It seems that at the dawn of the 21st century, popular music has reached a completely new phase of development. To write a song, you no longer need to play the guitar virtuoso and have a poetic talent, and to sing it, you do not need a powerful voice - welcome to the era of autotune! But it's one thing - just a song, and quite another - a hit that can instantly glorify the performer and make a millionaire of its author. By the way, who creates all these masterpieces?In his book “Song Machine. Inside the hit factory" John Seabrook, an American culturologist and journalist, explores the phenomenon of popular music, its impact on modern society, and also examines in detail the "anatomy" of a hit and comes to an interesting conclusion - it turns out that in such a creative matter as creating a song, it is not at all originality matters. Everything is subject to strict logic, "mathematics of the melody", and behind this is a whole team of professionals - producers, top-liners, beatmakers and text writers. Studying the history of hits, Seabrook brings us to another, no less striking thought: this was almost always the case.