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John Seabrook is a New Yorker staff writer and the author of The Song Machine: Inside the Hit Factory.\n\n\u201cWhether or not the piece succeeds or fails is not going to depend on whether I\u2019m up to the minute on the latest social media spot to hang out or the latest slang words that are thrown around. It\u2019s going to be the old eternal verities of structural integrity. So much of it is narrative and figuring out the tricks\u2014and they are tricks, really\u2014that make it go as a narrative. And that\u2019s really the most interesting thing. Because you never ultimately have a formula that goes from piece to piece; it\u2019s always going to have to be rediscovered every time you work on a long piece. And that\u2019s kind of fun.\u201d\n\nThanks to MailChimp and MasterClass\xa0for sponsoring this week's episode.\n\nShow Notes:\n@jmseabrook\nSeabrook on Longform\nSeabrook's New Yorker archive\n[3:00] The Song Machine: Inside the Hit Factory (W. W. Norton \u2022 2015)\n[11:00] "The Doctor Is In" (New Yorker \u2022 Oct 2013)\n[20:00] "Blank Space: What Kind of Genius is Max Martin?" (New Yorker \u2022 Sept 2015)\n[31:00] "E-mail from Bill" (New Yorker \u2022 Jan 1994)\n[45:00] Nobrow: The Culture of Marketing, The Marketing of Culture (Vintage \u2022 2001)\n[46:00] "Crush Point" (New Yorker \u2022 Feb 2011)\n[46:00] "The Flash of Genius" (New Yorker \u2022 Jan 1993)\n[55:00] "Factory Girls" (New Yorker \u2022 Oct 2012)\n[56:00] "The Song Machine" (New Yorker \u2022 Mar 2012)\nLearn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices