Welcome to Switched On Pop, I'm songwriter Charlie Harding.

When I think about how pop songs are written, I still have the image in my mind of artists

like Bob Dylan, Carol King, or Stevie Wonder.

For sitting in front of a piano or strumming a guitar on their lap and pouring words out

onto a page. And then, of course, there's collaborators, famous songwriting duos like George

and Ira Gershwin, Len and McCartney, now Rogers and Bernard Edwards, Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis,

for even frail Williams and Chad Hugo of The Neptune's.

But of course, the vast majority of pop songs aren't written this way anymore.

Now writers are often put together into group sessions with strangers, largely in Hollywood

songwriting rooms, turning out songs in a method that John Seabork of the New Yorker dubbed

the song machine, where a producer or engineer sits behind a computer, making it beat

as top-line songwriters and provides melodies until they land a hook, and then lyrics are paired

with the best melodies. It's really a numbers game. A pop songwriter will generally work at

these five sessions a week, writing 200 songs in a year, and if they're at the top of their game,

maybe 20% of those songs will actually get turned into records. Or maybe someone likes the song,

and they want to cut it, but it needs some punch ups and rewrites, and the credits on the song

balloon into dozens of co-writers. That can be fine if one of those 200 songs workshop or not

becomes a radio hit, because it can change your life. But really, you're not expecting to read a

hit every time. At the very least, you might perform a new relationship to make a new songwriting

team, like Harry Styles has with Kid Harpoon and Tyler Johnson, who've collaborated on all of

style solo material. But frankly, this session writing method can be a slog. You're working mostly

on spec and windowless studios that don't always spark creative inspiration. And really, this

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