Sterling Terrell

recovering economist

Hit Predictor

Hit Predictor

How is Hit Predictor a thing?

I mean, I guess there is an algorithm for everything nowadays.

Not algorithm. Crowd sourcing?

Of course, it makes sense on some level. For the closer you are to X, Y, and Z with your song, the more likely you are to succeed.

Just put it all into a multivariate regression, I guess.

BY THE EARLY 2000S, record men routinely used advance testing to measure the hit potential of prospective singles. One of the leading testing services, Hit Predictor, was created by Guy Zapoleon, together with Rick Bisceglia and Doug Ford. Whether or not Hit Predictor really worked, it was accurate enough that some labels came to rely heavily on Zapoleon’s method of testing songs. The labels’ interest in Hit Predictor made the company so valuable that Clear Channel eventually bought it and began using Zapoleon’s system in its own internal research as well.

-John Seabrook, The Song Machine

The Money Note

The Money Note

You know exactly what the money note is when you hear it, don’t you?

That crescendo of a song like a rogue volcano quickly rising and exploding.

Who knew the term came from a meeting with Barbra Streisand.

Whitney Houston and Carrie Underwood hitting the money note after the jump.

This stuff is just good, y’all.

The money note is the moment in Whitney Houston’s version of the Dolly Parton song “I Will Always Love You” at the beginning of the third rendition of the chorus: pause, drum beat, and then “IIIIIIEEEEEEIIIIII will always LOVE you.” It is the moment in the Celine Dion song from Titanic, “My Heart Will Go On”: the key change that begins the third verse, a note you can hear a hundred times and it still brings you up short in the supermarket and transports you from the price of milk to a world of grand romantic gesture—You’re here There’s nothing I fear. David Foster, the producer of Whitney’s version of “I Will Always Love You” and a contemporary master of the pop ballad, claims that he coined the phrase “the money note” during a session with Barbra Streisand. “Barbra had hit this high note,” he says, “and she wanted to know how it sounded, because although you’d think Barbra was real confident, she’s not. And I said, ‘That sounds like money!’ I don’t mean money in the crass sense of ‘That will make a lot of money!’ although that’s certainly part of it. I meant ‘expensive.’ It sounded expensive.”

-John Seabrook, The Song Machine

Sterling Terrell