It's always taken a dozen people to write a pop song. Only thing that's changed between now and forty years ago is how writing credits are handled. Originally only the arranger, lead artist or whoever wielded the most power would get the writing credit. If the person credited wrote anything at all, it was usually just a chart that shows the timing of key changes. Teams of writers at Stax or Motown or Fame studios and every other studio would bang out dozens of charts a day hoping to find a hit somewhere in the stack. Those charts were then taken to a room full of session musicians, the lead recording artist, engineers, producers and possibly other writers that all interpret those charts into actual songs. Forty years ago, none of them would get credit. If they had, every song from James Brown, the Rolling Stones or Sam Cooke would have anywhere from 5 to over a dozen "writers". Don't use utterly arbitrary industry writing credits as an excuse to demean artists you don't like unless you're willing to go back and criticize your heroes for the same practice. Making a pop song is and always has been exceedingly difficult. Literally thousands of people have tried it in the history of recorded music. Even with teams of people, only a couple hundred ever succeeded even once and only a few dozen could do it more than once. It takes incredibly smart songwriting and well thought out techniques to actually make something that is popular with the widest possible segment of the population. You'll get more out of trying to examine those techniques and learning from it than dismissing it entirely. I recommend the podcasts "Switched on Pop" or "Tuner" along with Chilly Gonzales' Pop Music Masterclass series on YouTube -Alpha
