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PODCAST

Switched on Pop

Switched on Pop

A podcast about the making and meaning of popular music hosted by musicologist Nate Sloan and songwriter Charlie Harding. Episodes every other Wednesday.

music

All Episodes

34:34

Wonders: Bobby McFerrin

Switched on Pop ·

2023/01/31

In 1988, Bobby McFerrin recorded a song a cappella with a simple message: not to worry, and just enjoy life. That song, aptly titled “Don’t Worry, Be Happy,” topped the charts and become one of the most well known one-hit wonders of all time. In doing so, it also propelled McFerrin into the spotlight, winning him three Grammy awards and an eternal place in pop culture. His career, though, is more than just the Big Mouth Billy Bass: a deep dive reveals an incredible career in jazz, folk, and

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34:09

The New Wave of Paramore

Switched on Pop ·

2023/01/24

Six years after their last record, Paramore is back with new music, and their upcoming record seems to have an uncanny connection to the era of new wave. But what is “new wave” anyway? Is it just a period of time in music or something more? In this episode of Switched on Pop, we explore some of the tracks from This is Why, out February 10th, and connect them to the works of everyone from Talking Heads to Joy Division. Songs Discussed Paramore – C’est Comme Ça Olivia Rodrigo – good 4

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80:11

Taylor Swift and the music industry's next $20

Switched on Pop ·

2023/01/20

Streaming feels like it's both at its height and on a precipice. Musicians are fed up at getting paid fractions of a penny, and the whole business model seems precarious. Switched On Pop co-host Charlie Harding was talking about the challenges for streaming future with my friend Nilay Pattel, editor in chief of The Verge and host the podcast Decoder - a show about big ideas. And they taped a conversation about what’s next for streaming through the case study of Taylor Swift who has deftly navigated

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29:37

SZA's Endless Melody

Switched on Pop ·

2023/01/18

Why does SZA's latest album SOS hit different? It's the way her melodies don't repeat where you expect them they would, defying all the rules of pop . We break down how her endless melodies echo the intimate themes of her most recent release, and how they connect to genres ranging from gospel to Wagnerian opera. Songs Discussed SZA - Kill Bill, SOS, Shirt, Notice Me, Seek & Destroy, Gone Girl, Low, Smoking on My Ex Pack, Ghost in the Machine (ft Phoebe Bridgers), F2F Sam Smith & Kim Petras

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28:19

Too Fast? We’re Curious: The sped-up remix phenomenon

Switched on Pop ·

2023/01/10

Over the past few months, you may have heard your favorite song pop up on the Internet – just slightly faster. You’re not alone: the phenomenon of the “sped-up” remix has taken over social media, with everyone from Lady Gaga to Thundercat getting the tempo treatment. The popularity of the craze has led to millions of TikTok videos, Billboard number ones, and songs becoming relevant again, decades after release. Ever since the proliferation of these “remixes,” the big questions remain: where did

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35:04

ICYMI 90s Music Canon

Switched on Pop ·

2023/01/03

Matt Daniels, editor of the publication The Pudding, wanted to find out what songs from his youth would last into the future. So he designed a study that would test if Gen-Z had a grip on 90s culture. Hundreds of thousands of participants provided over 3 million data points. Daniels parsed through the data for insights. Sadly, the majority of his most beloved songs have not survived even one generation. Though most had been forgotten, he found that just a few songs had staying power across

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28:52

ICYMI: We *do* talk about Bruno

Switched on Pop ·

2022/12/27

The number one song on the charts is a bit of a mystery. “We Don’t Talk About Bruno” is the unlikely hit from Disney’s sleeper animated musical Encanto. Set in a mountainous village in Colombia, the film was a middling commercial success when it was released in Nov 2021. But in recent months it has become a pop culture phenomenon for a confluence of reasons: an expansive discourse on Colombian representation in media, fan videos on TikTok, and of course it's ear-wormy hits. The musical is yet

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29:59

Anitta & Rosalía on the borders of Latin pop

Switched on Pop ·

2022/12/20

When it comes to distinguishing what exactly Latin music is, what makes the cut? To some, it’s simply music from the Latin American region, and to others, it’s any music that is sung in Spanish – but much like the pop canon, the phrase encapsulates so many different eras, styles, and genres. Like any distinction, there’s also music on the periphery: specifically, the music of Brazil, where the sounds are similar but the main language is different, and Spain, where the history of colonization looms

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35:31

How Bad Bunny won 2022

Switched on Pop ·

2022/12/13

For Switched On Pop’s end of year coverage, we just have one superlative: who won 2022? The answer, of course, is Bad Bunny. This year alone, the prolific Puerto Rican artist has topped charts worldwide, became Spotify’s most streamed artist globally, and his record Un Verano Sin Ti has obtained many accolades including being the first Spanish-language album nominated for Album of the Year at the Grammys. The record itself serves as a textbook to the sounds of Latin America: over the course of 23

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33:47

The soft sounds of Kali Uchis (live from Vulture Fest)

Switched on Pop ·

2022/12/06

Through crafting a unique, cross-cultural sound, Kali Uchis has emerged as one of indie music’s most promising talents. From playing in jazz band as a kid to collaborating with Bootsy Collins and Kaytranada, the Grammy Award-winning artist has managed to take her bilingual, one-of-a-kind music to the Billboard charts while still keeping her DIY ethos. At this year’s Vulture Fest live in Los Angeles, host Charlie Harding talked with Uchis about her career, her songcraft and her two upcoming albums:

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27:04

Why do new Christmas songs fail?

Switched on Pop ·

2022/11/29

In case you missed it last year: why are there no new Christmas songs? One one hand, there's more holiday songs than we’ll ever need. Every year pop stars drop countless holiday-themed album. But despite the annual glut of Christmas releases, few of these new songs join the rotation of holiday classics. On Billboard's Holiday Hot 100 chart right now, there's only four songs from the past ten years that have made it to the top fifty. We listen to each of these holiday hits—from Kelly Clarkson, Ariana

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36:04

The Art of Flow

Switched on Pop ·

2022/11/22

In hip-hop, what draws us to an artist is not just the content of their lyrics but how they deliver them. Along with tapping your foot to the rhythm, understanding something called “flow” is essential to understanding hip-hop as a whole. In this episode of Switched On Pop, we interview genre icon DJ Jazzy Jeff on the concept of flow: what it is, how it applies to all music – not just hip-hop – and how any rapper’s flow can be analyzed under his guidelines. Taking his word for it, we put our

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24:02

Willow Smith rocks harder

Switched on Pop ·

2022/11/15

Coping Mechanism, Willow's new album, is her heaviest music yet. Charlie and Willow chat about the making of the new record and the many multitudes of rock music. Music Discussed The Anxiety - Meet Me At Our Spot Willow - Maybe It's My Fault, UR Town, Human Leach, PrettyGirlz, Lipstick, Why, Breakout, Hover Like a Goddess, Curious/Furious, Ur A Stranger Yungblood - Memories (with Willow) Deftones - Sextape Radiohead I Will Straight Line Stitch - What You Do To Me Killswitch Engage - My Curse Lamb

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32:51

The Sound of Sapphism

Switched on Pop ·

2022/11/08

In the 20th century, queer people had the phrase “are you a friend of Dorothy?” But in 2022, there’s the saying “do you listen to girl in red?” If you’re young, queer, or on Tiktok, you might have noticed a growing community of artists and listeners over the past few years under the banner of “sapphic pop,” a term recently coined referring to music by and/or for sapphics (a.k.a. women or femme folks attracted to other femme folks). Journalist Emma Madden defines the folk-inspired sound as having

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32:59

Scary Pockets funkify pop classics (with Lizzy McAlpine)

Switched on Pop ·

2022/11/01

Scary Pockets is the musical collective that has been transforming pop classics into funk anthems for over half a decade. Each week they release a new cover on YouTube featuring razor-sharp instrumentalists and a rotating cast of virtuosic lead singers. Amazingly, each of their 200-plus covers is arranged on the fly, in a span of about 90 minutes—capturing the talent and spontaneity of a group of musicians at the top of their game. We here at Switched on Pop were struck by the band's ability to

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37:45

Up late with Taylor Swift’s ‘Midnights’

Switched on Pop ·

2022/10/24

A Taylor Swift album is just not a collection of new music, it’s an exploration of a theme. For the last eight years, each release has embodied a single idea. Reputation marked a turn to the dark side, Lover a return to the light, and her pair of albums Folklore and Evermore painted acoustic, fictional landscapes. Each album propels fans to find covert lyrical connections to her personal life, and easter eggs to past compositions. Whereas Swift's pop star contemporaries have focused their

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33:40

Steve Lacy brings bedroom pop to the Billboard top

Switched on Pop ·

2022/10/18

It’s the song that launched a thousand TikTok videos – or over 500,000 to be exact: Steve Lacy’s “Bad Habit.” The track is a smooth, psychedelia tinged ode to yearning, currently spending its third week on the top of the Billboard Hot 100. Lacy is an artist dedicated to shifting form and convention, from his records with alternative R&B band The Internet to his productions for artists like Mac Miller and Vampire Weekend. Even in his solo work, his songs are unpredictable, deftly moving

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45:38

Why it hurts to release a record (with Sylvan Esso)

Switched on Pop ·

2022/10/11

Earlier this year, the members of Sylvan Esso took a gamble, making their "most free and wild and strange" album yet: No Rules Sandy. And to add to the overall theme of lawlessness, Amelia Meath and Nick Sanborn decided to do something equally as free and radical: they decided to forgo the typical multi-year album cycle as well as a standard promo campaign. While wrapped in what Amelia calls a “PR cocoon,” she began to think about the less tangible aspects of the album rollout process, and wanted to

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23:36

Santigold Sings Spirituals

Switched on Pop ·

2022/10/04

After a four-year hiatus – and a name drop on a Beyoncé remix – musical polymath Santigold is back with a brand new album. Known for her signature blend of genre-defying songcraft, the artist’s fourth studio album Spirituals is one of her most artistically challenging projects yet. It’s another venture into what she does best: addressing heavy themes through toe-tapping melodies. From Nate’s personal favorite, 2016’s “Can’t Get Enough of Myself,” to “My Horror,” a pan-genre sonic vision has always

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34:57

The future of music pt I

Switched on Pop ·

2022/09/27

In part 1 of our Vergecast: Future of Music series, Alex Cranz talks with Switched on Pop's Charlie Harding about the trends in music today that make new songs out of old material, and whether it's foreshadowing the future of pop. Further reading: Selena Quintanilla Will Sound Older on Her New Posthumous Album Michael Jackson songs removed from streaming services to 'move beyond' fake vocals controversy Shred with Green Day, with some help from AudioShake Invasion of the Vibe Snatchers Music

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306 results

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