Is there a formula for writing hit songs? Of course. Music that appeals on a mass level follows certain patterns.
As you listen to popular music and hear the lead vocal singing or rapping, your subconscious mind compares what you are currently hearing to what you heard in the previous section of the song. Your subconscious then proceeds to work out what it anticipates hearing in the next section of the song.
Years of studying music composition in universities doesn’t reveal a secret formula to you. Neither does reading books currently available by hit songwriters.
Using examples never before shown, this book will illustrate how this formula clearly exists and how to recognize it.
Countless services now provide detailed algorithmic breakdowns categorizing a song’s performance and hit potential.
But only some of these categories are revealed to people who use their service, while others are kept secret. Companies that market Spotify playlists will also give detailed breakdowns on “danceability”, “valence”, “speechiness” and other categories but leave out the secret formula.
Sounding “formulaic” has developed a bad connotation by implying that something is cookie cutter and devoid of deeper meaning or originality. But knowing the secret formula will not make you sound cookie cutter or unoriginal, nor will it make your music sound too predictable. It will simply make your songs fit into a more glorious and appealing form.
Why do you always hear so many people say “there is no formula?” They might be one of those people who know it and are guarding it. But more often than not, it’s people who use the excuse “if there was a formula, we’d all be using it.” This is either a failure to grasp the massive marketing and money needed to make a secret formula song a hit, or a failure to grasp the concept that…
…not all secret formula songs are hits, but all hit songs DO follow the secret formula.