Anatomy of a Hit
Hit song analysis
View all Anatomy of a Hit Articles

Coming Soon:
Beyonce—Irreplaceable
Corrine Bailey Rae—Put Your Records On
KT Tunstall—Suddenly I See

Nelly Furtado–Promiscuous
Ne-Yo—So Sick
James Blunt—You're Beautiful
Rascal Flatts–What Hurts The Most
Eminem—Lose Yourself

Norah Jones —Don't Know Why
Avril Lavigne —Complicated
Alan Jackson—Where Were You When The World Stopped Turning?
Pink—Get the Party Started
Craig David—Fill Me In
Alicia Keys—Fallin'
Train—Drops of Jupiter
Janet Jackson—All For You
Dido—Thank You
Sisqo—Incomplete
Macy Grey—I Try
Faith Hill—Breathe
Destiny's Child—Say My Name
Santana/Rob Thomas—Smooth
Ricky Martin—La Vida Loca

More Anatomy of a Hit Articles...

Classic Songcraft Articles
Reprints from Cat's columns in The Music Connection and LASS/NAS Musepaper

Outside vs. Inside Songwriting
Cat describes the change of opportunities in today's songwriting scene from Outside Songwriting for established artists to Inside Songwriting for original acts.

Grabbers and Shakers
Cat lists many of hue characteristics that make a pop song a hit song including what grabs a listener's attention and what keeps an audience involved all the way through to the end.

A Songwriter's New Year's Resolutions
Cat lists some goals and resolves we as songwriters can make to improve our writing and our careers for the coming year.

Other Classic Articles

The Hispanic Invasion
Today's pop scene has much in common with that of the mid-'60s. American pop music is being invaded by foreigners. Only this time the British aren't coming, it's the Hispanics.

1999: A Year of Retro and Recycling
Cat looks at the year 1999 in pop music and saw a return to recordings with older more melodic writing and more romantic dance styles including latin dance styles. Hot and sexy began to replace alienation and rebellion as the millennium turned.

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This year, the last year of the twentieth century, has witnessed a sea change in the pop music scene. While the early and mid '90s were about rebellion, alienation, and underground expressions like grunge, alternative and gangsta rap, the end of this amazing decade is seeing a return to more conventional and nostalgic music.

With the exception of country music performers like Shania Twain and Faith Hill who are extending country frontiers into new more sophisticated rock and pop territory, most of the rest of the recording industry is in a year of retreat back to older styles of music and ways to present them in a new package. Fading fast are the cynical, burnt out protestations of abused life styles and back in is romance and the pursuit of good times and the fast lane in music such as Ricky Martin's La Vida Loca and the outright sexuality in many of R. Kelly's R&B produced recordings. You might call this a return to Make Love not Revolution, not surprising in an age where prosperity has returned to much of the population.

Perhaps this recycling trend was built into earlier '90s music as both rap and alternative artists experimented with samples of earlier music to spice up their sounds, giving something familiar and nostalgic to the listener, albeit distorted and cut up. Lauryn Hill evoked the styling of several older hits on her Miseducation of Lauryn Hill album and Sugar Ray used an old '60s riff as the main hook in their recent hit, Every Morning. Dance styles from swing to go go rock, salsa and even mambo are returning to the charts in a big way. One night say that '90s rap and alternative music got stuck in its own grooves, and now pop audiences are hungry for fresh new sounds. Since not much is new under the sun, what has been off the charts for over twenty years is now suddenly fresh to pop ears and going over well commercially. Combine this taste for retro with the changing demographics of more hispanic consumers and you have the Latin Invasion, a parallel to the British Invasion of the mid '60s. Every recording company is chasing South of the Border stars with the fervor they were once signing the Brits a generation ago.

Along with the search for something new in the old is a return to more melodic writing and for some reason a fondness for minor keys. Many of the biggest hits of the year including TLC's No Scrubs and Christine Aguilara's Genie In a Bottle are written in 7-tone minor (in contrast to 5-tone or blues scales, for years the mainstay of R&B). It seems that the fresh crop of young R&B producers like Jermaine Dupris are finding a freshness and freedom in these long neglected scales. Another good example of minor writing is Destiny's Child's Bills, Bills, Bills. This has given 1999's crop of dance hits a decidedly different and distinctive sound. The combination of these evocative passionate melodic passages and sultry grooves have created a quality I can only call gypsy like. In fact I wouldn't be surprised if 1999 will be known in the future as the year of the gypsy.

I will delve into more of this gypsiness in our next article.

This Pop Chart Trends column is the first of an ongoing series. Feel free to return to this website as often as you need as I intend to update it monthly.

© 1999 Cat Cohen