Mmm from what i've seen there isn't much secret sauce to it man.
Ian Kirkpatrick makes regular livestream making tunes and breaking down his songs (Made a lot of hits for Dua Lipa, Selena Gomez and a lot of current popstars), after watching all of them there isn't any big secret, he's just a chill dude experimenting with plugins and trying to make fresh sounds without a plan in mind, infact most of his streams are completely similar to what we do, he just dabs with some plugs and sounds to make good bits here and there for two hours until he forms kind of an idea, or not. He says that most ofthe songs he makes are shit and never see the light of day. His plugins are the same we can find, his techniques are the same we learn. No secret sauce.

 

Ed Sheeran tutorial : use the same 3 cheesy gtr chords for every song, sing about some meaningless story, overprocess.