At the start of my employment, my boss showed me videos of people stealing, and we both had a chuckle about it. How silly they were! There was a camera overhead, and it’s not to watch the shoppers. See, we can’t actually stop shoplifters. They get away with it maybe nine out of ten times. But we, who are watched and tallied and witnessed? We are always caught.

At first it was hard to hold one hundred dollars bills. An amount I had never seen before. An amount that didn’t exist in my household. It’s normal now. Here is something that is not for me.

“What the hell, I’ll take another,” says the man, pondering our 200 dollar watches. What the hell. Total comes to 580 and not even a flinch in his face. I have been working for 11 hours today and made only 110 dollars. It will go to my rent. Today I work for free, it feels. When I get my check, I will have 35 dollars left for food and saving.

The six hundreds he hands me go into the cash register. For a moment, I imagine having money. Then I put it away, counting out his change.

I know for a fact we sell our products for double what they are worth. That I could be making commission. That they could hand me those 580 dollars and change my life and not even mark the difference in their checkbooks. He’s not the only sale they make today, but I am the reason they made it. He’s not the only one spending 600 dollars, but if I hadn’t spent two hours with him telling me about his life, he wouldn’t have spent any. I go home. I don’t own a watch.

I have watched and rewatched a video on how to make salmon four ways. My shopping list is always the same. Pasta. Rice. Tuna. If I can afford butter it was a good week. I dream of the world I will never walk in, where I can throw the best fish fillet in the cart with a shrug. I hold hundreds in my hand and look up at the camera. I put them under the cash drawer.

I go to work. I scrap together my savings. I eat my bowl of rice slowly. My manager takes a paid week off from work just for his birthday. He owns a yacht. 

i was part of their college program. i moved to the state for it. they legally owned the building i was living in and still charged me rent. i ostensibly was being charged to work for them. it was a 2 bedroom apartment and they placed 6 adult women in it in forced triples.

as many as one in ten disney employees have experienced homelessness while working for the company. despite huge efforts to unionize, strike, or otherwise demand fair treatment; disney has refused to increase employee quality of life.

disney admits publicly that a good portion of their success is because the employees (“cast members”) are dedicated, passionate, and selfless. this is never reflected in pay. even “face” characters (ie those that are princesses etc) make barely above a minimum wage.

at the time that i worked there, i made $8.50 an hour. at one point i was asked to create a human shield around a bag because a bomb dog had alerted to it. for eight fucking dollars an hour.

i now work a very cushy office job. i have bought the salmon and cooked it all four ways.

i go to the store. i am nice to the person behind the counter. she looks up at the camera while she counts out my change. there is nothing fundamentally different about her and i.

we're looking to create an AI policy, and when we were talking about this, my boss (older millennial) was genuinely shocked to hear that younger people do not (seem) to view AI positively (a la the recent commencement speakers being booed)

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Question 1/3

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I like to call it 'the game'.

What music companies do is come up with a brand to target a market, then sign talent to fit that market. Here's The Game: how well each album does determines how much creative control you as an artist have over the next album; you sign for multiple albums at a time, and if you make no money you're done. This means you can be 'shelved' in favor of another artist in your genre; you cannot sign with anyone else but they won't approve release of your next album.

If you come to the table with no writing chops, your job is pretty much to sing what's written for you until you can prove yourself. Example; Taylor Swift used to write pop with the people her teams chose frequently (as you'll see in a moment!), but as a superstar she's been working with Aaron Dessner from The National (and I, a former hater, give folklore a *chef's kiss*)

Aight let's fuckin go let's start with the song that made my mother ban Britney Spears from our house:

there are lots of places that list songwriters, but the easiest way is usually to check the lyric sites (which pull from those places)

Max Martin and Rami. Very famous writing/production team (both men), who have made pop songs for decades now. That album was one of their first projects together. Max Martin you may have heard of before. Here are his Billboard Hot 100 hits; you can see how he writes to the "brand" of each artist:

MAX MARTIN ALSO GOT DR. LUKE FAMOUS. Dr. Luke (of abusing Ke$ha fame) was the fucking guitarist for SNL until like 2007- but he met Max at a house party and they started swapping songs and eventually they wrote a big P!nk song together- THIS ONE:

Their next big hit was "I Kissed A Girl" for Katy Perry (who was discovered and signed as a 15 year old LITERAL CHURCH GIRL SINGING GOSPEL SONGS BY THE WAY!) Are you getting the picture? Dr Luke signed Kesha when she was 18!

Somewhere along the way Max Martin started another writing team called Wolf Cousins, which still functions as a songwriter club where he mentors other men on how to crack the charts. They made 1989 by Taylor and "Talking Body" by Tove Lo and Ariana's My Everything and Sweetener and and and - the list goes on, you can look it up.

Want a different genre? Let's check a song from someone who came to the industry with more influence and social power, at an older age: Cardi B's "WAP" (w Megan Thee Stallion). They're both credited as songwriters, but look at who else is:

Austin, James and Jorden? Yeah, I know em that's these guys, Ayo N Keyz and Megan's ex-boo Pardison Fontaine:

So, this was a kinda meh song Cardi (a brand) was making with Ayo and Keyz (recording) and Pardison Fontaine (writing) - until PF got close with Megan in 2020 and got her involved for some verses, and then they were cooking with sauce:

and THIS WAS THE FINAL PRODUCT! BEHOLD, "HOW TO RECEIVE SEXUAL PLEASURE FROM MEN BY CARDI B"

So yes, I'm sure Cardi/Megan wrote some lines on that song. Only they know who wrote which parts - but my point is this:

If you, as an artist, can't write a charting hit alone, the music companies are gonna stick you in a room with someone who can. Those people - at the company and in the room - are almost always men.

If you want to play The Game, your music gets filtered through the male gaze.

Nothing in pop is exempt from this process.

Everyone uses this model. Everyone. You like Doechii? She was put with Gotye (yes Im serious, the "Somebody I Used to Know" guy). Gracie Abrams? That's Aaron from The National again. Ryan from OneRepublic wrote songs that ended up with Adele and Ellie Goulding. Beyoncé took a song or two from him too, as well as from Ne-Yo and a bunch of others. Jack from Fun/Bleachers has a whole career doing this.

"Fancy" by Iggy Azalea and Charli XCX? I see seven writers credited, they're the only women listed. Remember "Glamorous" by Fergie? Six writers, five are men. Miley Cyrus has star power in her brand and can request to work with who she wants, but she doesn't write well - so her new song "End of the World" credits her, and Molly from Alvvays (an amazing musician and songwriter), and then five men. Miley's first big hit that I remember was "Party In The USA" - but she's not even a credited writer. That song came from Dr Luke and a producer being put in a room with 20 year old Jessie J- and they gave 15 y/o Miley that song because it was a winner and she was an industry baby with a Disney brand who needed a song and could outsell Jessie. "Monster" by Rihanna was another big one. That was Bebe Rexha's (written by Jon Bellion and friends) until it was given to sexy sexy Rihanna and Eminem was added for star power. You can still find Bebe's version leaked on YouTube.

Halsey? Last I checked was Nine Inch Nails. Rosalia? Yes, she plays the game too. Selena Gomez- yup, definitely. Camila Cabello? Haha! Lizzo? Yeah, I think her big hits were all the guy who wrote Derulo's "Talk Dirty". I could keep going. No one is exempt from The Game.

You can be smart about it, like Megan Trainor and Lady Gaga, and study music until you're hooky enough to sign with a label who can see you as a writer and you choose your own cowrites, harmless mostly gay men or older family men, but you can't escape The Game.

As a woman: if they can scout you young and train you to be a consistent cowriter (Lana, Taylor, Lorde) - great! If you can write for others and yourself (Sia, Julia Michaels, Starrah) - even better! If you can't write for shit, you can always be a sexy sexy singer (Katy Perry, Rihanna, Dua Lipa) and have the good ol' boys write for you. (Until you're not sexy sexy anymore, at least.)

Male singers have to play The Game too; Bernie Taupin wrote for Elton John, Jimmy Napes writes many of Sam Smith's hooks, Benny Blanco has a huge career writing for the pop charts- but. BUT. Women write for women, sometimes- while men write for men and women, always.

There's a difference between being a singer/songwriter and being a ghostwriter for people. Being just a writer, as a woman? Difficult as fuck. We can sometimes break into that world (Amy Allen for Sabrina Carpenter, Lauren Christy for Avril Lavigne, Kara Dioguardi, Laura Veltz) and live on royalties without fame, but you must still write for the male gaze brand, selling something that can make music videos and tour and partner with huge sponsors- it's still a boys club. Which is why I started the post with Max fucking Martin who runs a literal songwriting boys club. His is very far from being the only one. His just specializes in this Brand Artist trash for young women, and is good at keeping trend-relevant producers around so they've haunted the charts like misogynistic Swedish ghouls for decades. Look up some recent hits and you'll see Dr Luke is out of favor and Shellback is the new hot sound, and I'm sure some new one on the way.

TLDR- there are a bunch of women in music (hello!) BUT we rarely get signed to write unless we can ALSO perform as the face of a brand; unless we can be sexy sexy marketable. Men are the radio heads, label execs, studio owners, songwriters and producers and gatekeepers, all beholden to a $30 BILLION DOLLAR INDUSTRY.

So yeah. it's a fucking thing. It's at the core of how it works. Women are the face of the brand catered to a market, men hold the power.

Ive been in this since the aughts and it's been horribly sexist the entire time, top to bottom. I've been stuck in those rooms with those men. I've been badgered for sex. I've been groped (and worse) and stalked and threatened and harassed and more, and I know plenty of industry scandals where women took settlement money to stay quiet about sexual assault, discrimination and more. The hierarchy is clear to everyone. Every time you're in the label offices or studio you see some pretty young women with stars in her eyes, being shown around and promised millions by a sleezy old douchebag.

This shit is systemic. Sex sells and the companies that control everything want to make money so they make and sell sex. It's designed to sell over authentic music not produced by a huge team of marketing specialists and predatory and self-obsessed men. Once in a blue moon does someone escape this formulaic hellscape of the music charts I've tried to show here and - lemme tell you - I fucking live for the moments that they do. All of us in the music world constantly have our ear to the ground for aberrations, moments of genuine artistry and authentic creativity powering through to popularity as these huge music corporations fight with each other for space on the charts. I think the most recent for me was Gigi Perez.

When you start paying attention, it's easy to see who's making money for what. The harsh truth, from a woman in music, is that a lot of women in music are just recording artists who decide to play the game and let men write their brand while they tour and dance in music videos, and it's insidious as fuck what the end result is.

fuck this business

anyways go GO FORTH with this knowledge on how to pick apart a pop song and slay. sorry for ruining the radio for you.

oh, and don't fall for the "breakout indie music" schtick either; Chappell Roan's cowriter is Dan from As Tall as Lions and his other recent project was Olivia Rodrigo: