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PODCAST

The Secret Life of Songs

Award-winning music analysis podcast, The Secret Life of Songs, returns with a new series exploring classic songs from the 1970s and 80s. Hear how the fallout from the disappointed hopes of the 1960s was explored in the work of Sly Stone and Joni Mitchell, how the unearthly new sounds unlocked by radical new music technology was used to express both utopian and dystopian impulses by Giorgio Moroder and the originators of Detroit Techno, and how the era’s most divisive cultural concept -

music music commentary

All Episodes

83:10

#20 - A Case of You / Joni Mitchell

The Secret Life of Songs ·

2025/11/20

Writing candidly about intimate, private moments and feelings is today such an accepted practice in pop songwriting that it can be startling to go back to 1971 and find Joni Mitchell reflecting that, at that point, 'the only thing that I could see to do fresh, that hadn't really been explored poetically, was the internal landscape. … [to] write from my own experience … was one of the few territories left for a poet to be a contributor of any kind'. The album she's talking about is Blue, and i...

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66:11

#19 - Streets of Philadelphia / Bruce Springsteen

The Secret Life of Songs ·

2025/11/06

When Bruce Springsteen was asked why he was invited to write the theme song for 'Philadelphia', the first mainstream motion picture about the AIDS crisis, and one of the first films made in Hollywood featuring a gay protagonist, he responded that the film's director, Jonathan Demme, had 'wanted to take a subject that people didn’t feel safe with and were frightened by and put it together with people that they did feel safe with'. The song that Springsteen would create in response to this brie...

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62:07

#18 - I Wanna Dance with Somebody (Who Loves Me) -...

The Secret Life of Songs ·

2025/10/23

'I Wanna Dance with Somebody' is now safely embedded in the pantheon of great songs: a 2023 Billboard poll named it the greatest pop song of all time, and it continues to be an ever-present on pop radio and wedding playlists. When it was first released, however, as the lead single from Whitney Houston's second album, it prompted a widespread critical backlash. Rolling Stone found it 'ridiculously safe' and the novelist Trey Ellis called it 'lifeless'. This would culminate in the notoriou...

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45:22

#17 - Time After Time / Cyndi Lauper

The Secret Life of Songs ·

2025/10/09

Of all the pop songs released in the era this series has been looking at, there are few which command the depth of love and affection as Cyndi Lauper's 'Time After Time'. It brings with it, for many listeners, a powerful weight of nostalgic associations and memories, which is one reason it’s the perfect choice for accompanying the mesmerising dance sequence at the end of the 1997 film, Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion, but is there something about the song itself - something which goes ...

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65:26

#16 - 9 to 5 / Dolly Parton

The Secret Life of Songs ·

2025/09/25

Why do we work? The answer might seem obvious; as teenagers the world over have long been told, the world does not owe you a living, but predictions by economists that technological advances would inevitably lead to shorter working hours have not been borne out. We work more than ever, and experience more stress and dissatisfaction with our lives as a result. As Dolly Parton's famous song about the working life, '9 to 5', puts it: 'it's enough to drive you crazy, if you let it'. It was releas...

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43:05

#15 - Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God) / Kate Bush

The Secret Life of Songs ·

2025/09/11

‘When I was little, I really wanted to be a psychiatrist. That's what I always said at school. I had this idea of helping people, I suppose, but I found the idea of people's inner psychology fascinating, particularly in my teens.’ This is Kate Bush, talking about what she wanted to do before becoming a musician. In this episode I explore whether the trace of ideas from contemporary psychology can be found in the songs she would go on to write and what light it might shine on the meaning of on...

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41:39

#14 - Good Life / Inner City

The Secret Life of Songs ·

2025/08/28

The 1970s were a period of intensifying fears about the rapid spread of technological complexity in the wake of environmental catastrophes such as the Three Mile Island accident and the popularity of dystopian sci-fi and 'tech-critical' books which warned that technology was already harming human wellbeing and would soon be out of control. In this context, then, what are we to make of the development of a musical style in the early 1980s known from the very start as Techno? And what of the fa...

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38:48

#13 - SOS / ABBA

The Secret Life of Songs ·

2025/08/14

Has there ever been a pop band which has been as loved - and as hated - as ABBA? Even in the period before they appeared on the Eurovision Song Contest, when they were only well-known in Sweden, there were protests held and satirical songs written about them. In parallel with the long history of critical condemnations of ABBA, however, they have attracted greater love and admiration, from a wider range of listeners, than perhaps any other band of the era. What explains this range of reactions...

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34:52

#11 - I Feel Love / Donna Summer

The Secret Life of Songs ·

2025/08/14

When Brian Eno first heard 'I Feel Love' by Donna Summer, produced by Giorgio Moroder in 1977, he declared that he had 'heard the sound of the future'. It was the first pop song to be entirely produced on a synthesiser and quickly came to be seen as an important milestone in the history of record production, pointing the way forward to the dominance of electronic technology in the decades following its release. Equally, it's a song which was immediately embraced by gay clubbing communities; w...

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28:55

#12 - Family Affair / Sly and the Family Stone

The Secret Life of Songs ·

2025/08/14

When people first encountered Sly and the Family Stone in their early performances in San Francisco they were often struck by how much they really seemed like a family. They eschewed starriness; no one was put on a pedestal and it was clear that each member was valued and cared for. In a few short years, however, as the 1970s dawned, the band and this idealism seemed to implode. Sly Stone, the band's songwriter, had retreated into his Beverly Hills mansion, making music virtually alone and in...

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0:59

Series 2 trailer

The Secret Life of Songs ·

2025/08/07

The return of the award-winning music analysis podcast, The Secret Life of Songs, is a major event in the worlds of podcasting and pop music writing. Building on the success of the first series, which was awarded Bronze in Best Arts & Culture Podcast at the British Podcast Awards 2021, the ten new episodes explore classic songs from the 1970s and 80s in ways which transform our understanding of popular music and break new ground for the podcast as a medium. We’ll hear how the fallout from...

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24:11

#10 - River Deep — Mountain High / Ike & Tina Turner

The Secret Life of Songs ·

2020/08/27

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27:30

#9 - The Makings of You / Curtis Mayfield

The Secret Life of Songs ·

2020/08/13

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24:46

#8 - Walkin' After Midnight & Crazy / Patsy Cline

The Secret Life of Songs ·

2020/07/30

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26:21

#7 - Cigarettes and Coffee / Otis Redding

The Secret Life of Songs ·

2020/07/16

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20:38

#6 - Jealous Guy / John Lennon

The Secret Life of Songs ·

2020/07/01

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23:10

#5 - Son of a Preacher Man / Dusty Springfield

The Secret Life of Songs ·

2020/06/17

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23:46

#4 - God Only Knows / The Beach Boys

The Secret Life of Songs ·

2020/06/04

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23:21

#1 - Bring It On Home to Me / Sam Cooke

The Secret Life of Songs ·

2020/05/21

How does a song make us feel like we want to go home? that we miss someone who has left us at a home that now feels nothing but empty? that they may never come home, though we'll never stop hoping? In this first episode, I look at Sam Cooke's song, 'Bring It On Home to Me', to introduce the concept of the 'home' chord and to explore all the ways Cooke uses melody, harmony, lyrics and more to achieve a powerful expression of missing someone, of longing for their

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23:32

#3 - You're All I Need to Get By / Marvin Gaye &...

The Secret Life of Songs ·

2020/05/21

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22 results

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