Rick Beato says most modern popstars are just “vehicles” for songs crafted by professional songwriters

Rick Beato has called out the machinery behind modern pop and the way most popstars today just function as “vehicles” for songs crafted by teams of professional songwriters.

Using Sabrina Carpenter’s latest hit Manchild as an example, the producer and YouTuber explains how most fans don’t realise just how curated the process really is – or how little of the song may actually originate from the artist themselves.

“When an artist like Sabrina Carpenter is doing a new record,” says Beato, “she’s presented hundreds of songs to choose from. Or, she will go and ‘write’ with people she had hits with from the last record. Which she did – Amy Allen was one of the writers, and so was Jack Antonoff. And they will write new songs for this thing.”

“Yeah, she might be in the room for some of this stuff. But the fact of the matter is, these same people are all over multiple hit songs.”

According to Beato, hitmakers like Allen and Antonoff are part of a “professional songwriter group of people that write a majority of big hit songs out today that we hear constantly.”

“These things are created by the producers. And then they figure out what the image is going to be for the video, for the record. This stuff is all put together. And when I see people make videos on YouTube where they’re talking about her lyrics – what this Manchild thing means – it’s like ‘it doesn’t mean anything!’”

“They’re not written by these people. They’re no statement,” he says. “All of it is a completely calculated thing.”

While Beato acknowledges that artists like Carpenter may be musically capable – “I know she plays guitar and piano and everything. You can see videos of her doing that” – he remains skeptical of their involvement on the actual records.

“You think she’s playing anything on here? That’s Jack Antonoff playing that, I’m sure. These things are all just programmed. They bring her in, she sings over it, she reads all the lyrics, she might say ‘You know, I wouldn’t say that, I would say this,’ and she gets her songwriting credits on there. The fact of the matter is that these songwriters need artists that are young – let’s be honest about it – that are vehicles for their songs.”

“These are not songs coming out of Sabrina Carpenter’s head,” he continues. “I bet she doesn’t play one note on any of her records.”

At the heart of it, Beato says, is an old truth about the music industry: “This has been going on since the beginning of the music business. In order to get your song cut by a huge star, you have to give a piece of the song. Even if they wrote nothing, and it’s really terrible. Especially when there’s so little money in the business these days as compared to 25 years ago, even.”

The exception, in his view, is Billie Eilish and Finneas – one of the few major acts who not only co-write their music but play the parts too.

“She and her brother write the songs together. Not only do they write them, but he plays all the parts,” says Beato. “They’re one of the very few people.”