If pop songs can so easily be written and then distributed into an unbreakable cycle of hits, can't they also be reverse engineered and reproduced? Can't a songwriter feed a topic into a machine and have that machine regurgitate a melody and lyrics, forming a pop song that's packaged and ready to go?
Not if you want the song to find an audience, says John Covach, the director of the Institute for Popular Music at the University of Rochester. Pop music has always been more about... See More
If pop songs can so easily be written and then distributed into an unbreakable cycle of hits, can't they also be reverse engineered and reproduced? Can't a songwriter feed a topic into a machine and have that machine regurgitate a melody and lyrics, forming a pop song that's packaged and ready to go?
Not if you want the song to find an audience, says John Covach, the director of the Institute for Popular Music at the University of Rochester. Pop music has always been more about cultural significance than musical inventiveness. The tunes that become hits today may not have five years ago.
The Beatles, he says, probably wouldn't have had the success they did if they released their music for the first time today.
