Nick Hornby on the joy of pop music
It's easy, in fact, to get carried away after an experience like that -- to demand [Patti] Smith's kind of commitment and fiery vision from all music. "I don't care who you listen to, or how good they are," you want to say to kids who are about to embark on a lifetime of listening, "just make sure that whoever it is means it, that they're burning up in their desperation to communicate whatever it is they want to say." But that's not how popular music always works. Gerry Goffin and Carole King sat in an office in the Brill Building and treated songwriting as a day job; they bashed out "Up on the Roof" and "Will You Love Me Tomorrow?" because they needed hit records. And I doubt whether Bjorn and Benny would have self-combusted if "Dancing Queen" had gone unwritten and unrecorded -- it's a great song, but it doesn't sound as though anyone's life depended on it. Pop's indifference to motive and conviction is one of its joys.
Nick Hornby, Songbook