February 7

So I just found this 23 year old Manual, instructing its readers on how to craft and direct a pop song to the top of the UK charts. It's been out of print forever (sells on Amazon for over $250) and speaks rather specifically to its times, but the concepts are still extremely salient. Most interesting to me was the songwriting formula, which points out the common ground between such contemporary acts as Lady Gaga and Lady Antebellum, Nickelback and Eminem, Lil Wayne and Coldplay. It's the reason DJ Earworm's year-end mashups weave together the Billboard radio chart Top 25 with a seeming effortlessness.

(you can find MP3s of his year-end mixes at his website.)
He's been slinging these together for years. 2010's was considered a step down from the previous year, but I don't blame the DJ; I blame the sameness of the music.

The most illuminating fact that I learned from this PDF was the structural rigidity of the successful pop song. The structure is as necessary to its identity as the structure of a sonnet or haiku, and just as essential in fulfilling its function. It's a very mathematical way of seeing it, but all the evidence I see suggests that it works.

Got a great example over the weekend: a press release for DJ Smurf's new mixtape, coming out in March. DJ Smurf, aka Mr Collipark, masterminded songs that jump-started the careers of the Yin-Yang Twins ("Whistle While You Twerk", "Wait(The Whisper Song)") Hurricane Chris, and Soulja Boy. He's part of a collective of music producers and performers who figured a variation on the 'road test' for a song; instead of just giving copies to nightclub DJs and gauging the dance floor's reaction, they sent copies to strip club DJs and counted the amounts of tips the dancers collected.
And it sounds like Mr Collipark is at it again. I got my hands on his single mix for one Lil Chuckee, who puts the Young in Young Money Records; Lil Chuckee turns 16this October, but that won't stop this song from playing around the poles (You can download this inescapable hit here.)

It's got all the elements: an unmistakable hook, an inescapable groove, an easy to remember chorus, and marginally interesting verses that keep out of the music's way. At the least, this will be the next "Chicken Noodle Soup".

All this inspires me to try to make 2011 the year I scratch an item off my Bucket List: "become a one-hit wonder". The field has changed, but the game's the same. (By the way, if you're just as interested, I've supplied all the clues you need to find the Manual... if you're up to the quest.) The manual gave a timetable of one month; meanwhile, I've got 11. Let's see how it goes...