The Song Machine: Inside the Hit Factory

Nowhere is the truism "everything old is new again" truer than in pop music, where all the upheavals of the digital era have brought us back to the hit-factory days of Tin Pan Alley, the Brill Building, and Motown, led this time by a handful of Scandinavians who have married ABBA to R&B to produce hits for stars from the Backstreet Boys to Rihanna to Taylor Swift. Seabrook brings a dorky-dad earnestness to figuring out why he loves his kids' music and an analytical eye to the mechanics of stardom and pop pleasure, which becomes most interesting when he focuses on the behind-the-scenes pop scientists who can't quite become stars themselves.