A.P.M., the Hit Songs Deconstructed acronym for “Audience Participation Moment,” refers to a specific part of a song primed to actively engage fans during live performances, elevating their concert experience.
A.P.M.s can be vocal, instrumental, or a blend of both, and have been a feature of numerous iconic hits. Notable examples include Queen’s “We Will Rock You” (stomp/clap beat), Neil Diamond’s “Sweet Caroline” (the audience invented “ba, ba, ba” and “so good, so good, so good”), and Katy Perry’s “California Gurls” (“put your hands up”).
While many hit songs incorporate one A.P.M., it's far less common to feature multiple A.P.M.s. Sabrina Carpenter’s hit “Taste,” which entered the Hot 100 top 10 in the week of 9/7/24, takes it to the next level with six A.P.M.s, ensuring the song is consistently fun, catchy, and highly interactive - whether you're listening alone or at a live show.
Find out what these A.P.M.s are, how they’re worked into the song, and what they achieve in this week’s Technique Tuesday!
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A Library of 60+ Hit Songs Deconstructed Reports
The Hit Song Deconstructed reports provide unparalleled analysis of today's hits.
Each deconstruction breaks down a current hit to its foundational building blocks and pulls back the curtain on the patterns and science behind how the song was written, produced and arranged.
Leaving no stone unturned, everything is presented in a clear and concise manner and is complimented with unique Hit Songs Deconstructed visualizations that can be used to assess your own songs for strengths and weaknesses as well.
Among them are the HSD melodic parts tables and graphs, rhyme scheme tables, narrative structure tables, energy graphs, and more.
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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.
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Compare and contrast compositional characteristics across songs, artists, songwriters, producers and labels.
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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.
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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. To stay ahead of the curve, it's critical to proactively stay on top of what's driving today’s most successful songs at the compositional level. The Hit Songs Deconstructed trend reports deliver an easy-to-digest snapshot of the trends driving the Hot 100 top 10.
A deconstruction of the most recent quarter's new arrivals, and how they differ from the songs that carried over from the previous quarter.
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.
A deconstruction of the compositional characteristics that are unique to songs that chart for 10+ weeks in the top 10..
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