
Hit Charade - tokenadult
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/10/hit-charade/403192/hn-repost?single_page=true
======
addisonj
Incredibly fascinating article. The article mentioned both the 'sameness' of
pop music as well as blatant copying, but what I find the most interesting is
how they pop industry has somehow found some magical rate of evolution to keep
most people interested while not changing too fast to alienate certain
demographics.

A few years ago, when dubstep was still fairly new, a build up and shift as
dramatic as the typical dubstep 'drop' would have been fairly jarring for most
pop music. Fast forward to today and you hear elements of it almost
everywhere, but it all happened gradually enough to make it feel familiar but
different enough to be exciting.

~~~
otis_inf
> A few years ago, when dubstep was still fairly new, a build up and shift as
> dramatic as the typical dubstep 'drop' would have been fairly jarring for
> most pop music. Fast forward to today and you hear elements of it almost
> everywhere, but it all happened gradually enough to make it feel familiar
> but different enough to be exciting.

Agreed, and that's what's bugging me: I missed a bit in the article the
following: how do they get massive groups of people buying into the products
they are selling, every time? If you look at the whole pipeline, from writing
the 'hit' to recording / mixing / mastering to getting it on iTunes (record
store?) and the shows live in the halls / stadiums, where and more
importantly: how, are they getting the people that far that they part with
their money to 'own' a copy of these, often dreadful (music wise), songs?

It is, IMHO, that part of the whole pipeline that they have mastered, not the
song writing/recording: the product isn't the music, the product is something
else, the front person ('artist') + the whole entourage around it, but it's
fascinating how they manage to construct _that_ entourage that is sought after
by people with money to burn. they must know an answer (which is sold in the
form of the artist+entourage+shows+music) to an unknown question / benefit
sought a lot of people have.

~~~
guscost
The piece you're not quite mentioning is that for a very long time now,
mainstream pop culture has been mostly about getting adolescent kids to lust
after the celebrities or musicians or whoever. That segment of the market
sells (images of) people as sex objects, not any particular creative media on
its own merit. It's a bit disturbing but there you go.

------
morgante
This is a great article, but I don't understand the undercurrent of judgement
and the overt judgement here on HN. Yes, songs are produced by teams of people
behind the scenes who adopt common formulas and churn out hit after hit. So
what? They're a product just like anything else.

My enjoyment of the latest movie isn't lessened by the fact that the actors
didn't write the script. I don't dislike my iPhone just because it's a mass-
produced item which is just a small tweak from its previous iterations.

Just because music is a product doesn't mean it's not enjoyable (or worthy of
enjoyment).

~~~
donall
I think the difference is that the actors in movies aren't trying to give the
impression that they wrote the script, whereas musicians talk about "their"
songs like they conceived them in a process of true artistic expression.
Revealing that they are actually manufactured in a formulaic manner by the
same people who wrote all the other hit songs can leave a sour taste in the
mouth of a fan who is perhaps emotionally invested in a song or artist...

~~~
morgante
I agree that _some_ fans might have a negative reaction to realizing that the
performers don't write their own music, but it's hardly a secret. Songwriting
credits exist for a reason.

Even if they do find that out, the music is still enjoyable. I'm literally
listening to mass-produced music as I write this comment, fully aware that
it's produced but still enjoying it.

~~~
analog31
Indeed, I think that the benefit of good songwriting outweighs the downside of
knowing how songs are written. I'm a pretty good musician, and the one skill
that I really envy is songwriting, which I just don't know how to do.

It'd have been a shame if Sinatra had tried to write his own songs, or if the
Beach Boys had tried to record their own instrumental parts.

------
jdietrich
I can highly recommend "The Manual" by The KLF. It cynically documents how
they wrote and produced one of their many hit singles. It was written in 1988,
but proved to be remarkably prophetic.

[http://freshonthenet.co.uk/the-manual-by-the-
klf/](http://freshonthenet.co.uk/the-manual-by-the-klf/)

~~~
david-given
It's a great read.

For reference, here is the video in question:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bdTELokKfCk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bdTELokKfCk)

And, simply because it's awesome, even though it's totally unrelated to the
conversation, here's... a thing... with the KLF, Daleks, George Bush, and
Green Day in it.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PAzzhJeTp-I](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PAzzhJeTp-I)

------
tomkwok
The previous story about Max Martin (Martin Karl Sandberg):

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7127488](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7127488)
[600 days ago] _One Man Has Written Virtually Every Major Pop Song Of The Last
20 Years_

~~~
infofarmer
How meta would it be if both articles were ghost written by the same person?

------
nostromo
Check out how similar Tik Tok and California Gurls are when they're mixed
together:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T2dPA2dCRNY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T2dPA2dCRNY)
The similarity is striking.

Both are written by Lukasz Gottwald, one of the songwriters mentioned in the
article.

~~~
doughj3
Here's another one, Part of Me by Katy Perry and Till The World Ends by
Britney Spears:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bXC0ihxJQAQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bXC0ihxJQAQ)
(This is a mix of the two, but you can also clearly hearing it just by
listening to one and then the other).

Both songs by Dr. Luke and Max Martin

------
Eric_WVGG
This five minute excerpt from Before the Music Dies is one of the most
amazing, illuminating things I’ve ever seen.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=irk3_p15RJY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=irk3_p15RJY)

~~~
SwellJoe
I think that's almost like the "uncanny valley" of pop stars. For all of the
skills and tools that have to "make" her a star, she doesn't have that
something that, say Rihanna or Katy Perry have, and it seems apparent that she
doesn't within seconds of the video playing. Certainly, Katy Perry has a
bigger budget behind her, but, I think there is an undefinable something else.
The industry would love to be able to create a Katy Perry on demand, because
Katy Perry commands significant money and has much more control over her
career than a new artist.

I'm not suggesting Katy Perry or Rihanna are better, musically, than the next
skinny hot teenager that comes along. But, evidence indicates they are better
at being the face of the musical machine than the dozens of others that have
come along with the same producers, same studios, same music execs, etc.
backing them.

So, it's simplistic to suggest anybody hot could be a star like Katy Perry,
because I don't think it's actually true. Anybody could sing on key, because
there's a plugin for that. But, that's not all there is. I feel like this
video (which I've watched before, and had the same sort of reaction to it)
wants to present a story of the masses being bamboozled by these "made"
artists. I think plenty of people want a manufactured product. Just like
people don't buy laptops made in a garage, and instead choose a laptop
designed and manufactured by thousands of people.

I don't like it (I'm a musician myself, and a huge music snob with a huge
music collection), but I can't help but acknowledge that it is so. I want to
listen to art, but many people just want an escapist product; the same could
be said of film, television, etc.

~~~
girvo
Rihanna is an interesting one though; yes she's a mass-produced pop star, but
she also has a really interesting reputation and is considered "real".
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ejRwLJcXjGQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ejRwLJcXjGQ)
\-- unless you're aware of who "Charlamagne Tha God" is, the video might be a
bit lost on the viewer, but it's worth watching. I find it fascinating when
some of the pop stars apparently are living the lives they sing about.

~~~
SwellJoe
I think that's part of what makes an "it" person work. It is manufactured, but
it is also "true" (by some definition of the word). I'm not criticizing
Rihanna (or even Katy Perry, though I think musically Rihanna is occasionally
more ambitious) in stating that they are building a manufactured product,
anymore than I am criticizing friends who work for Apple or Google. It is a
product, and they're good at helping build a product that people want to buy.
I'm also not generally envious of them, despite being a lifelong musician and
occasionally thinking, "it'd be nice to make a good living making music". The
lives they lead, while extraordinarily privileged, are also demanding in ways
that most non-famous folks never experience. Staying "real" through that
experience probably is an admirable trait...and maybe why Rihanna being "real"
is such a big deal to musicians who are less obscenely popular and rich. He's
likely interacted with enough primadonas to know famous people become
sheltered, surrounding themselves with buffer layers of assistants and staff
to protect their privacy/ego/time/etc.

------
wpietri
What a good article. Given the bits about how related popular songs are, I
can't believe we're far off from algorithmically generated songs being fed to
a variety of meat-puppet stars. Or can we skip that and go right to CGI anime
pop stars?

~~~
bjacobel
Japan did. [http://youtu.be/YSyWtESoeOc](http://youtu.be/YSyWtESoeOc)

~~~
wpietri
Neat. More for the curious:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hatsune_Miku](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hatsune_Miku)

It mentions she has over 100,000 released songs, which I presume are mostly
fan created.

I guess I was thinking more like a virtual pop star in the sense of the pop
stars mentioned in the article: meticulously controlled, always-on-brand
industrial product. Sort of like the way a virtual Tupac appeared at
Coachella, but made from scratch so that the money all flows to the
puppeteers.

~~~
objclxt
> _more like a virtual pop star in the sense of the pop stars mentioned in the
> article: meticulously controlled, always-on-brand industrial product_

Well, that's kind of what a group like Gorrilaz is, I think, although maybe
not quite as industrial/mass-produced a product as you're suggesting.

~~~
chromaton
I think this trend started with The Archies or perhaps Alvin and the
Chipmunks.

------
infiniteseeker
The more years I live on this planet the more I realise how smoke and mirrors
a lot of things are. Its all an illusion??

~~~
chillingeffect
Yeah, it's mostly all an illusion and mostly it works for most people. The
standard script our rulers provide gratifies our emotions, giving us just
enough safety to raise our children and just enough of a glimpse into the
fearful world (think: police shows) to make us never question them while the
billionaire rulers fly from house to house, from beach to beach, with a short
stop at the schools to make sure as few as possible of us learn how to self-
govern (hint: by emphasizing answers rather than questions).

If you look, at least at American music culture since the beginning of the
industrial age, you'll see cycles of people seeking authenticity (the beats,
hippies, hip-hop, grunge, etc). Generally, that authenticity gives birth to
some consumable form, such as the stuff that passes for hip-hop nowadays, as
well as the "corporate grundge" of the 90s. I'm not as familiar with other
eras, but I understand authenticity to be a huge point of critique w/r/t 60s
pop culture.

My favorite (ironically-meant) part of this article was when they pointed out
the music was engineered for shopping malls, as opposed to home stereos and
that it is "more captivating than virtuoso musicians." The fact that a
cybernetic artifact (pop-by-committee) can supplant the intimacy of a live
performance by a master is astonishing and disturbing. I hope it's not true...
but if you think about it, even the concept of a virtuoso is an economic
artifact of a ruler/leader with excess capital to support the specialization
of a lifelong performer. I believe the same or more authenticity can be had
from amateurs or mid-level players, although that's probably my own bias.

~~~
philwelch
> If you look, at least at American music culture since the beginning of the
> industrial age, you'll see cycles of people seeking authenticity (the beats,
> hippies, hip-hop, grunge, etc). Generally, that authenticity gives birth to
> some consumable form, such as the stuff that passes for hip-hop nowadays, as
> well as the "corporate grundge" of the 90s. I'm not as familiar with other
> eras, but I understand authenticity to be a huge point of critique w/r/t 60s
> pop culture.

I think this is the beginning of understanding what is so loathsome about
hipsters. Hipsters are some awful Hegelian synthesis of the impulse towards
authenticity and the culture of irony. Hipsters mostly express the urge for
authenticity as a type of consumerism, but then immediately undermine
authenticity through their commitment to irony.

------
IkmoIkmo
A lot of the reactions in this thread remind me of Bourdieu's book La
Distinction.

It's one thing to say that these songs are algorithmic and not deeply creative
which is objective fact, it's another thing to say the songs are crappy, not
good to listen to and indicative of poor taste. It's these latter statements -
that I came across in this thread - that La Distinction touches on in a very
interesting way, I can recommend everyone to read it.

------
jccalhoun
Adorno was talking about this back in the 1940s in "The Culture Industry:
Enlightenment as Mass Deception"
[https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/adorno/1944/cultu...](https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/adorno/1944/culture-
industry.htm)

------
pat2man
It seems incredibly hard to "discover" an artist these days. There are so many
musicians out there that aren't quite good enough. To be able to pick out the
good ones pretty much requires dedicating your life to it:
[http://www.npr.org/people/2100252/bob-
boilen](http://www.npr.org/people/2100252/bob-boilen)

Its much easier just putting together a dream team of writers and musicians
that have made hits in the past.

That being said there is still an amazing amount of great music out there that
doesn't hit the charts. Live music seems to be the best place to discover and
contribute to those artists. Too bad its mostly focused in a few major cities.

~~~
mafribe

         There are so many musicians out there that aren't quite good enough. 
    

I disagree with you. There are more good enough artists than ever. Pop music
orchestrates the transition from childhood to adulthood. It helps structure
sexuality, make it more predictable. In order to fulfil this function, the
musical quality is not too important, as long as a certain standard is met.
And modern production technology can help just about everybody to achieve
these minimal standards. What is much more important is achieving a critical
mass of fans, which is to a substantial degree a question of marketing, and
hence access to capital. Even though modern production outfits like Max
Martin's are highly skilled, most of their artists fail. But the 1 in 10 who
make it big recoup the loss by the 9 others. The music industry's main
business model is thus this: find 10 young (hence cheap) musicians, try to
make all of them a star, live on 1 of 10 unicorns.

As you can see, that's the Y Combinator business model. The music industry got
there first. I would not at all be surprised if Y Combinator were consciously
following in the music industry's footsteps.

~~~
catshirt
"There are more good enough artists than ever."

also more bad ones.

~~~
mafribe
Maybe. So what? Even bad musicians are better these days, because of improved
music technology. In terms of recording, production, distribution, learning
music you can do with a laptop today what Beethoven and James Brown couldn't
dream of.

~~~
catshirt
I was supporting the claim that there are many artists out there who are not
quite good enough.

------
mynegation
Even more succinctly, funny, and cynically: "Four Chords Song" by Axis of
Awesome:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5pidokakU4I](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5pidokakU4I)

------
marincounty
In freshman Psychology, I happen to have an Instructor at a community college
that worshiped B.F. Skinner. Mr Goddard, worked part time as a landscaper. He
wasen't a tenured teacher yet. He definitely tried to help us understand the
world, and knew the majority of us--never had anyone one who really cared
about our education, or future. He wanted to prepare us for a deceptive,
complicated world. A world we would be forced into very soon. (Hell, most of
us were already working adult jobs at the time, trying to just get through
school, and get a four year degree somewhere?)

Well, my take on B.F. Skinner was we all copy in one way or another? There are
few original ideas, or thought in B.F. skinner's world? When I read an new
author, listen to a new artist, look at a new website; I always see a lot of
copying. Be it subconscious, or conscious the results are the same; the work
looks similar?

I don't know why we act so suprised when someone points out similarities in an
artist's/inventor's/scientist's work?

When I do find anything remotely original, I'm honestly impressed, until I
find they stole someone's idea. I don't think seen, or heard anything truly
original. I didn't know it was even debatable? I sometimes think we need to go
to sheltered communities in order to get anything related to originality?
Maybe the indigenous people of the rain forests? Let's not though? The last
thing they need is our diseases, and white men stealing their original ideas?

------
WalterBright
Hmmph. Maybe this explains why I keep going back to music from before 1990. Or
maybe I'm just old :-)

~~~
WalterBright
It also explains why David Cassidy never had another hit after leaving the
Partridge Family, and the Monkees never had one after deciding that they were
real musicians and could write their own music :-)

~~~
smacktoward
That was my thought too, yeah. We all have a tendency to romanticize the stuff
that came before us, but manufactured pop was a thing long before 1990.

EDIT: To provide an example, here's a very good 2001 article by British
journalist Jon Ronson about the culture of child sex abuse that surrounded the
UK's hitmakers of the '70s:
[http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2001/dec/01/weekend....](http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2001/dec/01/weekend.jonronson)

~~~
PhantomGremlin
_manufactured pop was a thing long before 1990_

Here's a short snippet from Wikipedia that illustrates it[1]:

    
    
       Bubblegum pop is a genre of pop music with
       an upbeat sound contrived and marketed to
       appeal to pre-teens and teenagers, that may
       be produced in an assembly-line process,
       driven by producers and often using unknown
       singers. Bubblegum's classic period ran from
       1967 to 1972. A second wave of bubblegum
       started two years later and ran until 1977
    

Hmmm... Seem familiar?

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bubblegum_pop](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bubblegum_pop)

------
snarkyturtle
There's a great Planet Money piece about which touches upon this process of
pop song creation:
[http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2011/07/05/137530847/how-m...](http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2011/07/05/137530847/how-
much-does-it-cost-to-make-a-hit-song)

------
huuu
This also reminds me of Carol Kaye, a female bass player who, because she is a
woman and too old for the industrie, remained unknown while playing a lot of
songs for the famous.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carol_Kaye](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carol_Kaye)

------
Jedd
A couple of points.

Boy band (and girl band) often seem to conflate the word 'band' with an entity
that produces / creates / makes their own music ... with a group of people
that can sing or mime to a song someone else made, without needing to play any
instruments.

In 2002 there was a story about Carly Hennessy[1] (who later made at least one
somewhat contentious 'comeback' on a pop TV show in the US) who'd basically
been financially destroyed by a wager the music industry had placed on her at
our (and her) expense.

We don't seem to be making much progress on this front.

[1]
[http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB1014678641479060480](http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB1014678641479060480)

------
adamnemecek
The charade is so well covered up that you have to go all the way to wikipedia
to learn who wrote the single songs.

~~~
api
In the age of noise you don't have to keep somethings secret to cover it up.
You just have to avoid drawing attention to it.

~~~
adamnemecek
Calling that a charade makes it sound like there is some sort of conspiracy
though.

~~~
fenomas
A "charade" isn't a conspiracy, it's a pretense - people going through the
motions as if something was true when they know it isn't.

Perfect word choice for the article, in my opinion.

~~~
voyou
Where's the pretence, though? I don't see anything in that article about
anyone pretending anything; just some details about pop music production which
the author - presumably because he isn't very interested in pop music - didn't
know.

~~~
adamnemecek
Charade means pretense or deception.

------
rdslw
I always give a two months quarantine to an article about some theory which is
nice to hear (celebrities are fake), groundbreaking (they're doing it so long
and are bald swedish vikings!), and on the verge of conspiracy theory (the're
hiding), WHILE THE ARTICLE IS BASED ON THE BOOK "INCIDENTALLY" ;-) JUST TO BE
RELEASED (AND BOUGHT BY US ;-).

Two months it's a great time to wait and decide if it was book promotion or
worth read.

------
ams6110
_there are no musicians anymore, at least not human ones. Every instrument is
automated._

There really aren't vocalists either. In pop music today, the vocals are
processed through an Auto-Tune[1] device resulting in perfectly on-pitch
vocals.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auto-Tune](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auto-
Tune)

~~~
orbitur
It's not true to say there are no singers, since the existence of Beyoncé and
Ariana Grande contradict you. Recordings might be fine-tuned to remove
imperfections but there are plenty of legit singers at the top of the pop
charts, and probably not any less than previous eras.

------
mwsherman
No mention of the Brill Building [1]? Pop music has always been factory-
produced.

Also, multiple hooks per song is a better song. We like pop music for the
hooks. If we don’t like the hooks, we don’t like pop music.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brill_Building](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brill_Building)

~~~
coldtea
> _Pop music has always been factory-produced._

Correction: pop music has always had factory-produced hits. It also had other
hits.

------
danbmil99
There has been crap pop music churned out by modest talents for decades. 90%
of commercial music is completely devoid of any redeeming artistic merit.

Great music is produced by every generation. All you have to do iisten for it.

------
erichmond
Country pop is not spared by this formula:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FY8SwIvxj8o](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FY8SwIvxj8o)

------
colordrops
This is no different from a car company using the same chassis for multiple
cars. They've got a money making formula so why change it.

------
devit
Doesn't really seem a bad thing.

It seems natural that picking the best performer and the best song writer
would give a better result than having the same person do it all.

It's a bit like complaining that in a videogame, the programming, game design
and graphics are often done by different people.

------
kevinwang
For what it's worth, Taylor Swift is a songwriter.

~~~
gcv
Is or was? The article explicitly mentions several of her tracks as having
come from the pop production machine.

------
look_lookatme
What is sad is how critics, like the Times Jon Caramanica, are complicit in
this system.

------
zasz
Dude, what the hell, Atlantic. This article lifted a bunch of quotes straight
from The New Yorker article on this a few years ago.
[http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2012/03/26/the-song-
machin...](http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2012/03/26/the-song-machine)

The quotes about needing a hook every seven seconds, and the magic that makes
someone an artist and not a performer, were stolen.

Edit: guys stop upvoting me, I jumped on the plagiarism wagon way too quickly.

~~~
w1ntermute
The author probably took those quotes from an upcoming book by the same author
as that New Yorker piece[0]. The book's linked in this (Atlantic) article.

0: [http://www.amazon.com/The-Song-Machine-Inside-
Factory/dp/039...](http://www.amazon.com/The-Song-Machine-Inside-
Factory/dp/0393241920)

~~~
zasz
Ah, you're probably right.

------
ksml
I'm sorry, and I guess I'll probably get downvoted for this, but why the heck
is this #1 on HN?

Edit: I'm not saying the article is not interesting, but it is hardly related
to tech.

~~~
waterlesscloud
I think it's interesting that even after two decades of very intense and
traumatic disruption, the pop music business is still essentially controlled
by a handful of men.

~~~
noobermin
someone already suggested ML generated pop. All we need is an overfunded
startup from sv to do it.

