The Song Machine
John Seabrook Norton, 338 pages, $26.95
Every musical genre has its canon: Bach and Mozart for classical, Dylan and the Beatles for rock. Only pop music — the "bubble gum" tunes played on Top 40 radio — lacks similar critical analysis and acclaim. True, Michael Jackson has been given his due. But no one would mention today's "manufactured" stars, such as Katy Perry or Miley Cyrus, in the same breath as the King of Pop.
John Seabrook takes another tack. In "The Song Machine," a history of the past 20 years of pop music, he argues that modern "earworm" pop is a high art form, as worthy of appreciation as any other. The public unfairly dismisses such masterpieces, he writes, because its expectations of the creative process were set during the rock 'n' roll era, when singer-songwriters were the norm. In fact, the 1960s and 1970s were a historical aberration, and what may seem like a soulless new wave of industrial music production is a return to the "hit factories" of years gone by.
During the first half of the 20th century, many of the biggest names in popular music were not performers but songwriters, based on the stretch of West 28th Street in New York known as Tin Pan Alley. Think Cole Porter or Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein. They remain far better known than the singers who performed their work. The protagonists of "The Song Machine" are not headliners like Taylor Swift, but rather the men behind the music, and Seabrook brings several of their little-known stories to life.
THE ECONOMIST
