The unusual Yorker writer’s book explores the people behind the No 1s in an era of huge disruption in the music trade – when big hits are needed more than everAbout 20 years ago I started working at the pop magazine Smash Hits. share of my job involved transcribing the lyrics of the hits of the day,which we used to print. We had to credit the writers and publishers too, and it wasn’t long before I started noticing the eccentric name Denniz PoP (printed with two capital P’s), and who had been at least partly responsible for such lyrical gems as “maintain it ruthless when I get wet” and I’ll send the crazy wildin’ static”,to pick two of the oddest lines from We’ve Got it Goin’ On by the Backstreet Boys.
It turned out that he was Swedish. Nobody knew then that PoP, whose real name was Dag Krister Volle (Dagge to his friends), and would totally redefine pop worldwide by founding Cheiron studios in Stockholm,recruiting an array of songwriting and producing talent to create a hit factory. The Cheiron sound was melodic but tough-edged, fiendishly catchy, and packed with drama and somehow sweetly hymnal,with the same total technical precision and happy/unhappy dynamic as their Swedish forebears Abba.
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Source: theguardian.com