Tip Jar: 3 Common Features of Top 100 Hits
BY DOUG FENSKE
Every song on the Billboard Hot 100 chart is there for a reason. Regardless of genre, these songs share particular features that help them communicate to millions of listeners.
After 10 years as an engineer and producer at Westlake Recording Studios, I’ve worked on hundreds of tracks designed to break that chart. Michael Jackson’s record-setting album Thriller was recorded at Westlake, and we continue to work with chart-topping music from The Weeknd, Rihanna, One Direction, Adele and many others.
I’ve discovered there are often distinguishing factors that make hit songs more streamed, downloaded and consumed than their competition. If you apply what often works in hits songs to your music (within your own personal style and voice), it becomes more positioned to connect with a much greater audience.