What do you get when you put the hits of Justin Timberlake, Kesha, Psy, Mumford & Sons, Carly Rae Jepsen, and The Black Eyed Peas in a blender?
Something like the pop music instructional shown above!
I know this video is from last summer, but I saw it again last night and then this morning I heard a few current Top 40 songs in the car and thought, “Hmmm, filter sweeps? 4 on the floor? Gang vocals? Not much has changed in a year (or five)!”
So long story short, if you want to write a modern pop hit, watch the video above and take careful notes. (And then please remember that by the time you write, track, mix, master, release, and promote your new song, it might already sound stale, at least to discerning ears — so just make the music you want to make.)
What are the defining sounds and production tricks that will stamp today’s music as very 2015? Let us know in the comments below.
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Chris Robley is an acclaimed singer-songwriter and award-winning poet from Maine.
His Beatlesque indie-pop and milltown Americana songs have been praised by The Associated Press, No Depression, KCRW, The LA Times, Boston Globe, NPR, American Songwriter, and others.
His poems have appeared in Poetry Magazine, Prairie Schooner, The Poetry Review, and more.
Robley has received a Maine Literary Award in Poetry, Boulevard’s Emerging Writers Prize for Poetry, and in 2016 was selected by former US-poet laureate Robert Pinsky as a finalist for the Dorset Prize.