A Contemporary Approach to Music Theory
Used by Top Music Programs. Loved by Students.
The Craft and Trends Behind Today's Hits
The Craft Behind Today's Hits
Hit Songs Deconstructed offers a contemporary, song-driven approach to music theory – one that reflects how today’s music is created and consumed. Rather than exclusively applying traditional classical frameworks to popular music, often forcing a fit that doesn’t reflect how today’s songs are actually written, our methodology is grounded in the real-world analysis of today’s most commercially successful songs.
Theoretical insights are drawn directly from the songs themselves, reflecting the structural, melodic, harmonic, rhythmic, lyrical, and production techniques that shape today’s hits. As a result, Hit Songs Deconstructed is an ideal resource for educators who want to equip students with tools that are both analytically rigorous and directly relevant to the music they’re creating and studying today.
The Trends Behind Today's Hits.
Today’s hits are evolving faster than ever, from the songwriting and production techniques used to craft them to the influences and instruments shaping their sound. To stay ahead of the curve, it's critical to proactively stay on top of what's driving today’s most successful songs.
Every week, as new songs enter the Hot 100 Top 10, the Hit Songs Deconstructed team manually breaks them down, providing real-time intelligence on how todays most successful songs are evolving and what's driving them at the at the compositional level.
Trend reports are published bi-annually.
Sample Reports and Logic Projects
What Educators Are Saying About Hit Songs Deconstructed
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"I have been giving hit record analysis exercises to my students for years, but the level of depth in a single Hit Songs Deconstructed report is a full semester’s worth of information. My entire thought process as a producer, an engineer, a musician, and a songwriter are fleshed out in the pages of the HSD reports."
"Prince" Charles Alexander
Grammy-winning, multi-platinum producer, audio engineer, and recording artist and professor, Music Production and Engineering, Berklee College of Music
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"The depth, detail and level of care that Hit Songs Deconstructed exercises in their song analysis is something I want my students to aspire to. I am using their analysis techniques as a benchmark for them to apply when analyzing songs and their compositional analytics to keep them in tune with what’s happening now."
Chris Sampson
Founding Director of Popular Music Program
USC Thornton School of Music
Director of Popular Music Pedagogy
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"Hit Songs Deconstructed is a great teaching tool and an extremely valuable resource for my songwriting students. We’ve made it an integral part of the songwriting curriculum at MTSU. I’m thrilled to say that Middle Tennessee State University is at the forefront of songwriting education as a result of this partnership."
Odie Blackmon
Assistant Professor and Coordinator of the Commercial Songwriting Concentration for the Recording Industry Program,
Middle Tennessee State University
Lecturer, Music at Vanderbilt University’s Blair School of Music
How will students and faculty benefit from Hit Songs Deconstructed?
Students will benefit from:
Faculty will benefit from:
Hit Songs Deconstructed offers flexible and highly discounted academic plans.
IP-Based Authentication or Group Subscriptions
Secure and seamless integration with your library network using EZproxy and other authentication systems.
If you require a subscription for a small group, you will receive an account where you can manage subscribers yourself.
Individual User Profiles
Faculty and students have the ability to create their own individual profiles so that they can save their personal searches privately.
Customized Lesson Plans
Faculty can easily create customized lesson plans by saving searches and reference material to a dedicated page in their private account.
Students also have their own private account where they can save searches for assignments and their own personal projects.
To schedule a demo and learn more about our
flexible and highly discounted academic rates, please fill out the form below.
What does a subscription include?
Hit Song Deconstructions
A Library of Hit Songs Deconstructed Reports with New Report Segments Published Every Two Weeks
The Hit Song Deconstructed reports provide unparalleled analysis of today's hits. Each deconstruction breaks down a current hit down to its foundational building blocks and pulls back the curtain on the songwriting and production techniques used to craft the song.
Reports are published in ten segments every two weeks, and analyze structure, genres and sub-genre fusion, instruments and arrangement, energy and dynamics, vocal melody, vocal production, lyrics, and rhymes. The last segment features a top 10 benchmark and highlights the most important report takeaways.
By reading these deconstructions, you'll become privy to the same tools and techniques today's hitmakers are using. The insight you'll gain will take your craft to the next level, guaranteed.
Downloadable DAWs
A visual roadmap for understanding how today's hits are arranged.
Every Hit Song Deconstruction includes a downloadable DAW project (Logic).
Using empty MIDI regions to visualize the instrumental arrangement, energy, vocal melody and production, structure, select techniques and more, these DAW projects provide you with a visual roadmap for understanding how today’s hits were effectively arranged.
By watching as you listen, you will gain valuable insight into the strategic decisions today’s hitmakers made to help prime their songs for maximum impact, giving you a host of new tools, techniques, and ideas to help take your own songs to the next level.
HITTRAXX:
The HSD Searchable Technique Database
Fuel your inspiration with the techniques that helped today’s most successful songs become global hits!
HITTRAXX is Hit Songs Deconstructed's searchable technique database, housing a treasure trove of hundreds of highly effective songwriting and production techniques drawn from Hot 100 top 10 hits.
Each technique comes with a clear explanation, visual aids, and audio examples, breaking down the "what," "how," and "why" so that you can seamlessly apply them to your own music.
Fresh techniques every other Tuesday! The Hit Songs Deconstructed team updates the database with a new, expertly deconstructed technique every other Tuesday, and delivers it straight into your email inbox.
This comprehensive collection is the perfect tool to help you continuously sharpen your songwriting and production skills and infuse your music with techniques that are currently dominating the charts.
SongLab
Analyze your own music using the HSD's proven methodologies.
SongLab is a suite of interactive tools designed to help you analyze your own music using the same methodologies we use in our reports and industry consulting.
These powerful tools give you a framework to evaluate your work with clarity and confidence.
Search Filters include:
Unlike AI-Powered analytics, each song is manually analyzed and every data point is vetted in accordance with HSD's proprietary methodologies for accuracy.
Compositional Analytics
Round out your toolbox with songwriting analytics for today's most successful songs.
Looking for insight into what today's hits have in common? Or want to spot trends on the rise, or in decline? Or need to back up gut feelings with factual data?
This powerful, fully interactive database provides you with critical insight into how the current musical landscape is evolving with valuable, real-time intelligence on the compositional characteristics of the songs that land in the Top 10 of the Billboard Hot 100.
Hundreds of different searches keep you in tune with what’s driving the Hot 100 Top 10 at the compositional level. Trends are visualized with graphs and tables with each data point linking to a list of the corresponding songs.
Search for trends pertaining to primary genres, sub-genres/influences, instruments, lead vocals (gender, vocal delivery, etc.), lyrics (lyrical theme, title placement and appearances, etc.), song structure (key, tempo, song length, song form, etc.), song sections (intro characteristics, first chorus occurrence, post-chorus types, etc.), and much more.
Benchmark Tool
Compare and contrast compositional characteristics across songs, artists, songwriters, producers and labels.
This powerful tool gives you the ability to compare and contrast any of the compositional characteristics in The Immersion Database across songs, artists, songwriters, producers and labels.
- Gain insight into a specific body of work of a particular artist, songwriter, producer or label
- Understand what compositional characteristics a select group of songs have in common
- Discover how songs stand out from the pack by going against the grain
- Make targeted pitches by researching what creates the signature sound of a particular artist, producer, or songwriter
Hit Song Reference Track Search
Find the exact song you are looking for with the click of a button.
Mix and match 200+ compositional filters to find Hot 100 Top 10 songs with very specific compositional characteristics.
In addition, this tool can be used to:
- See how your song stacks up against proven hits with similar compositional characteristics
- Get insight for ways to take your song to the next level and/or give it a unique spin
- Understand the space you are looking to compete in
- Or simply get inspired!
Artist, Songwriter, Producer
& Label Database
Stay in tune with the artists, writers, producers, and labels behind today’s hits and the trends behind them.
Every artist, songwriter, producer and label has its own personal profile detailing which artists, songwriters, producers and labels they’ve collaborated with, their compositional profile, charting information and a link to their Twitter and Instagram pages.
Trend searches include number of songs in the Top 10, weeks in the Top 10, trends for featured artist, genre breakdown, team size, and more. Searches can be filtered in a multitude of ways including by date range, primary genre, peak chart position, among others. All search results include links to the corresponding songs and profile pages.
Hit Songs Deconstructed Trend Reports
The State of the Hot 100 Top 10 Delivered to Your Inbox
Today’s hits are changing faster than ever, from the songwriting and production techniques used to craft them to the influences and instruments shaping their sound. The Hit Songs Deconstructed trend reports deliver an easy-to-digest snapshot of the trends driving the Hot 100 top 10, keeping you in tune with how popular music is evolving.
This report delivers an in-depth look at trends for all the compositional categories we track, including primary genres, sub-genres, lead vocals, lyrical themes, instruments, key, tempo, song length, song structure, and much more.
A deconstruction of the compositional characteristics that are unique to #1 hits.
This report analyzes the compositional characteristics of songs that remain in the Billboard Hot 100 top 10 or more weeks compared to those that chart for nine weeks or less. that remain in the Billboard Hot 100 top 10
Give your students a competitive edge!
Hit Songs Deconstructed is also used by leading songwriters, producers, labels and publishers.
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We’ve had rave reviews from students and educators about Hit Songs Deconstructed.
Stephanie Maatta Smith, PhD
Director of Library Services
Full Sail University
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Hit Songs Deconstructed is an integral resource used in our teaching of popular music analysis on both the Popular Music Performance and Popular Music Performance/Production BA (Hons) degree courses here at Solent University.
Esther Frake
Senior Lecturer, Popular Music PerformanceSolent University, Southampton UK
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Whether you want to work with the current trends or against them HSD is a powerful tool in music production strategy.
Dean Nelson
Director of Music ProductionOntario Institute of Audio Recording Technology
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Hit Songs Deconstructed is an astonishingly thorough look at contemporary hits. The site takes a comprehensive look at both lyrics and music, and is an extraordinary tool for anyone interested in understanding and absorbing what makes commercial songs successful.
Deanna Walker
Director, Blair Songwriting Program at Vanderbilt University
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Finally… here is a great service for producers and writers that explains in great detail what makes a hit song… HSD gives you not only the 'How they did it’, but also the Why… I highly recommend HSD.
Tony Carbone
Assistant Professor
Berklee College Of Music
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As a teacher AND a songwriter, an important part of my job is to analyze what works in successful songs. HSD does the research for me. It's an amazing tool--and one I highly recommend to my students and collaborators throughout the world.
Jason Blume
Songwriter w/50 million album sales | Top-selling author, Billboard Books