There was a time when the most exciting musical projects arose from sheer spontaneity - two or three artists meet at a party, fall in together, and before long we have the Traveling Wilburys or, er, Jackson and McCartney's Say Say Say.
These days the model is different. In 2008, a company, let's say a shoe company, hires a big advertising firm. Executives at the ad firm call their teenage nieces in New York and London, and ask them what's cool. And then the shoe company throws money at people.
That is how we imagine Santogold, the Strokes' Julian Casablancas and Pharrell Williams from the Neptunes came to be working together on a song for Converse trainers. And Santogold - the scattershot American electro-punk who is currently one of the most talked-about artists - is fine with it. "It's like one of the main ways to get our music heard now and so it's stupid for artists to shy away from that," she said to Gigwise.
The new untitled song is "such a Pharrell track", Santogold said. We hope this means it recalls the heights of Justin Timberlake and not the lows of Skateboard P.
A video has also been shot, in which we assume Converse trainers will feature prominently.
Finally, if anyone's worrying that this kind of arbitrary commissioned project might somehow be lacking in a clear, creative vision, Santogold offers the following lucid insight: "Everybody on it does their own separate thing and we didn't do it together so it ends up being just this weird long song with sort of everybody with lots of their own personalities separate."
It's enough to make us long for Michael Jackson and Paul McCartney on a horse-drawn wagon.
