Songwriters are the under-appreciated, uber-talented engine of the pop industrial complex, churning out beloved hits for artists and doing so with little spotlight, limited fanfare, and too often these days, not very much money.
But in Netflix’s Hitmakers, the songwriter takes center stage, teasing the chance for a rare inside look at how your favorite songs got made, the people who created them and how this grinding but glitzy industry actually works. Unfortunately, the show doesn’t deliver on its promise.
Produced by Selling Sunset creator Adam DiVello and Recording Academy CEO Harvey Mason Jr., Hitmakers forgoes the in-depth docuseries route for a reality show approach. The result is a Selling Sunset-ification of the craft, placing a dozen top songwriters — Jenna Andrews, Harv, JHart, Tommy Brown, Whitney Phillips, Trey Campbell, Ferras, Stephen Kirk, Sevyn Streeter, Ben Johnson and the duo Nova Wav — in lavish digs in the Bahamas, Nashville and Cabo for a songwriting camp where they pop champagne and chow down on lobster between efforts to write smashes for John Legend, Usher, Shaboozey and Blackpink’s Lisa.
It’s about on par with the sort of luxe vibe and aesthetic typical of today’s reality TV landscape. But in an industry where most songwriters have to fight for scraps even if their tracks get millions of streams, are paid nothing for their session work unless a song gets placed, and regularly give up their publishing rights to artists who didn’t write the songs, one can’t help but feel that it’s a missed opportunity to reveal the actual drama of this business. The struggle is nominally hinted at, as in episode one, where writer Trey Campbell mentions that he still drives for Uber despite a Grammy nomination. But that’s as far as Hitmakers goes.
For each session, the writers get a brief video call with the artist they’re writing for, to get an idea of what is desired (except for Usher, who sent producer L.A. Reid in his place); then they break out into smaller teams to get to work for the day. Early and often, Hitmakers presents the challenge our cast of creators faces: They’ve got just a six-hour session or two in their studios, and if they want any chance at one of those superstars recording the song they write, it has to be a potential smash atop the Billboard charts. It’s all a bit cynical, though it’s also an honest portrayal of the mindset these rooms often take on.
Unfortunately, Hitmakers is trapped in its format, stuck between disparate goals of championing the music and following storylines that make for good reality TV. There are some gems in here, but viewers hoping the show will offer a deep, detailed look into the songwriting process may come away frustrated. The series is adept at capturing the beginnings of melodies and lyrical ideas the writers come up with as they kickstart a studio session, but viewers see only brief cuts from each team before we hear completed tracks during a listening party at the end of each session.
To be fair to Hitmakers, taking a songwriting session and making it entertaining to a wider audience isn’t easy; there are plenty of arduous and repetitive tasks between those magical moments when the musicians nail down lyrics or perfect chord progressions. But time that could have been used to delve deeper into the music and its creators’ connection to it is instead devoted to lower-stakes drama like mild slights the writers may have aimed at another, or confessionals about problems they’re having in their love lives off screen.
Reality TV fans may not be satiated either. Hitmakers lacks much of the underlying conflict and tension the genre usually needs to thrive. At just six episodes that clock in under four hours total, there isn’t much time to develop a closer emotional connection to the cast. And the dramatic threads that do get pulled throughout the run — whether it’s Kirk, who is Andrews’ romantic partner, condescendingly interrupting her during a dinner, or Andrews not gelling with Phillips during a studio session — just aren’t all that interesting.
Perhaps the closest look at an actual songwriter dispute comes toward the end of the season, when JHart and Johnson have a disagreement over the origins of a song concept JHart pulled from one of the Nashville sessions with Johnson. Johnson awkwardly calls JHart out during a listening party, pouring cold water on the moment. The two manage to hash it out not long after.
The songwriters themselves are charming and easy to root for. While the cast often calls songwriting a competition during the show, the writers are always collaborative and lift each other up when it’s time to make a song. Hitmakers is at its best when we see just how talented these writers are — their ability to tailor songs for specific artists while adding their own personal flair to whatever genre is put before them. There are several moments of genuine songwriting heroism on display, too; the cast really hits their stride in episodes three and four in Nashville, where they create a bevy of potential hits for Shaboozey.
Nova Wav, JHart and Ferras’ “Tarantino” and “VVS Cowboy,” in particular, sound like genuine hip-hop country placements. And “Eleven,” which Johnson, JHart, Sevyn and Nova Wav’s Chi Coney write for Lisa, is a convincing and catchy K-Pop smash.
The only true tension that we’re reminded of throughout the show is the pressure to come away from a session with a hit that Legend, Usher, Lisa and Shaboozey will want to cut — and ironically, that’s one area on which we don’t get much resolution. Reid suggests that if Usher doesn’t take “Rose Gold,” he has an upcoming artist he may want to show the song to for consideration instead. JHart updates his fellow writers that Lisa is “supposedly… allegedly… maybe… potentially going to cut ‘Eleven.’” Nova Wav says Lainey Wilson might cut a country happy birthday song they wrote in Nashville.
And so we’re left to experience the daunting reality that songwriters in these sessions have to wrestle with every day: Are these songs actually hits? Are they going anywhere? Will the time we invested here lead to a reward or just be left in the ether?
Hitmakers at least got that part right.
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