A look at how pop music became personal

Ever wonder what makes pop music so irresistible? David Hajdu, a music critic and professor at Columbia's School of Journalism, has spent a long time thinking about the question.

In Love for Sale: Pop Music in America, he explores the combination of luck, talent and hard work that goes into making a hit: this "product of mass culture that reaches millions of people ... at one time and works for each person in a personal way".

He begins his story in the 19th century with the cultural changes wrought by the widespread publication of sheet music and continues on into the 20th and 21st centuries with the rise of new music-making technologies: Tin Pan Alley, recordings, MTV and digitization.