We got away from "Tin Pan Alley" music for awhile but it's back.
And when George Martin cast the Beatles as an early boy band, he made them ditch the leather jackets for suits and had them sing "tin pan"/"brill" song factory covers and some ballads in with "their own contributions".
It took them a number of albums before they got to be 'themselves' and even that was song factory production. Paul got tired of it and suggested that they "become" Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band where they could write material that didn't fit the old "Beatle music" mold. And after that, they increasingly became soloists working on albums together (and keeping Ringo out of it).
Woodstock folkies brought us to an era of financially successful singer-songwriters but other bands still had music created for them (some bands were even offered a 'hit' that they did not write and wouldn't be recording in the studio, session musicians would be hired, they'd play it live and make the public appearances in print and on tv/radio).
We haven't gotten away from "tin pan alley", people just can't find "the building" anymore.
Had to look up “Tin Pan Alley.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tin_Pan_Alley
Tin Pan Alley is the name given to the collection of New York City music publishers and songwriters who dominated the popular music of the United States in the late 19th century and early 20th century. The name originally referred to a specific place: West 28th Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenue in Manhattan, and a plaque (see below) on the sidewalk on 28th Street between Broadway and Sixth commemorates it.
The start of Tin Pan Alley is usually dated to about 1885, when a number of music publishers set up shop in the same district of Manhattan. The end of Tin Pan Alley is less clear cut. Some date it to the start of the Great Depression in the 1930s when the phonograph and radio supplanted sheet music as the driving force of American popular music, while others consider Tin Pan Alley to have continued into the 1950s when earlier styles of American popular music were upstaged by the rise of rock & roll, for which the Brill Building served much the same role as Tin Pan Alley had.
The origins of the name “Tin Pan Alley” are unclear. One account claims that it was a derogatory reference to the sound of many pianos resembling the banging of tin pans. Another version claims the name stemmed from the way that songwriters modified their pianos so that they had a more percussive sound. After many years, the term came to refer to the U.S. music industry in general.
All things must pass, and you’d better don’t invest your precious 401K dimes into the publishing rights of the Beetles catalog whose value diminishes with our every breath.
I mean, look, somebody here had to look up ‘Tin Pan Alley’! Beatles forever? Elvis forever? Sure, as long as forever lasts until your funeral. (Anticipating responses referring to one’s grandkids liking Laugh Me Do, I say but not their grandkids!)
My version of secret rock history has the over-educated and frustrated classical musician George Martin leading the school dropouts Beatle boys toward string quartets, flutes and eventually toward Sergeant Pepper’s ridiculous and altogether and unfortunately too influential self-indulgence and pretense. Pepper is his baby! It ain’t art, baby, it’s rock and roll. Thank Heaven for the Sex Pistols.