Recently, his most productive partnership has been with Panic! at the Disco. The challenge today is not the Brill Building half of the formula but the rock half: The genre’s commercial fortunes have fallen off a cliff.ĭespite this, Hollander has managed to carve out a space writing rock hits in a world that mostly doesn’t want them. In the subsequent decade-ish, co-writing has become more popular in every genre - most of the biggest streaming hits last year had five or more writers - which makes Hollander’s Brill Building-meets-rock vision seem more attainable. “That record changed my life.” He started to build his plaque collection - he co-produced Metro Station’s “Shake It” (double platinum) and We the Kings’ “Check Yes Juliet” (platinum) - and to place songs with the upper echelon of pop stars: Katy Perry, One Direction. “I went from making major label records for hundreds of thousands of dollars with no success to making the Gym Class Heroes’ As Cruel as School Children for $29,000 including mastering,” he says.
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His career inflection point came through Gym Class Heroes: Hollander co-wrote the single “Cupid’s Chokehold,” which was certified platinum in 2007. “I think I have a rarified distinction: The first six or seven records I made, five were never released, the sixth came out on September 11 and was never heard from again, and the seventh, Dreamworks folded on the act,” Hollander says. Hollander also started to develop acts, but while his bands kept getting signed, none of their songs stuck. I did jingles and dance records overseas.
#Panic at the disco music type how to#
I learned how to make beats and I did remixing for Def Jam. So I did whatever I could do to stay in it. “I banged on doors, but there was zero response. “I wanted to bring the Brill Building to rock, but co-writing just wasn’t a thing - rock was in that Kurt Cobain-era of self-contained bands,” Hollander recalls. Thanks to industry trends, he was directionless, too. Sam Hollander calls Panic! at the Disco’s “High Hopes” “the eight-chord wonder.” You have to put in that frame of reference.” Whenever you’re in jazz or Broadway, the chords start multiplying like rabbits. “Some bands, like Panic! and the Killers, almost hearken back to lounge singers with jazz influences - that’s what all those chords are, jazz chords.
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“That song is candy for a music-theory geek,” says Dean Olivet, who authored Soundfly’s report. “High Hopes,” on the other hand, was the only major hit to incorporate eight different chords.
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A recent report by Soundfly analyzed every song that cracked the Billboard Top 5 in 2018 and concluded that more than half of those songs used two to four chords. But at the end of January, Panic! at the Disco’s “High Hopes” was comfortably ensconced at Number Four on the Hot 100, making it the biggest hit of the band’s 14-year career.Īnd that may not be the most atypical feature of this hip-pop-parade-march mishmash: “High Hopes” is bizarre down to its musical skeleton. For most artists, the likelihood of writing a major hit diminishes over time - pop success is often synonymous with youth.