Hit Songs Deconstructed (review)
- Hit Songs Deconstructed
Introduction
Hit Songs Deconstructed (HSD) is a database featuring in-depth reports on hit songwriting trends and techniques used to craft today’s hits. Founded in 2011 by David Penn (Editor-in-Chief) and Yael Penn (CEO) this database provides musicians, songwriters, producers, educators and music industry professionals with the tools they need to stay in tune with the most modern hit song musical vocabulary and production techniques. Unlike other music industry databases which focus on song sales or airplay, HSD focuses on the songs themselves by tracking their compositional characteristics.
A Hit Songs Deconstructed annual subscription includes twelve monthly Hit Song Deconstructed reports, four quarterly Top Ten Trend reports, four quarterly Top Ten Hits reports and four quarterly Top Ten Genre reports. In addition, a subscription provides access to the weekly HSD Music charts.
Layout and Navigation
The Hit Songs Deconstructed Web site has a simple, clean, and well organized [End Page 327] layout that makes it easy to find reports. Reports feature detailed analysis supported by snippets of notated music, as well as colorful charts and graphs illustrating trends, song structure, instrumentation and more. Links to each section of the report make it easy navigate. Official song videos and playlists are also available. There is a keyword search for reports at the top; this search function seems fairly basic, it does not highlight words in results or offer Boolean searching. The HSD Web site divides its information into two main sections: HSD Music Charts, and HSD Reports.
HSD Music Charts
The HSD Music Charts spotlight the characteristics driving the Billboard Hot 100 top 10 on a weekly basis. Each of the thirteen charts, ranging from First Chorus Occurrence to Sub-Genres & Influencers to Song Length, show the percentage of songs that possess a particular characteristic. For example, the Song Length chart shows what percentage of songs are three minutes versus four minutes long; this area also connects to Spotify playlists of top ten songs by week, which are curated by HSD as the Spotify user “hitsongsdeconstructed.”
HSD Reports
The HSD Reports section on the Web site houses all of the Hit Songs De constructed reports. David Penn manages the editorial team and spearheads all song analysis. Reports are “authored” by Hit Songs Deconstructed. The monthly Hit Song Deconstructed report takes a deep dive into the what, how and why behind a current chart-topping hit. The quarterly Top Ten Trend report provides a snapshot of the key hit songwriting trends that define all of the songs that land in the Billboard Hot 100 top 10, quarter by quarter, over the period of one year. The Top Ten Hits report provides an in-depth look at the specific techniques being utilized to craft the hits and the Top Ten Genre report provides a comprehensive overview of the characteristics and trends that define each genre represented in the Hot 100 top 10 each quarter.
A Hit Song Deconstructed report averages approximately 120 pages when printed. Each report is divided into about twenty-two smaller sections with charts and graphs, which makes the reports easy to navigate. Sections such as “Word and Syllable Count” and “Rhyming Schemes” treat the song like a complex math problem that can be simplified by breaking it down into smaller manageable pieces. Each report includes high quality images but since this is a Web based product, the quality is dependent on the monitor’s resolution. Each Hit Song Deconstructed Report repeats these same sections; making it easier to directly compare one hit song to...
