georgia, Norway, Ireland and Azerbaijan were written entirely or partly by Swedes; in the 2011 the songs from Russia and Azerbaijan; in the 2012 the songs from Italy, United Kingdom, Ireland, Malta, Greece, Cyprus, Norway, Azerbaijan and Spain; and in the 2013 the songs from Georgia, Finland, Norway, Russia, Netherlands and Azerbaijan, ; in the 2014 the songs from Azerbaijan, Ireland, Russia, United Kingdom and Ukraine; in the 2015 the songs from Azerbaijan, Georgia, Moldavia, Macedonia, Netherlands, Spain and Russia." Hardly ever the good ones, though.
posted by effbot at 6:31 AM on September 19, 2015 [4 favorites]

The article refers to Taylor Swift's "Bad Blood" (written with help from Max Martin) which according to my Twitter feed this week is a swipe at Katy Perry. And according to Twitter, Katy is writing a revenge song (also with help from Max Martin). So Max and the record companies are churning out the soundtrack and revenue stream to their spat. This is of course a separate story arc to the latest celebrity romance Taylor or Katy recently commenced, solemnized, or concluded (rapidly commemorated in 3 minute song with help from Max Martin).

It truly seems like these pop stars (Miley, Nicki, Justin, etc) are just characters in a 24/7 soap opera, monetized via the music industry.
posted by Chipeaux at 6:33 AM on September 19, 2015 [13 favorites]

I'm sure this is shocking to 13 year old Selena Gomez fans, but what isn't shocking to 13 year olds?

Hasn't social media created a younger generation desensitized to anything that would have shocked their parents when they were the same age?
posted by Beholder at 6:38 AM on September 19, 2015 [1 favorite]

It seems disingenuous to say "but everyone knows they don't write their own songs!". Because, no—everyone doesn't. And it might not exactly be a secret, but the whole pop industry works very hard to cultivate an image of the pop star as the main force behind the music, the one calling the shots, the person whose unique personality and style makes the music what it is, the one whose vision everyone else on their crew is following. They don't want the audience thinking too much about the machine behind the performer, because that deflates the fiction they're trying to sell.

People talk about the direction that the performer's next album will go in; they say that the performer has "reinvented [him|her]self" or "returned to form"; the media interviews the performer about the hit song; people say they're fans of the performer; they gossip about the performer's love life and fawn over paparazzi photos of the performer. The media industry around pop music (which, let's face it, exists to serve the labels' marketing ends) never, ever acknowledges the contributions of songwriters and the like—that only gets talked about among industry insiders and wonks like us.

Any given pop star is more like an actor playing a character in a Hollywood movie (complete with stunts!), with an army of songwriters, stylists, consultants, choreographers, stage designers, marketers, and so forth behind them. To be clear, I'm not objecting to the fact that pop stars collaborate with other people. I'm objecting to the stark difference between the painstakingly constructed simulacrum they're selling to their audience, and the machine behind the curtain. If you think that's anything other than a deliberate, cynical cash grab, then I'm afraid we'll have to agree to disagree.

On the nonexistence of authenticity: man, I wish this silly trope would go out of fashion. It's true that authenticity is rarely as cut-and-dried as people make it out to be. It's also true that people often ask "but is it authentic?" in situations where that's irrelevant, or meaningless, or secondary to more important concerns. Certainly when you're talking about entire cultures, the notion of authenticity becomes rather fraught. But that doesn't mean that authenticity doesn't exist. If I walk up to you and say "hi, my name is [something that's not really my name]" (and I'm not obviously playing a theatrical role of some kind), then I am not being authentic.

It truly seems like these pop stars (Miley, Nicki, Justin, etc) are just characters in a 24/7 soap opera, monetized via the music industry.

Pretty much this. Not just individual stars, but the whole public face of the industry is an engineered spectacle, much like professional wrestling (but at least people these days generally acknowledge that wrestling is a fiction).
posted by escape from the potato planet at 6:40 AM on September 19, 2015 [23 favorites]

I thought Taylor Swift wrote "We are Never Ever Ever" and "Shake It Off" until I read this thread, and I am not 13.

On the other hand, I never would have assumed Britney Spears wrote her own songs. I think there's a real difference in the way the two of them are presented. Swift's songs are read as things she, Swift, the person, is saying, Spears's not so much.
posted by escabeche at 6:44 AM on September 19, 2015 [11 favorites]

I WILL WRITE YOUR POST.

Can arrange authenticity.
posted by Trochanter at 6:46 AM on September 19, 2015 [2 favorites]

I will also chime in to say that the Beatles - and other singer-songwriter types - did change the face of pop for a long time. In the early 90s, I was listening to Tori Amos, another singer-songwriter, and Queen, who shared all their writing credits.

I was checking out the writing credits for some Lady Gaga songs, as I was always under the impression she wrote her own -- and she is credited as first author, working with different (and often Scandinavian) writers. Not all are middle aged: one is 37, which is clearly young & hip (I'm 38).
posted by jb at 6:51 AM on September 19, 2015 [5 favorites]

Also: I assumed that the move towards singer-songwriters was why I keep suffering through Dylan singing his own work, instead of getting to listen to good singers sing his very good songs.

same with Leonard Cohen: please, let your excellent backup singers just take over, please. They do your music more justice.
posted by jb at 6:53 AM on September 19, 2015 [4 favorites]

See, I don't know why this would bother anybody. There are people I listen to because I like both their performance and their songwriting. (Ani Difranco being my classic example.) But, like, I love Pentatonix and I clearly had no thought from the beginning that they were creating original music. I like how they perform. I like how Nicki Minaj performs. Even if they only have a slight curation impact on the songs they do, so what? Is that really why people like them? I'm not saying everybody knows, I'm just saying, if you want to get to know someone's authentic self, why would you turn to pop music for that?

However savvy they might not be about pop music, most 13-year-olds who want to know someone else authentically are at least capable of going out and making real friends. Teenagers or not, I think most people know at some level that their interest in celebrities is about fantasy, not reality. At which point it seems quite healthy that teenagers would rather fantasize about Taylor or Nicki than about a middle-aged Swedish man.

This is pretty much how I picture most pop-music 'rivalries'.
posted by Sequence at 6:56 AM on September 19, 2015 [1 favorite]

Much like in food or travel, "authentic" is the tourist version of "good"
posted by DoctorFedora at 6:57 AM on September 19, 2015 [3 favorites]

The comparison with big Hollywood sequels is accurate, and it's not good for artists. People like Scott Borchetta, Swift's label boss and not a songwriter, musician or even a producer, now have the final say in how a record turns out:

“I said, ‘You know, this song isn’t working yet.’ They both looked at me (Swift and Nathan Chapman) with a blank stare. The chorus isn’t elevating like it needs to. Where you’re wanting to take the song, it’s not going there. It needs a Max Martin type of lift.”… At that point Borchetta called Martin. Both Borchetta and Swift agree that it was a turning point for “Red”.
posted by colie at 7:02 AM on September 19, 2015

The comparison to wrestling is interesting, because there's a cool sort of suspension of disbelief with wrestling fans. Everyone knows that everything was planned in a writers' room to be as exciting as possible and get the most marketable stars some memorable moments. But it's fun and exciting to pretend that it wasn't.

Isn't that how a lot of people treat pop music? Even if you don't know who Max Martin is, you know Katy Perry & Taylor Swift are Pop Stars, with everything that means. We see the creation of a talented team crafting a song and sound and image to appeal to as large an audience as possible, but we also choose to see the artist as the creative force. We can hold the fact and fiction in our head at the same time, because people are actually pretty good at that kind of ambiguity.
posted by skymt at 7:14 AM on September 19, 2015 [3 favorites]

It's not that 'there were no singer songwriters before the Beatles' or that there were no successful artists who never wrote a note thereafter. it's the perception of what the normal mix in the charts is that's changed. The data's all out there, and it would be (mildly) interesting to analyse the dominant mode over time. (But hard, as the size and nature of the market changes so much. It would make a good thesis/book, if done well.)

Authentic doesn't equate to good. There's plenty of bad music out there written and performed by people who are following their own muse, and I know some really excellent cover bands who deliver flawless fun.

Or take one of my abiding pleasures from those golden teenage years, Gary Numan. Who has never claimed to be authentic - he started up a punk band because punk bands were getting signed, discovered synths by accident, based his image and much of his music on Bowie and a whole host of other 'influences', and still ended up producing through that synthesis some abiding, influential moments in pop. You could say that by being open about being derivative, he's entirely 'authentic'.

It's just a term, to be used and abused as any other. In the end, there are just two kinds of music: good, and the other sort. And you can get as deep into the hows and whys of the stuff you like as you care to, or you can close your eyes and sink in, or you can get out there and shake your booty like a epileptic pirate.

Ain't no thang.
posted by Devonian at 7:24 AM on September 19, 2015 [1 favorite]

I WILL WRITE YOUR POST.

Can arrange authenticity.

Metafilter has an interesting focus on authenticity -- a person joining to comment in an FPP about their work is usually welcomed and celebrated ("Metafilter's own"), but that same person joining to promote their work otherwise would be considered a violation of community norms. I've flagged super obvious spam FPPs, but there have been more than a few over the years that made me wonder about viral marketing.

Here at Metafilter learning that a person was paying the FPP equivalent of Max Martin to co-write their posts would be frowned on and seen as unauthentic. Getting that same help voluntarily from other community members would not be seen that way, at least up to a point.
posted by Dip Flash at 7:25 AM on September 19, 2015 [5 favorites]

yes, but it's The Beatles who transformed the industry, and who created the expectation that pop groups would both write and perform their own music

that was a trend, especially in rock music, but there were many top 40 artists who didn't write their own songs - most of motown, groups like 5th dimension and 3 dog night, much of what blood sweat and tears did - i'm barely scratching the surface here

people give the beatles too much credit for transforming the industry - it was technology and demographics that caused the explosion of music in the 60s

the beatles were partially responsible for the idea that pop musicians could be "artists" - but it was well known in the industry that songwriters got a bigger piece of the pie than those who just performed - back then a track might languish for a couple of weeks below the top 40 and the payoff was still in the 5 figures for the songwriter - the idea that pop groups would both write and perform and that made them better stuck around for awhile, but it didn't have as much influence as the idea that they would be richer - (and that money was money that wouldn't be counted against what you owed for the record company's advance, either, it was yours)

actually, the songwriters and producers mentioned in the article have simply updated the old motown way of churning out pop records - only i don't think the results are quite as worthy
posted by pyramid termite at 7:25 AM on September 19, 2015 [3 favorites]

I assumed that the move towards singer-songwriters was why I keep suffering through Dylan singing his own work, instead of getting to listen to good singers sing his very good songs.

same with Leonard Cohen: please, let your excellent backup singers just take over, please. They do your music more justice.

I can only think of one example of either songwriter being outperformed on one of their own songs: Hendrix doing Dylan and (maybe) Teddy Thompson doing Cohen.

Every other song that either of them sang was the best version of that song.
posted by You Should See the Other Guy at 7:29 AM on September 19, 2015 [9 favorites]

I actually like Max Martin anyway because he proves that good pop depends, at its foundation, on musical structures - melody, harmony, and all that very hard to pin down stuff. That's why he's able to do it for 20 years. In turn, he would be the first to admit that projecting a personality and a world view and a lifestyle-identity that is completely 'baked in' to your songs and performing style is also crucial and has very little to do with him, and is what gives the artist 'authenticity'. The possession or not of this quality is why music critics will say they like 'Shake it Off' but not 'All About That Bass', even though musically they are essentially the same song.
posted by colie at 7:30 AM on September 19, 2015 [4 favorites]

Can anybody quantify for me what the total songwriter credit on a top 40 hit song is worth? Does the song writing credit for a very successful top 40 hit make 100s of thousands? Millions? Tens of millions?
posted by AugustWest at 7:31 AM on September 19, 2015

it's still worth something, but nowhere near as much as it used to be worth - back in the 60s and 70s a minor hit was worth quite a lot - sales are down so much these days, i really have to wonder, especially when there's so many songwriters involved
posted by pyramid termite at 7:35 AM on September 19, 2015

Fifty best covers of Dylan songs - and as a non-Dylan fan, I'd say many of them are better than the original version. As there are more non-Dylan fans than Dylan fans, WE WIN.
posted by Devonian at 7:38 AM on September 19, 2015 [5 favorites]

I had to check the "Swedish Invasion" link to make sure - it's like, how many years since ABBA and people are still surprised that the Swedes have basically solved pop music?

I too think it's rather hilarious and obtuse that these "Swedish invasion" articles say nothing about previous Swedish invasions -- ABBA, of course (and its aftershocks, including -- just small examples -- the recently-closed Mamma Mia, which millions of teenagers and their moms and grandmas saw on Broadway for the past 14 years), but also Ace of Base, Roxette, ...... and all of the pop hits those groups have influenced, on and on down the line.

And what about Robyn? Tove Lo?

The Swedes have always pwned pop music. Well, for the past 40 years, anyway.

We're still thanking Abba for the music, 40 years after Eurovision

ABBA's Essential, Influential Melancholy
posted by blucevalo at 7:41 AM on September 19, 2015 [2 favorites]

Does the song writing credit for a very successful top 40 hit make 100s of thousands? Millions? Tens of millions?

I have no idea about the total numbers or how the rights are split up, or for that matter how many companies he has, but Max Martin's personal production company made around $20 million last year.
posted by effbot at 7:42 AM on September 19, 2015

Musicologist Philip Tagg wrote an entire book about a single Abba song, Fernando.
posted by colie at 7:48 AM on September 19, 2015 [3 favorites]

How 10 Major Songwriters Make Big Money

There's a range of percentages but it looks like 10% of gross is about average.
posted by nathan_teske at 7:49 AM on September 19, 2015 [1 favorite]

This isn't entirely new. No one seems to mind that Motown, say, produced hits, with specialization of labor, on an assembly line basis even (because of the Detroit influence?), even having different artists record the same material.Maybe what the article describes isn't really comparable, though, because everything in this modern pop seems to be centralized in the producer, who does so much editing and processing that he almost even co-performs the vocals, while, in the Motown example, you had differently talented people (composers, engineers, arrangers, instrumentalists, singers) collaborating.
posted by thelonius at 7:49 AM on September 19, 2015 [1 favorite]

(ah, I see pyramid termite was already discussing Motown - it is a good point of comparison)
posted by thelonius at 7:51 AM on September 19, 2015

I thought Barry Manilow writes the songs.
posted by TedW at 8:10 AM on September 19, 2015 [9 favorites]

i find it very strange that this article and discussions about this article don't include any mentions of kesha or her allegations of rape against dr. luke and how she says that the label knew he was dangerous and forced her to work with him.
posted by nadawi at 8:12 AM on September 19, 2015 [9 favorites]

it's still worth something, but nowhere near as much as it used to be worth - back in the 60s and 70s a minor hit was worth quite a lot - sales are down so much these days, i really have to wonder, especially when there's so many songwriters involved

Sales are down, but aren't there other substantial sources of revenue these days, like the fact that a lot of TV ads feature snippets of semi-popular songs?
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 8:18 AM on September 19, 2015 [1 favorite]

Mod note: Couple of comments deleted. I know the intentions are innocent, but snarky comments about the revealing outfits of young women come across as pretty ehh, and are a great way to start a pointless fight that would derail an otherwise interesting thread.
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 8:36 AM on September 19, 2015 [1 favorite]

Fun fact: Bill Bruford was once given songwriting credit for choosing to not play drums on an improvised King Crimson track.
posted by davebush at 8:40 AM on September 19, 2015 [4 favorites]

The best part of the article is the last part -- "an urgent need to escape." That explains so, so much. It's striking.
posted by Cool Papa Bell at 8:47 AM on September 19, 2015 [2 favorites]

Does the song writing credit for a very successful top 40 hit make 100s of thousands? Millions? Tens of millions?

I have no idea about the total numbers or how the rights are split up, or for that matter how many companies he has, but Max Martin's personal production company made around $20 million last year.

Keep in mind that royalties will continue to pay out for decades and decades.

Irving Berlin and his estate started receiving royalty checks for "White Christmas" in 1942, and will continue to do so until 2037.
posted by Cool Papa Bell at 9:06 AM on September 19, 2015 [1 favorite]

I love Pentatonix and I clearly had no thought from the beginning that they were creating original music.

I also love Pentatonix - and they have some good "original" stuff on their first two EPs - they are credited as songwriters along with the record producer. But I think that - in addition to being good singers - PTX also has some good musical training. Their beatboxer is also a cellist, and I've seen arrangements by Superfruit (2/5's of Pentatonix) and from the original trio's high school days that are excellent.
posted by jb at 9:09 AM on September 19, 2015

I can only think of one example of either songwriter being outperformed on one of their own songs: Hendrix doing Dylan and (maybe) Teddy Thompson doing Cohen.

Every other song that either of them sang was the best version of that song.

Peter, Paul & Mary did Dylan way better than Dylan -- and Leonard Cohen's backup singer did "Manhatten" better than he did. Cohen's "Hallelujah" is one of the worst arrangements; there is a reason no one follows that one.

I live with a trained singer. His verdict? "Brilliant songwriters, terrible singers".
posted by jb at 9:12 AM on September 19, 2015 [5 favorites]

The idea of authenticity is indeed mostly bullshit, but its influence over the past 50 years of popular music should not be shrugged off, either. The best, easily accessible treatment of this idea is in Nicholas Cook's surprisingly substantial and excellent Music: A Very Short Introduction. He considers it important enough a topic that it's at the front of his essay.

But Pop music, as a genre, has never been part of the urge for cultural 'authenticity'--in fact, the idea of authenticity arose around Rock music as a rejection of Pop and its values and sounds. Ever since Patti Page sang How Much is that Doggie in the Window? (generally considered the first "pop" song), singers of Pop have only been part of the process. In Rock, of course, things have been quite different and ideas of authenticity really appear in the early 1960s* around artists like Bob Dylan, when the Beatles were still singing "Love Me Do" and just trying to sell records. It quickly established itself in the popular imagination, and by 1966 was pretty firmly entrenched culturally.

Of course, this was immediately undermined by Brian Wilson's creative leap of 'playing the studio,' meaning that a recording was more than a song; it is the song as written + the performance of it + the ways in which it has been manipulated in the studio that make a final work, and production is inherently collaborative. Wilson also prized making great music over selling lots of records, which was profoundly influential on John and Paul, as well as George Martin, and sold them on the idea that the recording itself is the final composition. So, even when other rock groups were taking cues of authenticity from the Beatles, the Beatles themselves were working very collaboratively.

I'm not surprised that most people don't think about where the music they love comes from (though I remain disappointed by that). People also don't realize that the actors they love most often have very little to do with the movies they love them in. So it goes. For those who pay attention, which means asking the simple question "who made this?", Max Martin is marquee name in Pop music--at this point, he's the second most successful record producer in history, after only George Martin. So if you know how recorded music is made at all, none of this is news. If you don't pay attention and are surprised, well, it's because you haven't been paying attention. I imagine all sorts of things are surprising, then.

Music is a collaborative art, it always has and always will be. Different musical styles/traditions/genres have their own particular cultural baggage, but the singular genius--in music or any other medium--is truly very rare, the exceptions that prove the rule of collaboration. As a musician, I find no one way of working inherently superior to another. Whatever makes great music is what makes great music, and that's what matters.

* - not that you're taking my course on this, but the real origin of the idea of musical authenticity comes from around 1800, in the person of Ludwig van Beethoven and the essayist E.T.A. Hoffman. Beethoven was the first composer to assert complete editorial control of his music (e.g., insist on final proof of any published versions), as well as to assert that his music was a realization of his inner expressive self. Hoffman wrote widely and influentially to lionize Beethoven, as well as the idea of composer-as-hero, which became bedrock to the Romantic creative imagination. It's stuck with us in some form ever since. It was somewhat less bullshit then, but still mostly bullshit, especially because it gave birth to the work-concept in composed music, which has been corrosively destructive. But that's a whole other kettle of fish. It is ironic to me that no one considers an orchestra inauthentic for playing other people's music.
posted by LooseFilter at 9:15 AM on September 19, 2015 [21 favorites]

Reminds me of this MADtv sketch with Mandy Moore. I can totally see that guy writing No Scrubs.
posted by daninnj at 9:18 AM on September 19, 2015 [1 favorite]

It totally makes sense to me that the top 40 hits are written by non-native speakers of English. It certainly sounds like it.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 9:22 AM on September 19, 2015 [2 favorites]

just stepped in to check if Willie Nelson was mentioned. Yes. Thanks.
posted by valkane at 9:34 AM on September 19, 2015

The best part of the article is the last part -- "an urgent need to escape." That explains so, so much. It's striking.

Do you think? I thought that bit was remarkably stupid. So basically, most pop stars don't write their own songs. Songwriters write their songs. But songwriters often fail when they try to be pop stars. How can that be?! What mysterious magic do pop stars possess that cause them to be successful when clearly superior people fail?! It is all a big mystery. Maybe it is good looks, which we all know is how silly, superficial people get ahead. Maybe it is that they are fundamentally damaged, and therefore they are able to connect with the pathetic, lumpen masses who make up their audience.

And I mean, maybe it's that, but maybe it's that songwriting is not the only important component of pop stardom. Not every voice is created equal, and that's true even though a lot of pop stars are not technically great singers. Some of them are not technically great singers who have interesting vocal qualities. It takes talent to figure out the right combination of song, singer, and producer to make a hit record, and songwriters don't necessarily get that combination right on their own records. Performance is a big part of contemporary pop stardom: a lot of pop stars are much better dancers than they are singers, and a lot of the top ones put on a great stage and video show. And it takes talent to create and manage a persona that resonates with audiences. It doesn't make sense to dismiss that stuff as trivial. It's not. And in order to have any longevity, pop stars have to have a fair amount of talent for figuring that stuff out, or at least for picking people who can figure it out for them. Manufactured pop stars are a thing, but they're also totally disposable, and the people who have long careers are probably calling the shots and exercising a fair amount of judgment and business acumen.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 9:36 AM on September 19, 2015 [10 favorites]

Millions of Swifties and KatyCats—as well as Beliebers, Barbz, and Selenators, and the Rihanna Navy—would be stunned by the revelation that a handful of people, a crazily high percentage of them middle-aged Scandinavian men, write most of America’s pop hits.

Oh, please. Would they also be surprised that a crazily high percentage of middle-aged white men control most of America's music industry?
posted by kinetic at 9:40 AM on September 19, 2015

It totally makes sense to me that the top 40 hits are written by non-native speakers of English. It certainly sounds like it.

Hahahaha, yeah man, totally! Not like that golden age from 1950-1990, when lyrics sounded like Shakespeare!!
posted by LooseFilter at 9:40 AM on September 19, 2015 [6 favorites]

The Motown analogy is interesting. I don't hate on Max&Dr.Luke, but I sure don't love them. I think that their music tends to sound brittle and amorphous. So the part in the essay where he talks about piling hooks on top of hooks on top of hooks sounds funny, because there's so many hooks fighting for attention that the songs themselves lack definition and sound shapeless. But then again, my parents told me that all rock music sounded the same to them.
posted by ovvl at 9:45 AM on September 19, 2015

Personally, I think pop music* is at least as interesting now as it's ever been. I really listen more widely now than I have in decades, to much enjoyment.

* - n.b., especially for this conversation: it's important to distinguish between Pop music and popular music. From Wikipedia:

Pop music (a term that originally derives from an abbreviation of "popular") is a genre of popular music that originated in its modern form in the Western world during the 1950s and 1960s, deriving from rock and roll. The terms "popular music" and "pop music" are often used interchangeably, although the former describes of music that is popular (and can include any style).

As a genre, pop music is extremely eclectic, often borrowing elements from other styles such as urban, dance, rock, Latin, and country; nonetheless, there are core elements that define pop music. Such elements include generally short to medium-length songs written in a basic format (often the verse-chorus structure) as well as the common employment of repeated choruses, melodic tunes, and hooks.
posted by LooseFilter at 9:50 AM on September 19, 2015

You can't have too many hooks in a pop song. A producer friend of mine said to me the secret of great songwriters is that they go back over a song again and again trying to turn everything in it into a hook. It's one of the Beatles' secrets. The first four drum beats of She Loves You last less than half a second, and they're a hook.
posted by colie at 9:51 AM on September 19, 2015 [3 favorites]

More funny songwriting trivia: in the rock band Queen, every single member had a solo songwriting credit to chart at #1. (from 'Is This The Real Life'; I think it applies to UK and US charts.)
posted by ovvl at 9:54 AM on September 19, 2015 [1 favorite]

Hahahaha, yeah man, totally! Not like that golden age from 1950-1990, when lyrics sounded like Shakespeare

I'm not saying may sound unintelligent; I'm saying they sound awkward.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 9:59 AM on September 19, 2015

“It’s not enough to have one hook anymore,” Jay Brown, a co-founder of Jay Z’s Roc Nation label, tells Seabrook. “You’ve got to have a hook in the intro, a hook in the pre, a hook in the chorus, and a hook in the bridge, too.”

I have a memory of reading John Lennon saying much the same thing back in the day, only boiled down to three hooks per song.
posted by BWA at 10:04 AM on September 19, 2015

Dylan Cover: Masters of War
Album by Mountain. Best full album cover. Personal opinion.
posted by bjgeiger at 10:11 AM on September 19, 2015 [1 favorite]

I can only think of one example of either songwriter being outperformed on one of their own songs: Hendrix doing Dylan

This rumor needs to die. Hendrix did a nice little version of a Dylan song in which he presents a fictional rendering of a coming apocalypse, as illustrated by a cataclysmic guitar; in Dylan's version, though, it's pretty clear that the apocalypse is real.
posted by shakespeherian at 10:16 AM on September 19, 2015 [4 favorites]

Nicholas Cook's surprisingly substantial and excellent Music: A Very Short Introduction.

I have read about 20 books from that series, and about half of them were outstandingly good, a quarter pretty solid and informative, and a quarter rather bad (in my opinion).
posted by thelonius at 10:29 AM on September 19, 2015

This rumor needs to die. Hendrix did a nice little version of a Dylan song in which he presents a fictional rendering of a coming apocalypse, as illustrated by a cataclysmic guitar; in Dylan's version, though, it's pretty clear that the apocalypse is real.

sure is funny how bob's been following hendrix's arrangment live ever since it came out

---

Ever since Patti Page sang How Much is that Doggie in the Window? yt (generally considered the first "pop" song), singers of Pop have only been part of the process.

between 1905 and 1920, billy murray was doing pop like K-K-K-Katy - pop music goes back a lot farther back than the 1950s - 1909 - billy murray - in my merry oldsmobile
posted by pyramid termite at 11:38 AM on September 19, 2015 [2 favorites]

If you want to trace the first pop songs, I reckon they must be music hall/vaudeville songs that were transmitted through parents singing to children. As opposed to folk music that had a social function and set of meanings - 'pop' was usually pure ribaldry. It could be argued that pop only exists once the mechanical reproduction of sound was invented.
posted by colie at 11:53 AM on September 19, 2015

sure is funny how bob's been following hendrix's arrangment live ever since it came out

Bob Dylan can also be wrong, even about his own song.
posted by shakespeherian at 12:07 PM on September 19, 2015 [1 favorite]

Under U.S. copyright and royalty laws, songwriters are basically guaranteed a piece of all of the varieties of royalties and income sources, performers not so much. So getting a songwriting credit is the best route to maximum money from a hit record, especially once you're past the relatively short period of weeks/months where a song is actually selling lots of copies.

This is also true of performers who were one-hit wonders, but found it more lucrative to be a song doctor for other performers. Dan Wilson had a hit with "Closing Time" for his own band Semisonic, but he's made way more money from a very small number of songs, such as The Dixie Chicks, "Not Ready to Make Nice"; Adele, "Someone Like You"; and several Taylor Swift hits as well. Linda Perry of 4 Non-Blondes fame is another one-hit wonder turned song doctor.
posted by jonp72 at 12:13 PM on September 19, 2015 [5 favorites]

American pop music goes back to vaudeville through the 19th century, and then the emergence of a proper "music industry" with Tin Pan Alley (as they called the row of music publishers in Union Square). Unsurprisingly for anyone with a whiff of understanding race relations in US history, it generally grew from the minstrel shows, black music taken over by white performers in blackface. The separation of creation / refinement / performance was always a part of popular music.

I wonder if the "singer/songwriter" and "originals band" concepts came about parallel to the idea of the auteur in film, the idea that a visionary could really control every aspect of a creative work. Certainly it drove with a powerful force through the work of the Beach Boys and Beatles, which became increasingly studio-bound, and into certain strains of rock music.
posted by graymouser at 12:14 PM on September 19, 2015 [1 favorite]

It would be like Will Smith writing the next Independence Day.

I'd for a high speed internet internet connection and VPN to watch that on a rainy day when there's nothing better to do.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 12:16 PM on September 19, 2015

It would be like Will Smith writing the next Independence Day.

I'd for a high speed internet internet connection and VPN to watch that on a rainy day when there's nothing better to do.

I'm just picturing Will Smith at his computer typing up the movie and talking out all the over-the-top action movie lines as he does it, and watching him write the movie being more entertaining than the actual result would be.
posted by graymouser at 12:18 PM on September 19, 2015 [2 favorites]

One of the skills an aspiring singer-songwriter needs to gain is the ability to discard what isn't working, and move on. Be that a lyric, a hook, or an entire song. The songwriting bands I follow talk about how 80% of their work is garbage not fit for anyone's ears, and it accordingly does not get recorded or published. While that claim is probably up to individual taste just as it is for the quality of their published music, the fact is that they're constantly culling. It must be difficult to discard something you've been working away at that holds meaning for you.

Then we get to the Swedish pop machine: English isn't their first language, so they probably take a more utilitarian approach to massaging it into a tight set of rhyming lyrics that can be committed to memory by every English-speaking preteen on the planet. Nor are they writing music for themselves, so there's a greater degree of detachment that would make it easier to discard the sub-par stuff. And their music naturally goes through layers of sifting to sort out the wheat from the chaff: biggest stars get first dibs, and if no one buys it doesn't make it onto the radio. Finally, practice makes perfect! It's easier to learn how to write a hit song when you're free to focus on that all day, and not having to tend to any of the commercial and performance duties that come along with pop stardom.
posted by mantecol at 12:23 PM on September 19, 2015 [1 favorite]

It's not just the U.S. charts that have been taken over by the Scandinavian pop machine - many kpop hits are written by Swedish and Norwegian songwriters. These songwriters then get royalties from across Asia as the kpop songs are played and performed throughout Asia.

(A rather amusing quote from one of these songwriters: "I could never get my head around J-pop and what the Japanese wanted.")
posted by needled at 12:38 PM on September 19, 2015 [1 favorite]

If I walk up to you and say "hi, my name is [something that's not really my name]" (and I'm not obviously playing a theatrical role of some kind), then I am not being authentic.

No, it means you're not being honest. If you are a compulsive liar, telling a lie is being authentic.
posted by krinklyfig at 12:44 PM on September 19, 2015 [1 favorite]

> pop music goes back...

1000 Years of Popular Music [previous-ish-ly]

Oops I Did It Again performed by Richard Thompson with an interlude in a 16th century style.
posted by morganw at 1:28 PM on September 19, 2015 [4 favorites]

So, people still manage to make money on pop music these days. Good for them!
posted by bfields at 1:34 PM on September 19, 2015

If you watch the Richard Thompson video all the way to the end he puts his hands up and out exactly like Spears's move. Not as good as the renaissance bridge but pretty damn funny.
posted by bukvich at 1:44 PM on September 19, 2015

Swedes! Songs, meatballs, massages, bakery goods, is there nothing they can't do?
posted by Chitownfats at 3:13 PM on September 19, 2015

"People" are making more money than ever from music. Particularly the song-writers.

What I want to know is: who is the person who writes all these soaring dance pop songs like Imagine Dragons and Bastille and whatever? Is it one old Swedish dude too? They couldn't sound more similar. Yet probably, ironically, they are all individual artistes desperately trying to be more like fun.
posted by Potomac Avenue at 3:35 PM on September 19, 2015

It comes as no surprise, of course, to the world-weary and jaded cynics of Metafilter that the treasured emotional moments cherished by our impressionable youth are also the product of a profound and jaundiced cynicism.
posted by Joseph Gurl at 4:24 PM on September 19, 2015 [3 favorites]

fun. is pretty much all written by the band but they have taken a little help from Emile and jake one.

imagine dragons is helped out quite a bit by alex da kid.

bastille seems to all be done by the lead guy dan smith and produced by a guy named mark crews who seems to mostly work with bastille (but maybe worked a littile with taylor swift too).
posted by nadawi at 4:30 PM on September 19, 2015

I've also heard mean people say that actors don't really write the lines they say, that their apparent intelligence bears little relation to their actual intelligence, that they don't really feel the emotions they emote, and that their on-screen personas are often incongruent with their baseline personalities. But who would want to live in a world where that was true?
posted by meehawl at 4:31 PM on September 19, 2015 [1 favorite]

I don't care about authenticity, how do I become Max Martin's protege? And do songwriters like this exist for other genres of music? Could I create a metal band and have them high charting? Job For A Cowboy's albums were some of the biggest metal albums to chart, along with other sort of "niche" (underground) bands like A Day To Remember and such. While stuff like Taylor Swift and Rihanna are huge, that doesn't mean there aren't other music scenes to be profited off of (see: Warped Tour). So how does one exactly go about creating these groups? I know how to record, I just want to tell a band what to do in order to get big, because I know what people like and I especially know what people with money like.
posted by gucci mane at 4:42 PM on September 19, 2015 [2 favorites]

>I've also heard mean people say that actors don't really write the lines they say, that their apparent intelligence bears little relation to their actual intelligence, that they don't really feel the emotions they emote, and that their on-screen personas are often incongruent with their baseline personalities. But who would want to live in a world where that was true?

While both actors and musicians craft their images carefully, actors don't pretend in their daily lives to be the characters they play on screen, whereas musicians' images and the characters they play on stage and in videos are rarely separable and distinct.
posted by Joseph Gurl at 6:02 PM on September 19, 2015

actors don't generally pretend to be their characters (except people on scripted reality, i guess), but they have exactly as much artifice in the public sphere, and as much range in how much is real and how much is created by a team. take the late nigh circuit - nearly all of those interviews are scripted, previously agreed upon topics, stories written to further their brand, but they're presented as an honest look into the actor's world, same for articles, social media, appearances, etc. they're all selling a product and that product is some part them/their personal brand and some part their job title.
posted by nadawi at 6:19 PM on September 19, 2015

I came up with an idea for a song once, lyrics melody and overall sound. Not knowing how to play any instruments, I enlisted a musician friend of mine who laid down all the tracks based on my description & guidance.

Then it came time to lay down the vocals. I can carry a tune, I guess I can sing. But hearing MY voice sing MY song... was underwhelming to say the least. I suddenly had a lot of appreciation for someone like Kesha, who can't sing worth shit but man can she sell it on styling.

So yeah. Pop stars have a talent, it's just not the one they want us to think it is.
posted by St. Peepsburg at 7:04 PM on September 19, 2015

I watched this documentary about Sinatra that's on Youtube not too long ago, and it gets in to the mafia connections that made him famous. It also talks about how the crooners of the fifties were not so unlike the boy bands of recent years. They also had gurus and money men that made sure they got the right songs to sing and had the right gigs to orchestrate their road to fame.

So, yes, musicians and their brands have been manufactured for some time. And most pop songs have some degree of manufacturing done to them. But the article does a good job of pointing out to what degree all of pop music is manufactured now.

Maybe just needs a graph comparing how manufactured a song/artist is to how authentic it comes across versus the quality of the craftsmanship.
posted by destro at 7:07 PM on September 19, 2015

kesha released (and was pushed towards) a type of music that never sounds good without all the bells and whistles around it, but i personally think she's a pretty good singer.
posted by nadawi at 7:14 PM on September 19, 2015 [1 favorite]

From a listener's perspective, I find these songs by Max Martin and company to be really boring. But damn it's impressive whatever it is they do.
posted by gehenna_lion at 7:28 PM on September 19, 2015

St. Peepsburg, that seems to be a live track (SNL performance, just the recording from her mic only), and given that, I think she actually sounds legitimately good: she's remarkably on pitch and high-energy the whole time, which is hard to do when you're singing in that punky-belt style even if you're an experienced singer. If it sounds harsh or awkward I think it's more because that Karen O-esque yelping she's doing sounds out-of-place without the rest of the instruments in the mix (and also because she's writhing around towards the end, which is going to affect your singing -- which is why performers who dance usually lip sync in concert). What she's doing vocally definitely takes talent and practice.
posted by en forme de poire at 8:10 PM on September 19, 2015 [1 favorite]

First things first, you kids get off my lawn.

OK, I'm as old as dirt so I grew up with the rock n' roll aesthetic. While I prefer to hear music from someone that wrote it, I can understand how a singer can cover a song and still make it their own. Look at Sinatra. I've got an Alison Krauss live album where she covers the schmaltzy "When You Say Nothing at All" and she takes it to somewhere else. And how about Johnny Cash covering Nine Inch Nails. So I don't think that pop stars are less authentic just because they can't write music. My biggest gripes is the sheer mind-numbing simplicity of dance pop.

Talk to a musician that plays in a cover band. I know a few. Playing three chord rock is one thing, but many modern pop songs are dumbed down further than that. There may be hooks aplenty but the structure underneath is threadbare. Just a few major chords and a four-four beat. A guitarist I know says a little bit of her soul dies every time she has to play a boy band song. I guess that's why things like this happen, sooner or later you gotta play something a little more twisted.

My wife loves pop. I am far too familiar with the works of Justin Timberlake and Katy Perry. The missus also has a N'SYNC live DVD from several years ago. I only come into the living room for the final number. As the boys are leaving the stage, their band continues to play "Bye Bye Bye" or one of those songs, can't remember. And then, as the credits on the DVD roll, the band shifts into "YYZ" of all things. My guess is that somewhere, out in that vast arena, there was a parent or two that paused while herding their tweens toward the exit and thought, "you gotta be fucking kidding me."

I gotta Roger Waters album playing now. Not a lot of hooks or beats but damn, it feels real to me.

You kids can have the lawn back now.
posted by Ber at 8:50 PM on September 19, 2015 [1 favorite]

I suddenly had a lot of appreciation for someone like Kesha, who can't sing worth shit

Whoa hold the phone. Her mother is Pebe Sebert, and Ke$ha covered her mother's / Dolly Parton's song Old Flames Can't Hold A Candle To You and fucking kills it. That woman has some pipes, and her mom is a phenomenal lyricist.

This song gives me such chills.
posted by special agent conrad uno at 10:19 PM on September 19, 2015 [4 favorites]

Somewhat related, The Wrecking Crew (currently streaming on Netflix) is a documentary about studio session musicians recording just about every hit song that came out of California in the 60's. It's not just that a lot of pop stars didn't write their own music, a lot of them didn't even perform their own music. I think most contemporary pop stars are singers rather than musicians, so I don't think it's quite the same as what goes on today. Auto-tuning may be the modern equivalent.

I'm pretty out of touch with current pop music, but l I've been listening to Daft Punk a lot recently. It's kind of embarrassing because I should be too old for this stuff, but they're really good. Since they hide their faces, they're somewhat of an inversion of the usual pop star phenomena.
posted by Loudmax at 10:19 PM on September 19, 2015 [3 favorites]

All of this makes Grimes look like even more of a genius.
posted by smidgen at 12:29 AM on September 20, 2015 [3 favorites]

Grimes probably is the best thing I can think of to happen to music in any year starting with 20.

And I say that as someone who should probably hate what she does.
posted by Mezentian at 1:27 AM on September 20, 2015

Carol Kaye of the Wrecking Crew Clique:

Carol Kaye (born March 24, 1935) is an American musician, known as one of the most prolific and widely heard bass guitarists, playing on an estimated 10,000 recording sessions in a 55-year career.[1]

As a session musician, Kaye was the bassist on many Phil Spector and Brian Wilson productions in the 1960s and 1970s. She played guitar on Ritchie Valens' "La Bamba" and is credited with the bass tracks on several Simon & Garfunkel hits and many film scores by Quincy Jones and Lalo Schifrin. One of the most popular albums Carol contributed to was the Beach Boys' Pet Sounds.

posted by asok at 4:08 AM on September 20, 2015 [2 favorites]

The Wrecking Crew is terrific, if you haven't seen it. What was most interesting to me was Kaye talking about working with Brian Wilson. She mentions that iconic, perfect bass line in the opening of "Good Vibrations", and confirms that she did not write it; Wilson sang it to her, exactly what he wanted to hear (she says something like 'it's brilliant, I never would have come up with that', and indeed I find it one of the most distinctive bass lines in popular music). Others from the Pet Sounds sessions confirm: he had everything clearly composed in his head. Even though the Crew was in there playing their hearts out for him, Wilson was still the composer.

Imma go listen to some Brian Wilson now.
posted by LooseFilter at 8:31 AM on September 20, 2015

You can't have too many hooks in a pop song. A producer friend of mine said to me the secret of great songwriters is that they go back over a song again and again trying to turn everything in it into a hook.

Seriously. I mean, there's an art to having a great song with just one or two hooks that really grab you (Maps, which they talk about in the article, is a great song for that very reason: it's understated with a few really memorable hooks) but think about a song like "Be My Baby." It's absolutely loaded with hooks, from the very first beat, and it's so beloved decades later for that reason.
posted by lunasol at 2:28 PM on September 20, 2015 [1 favorite]

İt's interesting that the article brings up South Korea, because that's a market where the songwriters actually do get a lot of exposure, especially hometown heros like Brave Brothers and Shinsadong Tiger and Sweetune &ct. "So-and-such famous producer wrote Boyband A's new single" is a legitimate marketing strategy and a lot of the more sucessful idol groups became famous by consistently working with the same songwriting team.
posted by subdee at 4:12 PM on September 20, 2015 [1 favorite]

If I walk up to you and say "hi, my name is [something that's not really my name]" (and I'm not obviously playing a theatrical role of some kind), then I am not being authentic.

Unless you're a liar. A liar lying is a liar being authentic. Or unless you're afraid of the negative repercussions of revealing your identity - say you're a woman giving out a phony name and number to a creepy guy.

In any case I didn't say authenticity doesn't exist; I said I don't think things have essences, which means that appeals to authenticity are actually appeals to a particular recitation of the self that meets the expectations of the observer. It is possible to recite the self in a way that is internally consistent with one's own beliefs about oneself and still be perceived as inauthentic and this is even more possible and frequent in art and pop culture.

This makes me think of the conversation that often happens about musicians "selling out" which is usually a description employed by fans of early work who don't like how the artist's subsequent work differs in terms of technique or subject matter as if the only reason for, say, a punk band to try different musical approaches or a rap artist to write about different subject matter is that they were motivated by the hope of higher album sales and popularity. Bands might just be tired of playing derivatives of blues chords progressions over and over day in and day out. Rappers might be interested in subjects other than growing up poor or "money hoes and rims again."

Take Kanye West - that is one "authentic" dude, if by "authentic" we mean that his recitation of himself doesn't change much from context to context - but is that a good thing? And: how do we know that he's like that in private? Maybe he's really sweet and gentle. And, maybe both are "authentic."

I know about myself that I am usually pretty easygoing and I try to be kind but in certain contexts I become quite anxious and other times pretty mean-spirited. The guy I am when I'm riding my bike through Midtown Manhattan is a very different guy than the guy I am on the subway. But they're both me; I'm just way more stressed out if I'm on a bike between 34th and 59th streets.

So sure authenticity might exist, but I think it's the sort of description that is very useful when dealing with entities whose complexities lie in materials and manufacture and which are detectable and which don't change much from context to context but not a very useful description for entities whose complexities are in large part unseen and unknowable and which change from context to context. No one says, for example "That is a very authentic sparrow," nor do they say "that is an inauthentic mountain." That's because birds and mountains aren't really the kinds of things about which authenticity is a useful description. I'm suggesting that people and art are also not well-described by the word, with the exception of comparing art with forgeries. But that distinction doesn't hold for people - if you give me a fake name my reaction isn't "oh s/he's a forgery," my reaction is "that person lied to me." Your authenticity is not my concern in that statement but rather: now I have a reason not to trust you.
posted by eustacescrubb at 6:00 PM on September 20, 2015 [1 favorite]

As an example of how these are often very good songs disguised in the presentation, here's Marillion - Toxic.
posted by salmacis at 6:09 AM on September 21, 2015

There's nothing "disguised" about Toxic being a very good song. I don't see how you could miss that it's a very good song in its original presentation.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 6:12 AM on September 21, 2015 [5 favorites]

I'm pretty out of touch with current pop music, but l I've been listening to Daft Punk a lot recently. It's kind of embarrassing because I should be too old for this stuff, but they're really good. Since they hide their faces, they're somewhat of an inversion of the usual pop star phenomena.
posted by Loudmax 2 days ago

Having discovered Daft Punk at the ripe age of 37, I have declared that one is never too old for Daft Punk - especially since both members are still (a couple of) years older than me.

Also, I like to point out the baroque qualities of "Giorgio" from their most recent album, just to seem more sophisticated. Their lyrics can frequently be summed up as "Music is Great. I love Music. Let's Dance!" but the music itself can be really complex and interesting. (Of course, I like "Get Lucky" in all its repetitive glory just as much).
posted by jb at 7:14 AM on September 21, 2015

There's nothing "disguised" about Toxic being a very good song. I don't see how you could miss that it's a very good song in its original presentation.

When I listen to the Spears' version, I don't really like it. But when I heard the Glee version - particularly Mathew Morrison's singing - it really grabbed me.
posted by jb at 7:15 AM on September 21, 2015

Somewhat related: Ryan Adams released his cover of the entirety of Taylor Swift's 1989 today. I'm really enjoying it, especially his cover of "Style." (spotify link)
posted by lunasol at 8:12 AM on September 21, 2015

Entertainment Weekly gives it an A-:
But there’s nothing ironic or tossed off about Adams’ interpretations. By stripping all 13 tracks of their pony-stomp synths and high-gloss studio sheen, he reveals the bones of what are essentially timeless, genre-less songs.

Ms Swift seems overjoyed by the effort.
posted by octothorpe at 11:27 AM on September 21, 2015

New BFF for Taylor. It can happen to anyone.
posted by colie at 11:58 AM on September 21, 2015

I can only think of one example of either songwriter being outperformed on one of their own songs: Hendrix doing Dylan and (maybe) Teddy Thompson doing Cohen.

I don't know if she outperformed her, but I certainly hope that Dolly Parton sent Whitney Houston a bouquet in thanks for the "I Will Always Love You" royalties.
posted by psoas at 12:52 PM on September 21, 2015

What is that ineffable something that separates pop stars from the rest of us? [...] Seabrook lands on a more subtle quality: an “urgent need to escape”—escapism as a matter of life or death. Rihanna was desperate to escape an abusive father; for Katy Perry it was her family’s repressive evangelical faith; for the Backstreet Boys it was Orlando.

SICK BURN ON O-TOWN, BRO
posted by psoas at 1:10 PM on September 21, 2015 [1 favorite]

I don't know if she outperformed her, but I certainly hope that Dolly Parton sent Whitney Houston a bouquet in thanks for the "I Will Always Love You" royalties.

Most definitely not. Parton thinks that Houston essentially ruined a lovely, heartfelt little song--and didn't need the money, then or now.
posted by LooseFilter at 3:46 PM on September 21, 2015 [1 favorite]

Rich is getting called out a little today (on Twitter at least) about his article:

From Brian Koppelman:

If you slam @taylorswift13 for cowriting, then you can't celebrate Difford and Tilbrook. Or Elton. As a man, I say: men are often asses.

That Atlantic piece that paints Max Martin as creative visionary behind Taylor is gross. Ask @jackantonoff if Taylor writes!

You can also ask Imogene Heap. Swift has always been open to collaboration. Max Martin isn't someone who invented her or Perry or Rihanna or is the sole source of any of their successes.

This tweet, though, not from Koppelman, was my favorite so far:

No music that Taylor Swift has ever written or will ever write could ever get close to being worse than adult men being mad about it

Pretty accurate, I'll say, from the many men who believe themselves to be authorities on music or anything and how petty and childish and predictable their feelings about young woman being successful in a field they desperately wish they were successful at. ("I didn't play the game! If I played the game, I'd be famous too! She can't sing! If I was a woman, I could sleep around or show my legs, and I'd be a multimillionaire cat owner too! But I'm not selling out!" Yet they're not quite Ani DiFranco, are they? Hmmm. )
posted by discopolo at 3:52 PM on September 21, 2015 [2 favorites]

I found this worth a read.

a list of fact checks of this nathaniel rich high school book review/pop music pontification job, up to the point where I lost my mind
posted by discopolo at 4:04 PM on September 21, 2015 [5 favorites]

Thanks discopolo, the assertions that Taylor Swift doesn't do any real songwriting have been bugging the crap out of me for reasons I still have trouble articulating. That article does a better job than I ever could.

I also have a (difficult to verify) suspicion that some of this is gendered. Rich certainly seems to throw shade on a lot more women than men.
posted by contrarian at 5:54 PM on September 21, 2015 [1 favorite]

The Atlantic piece seems most critical of the guy who invented 'NSync and Backstreet Boys and gave rise to the even worse K-pop boy bands, and hardly mentions Swift.

"Most memorable—and instructive—is the story of the obese, oleaginous Orlando entrepreneur Louis Pearlman."
posted by colie at 11:37 PM on September 21, 2015 [1 favorite]

and yet, the article also seems to ignore louis pearlman's sexual predation of the boys under his care.
posted by nadawi at 8:36 AM on September 22, 2015 [2 favorites]

kesha is still trying to end her business relationship with dr luke - he seems to disinclined to let her
posted by nadawi at 11:32 AM on September 22, 2015 [1 favorite]

I've always wondered what the "pop is fake because artists don't write or compose" people go around the impact a producer has on the first album of a young band (when, as Martin Hannett once put it re: Joy Division " they didn't have a clue").
posted by lmfsilva at 1:54 PM on September 22, 2015

Kesha Effectively Iced Out of Music Industry for Her Accusations of Abuse, Rape Against Producer
posted by homunculus at 6:57 PM on September 23, 2015 [1 favorite]

Yeah, the idea of pop music's lack of authenticity because there are songwriters behind the scenes ignores a lot of history. Jazz music is all about covers, and sometimes jazz is pretty straight ahead and not improvised, particularly with many jazz singers. Ella Fitzgerald can be criticized because of her limited range, but she's not accused of being a phony. Symphony orchestras aren't writing their own parts, nor do most conductors compose symphonies.
posted by krinklyfig at 1:42 PM on September 24, 2015

This earlier New Yorker column from 2012 by the book's author strikes me as way more interesting. The Atlantic article treads a lot of the same ground, but adds a greasy layer of scandalized moralizing.

In other words, it's the Atlantic.
posted by the christopher hundreds at 2:26 PM on September 24, 2015 [1 favorite]

That article does a better job than I ever could.


Well, it's written by a talented music critic who is involved in the industry. Someone who should have written the article in the first place, instead of Rich.

Bugs me, too, obviously. But, unfortunately, the annoying and unsophisticated "it's all Max Martin!!!" talk is going to continue because women like Taylor Swift and Anne Hathaway get regularly raked over the coals for not being "cool girls" by actually looking like they put in effort for their work. Somehow putting in effort means you're not talented or real or a liar or fake or phony (especially if you're female) and it's weird to see many people just salivating to put her down. Or something. It's clear Swift and her success really bugs a lot of people for whom disliking her is just super important to their ego and sense of self. And sadly The Atlantic article by someone who isn't even a legitimate music critic has given folks the cheap swords they'll continue to wave around to discredit her and the work she puts in.
posted by discopolo at 5:55 PM on September 24, 2015 [1 favorite]

The idea that you have to be a 'legitimate music critic' to write an article about the industry that produces the sounds that surround us all day long is absurd. It's not the best piece of writing in the world, but his central thesis is simply "never before has it [the music industry] been run so efficiently or dominated by so few" and he takes in a fair few convincing examples of how this process has developed - the most egregious of which were boy bands performing Max Martin's songs.

And nobody doubts you have to kill yourself with hard work to make it as any kind of pop star, anywhere. Given that Swift is probably the biggest pop star in the world, there will always be a minority of people that don't like the music she makes or the personality she projects, but I don't see her in much danger of being discredited by this article with its four passing mentions of her. As the article points out, average pop fans don't care about Martin's input one way or the other.
posted by colie at 12:17 AM on September 25, 2015

The idea that you have to be a 'legitimate music critic' to write an article about the industry that produces the sounds that surround us all day long is absurd.

Sure, you don't have to be experienced or very knowledgeable to half-ass anything you put one butt cheek to (seems especially true if you went to Yale and your dad is Frank Rich)---but writing without having knowledge or attempting to do the necessary research about the industry and then framing an article about the industry as something informative is lazy journalism. Which writers like Nathaniel Rich do a little too often, in my opinion. He could be the Thomas Friedman of pop music if he really pressed that one cheek down and gave it a real half-assed go.

Then again, as someone mentioned above, it's the Atlantic, the publication that printed Lori Gottlieb's piece arguing that women should just settle with a half decent guy they semi-get along with if they want a baby. I mean, they have printed worse stuff.
posted by discopolo at 7:53 AM on September 25, 2015 [1 favorite]

Friedman? Ouch!

The article by Katherine St Asaph says it's a 'fact check', and number one fact check is that 'Ester Dean isn't a producer.'

Wikipedia's page of 'songs written and produced by American singer, songwriter, and producer Ester Dean' seems pretty big, so I don't really know what's going on any more. Possibly this is an error and that's where Rich got it from. It's really not a terrible article, even if Ester Dean isn't a producer.
posted by colie at 8:49 AM on September 25, 2015

Hearing Sam Smith talk about writing and then singing his parts for the new James Bond theme song in under an hour made me think of this thread, and the idea that if you have an innate feel for a style of music, it can be dead simple to crank out iterations of that same style. (Which then made me think of an old Questionable Content comic.)
posted by filthy light thief at 11:30 AM on September 25, 2015

Sorry to bring up an old thread, but the New Yorker has chimed in with a piece of its own on Max Martin.
posted by kevinbelt at 2:25 PM on October 5, 2015 [1 favorite]