It’s fairly indeniable that essentially the most essential a part of the music business — the songwriter — is essentially the most ignored and, usually, shortchanged. With the rising dominance of streaming over the previous decade and the looming risk of AI to the artwork type, songwriters have light even additional into the background as royalty charges have remained shockingly low, and the possibility of touchdown within the credit of a licensed hit has diminished as music has favored a amount market.

“Hitmakers,” Netflix‘s new unscripted actuality sequence specializing in a dozen songwriters behind chart-toppers for Ariana Grande, Justin Bieber and BTS — and has no relation to Selection’s long-established music occasion and canopy package deal of the identical title — barely addresses that elephant within the studio throughout its six-episode arc. As an alternative, it performs as a shiny fantasy specializing in the glitzy aspect of the hit machine: songwriting camps, or luxurious gatherings of confirmed hitmakers flown to unique locales to provide you with the subsequent large smash. These camps, typically funded by report labels or publishers, can heart on a selected artist or be a basic jam session. In actual life, most songwriting camps are considerably much less opulent. The writers don’t receives a commission upfront or obtain a per diem — a serious level of competition in the neighborhood — and work on contingency, hoping to safe a spot on tomorrow’s greatest track.

The present, streaming on Netflix as we speak, manages to be revealing but tone-deaf on the identical time, utilizing the tropes of splashy actuality TV to convey the workmanlike, normally low-paying world {of professional} songwriting. It’s no surprise, as lots of its government producers labored on “Promoting Sundown,” bringing that very same fast-cut type to a brand new realm. (Harvey Mason Jr., CEO of the Recording Academy, can be an EP and effectively conscious of the problems within the songwriting business.) Within the “Hitmakers” universe, writing is a glamorous way of life with non-public transportation and costly lodging — which it’s, for under the one p.c — whereas avoiding the precise actuality of it. 

For these writers, who share billions of streams and over a dozen Grammys between them, these realities are barely talked about on “Hitmakers,” a well-intentioned and entertaining but superficial look contained in the hit manufacturing unit. We see them popping bottles and consuming gourmand dinners, jet-setting to Cabo and the Bahamas. Just one songwriter, Trey Campbell, manages to steer the present again to actuality, explaining that regardless of credit on John Legend and Giveon songs, he nonetheless has to make ends meet by driving for Uber.

The music business is all about notion, and “Hitmakers” largely depicts it as a continuous, money-making social gathering. That, by some means, is to its profit. The problem of capturing the magic of the songwriting course of is that, very like with many artistic vocations, it’s largely meticulous and mundane. MTV’s 2007 sequence “I’m From Rolling Stone” involves thoughts as an early actuality present that overestimated the extent to which writing is a social sport, pitting six summer time interns in opposition to each other for a contributing editor place on the journal.

The place “Hitmakers” succeeds is in turning the stress cooker of songwriting right into a compelling spectacle. Throughout the six episodes, the songwriters — Tommy Brown, Sevyn Streeter, Nova Wav, JHart, Jenna Andrews, Stephen Kirk, Harv, Ferras, Ben Johnson, Whitney Phillips and Campbell — break up into three smaller teams, tasked with creating songs for Legend, Shaboozey and Blackpink’s Lisa. Every of the singers cameos to offer an concept of what they’re in search of, and off the groups go to provide you with an authentic track beneath a good deadline.

It’s in these multi-million greenback studios the place “Hitmakers” shines. Every author has his or her personal strengths, and it’s like watching athletes on the prime of their recreation attain throughout style strains to hatch kernels of concepts into full-blooded songs. “Hitmakers” intends to indicate the human aspect of songwriting, and the writers clearly love their craft. Their pleasure and glimpses of brilliance radiate off the display screen as a track’s puzzle items come collectively, with every group celebrating one another’s creations throughout listening periods on the finish of every episode.

“Hitmakers” skates by with out taking part in up an excessive amount of of the drama, though there’s certain to be loads with one thing as emotionally charged as songwriting. Through the episodes, Andrews and Phillips clear the air about tensions that arose throughout a session; Brown pep-talks Campbell, who let feelings get the very best of him whereas collaborating; Harv, Brown and Streeter confront Kirk about how he spoke to his spouse, Andrews, throughout a dinner at their residence in Nashville.

In one of many present’s most revealing moments, Johnson publicly challenges JHart after an concept mentioned of their session emerges out of one other, one the place Johnson wasn’t current. Artistic possession is commonly a grey space in group songwriting periods — numerous lawsuits have spilled out of the studio about this very topic — but not often can we see resolutions met earlier than they attain a degree of authorized competition. (Ultimately, JHart graciously gives Johnson publishing out of his private share, an incredible actuality present second that not often occurs in actuality.)

That’s about as actual because it will get on “Hitmakers,” a present that skims the business’s floor. On the finish of the final episode, the writers collect in a backroom at BLVD, Brown’s Los Angeles steakhouse. He orders two caviars, two branzinos, three Wagyu meatballs and three steaks for the desk. They share what success tales got here out of the periods: Legend liked “Cherry,” a plunky tune from the primary episode; Lainey Wilson may reduce “Completely happy Birthday,” written for Shaboozey; and Lisa is “supposedly, allegedly” going to report the swaggery “Eleven.”

All of them elevate their glasses in a toast: “At all times up, by no means down,” says Brown. “Unfold that cash throughout.” It’s a strong mantra for an business that stiffs its lifeblood — the songwriter — far too typically.

All episodes of “Hitmakers” at the moment are streaming on Netflix.