Song machine. Inside the hit factory

It seems that at the dawn of the XNUMXst century, popular music has reached a completely new phase of development. In order to write a song, you no longer need to play the guitar virtuoso and have poetic talent, and to sing it, you do not need a powerful voice - welcome to the era of autotune! But it's one thing - just a song, and quite another - a hit that can instantly glorify the performer and make a millionaire of its author. By the way, who creates all these masterpieces? In his book "The Song Machine. Inside the Hit Factory", John Seabrook, an American culturologist and journalist, explores the phenomenon of popular music, its impact on modern society, and also examines in detail the "anatomy" of a hit and comes to an interesting conclusion - it turns out that in such a creative matter as creating a song, originality is not at all important. Everything is subject to strict logic, "mathematics of the melody", and behind this is a whole team of professionals - producers, top-liners, beatmakers and text writers. Studying the history of hits, Seabrook brings us...