Top 10 Deconstructed

Here’s a sneak peak at our latest report!

• EDM’s influence has been steadily growing over last two quarters in the Dance/Club category, specifically through the increased prominence of featured instrumental breaks within the mix. Great examples from Q2 are Starships, Where Have You Been and especially Feel So Close, where 52% of the entire song is an instrumental break.

• The two most popular methods used to transition into a chorus were the synth swell (which occurs in over half of all songs and is sometimes accompanied by a quick drum fill) and to pull the backing music out from under the first part of the chorus vocal in order to provide it with much greater impact when it hits.

• Of the Dance/Club influenced songs that entered the Pop Songs top 10 for the first time in Q2, ALL possessed a different structure from one another and NONE followed a straight-up A-B-A-B-C-B form.

• 83% of intros were “breakdown” intros – meaning that they featured solo or sparse instrumentation without a “full band” backing. This was up from 67% in the previous quarter.

Read the report, listen to the songs and apply these findings to give yourself an edge in a VERY competitive industry!

About this report:

Our latest report provides you with a comprehensive overview of the characteristics, attributes and trends that helped shape last quarter’s top-charting Pop hits.

You’ll learn how today’s most successful songwriters approach their craft from the inside-out, and gain insight into how to apply these proven techniques to help take your songwriting and producing skills to the next level.

Topics covered within the report include form, intros, outros, pre-choruses, choruses, bridges, lyrical themes, song titles, sub-genre influences, new arrivals vs. de-charted hits, instrumentation, lead vocal gender, hit songwriting trends and more.