Pete Ganbarg, a two-time Grammy-winning A&R executive who worked with Clive Davis at Arista and later J/RCA Records, has shared recollections of Davis's legendary A&R meetings following the music mogul's death on 22 June at the age of 94. Ganbarg's account offers a rare insider view of how Davis, revered for his uncanny ability to spot hit songs, ran his creative process, and highlights a working method built entirely around music rather than modern metrics such as streaming data or social media virality.

Ganbarg described impromptu, hours-long meetings in which staff pored over CDs organised into artist-specific "song folders" for stars such as Whitney Houston and Aretha Franklin, rating each track on a zero-to-ten scale where a six meant pass, seven was an album cut, and eight signified a hit. He recalled that Davis valued A&R staff highly, treating their numerical judgements as proxies for audience reaction rather than seeking their opinions to shape his own, with tracks like Houston's "My Love Is Your Love" standing out as a unanimous hit during their time working together.