The Song Machine

In 2009, journalist John Seabrook's 10-year-old son reprogrammed the car radio from classic rock to contemporary hits radio (CHR), exposing Seabrook to the electronically produced, hook-laden pop songs dominating the airwaves. Struck by how different this music sounded from the singer-songwriter tradition he grew up with, Seabrook set out to discover who creates modern pop hits and why they sound the way they do. The Song Machine traces the industrialization of hit-making from SweMix and Cheiron Studios in Stockholm in the early 1990s through the streaming revolution of the 2010s.

Seabrook frames the book around a central paradox: Even as record sales collapsed following digital piracy, hits became more concentrated and more important than ever, with 90 percent of industry revenues coming from 10 percent of songs. A small group of songwriter-producers, largely anonymous to the public, is responsible for hit after hit. Seabrook identifies the "song machine" as a network of specialized teams who use a method called track-and-hook, in which a producer creates a backing track of beats and chord progressions and a "topliner" writes melodies over it. This method replaced the older melody-and-lyrics approach and became the dominant way popular songs are written.

The story begins in Stockholm with Denniz PoP (born Dag Krister Volle), a DJ at the SweMix collective who dreamed of making original hits rather than merely remixing foreign records. Unable to play an instrument or read music, Denniz pioneered electronic production, building tracks entirely on computers. He aimed to merge club dance beats with the singable melodies rooted in Swedish musical traditions, from ABBA to folk songs and church hymns. His breakthrough came with Ace of Base, whose demo tape became stuck in his car's cassette player; after two weeks of involuntary listening, Denniz heard how to restructure the song, and "All That She Wants" became a massive European hit. Released on record executive Clive Davis's Arista label, their follow-up "The Sign" became the top-selling single of 1994. Denniz built Cheiron Studios and assembled a team of young Swedish writers and producers who collaborated like assistants in a Renaissance painting studio.

The most gifted protégé was Max Martin (born Karl Martin Sandberg), a former glam-metal front man who secretly loved pop and possessed both formal musical training and an extraordinary melodic gift. Their partnership attracted Clive Calder, founder of the publishing company Zomba and the Jive Records label, who needed songs for his new signing: the Backstreet Boys. This boy band had been assembled in Orlando by Louis Jay Pearlman, an entrepreneur who studied New Kids on the Block's business model and recruited five singers with complementary personality types. The group traveled to Stockholm in 1995 and recorded with Denniz and Martin; by 1997, "Quit Playing Games (With My Heart)" broke through in the United States. Pearlman also secretly created a rival group, 'N Sync, featuring Justin Timberlake.

Denniz was diagnosed with esophageal cancer in December 1997. While he was dying, 15-year-old Britney Spears arrived at Cheiron in May 1998 to record her debut. Martin had written "Hit Me Baby (One More Time)" for the girl group TLC, who rejected it; rewritten for Spears, it became ". . . Baby One More Time," which sold 500,000 copies on its first day of release. Denniz died on August 30, 1998; his gravestone is shaped like an eighth note, a musical symbol he never learned to read. Over the next two years, Cheiron produced massive albums for the Backstreet Boys, Spears, and 'N Sync. Pearlman's business empire was revealed to be a Ponzi scheme, and both boy bands sued him for fraud. In 2002, Calder sold Zomba to the music conglomerate BMG for $2.7 billion, the largest payout in music-industry history.

Seabrook charts the catastrophic impact of digital piracy. Napster, created in 1999 by college student Shawn Fanning, made music free and triggered a revenue decline from $27 billion to $15 billion by 2014. The labels sued Napster rather than co-opting it, and piracy splintered across dozens of services. Steve Jobs's iTunes store, launched in 2003, proved people would pay for digital music, but by unbundling songs from albums, it further eroded profits. Cheiron closed at the end of 2000, and Martin, now synonymous with teen-pop, struggled to place songs as hip-hop dominated radio.

The pop cycle turned when American Idol premiered on Fox in 2002. Davis took charge of developing the show's winners. Kelly Clarkson, a 20-year-old waitress from Texas, won the first season. For her sophomore album, Davis brought in Martin and his new collaborator, Dr. Luke (Lukasz Gottwald), a New York guitarist who had spent six years in Saturday Night Live's house band. They wrote "Since U Been Gone," combining Dr. Luke's indie-rock guitar with Martin's soaring pop melody. Clarkson hated the song, but Davis refused to remove it. The single made Clarkson a global superstar and returned Martin to the top of the charts.

Seabrook devotes a chapter to K-pop, the South Korean pop industry built on what SM Entertainment founder Lee Soo-man calls "cultural technology": a codified method of manufacturing idol groups that prescribes everything from chord progressions for different Asian markets to the color of eye shadow performers should wear in different regions. The system represents the most elaborate hit-making operation on Earth, but the most successful Korean artist in America, PSY with "Gangnam Style," came from outside it and satirized its conventions.

Seabrook uses Rihanna's rise from a Barbadian teenager to a global icon to explain the track-and-hook system in detail. Songwriter Evan Rogers discovered 15-year-old Robyn Rihanna Fenty in Barbados in 2003. She auditioned for Jay-Z, newly installed as president of the record label Def Jam, and was signed on the spot. Her early albums struggled to define her artistically until "Umbrella," written by the Atlanta-based team of Tricky Stewart and The-Dream, gave her a signature sound; the song had been offered first to Britney Spears, whose team rejected it amid Spears's personal crisis. Seabrook profiles key collaborators, including the Norwegian production duo Stargate (Tor Hermansen and Mikkel Eriksen), who achieved a hybrid of Scandinavian melodic sensibility and American urban music, and Ester Dean, a self-taught hook-writing savant from Oklahoma. Dean wrote hooks for several of Rihanna's biggest hits but remained trapped in the topliner's predicament: too valuable as a hitmaker to cross over as a performing artist.

Seabrook traces Dr. Luke's evolution from underground producer to pop mogul. Gottwald grew up in bohemian Manhattan and studied jazz guitar before Martin mentored him. Together they wrote hits for Katy Perry (born Katheryn Elizabeth Hudson), a former evangelical Christian singer dropped by two labels before Capitol Records executive Jason Flom signed her. "I Kissed a Girl" reached number one in 2008, and subsequent collaborations produced a string of chart-toppers. But Luke's relationship with singer Kesha (Kesha Rose Sebert) deteriorated; he had discovered Kesha through a demo in 2005 and persuaded the 18-year-old to drop out of high school. In October 2014, Kesha filed suit accusing Luke of sexual assault, drugging, and emotional abuse. Luke denied all allegations and countersued for defamation, and the legal battle effectively ended his career as a sought-after hitmaker.

The final section addresses Spotify, the streaming service founded by Swedish entrepreneur Daniel Ek. By 2014, Spotify had more than 50 million users and had paid over $2 billion to rights holders, but whether streaming adequately compensates artists remains contentious. Jazz guitarist Marc Ribot's band earned $187 from 68,000 streams, while singer-songwriter Rosanne Cash earned $104 from 600,000, because Spotify's payment system funnels most revenue to megastars. Pop star Taylor Swift pulled her music from the service, calling streaming barely different from piracy.

The book closes where it began. Seabrook concedes that repeated exposure to songs he initially dismissed made him like them, consistent with neuroscience research showing that familiarity reflexively causes emotional engagement. Martin, now based in Los Angeles, embarks on a third run of hits with Swift and others. The author's son, now a teenager, begins buying rock songs through his father's iTunes account, a generational reversal. The narrative ends with the son in the backseat, his eyes flickering briefly to the radio display when a hit plays, then returning to his phone.