The cases both for and against him can be built on the exact same evidence: that his ability to turn out consistent chart-toppers suggests something repetitive and formulaic. “If you look at his discography, there are so many gigantic songs,” says the music critic Maura Johnston. “He clearly has this formula that works. A friend said to me, ‘I can’t get ‘California Gurls’ out of my head. I hated it at first. But it totally overtook me.’ ” A Dr. Luke song reliably involves tension-building verses followed by a soaring, strap-yourself-in chorus (a poppified take on the old grunge approach); no end of bleep-blorp synthesizing (both instrumental and vocal) borrowed gleefully from eighties electro-pop; and an unapologetic, don’t-even-think-you-won’t-be-humming-this-all-summer hook. He’s successfully cracked the secret to what once seemed like a musical oxymoron: the aggressively sunny song that melds “the veneer of rock and the sheen of pop,” in the words of Sean Fennessey, a critic for Spin and the Village Voice, who adds, “It’s this amazing weaving of different genres. And you can’t really see the seams.” Of his work, Dr. Luke says simply, “I want to make songs that reach a lot of people and are fun and spread joy. You can make depressing music, that’s cool, and maybe I’ll want to do that sometime. But for now, I want fun stuff.”Or Diplo does with hip-hop. But in both cases, I think there's a useful acknowledgement that there is something inexplicable about the ability to just hear the sound of the moment, and to go out and create it. I like things like that, where you reach the limit of understanding and explanation.
On another note, the New York piece focuses on Dr. Luke's party anthems. I think he deserves a little bit more credit for emotional depth. He did three of my favorite songs on Pink's I'm Not Dead album, the hilarious bravado chant "Cuz I Can," the delightfully independent and a