Okay I get we don't have a lot of backstreet boy or Britney fans here (not one either) & I get the whole "pop music sounds the same lament, but at the same time, there's a market for it & he's excelled at creating something that sells that.
Just because it's pop music doesn't mean you can't give the guy credit for understanding his market & dominating his field.
Also I think it's important to note that just because its pop music doesn't mean it does not take an incredible amount of skill to produce well. There are a handful of producers that dominate the field because they are the best ones. Dr Luke is an example of another.
What I dislike about Dr Luke is that his artists are autotuned to the extent that they all sound exactly the same.
Katy Perry's voice could be swapped for Avril Lavigne's and many people would barely notice.
This accusation is not new in pop music, and I do like his work, but it seems no more skillful by now than finding the right formula and milking it to death with marketing machinery.
I also dislike pop for much the same reason: it's completely fabricated to produce money and little else.
But I do recognize and appreciate how good this guy is, writing and producing a hit is not trivial and also follows a portfolio approach, the difference being that his portfolio has way more successes than average.
If it were that simple to produce pop hits, any producer would do it. Consider that most of the costs are promotion (like many startups) and that the record company could get just about anyone to produce Katy Perry, but Martin's track record is beyond just about any other producer, so I think there's little doubt about his skills.
"I kissed a girl" sung by Avril Lavigne wouldn't be the same thing; Perry's persona and style was perfect for it. These guys know this and that explains half of their success. The other half is deep pockets for promotion.
Pitch correction is unable to change the timbre of a voice. If you can't easily recognize different people's (auto-tuned) voices, you would be in the vast minority of humans who lack this basic skill.
You can count me in that group, in this particular case, but maybe pitch correction is not the whole story.
Here's my point: I can identify a song as being by Dr Luke far more confidently and readily than I can identify the named artist, and I doubt I'm in such a tiny minority there.
I've got a feeling we're going to look back on this era of music with wide-eyed wonder and recognize many of his pop hits as the masterpieces they are.
Unfortunately, social norms prevent us from listening with our ears.
I never ever listen to pop-music, but every summer I used to drive my parents car for 1-2 weeks. So I always got a fresh set of songs every summer, and every year there were between 0 and 2 songs that I found genuinely good (and I knew little or nothing about the artists). The last time was in 2011 (I think) and Rolling in the deep was the only song I liked. I'll go back and look through the producers, would be cool if one turned out to be Max Martin, but I somehow doubt it.
I'm sure he gets plenty of credit in his professional life already. There's no reason to champion people who trade in valueless <whatever> simply because they are able to make a living at it. Of course he is probably a truly nice guy, and great source of conversation, but that doesn't necessarily mean he's making a valuable contribution of some kind.
I'd say it's more complicated than you're hinting at.
In this case, could it be at least in part a function of the likelihood that people will listen to and/or perform a piece of music after the copyright on that work has expired? Assuming such a thing is possible, of course.
To reduce the influence of external factors in the 'value' term. It just makes it easier to measure if one is purposefully factoring out marketing, branding and so forth.
It's fine to expect the sales of a work to go up if someone performs it well for a large enough audience, but is that measuring the value of the work, the performance, or the exposure? And basing the function on a period after copyright expires reduces the influence of stakeholders in the work who might pay for exposure.
I suppose. For me music is like fashion, it is in and of a moment. It is inspired by what came just before it, and it inspires what comes directly after it. Beyond that it takes on some sort of historical context.
>there's a market for it & he's excelled at creating something that sells that.
There's also a market for black tar heroin, nuclear missiles, drones, slaves, and so on.
>Just because it's pop music doesn't mean you can't give the guy credit for understanding his market & dominating his field.
Is pop music a good thing for the world? (It obviously isn't as bad as any of the things I listed above to avoid claims of hyperbole, but) should we think people who make pop music are doing a good thing?
Should we think 90% of the stuff produced by HN readers on a daily basis (I mean the software we write, not our comments, hehe) are good things?
Is Facebook a good thing? It just lets people stay in contact with one another, they could already do that with a phone, Facebook just makes it a little more pleasant.
Is Snapchat a good thing? It, well, I don't even know what it does, but it takes pictures and lets you share them with people or something, right? Is that really any more valuable to society than pop music?
I'm not saying Facebook and Snapchat are bad, just that they aren't really any better or worse than something like pop music. The idea is to make people a little happier, or let them do something that makes them happier. Get off your high horse. Bringing people joy or making their lives a little more bearable is just that, nothing more, nothing less.
> Should we think 90% of the stuff produced by HN readers on a daily basis (I mean the software we write, not our comments, hehe) are good things?
In the world I want to live in, would 90% of the stuff produced by HN readers, software, comments, and everythign else be good things? Sure. So in that sense, yes, they should be. Are they? Definitely not.
Is Facebook good? It definitely meets a market need; but what's the social implication of confining discourse into the channels it does? What will the generation raised on the 'like' button be like? How has social media affected journalism -- would people use phones to share linkbait about 10 Things You'd Never Believe We Found in Justin Bieber's Trash?
Snapchat is definitely a good thing. It's single-purpose enough that it doesn't replace anything else, but it add something to the toolkit of how people can communicate. It also brought the concept of ephemerality back to digital communication, which I think is invaluable. You might disagree about that, but it's definitely significant in the way that Call Me Maybe isn't.
I disagree that the idea behind pop music is to make people happier. The idea behind pop music is to make money. Sometimes these values align, and other times they don't. I've never met someone deeply fulfilled on a personal or spiritual level from playing Candy Crush; I've never seen anyone moved to tears by an N*SYNC song.
Assuming that people who make pop music are trying to make people's lives a little more bearable, I definitely think they could do a lot better. This guy is probably incredibly musically gifted, and what is he doing? Writing crap that nobody will remember to make a few bucks, in exactly the same way the greatest minds of our generation are using fantastic computing power and computing over insane amounts of data, thinking faster and deeper than any human ever could, to get people to click ads.
I think he could do better. I wish we lived in a world where he could.
I agree with everything you said, and you said what you said far better than I said what I said, so my hat comes off to you (then goes back on or my ears will get cold, this is Montana).
I would point out that, in a capitalist system, nothing is produced to make people happy, everything is produced for profit (http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/a/adamsmith136391.h...). And that is really what I was trying to get across, pop music may be crap, but it is what is profitable, to the extent that people want to buy it (presumably because it somehow makes them happy). People who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones, and a bunch of people building social networks and ad-targeting systems live in very fragile glass houses...
Sure. Heroin and slaves are really, really bad. Pop music is just mildly bad. That's a comparison.
The point I intended to make is that there are markets for everything.
I don't even think pop music is that bad, but being successful in a marketplace is never cause alone for accolades. Blindly worshipping people who are successful at some business venture blinds us to the ethics of whatever they're doing. Success shouldn't disable critical thinking.
> Blindly worshipping people who are successful at some business venture blinds
Completely agree, but I don't think anyone in the article or this forum could be considered "worshipping" this guy. The article was more of an observation about a not immediately apparent fact that was intellectually curious.
Not this man in particular, but in general I think people in this forum conflate "being successful in commercial enterprises" with "living a moral/fulfilling/best-possible life." As do plenty of people in society. (Definitely not all people in this forum, but certainly some, and certainly a plurality.)
No he didnt. All he did was say that its not an instant justification for something just because there is a market for it, by listing examples of things that have a market, but society doesn't want sold. Just because there is a market for something, it doesn't mean it should be sold.
I disagree that pop music is some how damaging, bad or undesirable, thats just snobbery. Its not my thing, but then I dont expect other people to like my taste in music. Its stupid, its like arguing that blue is good, and yellow is bad.
I wouldn't say pop music is damaging or bad, but it does seem undesirable in that it's very obvious that you can do far better. Listening to pop music (not necessarily popular music, but branded pop music like the Backstreet Boys and other groups mentioned in this article) seems like a waste of time in comparison to all the other things a human could do with their mental cycles.
I have pretty broad taste in music, and many other things, but it's still obvious even if I don't like something whether or not it's worth someone's time or not. This is also contextual; i.e., someone who listened to pop music and had an ear for the evolution of pop over time, was aware of people like the subject of this article, and understood the musical justification for things like catchy pop songs is probably doing a much better job of listening to pop music than I was at age 11 when I liked the Backstreet Boys.
Humans are amazing creatures full of potential. Is pop music really the best we could do? I doubt it, which is why I dislike it, and think that it's a pretty bad market to participate in.
Addressing your point directly, is pop music a good thing? Well, is music a good thing? I think yes. What makes pop music different from non-pop music? Probably something about ease of consumption. Does ease of consumption effect what makes music good? Possibly to a degree. I think its fair to say that pop music is more disposable, and also far less likely to challenge the listener - and that sometimes challenge is good.
That said, it still brings all sorts of benefits of music, and the sheer popularity of pop music makes the shared experience so much broader and possibly more powerful. So in balance, maybe pop music isn't -the best- type of music for people to listen to. But I don't really think it's -bad-. We can't really expect for everyone to wish to be challenged in all their activities and all the experiences they consume.
I'd offer in counter point that pop music normalizing some of the most base human behaviors in ease to digest packages is actually bad for us, and outweighs the benefits you propose.
You ask if pop music and the people who are writing it are doing a good thing? I think so. Pop music is abhorrent to me. I actually get nauseous listening to it. My wife on the other hand loves it. Before we got married I asked her why she liked it so much. She works in a Pediatric ER. She said, "Well, in my job and the horrible things we see, I have learned to cope with what I have to by doing four things: debrief with the other nurses, cry if I have to and not hold back, imagine that all my patients survive and go home to kind and loving parents, and listen to Top 40. It does not tax my brain any further after a 12 hour shift and is usually upbeat and tells a love story." So from my single anecdotal perspective, yes, some people need the escapism and bubblegum. Makes sense to me.
> should we think people who make pop music are doing a good thing?
...and the tech industry is any better? We're mostly driven by advertising and consumer software/electronics. (Yes, exceptions exist, but they aren't the rule).
"Every major pop song" seems like a bit of an overstatement. He's clearly very good at finding the sound that sells - but there are many successful songs (even just in the genre of "pop") not written by him...
Interesting to see similarities in musical preferences & identifying common threads that lead to popularity. This video / song [1] was viral a few years ago because it demonstrated the similarities between major popular songs spanning multiple decades through the use of just four chords..
I wonder why people find this surprising. This is how pop music has always been done and it even used to be more in the open. Bands/singers didn't have to get people to (ghost)write songs/lyrics for them - they used to just be performers.
Also, this list of names are the ones that are lucky.
At the low end of things, some songwriters end up selling their songs completely to the label and don't keep songwriting credit or royalties and those end up getting attributed to an artist or producer.
Go dig for names of people who write incidental music for TV shows (especially soap operas) and you'll find people who ghost wrote songs for major rock bands where no one will ever know about it. It's something I wouldn't have even known about myself had I not worked with a guy that did just that.
Well, you're right. But honestly producers have been the most important players in the game since Rick Rubin when producers started to contribute more to songwriting (actually that's sort of a lie - I'd argue it started with Keith Olsen). It's sorta shocking that people don't know. I only even mentioned ghostwriting because some other comments mentioned it and because it actually does happen where the credits aren't in the open.
How Motown slipped my mind completely I don't understand but yes you're right, but I wasn't under the impression that at Tin Pan Alley the songwriters did the production themselves. That said, I hadn't done much research into that era of recording.
There wasn't really production back then, as that stuff was usually cut live to two track, then the vocals overdubbed. But the song writers were also the arrangers in many cases.
On HN of all places we should value the creative process. I think we should do so even when we don't agree with the content, as long as there are no ethical/legal issues. The title is plain silly, of course. There are many other talented songwriters and producers out there - Babyface is one, I'm sure there are others.
Songwriters and producers don't get their due though (unless they also sing). Back in the day, I used to read CD liner notes to get to know the producers behind the songs I liked. But I always paid more attention to producers than songwriters: for some songs it's hard to know which one out of the five listed songwriters was the real creative force; songs with samples will often have lots of unrecognizable names; and I've always valued producers as being more critical to a song's success than songwriters.
On HN of all places we should value the creative process. I think we should do so even when we don't agree with the content, as long as there are no ethical/legal issues.
Well, the article like argument that the process going is less creative than it seems. I suspect hackers would love if software could 5% of pop songs. If a person with a formula writes 5% of pop songs, somehow it appeals less and seems less creative. I agree though articulating exactly why might be hard.
Reminds me of the Monkees. In the early days, the studio hired the best songwriters to write the tunes for them. After a while, the Monkees rebelled and insisted they could write their own songs.
When someone close to me had kids, I came close to loading up an iPod with all of Weird Al's music, so that they would hear his versions first, and they would think that he was the prime musical force of the past 30 years. I didn't follow through, though I regret that sometimes.
When I was a lad, I didn't understand that some of Weird Al's songs were just funny. I though that, for every Weird Al, there was a corresponding pop song. The best part is, even though I was wrong, I still sometimes hear a song and think "Oh. That one was a parody, huh."
Many of us on Hacker News dislike pop music. And there are good reasons to do so, but its popularity alone should not be one. I like to remind myself some of the greatest music in the world was once pop music. For example, J. S. Bach used to perform at the Café Zimmerman in Leipzig[1]. Could you imagine going into a coffeehouse and listening to Bach playing a Teleman concerto? Or a flute concerto of his own?
Now, I'm not saying that the Backstreet Boys have the musical genius of Bach. But neither should you discard their music because it is popular and overplayed. Would the world be better off had they never sung?
"The [Café Zimmerman] was destroyed during an air raid on Leipzig in December 1943." [1] I would have loved to stand inside it.
> And there are good reasons to do so, but its popularity alone should not be one.
It's its popularity, alone, that forces me to have to listen to it. Sometimes.
I don't believe that people can have "bad taste in music", or that pop music is bad. But I'd rather listen to what I like, which I guess is why I shun the radio.
Does anyone know what's the equivelent in rap? Can I assume most mainstream rappers(Kanye, Wiz, 50 Cent etc.) heavily contribute to their own lyrics? I'm particularly curious about Eminem.
If they're buying for the brand, then perhaps. The headphones are objectively worse than other models in the same price range. I'd guess that most buyers are not aware of this and just think it's cool or it must be good because it's higher priced.
It's brilliant marketing, sure. But it's like taking a $2 bottle of wine, rebranding it, and saying it's worth the value at $19.
That's the whole point of the brand though. I don't think Beats is trying to convey the image that they're the objectively best brand of headphones. However, they are saying - these are endorsed by Dre, popular athletes & other profile musicians & that wearing them is "cool".
That's like complaining that Nike can markup a pair of Jordans for $150 even though they're objectively "just as good" as a pair that costs $70-$100. A "brand" is valuable.
Case in point - that "rebranding" of the wine, just got you an extra $17 in margin.
The other most well known non-writing rapper is Puff Daddy, famous for the line "Don't worry if I write rhymes, I write checks." I wonder who actually wrote that line...
Most rappers write all their own lyrics, but there are definitely exceptions. Kanye West, for instance, semi-openly writes collaboratively with others[0]. It is also widely known that former labelmate Consequence wrote the first verse of Jesus Walks.
There are a handful of known ghostwriters in hiphop (who've even used ghostwriters themselves like Nas and Mase)... Sauce Money, Jay-Z, Eminem, Rakim, Pharoah Monch, Royce Da 5'9, Smitty, Skillz, TI, Cardan, but it's so taboo that most times you'll never know.
It's far more commonly known that people buy beats from producers.
Even if "ghostwriting" was a common thing in rap, I doubt anyone would consider anyone other than Eminem wrote his lyrics. His style has always been very unique and complex - and hardly ever imitated well.
That's just silly. Most rappers write their lyrics. You don't become a rapper by buying ghostwritten lyrics, at least in the overwhelming majority of cases.
Little people know that Rick Rubin is someone who helped make hip hop popular , I have an old video of him jamming on a TR909 with Afrika Bambaataa back in the early 80s. Without him , hip hop would not have been what it was. Funny as he is mostly known for his (successfull) Metal productions. But he is the "white guy" that defined hip hop sound. The crap we hear today is not hip hop, i dont know what it is frankly...
Most of the singers MM writes with contribute the lyrics. Hip Hop works almost the same way with their producers essentially writing the "song" structure (beats and loops).
He has a few classic pop songs, no doubt, and clearly a very lucrative career writing and producing tracks for A-list pop stars. But in the last 10 years I'm not sure he's written any of what I'd call the best pop hits. Looking through his discography on wikipedia I suspect there's some of those songs I know by melody and not by name, but I think he's long past his songwriter peak. And obviously there's dozens off great pop songs that he didn't write (which were smash hits).
edit: I missed all the Katy Perry ones, so I guess maybe he's still got it. But still, I don't see any work with Rihanna, who is probably the biggest pop star of the last decade.
Katy Perry's Teenage Dream album was largely written by MM, I'd say it's both one of the most important pop records of the last decade and MM's best work. It smashed all sorts of chart records, in total it had 8 top-three singles on the Billboard Hot 100, and 5 number one singles.
It's absolutely destined to be a classic album in every sense of the word, and I find it funny that most music heads I know can't see that because (imho) they are too afraid of being seen as someone who enjoys Katy Perry. Oh well, the kids who were 12 at the time will grow up appreciating it. I suppose it's for them anyway.
Interesting. Maybe I'll give it a spin. I can only think of a couple of singles but they were very catchy (Last Friday Night and California Girls).
I tend to view rock and pop and most other mainstream genres as simply one super-genre: modern song. It amuses me slightly when rock fans look down on pop music when really the difference is very small.
I have always been a fan of trashy pop (too busy still listening to "As Long as You Love Me" 10 years later to have any shame). I remember when I was 13 and used to read all the pocket leaflets from audio tapes I would buy. And reading the entirety of the fine print/credits for all my favourite songs after I'd memorized the lyrics (backwards too).
I remember coming across Max Martin and Denniz Pop prominently figuring in just about every single one of my favourite songs. I would be amazed to find a song I liked that didn't mention at least Max Martin. I was amused to find this consistent across BSB, NSync and Britney Spears (and I didn't like very many of her songs). I always thought to myself "This man, whoever he is, whatever he does, is a genius, because he seems to be the only real common factor across all my favourite trashy pop songs. Why isn't he the most important man in pop music?"
I got over my obsession over the backgrounds of pop musicians shortly. But I still find my favourite songs (within my understandably terrible taste according to those with a finer appreciation for the arts) to often be Max Martin produced.
He deserves a lot of respect and credit for not only dominating his field and picking the right talent to work with, but moreso for keeping up with the trends and times (or defining them?), entertaining teenagers and youngsters for multiple generations even as he grew older. That is definitely no easy feat, in music, movies, social media (hi Facebook) or any other industry.
As a game designer, I hope I can develop that talent to cater to the most important demographics in my industry even as I outgrow it.
It's extremely difficult to write a great melody, much less produce a great song. While I don't often listen to his tracks for "fun", I have to give him that he's a great songwriter.
Very few people can come up with catchy tune on consistent basis.
He reminds me of a prolific young Japanese orchestra-style music composer Sawano Hiroyuki who has written some terrific soundtrack for TV, though I'd consider him many level above Max Martin.
I'm an elitist when it comes to music, but I admitted to myself that Taylor Swift's I Knew You Were Trouble and a couple Backstreet Boys' songs are catchy, well-composed tunes. Good melodies are good melodies. But I'm glad I don't have to credit Taylor Swift anymore :p
A lot of these songs have much more musical merit than a lot of pretentious indie songs, which tend to be repetitive and lacking in melody. Contrary to unpopular belief (by the "hip" minority), you're not necessarily unsophisticated if you enjoy a wildly popular band like Coldplay.
I have a lot of respect for someone who can earn that much money with honest work. And those were mostly good songs, well written and arranged, and very suited to the singer, except for 22 which sucks.
> Is there a particular holy grail magical formula for mobile and web apps that produces more hits than losers?
Easy,make something really usefull that solves a real problem and people will pay for it... Unlike Pop music there is no formula,but knowing the right people helps I guess.
Pop music today is about using the same recipes that have been used for 30 years+ ,and i'm including "rap" in it, remember when rap was about something else than Btches and Bttles ? no? me neither...
I used to be very fascinated by http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stock_Aitken_Waterman a group that produced many of 80's pop hits and didn't think that there would be a "more modern" equivalent that could stand up to them.
I clearly don't share the musical taste of most developers - I love most of the music he has written. I'm probably not the target demographic (more like the target's dad) but I still love pop music as much as I did when I was a teenager in love with Agnetha Faltskog.
Not surprised by the other bands from the list, but Bon Jovi? That was very surprising to me. I always thought he had fairly original songs. It's not like they've only done one or two known albums and disappeared.
Nope, it is many millions of consumers who are responsible for all this crap. This one guy is just an important part of a team feeding them what they want to eat.
do you play music? do you have the ability to play his pieces? or to compose either at or above his level?
when I was learning piano in the late 90's, I bought classical sheet music for training, and pop sheet music to play for friends and family. at the top of most of the pop pieces said "max martin"
classical music taught a lot to me, but so did max's music.
point being, inarticulate insults such as saying the music is crap, are not worthwhile criticisms.
Sure, I think the guy is extremely talented. No doubt about it whatsoever. He uses his talent, though, on a format that is much simple and the results aren't very long-lasting, I guess because of the simplicity/lack of depth. In 50 years, who will still listen to the classical pieces you were learning? And who will still listen to the pop pieces?
Okay I get we don't have a lot of backstreet boy or Britney fans here (not one either) & I get the whole "pop music sounds the same lament, but at the same time, there's a market for it & he's excelled at creating something that sells that.
Just because it's pop music doesn't mean you can't give the guy credit for understanding his market & dominating his field.