Music publishers institutionalized melody recycling via songwriting camps.

Evidence

This monopolistic aspect of pop music froze the charts into place, as few novice acts could challenge the existing winners. On top of that sense of stagnancy, retromania entered an even more intense phase with a rise in interpolations—hooks and melodies from older hits being repurposed in new songs. While the music industry had always relied on covers, and hip-hop had emerged from sampling, interpolations took recycling to another level. Music publishers organized songwriters into weeklong camps where they attempted to interpolate the company’s back catalog. — W. David Marx, Blank Space, 641

On top of that sense of stagnancy, retromania entered an even more intense phase with a rise in interpolations—hooks and melodies from older hits being repurposed in new songs. While the music industry had always relied on covers, and hip-hop had emerged from sampling, interpolations took recycling to another level. Music publishers organized songwriters into weeklong camps where they attempted to interpolate the company’s back catalog. In rare cases, interpolations achieved an elegance in referencing tradition: Ariana Grande’s “7 Rings” transformed The Sound of Music’s “My Favorite Things” into a trap anthem. For the most part, however, the practice suggested a total creative exhaustion, as though all possible melodies had been written. — W. David Marx, Blank Space, 641

Categorization

• SEED: The interpolation-camp mechanism is a concrete institutional detail worth an essay on how creative exhaustion gets industrialized.
• XREF: The interpolation weeklong camps are a concrete institutional mechanism for cultural flatness — evidence for the era’s lack of distinct identity.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — W. David Marx, Blank Space: A Cultural History of the…, 641