The Song Machine: Inside the Hit Factory, by John Seabrook
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The Song Machine: Inside the Hit Factory, by John Seabrook
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There's a reason hit songs offer guilty pleasure―they're designed that way.
Over the last two decades a new type of hit song has emerged, one that is almost inescapably catchy. Pop songs have always had a "hook," but today’s songs bristle with them: a hook every seven seconds is the rule. Painstakingly crafted to tweak the brain's delight in melody, rhythm, and repetition, these songs are highly processed products. Like snack-food engineers, modern songwriters have discovered the musical "bliss point." And just like junk food, the bliss point leaves you wanting more.
In The Song Machine, longtime New Yorker staff writer John Seabrook tells the story of the massive cultural upheaval that produced these new, super-strength hits. Seabrook takes us into a strange and surprising world, full of unexpected and vivid characters, as he traces the growth of this new approach to hit-making from its obscure origins in early 1990s Sweden to its dominance of today's Billboard charts.
Journeying from New York to Los Angeles, Stockholm to Korea, Seabrook visits specialized teams composing songs in digital labs with new "track-and-hook" techniques. The stories of artists like Katy Perry, Britney Spears, and Rihanna, as well as expert songsmiths like Max Martin, Stargate, Ester Dean, and Dr. Luke, The Song Machine shows what life is like in an industry that has been catastrophically disrupted―spurring innovation, competition, intense greed, and seductive new products.
Going beyond music to discuss money, business, marketing, and technology, The Song Machine explores what the new hits may be doing to our brains and listening habits, especially as services like Spotify and Apple Music use streaming data to gather music into new genres invented by algorithms based on listener behavior.
Fascinating, revelatory, and original, The Song Machine will change the way you listen to music.
--- The Song Machine: Inside the Hit Factory, by John Seabrook- Amazon Sales Rank: #22478 in Books
- Published on: 2015-10-05
- Released on: 2015-10-05
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 9.60" h x 1.20" w x 6.50" l,
- Binding: Hardcover
- 352 pages
Review “Through immersive anecdotes and witty observations, Seabrook explores questions of ownership and taste, and about the music business as a whole, as we learn it’s not just the ‘song machine’ that’s brilliant but also the people churning the gears.” (Isabella Biedenharn - Entertainment Weekly)“Well researched…. Seabrook…takes us inside the troubled modern music business.” (Touré - New York Times Book Review)“Fascinating…. The Song Machine is lively, entertaining and often insightful, of interest both to pop mavens and to those who couldn’t imagine caring about the latest hits.” (Christopher Carroll - Wall Street Journal)“Fascinating…. Copy editors will rejoice at Seabrook’s well-written and deeply researched book. He is a staff writer for The New Yorker and his book fits into that magazine’s penchant for telling very detailed stories about things you might not notice about pop culture.” (Charles R. Cross - Seattle Times)“Seabrook spins a fascinating history, one that encompasses everything from the Brill Building and Phil Spector to Afrika Bambaataa to ‘American Idol.’ Running underneath the human stories like a bassline is the inexorable flow of technology.” (Kate Tuttle - Boston Globe)“Invaluable.” (Louis Bayard - Washington Post)“A revelatory ear-opener.” (Kirkus Reviews, Starred Review)“An immersive, reflective, and utterly satisfying examination of the business of popular music.” (Nathaniel Rich - The Atlantic)“Eminently readable and important…. Seabrook's in-depth interviews with an army of songwriters, producers, performers and others make for series of profiles that document a revolution in the music business.” (Shelf Awareness)“Brilliant.” (Michael Hann - The Guardian)
About the Author John Seabrook has been a staff writer at The New Yorker since 1993. The author of several books including Nobrow, he has taught narrative nonfiction writing at Princeton University. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.
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Most helpful customer reviews
31 of 33 people found the following review helpful. Behind the Auto-Tune Curtain By PH-50-NC Seabrook's book will appeal to at least two types of readers. First, it may appeal to those who grew up in the mid-late 1990s and the 2000s, when a new teen pop invasion began (led by Britney Spears and the Backstreet Boys), and when Jay Z began his ascent to music-biz tycoon. (Or, if you aren't a Millennial, perhaps the music of Katy Perry, Rihanna, Justin Timberlake, and Taylor Swift scratches an itch for you, and you'd like a peek behind the curtain to learn how it's made). Another group of readers who may be attracted to 'The Song Machine' are the music nerds and musicians who are intimately familiar with how records were made during "the golden age of recording"--the kind of people who watch documentaries like "The Wrecking Crew" and "Muscle Shoals". People curious about who the modern-day Phil Spectors and Brian Wilsons are, and how the hits are being made in the digital age. I'm not sure the book will wholly satisfy either group of readers, but I think it's an import piece of reporting that will be read in 50-100 years by historians of music and pop culture.For the fans of this music (particularly fans of female chart-toppers from Britney S. to Kesha), you'll get a look at how the industry finds unknown teens with musical ambition and molds them into superstars. You'll learn how this is taken to even greater extremes by the South Koreans, whose pop marketplace places much less value on "authenticity," rebelliousness, and individuality. There is a discussion of how "American Idol" affected today's record business. You learn a little about the mostly forgotten hit-makers Ace of Base, and how they launched the producing careers of a small group of Swedish guys who have (improbably) played a huge role in pop music from the Britney / Backstreet Boys era to the present. Seabrook gives a behind-the-scenes picture of the whole pop music industry as it exists today, from the stars on down to the computer programmer behind Spotify, and including the record label heads, producers, lyricists, publicity people, and others.For musicians and record nerds more interested in the mechanics and secret formulas of contemporary hit-making, about a third of the book delves into this. Seabrook details the "writing camps" which are convened when a pop-superstar has an album deadline and is lacking material. There's a breakdown of the "track and hook" method of song writing (where beats and and chord changes are created first, and only then does another person come in and try to figure out a melody that complements what has already been recorded). We learn who holds the most power (and gets the best cut of the royalties) in the current system, and how the old song writing specializations of "music" and "lyrics" have been further broken down and augmented by "beat makers," "topliners," "melody people" and "vibe people" ("vibe people" are defined somewhat vaguely by producer Dr. Luke as people who "understand energy, and where music is going, even if they can't play a chord or sing a note"--apparently this is a viable career option now).If you are looking for an indictment of Contemporary Hits Radio as a corporatized, soul-less, barely-creative nadir of pop music that is to the glory years of the 1950s-1980s what President Camacho is to Thomas Jefferson, you won't really find it here. This is no Jeremiad against Auto-Tuned pop tarts and the Clear Channel-ization of our musical culture. There are asides where Seabrook tips his hat in this direction. For example, he writes "the ecstasy [of today's hits] is fleeting, and like snack food it leaves you feeling unsatisfied, always craving just a little more." He admits that the music that has shaped his tastes and moved him the most is that of the 1960s through the 1980s (everything from Goffin and King to The Smiths). But Seabrook mostly puts his own tastes aside and finds the interesting stories and makes interesting the technical aspects behind today's hits, and he leaves judgements about the ultimate value of this music to the critics. He does write briefly at both the beginning and the end of the book about how he begans to enjoy the hits his young son played on the car radio for a few years, and in the end, claims he's a teen pop convert and fan now, switching regularly between contemporary top 40 and classic rock on his daily drives.While I give the book 4 stars, I can't say I'd actually recommend it as a purchase. I checked it out of a public library, and I don't feel the need to add it to my permanent book collection. The most interesting reporting in the book for my money (the sections on producer /songwriters Dr. Luke, Ester Dean, Max Martin, and Stargate) are drawn from three articles published in The New Yorker which you can read for free online as of the fall of 2015 ("The Song Machine," March 26, 2012, "The Doctor Is In," October 14, 2013, and "Blank Space: What Kind of Genius Is Max Martin?" September 30, 2015). If you are a serious music fan, they are fascinating (and maybe horrifying) reads. Don't miss them and/or this book. But don't expect the book to be "all killer and no filler." There probably isn't anywhere else you are going to get such good reporting on Dr. Luke, Max Martin, and the other writer/producers covered here. Seabrook really put in his time interviewing these people and getting a firm grounding in how the writing / producing business works today. But the material on the artists which supplements this original reporting is less essential and seems drawn from the work of other music journalists and biographers.UPDATE: "Rpopstar" comments below that "[Seabrook's] terrific chapter about kpop,"Factory Girls," is also still available at the New Yorker site (originally published Oct 1, 2012).
9 of 9 people found the following review helpful. Ghosts in the "Machine" By Roland Diehl Very informative work by Mr. Seabrook and excellent audio narration by Dion Graham. Enjoyable and ultimately satisfying from a factual standpoint. Disheartening in that most artists are reduced to glam shots and non-musical media hype. While their promoters hire people named Lukasz Sebastian Gottwald , (Dr Luke,) and Europeans Martin Karl Sandberg(Max Martin) and Dag Krister Volle (Denniz Pop) to write their songs. I guess globalization applies to the music industry too.Fascinating how they us use algorithms and computer generated visual overlays of to see what parts of other hits have in common so they can create the perfect uninspired “hit” within the modern pop culture matrix.Contrary to another reviewer, I found chapters on KPOP (Korean Pop Machine) interesting in a bizarre sort of way (Korean artists totalitarian discipline and in some cases having their jaws surgically broken and reformed to conform to Western beauty standards.)I was a bit puzzled by the author’s transformation in musical taste within the narrative framework of him and his son listening to the car radio, and his acceptance of the “machines” commercialistic output. In one chapter he mentions research done by Carlos Silva Peirera in an abstract called Music and Emotions in the Brain: Familiarity Matters. One definite truism about any kind of music, whether classical, jazz, pop, or what have you, is that the more it is repeated the more it has a chance of being commercially viable. This goes back to Payola days and Clear-Com, etc. I figured I would put this to the test with “Roar”. I listened and replayed it a dozen times and only became increasingly dyspeptic with each listening. My granddaughter, on the other hand, loves it, so I guess this makes my point moot.
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful. Overall I enjoyed this book about one aspect of our modern culture By Dennis J. Koble Overall I enjoyed this book about one aspect of our modern culture. It actually is fairly accurate commentary on the way things actually work in the real world as opposed to the romanticized notion most of us have about the ways we think it does work. The writer is clearly well informed about the "inside" operations of making pop hits in this day and age. My only small criticism is that he some times overwhelms the reader with too much inside information like the endless parade of names of behind the scenes people that were involved in each pop star's rise but that we in the general public don't really care too much about. It's true in every entertainment genre of course but in fact it does takes tons of talented people to make each "hit" happen that you never hear about.I will say this is almost a must read for anyone interested in pop culture. Knowing who many of the top people are who work in those behind the scenes jobs is interesting and can give many aspiring music creators, technical people, songwriters, etc. a necessary introduction into that business.It's a true fact that most of us will never be those "vocal personalities", the term he gives to the Pop stars of today but that does not mean there are not tons of useful and interesting jobs available in those businesses. This book can help them in their journeys and is a well informed guide to the history and people of the pop music business.
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