One Song - Iggy Pop's "Lust for Life"

Episode Date: November 13, 2025

How did “Lust for Life” become Iggy Pop’s ultimate reinvention? Diallo and LUXXURY dive into his Berlin partnership with David Bowie, unpack the unstoppable Motown-inspired drumbeat, and reveal the meaning behind one of Iggy’s most provocative lines. One Song Spotify Playlist Songs discussed: “Lust for Life” - Iggy Pop “Search and Destroy” - The Stooges “Stay” - David Bowie “Nightclubbing” - Iggy Pop “Rock and Roll (Pt. 2)” - Gary Glitter “Closer” - Nine Inch Nails “What In The World” - David Bowie “Sound and Vision” - David Bowie “The Passenger” - Iggy Pop “Heroes” - David Bowie “You Can’t Hurry Love” - The Supremes “Barbara Ann” - The Beach Boys “Rock Around the Clock” - Bill Haley and His Comets “Touch Me” - The Doors “C’mon Marianne” - Frankie Valli & the Four Seasons “Maneater” - Daryl Hall & John Oates “Town Called Malice” - The Jam “Are You Gonna Be My Girl?” - Jet “Fun House” - The Stooges “Down On The Street” - The Stooges Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Well, I'm just a modern guy. Of course, I've had it in the ear before. I don't know why the phrase, I've had it in the ear before. I don't know why that bothers me so much. Lexury today on One Song, we're focusing on a specific time and place. We're talking 1977 Berlin and an iconic collaboration between the Godfather of Pung and the Thin White Duke. That's right, y'all. And while this song wasn't a hit in the U.S. at the time, it has since become a cultural.

classic, thanks in part to a key placement in one of our mutual favorite films train spotting. Yes, yes. We're just two modern guys talking one song, and that song is Less for Life by Iggy Pop. I'm after writer-director and sometimes DJ Diallo Riddell. And I'm producer DJ songwriter and musicologist luxury, aka the guy who whispers, Interpolation. And this is one song. The show where we break down the stems and stories behind iconic songs across genres and tell you why they deserve one more listen. You will hear these songs like you've never heard them before.

And you can watch one song on YouTube and Spotify while you're there. Please like and subscribe. But don't join ICE. All right, Diyala, I've got an extra bounce in my step today. A little swing. Boom, boom, bum, baboon. It's so infectious. But tell me, Dialla, when did you first hear Lust for Life?

Oh, it was definitely in the opening scene of Tray's Body. Let's watch a snippet. it. Choose life, choose a job, choose a career, choose a family, choose a fucking big

television. It's so fun to see Obi-Wan Konomi running from old Bill. iconic opening scene, they're all running. We don't know from

what yet, but we suspect it's something that they did wrong. They did something wrong. And the police are about to arrest them. Racing, racing,

and they're in Scotland, right? Edinburgh or whatever, and then they almost get hit by a car and then it's freeze frame. It's such an iconic opening scene.

So much energy. So many good moves. movies begin with, they open on running. There's something cinematic about just seeing a guy run. I remember the first weekend I saw this movie. I actually saw this movie, A Clockwork Orange, and the movie Go all the same weekend. That's kind of the same energy. That makes a lot of sense.

Dude, I felt like I had done drugs from Go, a Clockwork Orange, and Tracepotting. And committed a lot of crimes and maybe gotten away with it, maybe not. There's something so subversive about the song, Less for Life, the song we're talking about today. Yeah. And I got to say, like, I associated with two things that they're, complete opposites. The movie Tradespotting and a commercial

for Cardival Cruises. Like, to me, there's something so weird with like these really weird subversive songs get dropped into commercials. I'm just like, not right,

all of us in the know who saw that ad were like, do they know what they're doing? Did they listen to the rest of the lyrics? A song about doing heroin now used to sell cruises to old people.

Incredible. Incredibly subversive. That's the sort of thing that divo would do. I love the fact that it happened. Devolution. But I don't think it happened again.

I think there'd be a lot more people on top of that information. But I want to say something about Trace Bodding. This soundtrack was really formative to be as a DJ. It had songs from some of my favorite at that time contemporary artists like Blurr, Underworld, Left Field, right next to legends like Lou Reed, Brian Eno, and of course, Iggy Pop. It inspired me to be more of an open format DJ and mixed genres and eras in interesting ways. Like, I feel like in a time before the iPod came along, the iPod. specifically, this was a soundtrack that mixed genres and put everything right next to everything

else. Yeah, this was like Smart Shuffle before there was Smart Shuffle. It really has a perfect flow to it to the sequencing. Perfect Day, of course, iconically is the moment you need to kind of rest from everything else. Great soundtrack. I still listen to it to this day. What about you, Luxury? What was the first time you heard Lus for Life? When I saw Trainspotting, I had heard that song before, but probably once on the radio years before, but he'd evoked a memory. As I'll be talking about later, that song has a lot of evocation in it because it's evoking a lot of sound from another era. So when I saw it, I was like, this sounds so familiar, but it was also kind of new to me. But at the same time,

I was a huge Iggy Pop fan from the Stooges. And let's just be clear, Iggy Pop is one of my heroes, one of my icons. And this is not our Stooges episode. There will be a separate Stooges episode. This is like we've done before with Ozzie. There will be a Sabbath episode separately. We're going to focus, however, for the sake of this one episode about Lus for Life, not just on Iggy and his solo career, but on the year 1977. Yeah, 1977 is a really big year. Yeah, and one of my favorite things about this phenomenon, and Iggy Pop is 1977, is that as kind of one of the forefathers of punk, right,

this dude just started in 1969. This is one of the first bricks in the wall that became the Ramones and the Sex Pistols and the Clash and everybody else in punk rock later. But in 1977, Iggy Pop kind of goes the opposite direction. What do you mean by that? What do you mean that Iggy went the other way? I would argue that at this moment in 1977, Iggy Pop, one of the godfathers of punk rock, along with David Bowie, are kind of crafting post-punk.

They're creating post-punk almost simultaneously with punk existing. I think that's the best way to describe what he's doing with the two iconic records that he makes with Bowie that we'll be talking about on this episode. Let's go back to the studios for a second, because I think that their last album, Raw Power, predates the 1977 punk wave by about four years. When you listen back today, it's not. not hard to hear why he's called the Godfather of Punk.

The Stooges were really just, they were ahead of their time. Let's listen to a little bit of that period of their output. Let's listen to Search and Destroy. I thought it was going to be out. Ow! I love that song. I freaking love that song. So here's the thing, David Bowie mixed that song, and he mixed it so poorly.

It's one of the worst mixed songs of all time. It's insane. I've gone into it to like analyze it and figure out, how do you fix this problem, which they tried to do years later. I bought the remix version. It is no better. It's a strange mix. It's a great song.

It's not a problem. It's one of those things where by the book, it's not doing things correctly, but we love this song and we love the energy. But his voice is like crazy loud. The drums are like this tiny little being in a box in the closet over there. It's so weird. But it's great. Was it the mics?

Like, what is going on there? I'm sure there are wonderful analyses out there. I've literally, with the stems, tried to remix this song and failed miserably. Like, I can't, the energy was, to quote Tank from our Tank episode, which we should go back and listen to. We should always call Tank. Tank had a wonderful line about perfection is how it turned out. Yeah. That was the perfect way.

Yeah. So it wasn't perfect by the book. He wasn't talking about Search and Destroy, but he was making a general point. Absolutely. He was talking exactly. We don't know Tank's opinion about Search and Destroy. I would love to know what Tank thinks about Search and Destroy. And I think he'd agree that because the vibe was the vibe and that was the accurate, correct vibe for this song.

It's why it's one of the greatest. this punk, proto-punk songs of all time. But, you know, by the book, if you ask a mixing engineer who had only, you know, spent time at Berkeley and full sale, like, in the books and, like, learning the technical perfection techniques. They do, like, well, did everything wrong. Throw this away, delete it. Start again.

So as much as this is our Eey-pop episode, it's also our Iggy and David Bowie episode, because Bowie was so crucial to Iggy Pop's life in this moment, both creatively and personally. After this dude just broke up in 73, Iggy was in a pretty bad place. He was in and out of rehab. As the story goes, Iggy was in such a bad place that he checked himself into a psychiatric hospital and Bowie visits him, you know,

while he's staying there. Bowie wanted to keep his friend on track and help him get it back on his feet. Invites Iggy to go on the station to station tour in 1976. By the way, station of station, what of my favorite? That might be my favorite Boehre record, too.

It's so good. Let's hear a little bit of stay off of station to station. And after that tour, they decided to move to Berlin. Truth be told, both of them were battling addictions. How do you think he stayed the thin white duke? This is such a well-documented period.

It's sort of like their lost time together in the wilderness. I found some great quotes about Bowies. He was living in L.A. in 75. And his cocaine addiction was so all-encompassing that apparently he refused to use elevators. He subsisted. Why elevators? What was wrong with elevators? I don't know.

Fear of Heights or something. He subsisted on a diet of red and green peppers, milk and cocaine. And he wouldn't sleep for three or four days at a time and was deathly afraid of Jimmy Page. See, kids, this is what the white stuff will do to you. Stay away from powders is all I'm saying. And stay away from Jimmy Page on an elevator, apparently. So yes, they wanted to stay away for the drug scene in L.A., but before landing in Berlin, they stayed in France for a few months and started recording Iggy's first solo album, The Idiot. Let's hear one of my favorite Iggy Pop songs from this period.

This is nightclubbing. It's so good. I like songs that are simple sometimes. You know, he's just like, hey, we're nightclubbing. Yeah. Sounds like a guy who's been out clubbing a little bit too much. Yeah, that's the, you feel it in the sounds. You feel it, yeah.

The vibe in the sounds. By the way. Maybe don't nightclub tonight. I didn't expect that we'd be talking about Gary Glitter so much, but there's such a rock and roll part two vibe in the beat, right? Because rhythmically it's done to touch. I can see that. Yeah, yeah.

I can see that. I'll just play it quickly. Right? It's like the. It's slowed down, though. Slowed down, but that slowed down, including the slapback sounds. This feels like an after-hours party in 1977. Yeah, if you chopped and screwed Gary Glitter Part 1 and 2, it becomes nightclub in, right?

By the way, do you also know what song was famously used that beat as a sample? No. The beat, by the way, comes from a drum machine. It might be the, I looked it up. It's not the Lynn. I think it was not the Lynn. It precedes even the CR-78 by a few years. It might be the Roland TR-55.

and Bowie wanted to replace it with real drums, but Iggy Pop is like, no, it sounds really cool. You gotta keep that vibe, right, the robotic kind of motoric feeling you're getting. Yeah. was sampled in a song you may recognize. Oh, God, are you serious? That's nine inch nails closer. Which I think we should do an episode on, by the way. We will. We'll just do double. And again, this is one of this.

That's the same beat. It's one of the scenarios. It's not the same rhythm, but it's the same sound. I think they isolated the kick and maybe the snare with a layer to it. It's clearly been processed. Again, it comes from a roll and drum machine. So this is one of the situations that we've talked about in the Missy Elliott episode. The sample is embedding a free-to-use sound that's licensed for the public to use at large.

That's so cool. It's so cool. I love that reuse of sound like that. And embedded in it is the history. Berlin 75. Yeah. Exactly. I also love how Iggy himself describes the inning.

He describes it as a cross between James Brown and Craftworks. Like there's such a vast space between those two artists, like the organic funk of a James and craftwork. That's such a cool place. You hear it when you look for it. But that was the mission statement. Jimmy Osterberg, his name is Jim. All his friends call Iggy Pop Jim.

Jim's favorite artist, I believe, as a performer, he's talked about this many times, is James Brown. So when he's on stage, he's picturing like next level James Brown, the showmanship. And it kind of makes sense when you plug it in and think, oh, that's what he's doing up there with the peanut butter and the blood and the like jumping in the crowd. It's like next level James Brown. It makes skinny look good. Like it wouldn't work if Iggy, like, was out of shape still like taking the shirt off after all these shirts. Like it kind of works because he's so.

He's lying. Yeah. I agree. And then the craftwork comes into play because when they would drive around, Bowie and Iggy were being shuttled around in this time period between studios in Berlin and Munich and France. They had like

a little record player in the limo that they were being driven in and they had three records and one of them was... How do they power it? In the 70s. How did they power it? Oh, a record player in the car? I don't know. When you're rich in the 70s, you figure things out, I guess. Good question. They had cell phones back then too, though, right?

In the 70s? Yeah, there's like pictures of people in 1974 in their car on a film. Like rich people with like fur coat. on like ballers. I don't understand. This is not a technology podcast. If it were, I could tell you the answer. I just know rich people have magic tricks to do what they need to do.

That's just a thing. That's fantastic. I mean to look forward to both of them. But yes, I love the sound on nightclubbing. I love how guitarist Phil Palmer explained what he was told to do by Bo. He was sort of acting like a director. Bowie was like... He was like a conductor to all the session players that he had brought in.

Some of them were his longstanding collaborators like Carlos Alamo. and also Phil Palmer, who played guitar on this, who said that Bowie wanted him to make a, quote, noisy ruckus. And when Phil said, well, what key are we in? Boy was like, the key is irrelevant. I want you to imagine you're walking down the street at three in the morning. And each club you pass, you're getting a different racket coming out of every door. I love that. I love that.

Can somebody do that in L.A.? Can somebody just, hey, you're walking down sunset. Yeah. It's 2 a.m. everything's closing. Right. Just do a song about that. This is the soundtrack.

Knowing that, like, I think intuitively it sounded like something like that. but now that I know that was the intent, it makes so much sense. So cool. But by the way, Boy wasn't just producing. He was also co-writing alongside Iggy and playing on many of the songs on Lus for Life and The Idiot. The way Iggy described their working relationship was that he was Bowie's Giddy Pig. He said, if Boy who had an idea and wasn't sure how to approach it,

he would write or arrange something in a similar manner for one of Iggy's projects. That's right. And this is maybe a good time to point out that these two records were talking about The Idiot and then into lust for life. There's a major distinction, I would say, draw between them. In that the idiot is very much a collaboration where Bowie's leading the way and Iggy's learning the ropes. And even sonically, you listen back to The Idiot.

It's right next to Lowe. They were a record, in fact, Lowe was recorded after. Bowie made sure that Lowe came out first so people, when the key was ripping the idiot off. But the idiot actually came first. They made that one first. But sonically, they really fit together. And then for Lus for Life,

Iggy's a little bit pushing back on the Bowie in zones. He's like, I kind of want this one to be a little bit little more me. I'm a little tired of everyone asking us, asking me in interviews about the Bowie factor. Yeah. So there's a big sonic change, I would say. They're both incredible records. They're both 1977. Let's not forget. They're cranking them out. And then Bowie goes on to do heroes, like four records in Berlin in this period of time. But I just wanted to sort of, as we're talking about it, I'm sort of thinking about this and realizing there's a subtle change that happens into Less for Life, which is the song we're going to be focused on today. It's a little more rock and roll,

a little more throwback. Whereas the idiot and low are kind of more the sound of the future. That's where the craft work and the electronic stuff comes in. But you're absolutely right, Diallo, those two records, Bowie is mainly being the musical director. He's performing on the tracks. Iggy is mainly on lyrics, but sometimes there's some cross-pollination. For example, let's hear a Bowie song. This is What in the World from Lowe

and see if you can make out Iggy's backing vocals in there. I hear Jim. I hear Jim. I hear it in there, too. By the way, listening to that makes me realize, too, One of the major things about these records is this is like in the weeds thing for the Sonic nerds. It's not in the song today,

but there was this really important invention called the Even Tide Harmonizer. That snare sound is iconic. Once Tony Visconti made the drums on the record low, have that sound that you just heard, which it didn't sound like what snare drums normally sounded like. This was the beginning of some of these machines and devices, adding capabilities.

It wasn't a drum machine. It's an effect that was sort of like, a delay. It thickens it. It gives us this otherworldly feel. And it's one of the most famous snare sounds of all time. Like producers legendarily will refer to it even to this day. It's like, I wanted to sound like Lowe. I wanted to sound like the snare on Lowe. So low is part of what Bowie fans referred to as the Berlin trilogy, which is Low Heroes and Lodger. I didn't realize people had a term for Ease the idiot and less for life releases. But I read people referred to it as the Berlin diptic. Hey. That sounds like it is.

old, you're a diptick. Burlington. Hey. Which is, I think the only time I've ever said diptic in my life. Yeah, I don't think I'll be saying it at all. I got it. It doesn't have the same ring. You own that word.

It's all yours. So after the idiot, they go out on the idiot tour and the band's getting tighter and they're also trying out new material. Yeah, and it should be said that Bowie's on this tour with them. Bowie's playing keyboards and he's sort of in the background. That's a good concert. Yeah, he isn't always looking at the audience. He wanted to not take the shine off of Iggy Pop.

Of course, people in the audience are like, oh my God, it's David Bowie. Who's that tall white guy? up there. Who's that thin white? Who's that thin white? After the tour, they get back to Berlin, and they go straight to Hansa Studios and record a mix, Lest for Life in just eight days. Let's listen to a clip from another track off Lus for Life.

This is The Passenger, which is a classic cut. Here's Iggy performing the song live in 1977 in Manchester. By the way, what is the passenger about? According to Iggy, first of all, the passenger was co-examination. written by Ricky Gardner, who's the guitar player on the song we're talking about today. And actually Ricky Gardner is credited as being one of the kind of collaborative nucleus for this record.

It was him and Bowie and Iggy Pop hold up writing a lot of songs together. This is one of them. But apparently, according to Iggy, it partially comes from a Jim Morrison poem called The Lords. It also has a connection to an Antonioni movie called The Passenger with Jack Nicholson. Oh, wow. That Biggie had seen a billboard

what he was driving down sunset. I love this. He was a big Jim Morrison fan. This is of my favorite stuff. He was a big Doors fan. They were labelmates. Yeah, for sure. I mean, there's obviously a Jim Morrison stage presence connection with Iggy as well, right? Yeah.

Who came before. There's another connection I'll be pointing out a little bit later. I don't want to ruin it. And then the last one is simply what we were talking about a minute ago. They were driving, being driven around. He was the passenger. He was literally the passenger. From station to station.

I love it. When we get back, we'll unpack the ukulele beginnings of Less for Life and discover the unlikely source of that Motown-esque rhythm section. Don't go anywhere. Welcome back to One. song. So before we get into the stems, let's talk about how this song began. Iggy and Bowie were not only close collaborators during this time, but they were also living together. And so one night, they're watching TV when Bowie is captivated by a blippy call signal that the American Forces Network is playing. So he picks up his ukulele and starts playing along with it,

and then it becomes lust for life. And this is post-World War II, Berlin, not post-the-wall, has fallen down Berlin. Are they in East Berlin or West Berlin? They're in West Berlin, but they can see East Berlin. In fact, in the song Heroes, which is also done in this area, they talk about, I remember standing by the wall. That's great song. That's one of the all-time grades. It's insane that these four records, there's also, actually technically in 1977, five records came out between the two of them because Iggy actually had a third record, which was just a

re-release of Kill City. So it's not a diptic. It's not a diptic. Well, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, it's still a diptic. He had recorded it in 75. It was kind of like a fourth Stooges record that never happened. My point is five records, iconic records happening in one year. I love it when people have like these like weird, very prolific periods.

Yeah. Well, it helps. It helps to not sleep and be on drugs the whole time. There's actually a really funny quote where you get. Pay attention, kids. It helps to not sleep and be on drugs. One song has a lesson for you. That's how we do this show. We recorded five of these episodes of one day. I'm telling you. It's funny you said that because they actually really.

wrote all the songs and recorded and mixed this entire record in eight days. So they were extraordinarily prolific and tight. That's so crazy. With their, you know, efficient. We tried to do this show in eight days. It did not work. There's a really funny line. Remember before I was alluding to how for less for life,

Iggy was starting to maybe try to break away a little bit. Yeah. There's this funny line I read. He said, he wanted Bowie to have a little bit less input, so he didn't sleep very often because he had to get there first. Quote, Bowie's a hell of a fast guy. I realized I had to be quicker than him. Otherwise, whose album was it going to be?

So that's really interesting to think about it, setting the tone of like, they're starting to separate a little bit. And they actually was a three-record deal. They ended up not doing the third record together. So Les for Life is the end of their like collaborative moment, but what a collaborative moment it is. Let's get into the drums. What's going on with the drums?

Because I think you said earlier that they have this sort of Motown appeal, and I would agree. All right, let's listen to those Motown drums. These are played by Hunt Sales. That's right, son of Supi. Along with that's literally soupy sales Television star Suppy sales is one of those iconic early

television comedy stars He's like a Borchbelte comedian right? He's a Borchbel comedian who made the transition to TV We've lost everybody under 50 This conversation I feel like they had puppets on Suppy sales The show, did they? I feel like they did it was very funny

Before the puppets Supi had puppets I feel like I've gone back to watch those like early shows And they're kind of funny They're pretty good They're pretty good test of time Do we leave out anything else? No.

Oh, you left out one more thing? Uh-huh. Well, let's get to it. Uh-huh. See you, folks. Here's the drums. And now listen for here. There starts to be this overdub in one channel.

You hear a chick, chick, chick, and on the other side, you'll hear a tambourine come in to kind of lock it in because it's so wonderfully messy and big and loud. Okay, here comes overdub one. Tambourine. Two, two, two, one, two. Can you do play him? Leave it play him. I'm going to lay it up. I need love love to ease my mind

It sounds just like Motown, right? It sounds just like the Supremes. It's the Supremes. You can't hurry love. I'm glad we're going to pause here for a minute to talk about that beats evocation moment. Right on. Perfect.

So what does that beat remind you of? Well, a lot of us, it reminds us of Motown in the 60s. Music to drive to, as Barry would have said. So what's interesting about that rhythmic motif, it's kind of the riff of the song. doon, doon, doon, doon, doon, doon, which we'll talk about these evocation things in a second. But it is the driving motif of the song.

It is the closest thing we have in ways, and this will be apparent when we get the vocals to a melody. Like what we're hearing in the whole song is really just this riff, played on different instruments. There's not a lot of counter rhythms. There are actually no counter rhythms in the percussion. There's one or two overdubs that kind of play off of it, but it is such a prominent through line of the entire song

in everything that you hear. It's the core. I would even argue it's the melody of the song. I think you're right. This feels like the melody of the song. And I love that Hunt Sails, the drummer, said that he was definitely inspired by You Can't Hurry Love by the Supraise. But he was also inspired by this song.

George, George of the Jungle Strong as he can be. That is George of the Jungle. Theme song, right. Of an early 60s cartoon. I love that. The drums are so big. They're so big. And you know what?

For the longest time, I assumed that they were either overdubs of a Tom overdub with two hands, along with the track kid going on the snare. Like, until I saw live footage, and Hunt Sales is playing that beat wholesale. He's doing the whole thing. I'll play you some footage. It's just his kick drum.

Wow. He's playing the whole beat. I love it when you go see artists perform live. And the songs are faster. Oh, yeah. That is my preference. I hate it when you go to a live performance, a concert, and motherfuckers have slowed it down way too much.

Oh, I can go one better. I'm like, how old are you? Fucking, let's go fast. You don't even have to go to the show for that. It happens in this song. In the beginning of the song, we're at about 100, 101. By the very end of it, listen to this. We go crazy at the end.

We're at like 107. Here we go. Crazy. So that speeds up by six or seven BPM, just within the stand of the recorded song. Yeah, I love that. Because it's so exciting, and they're all excited, and they're all on drugs. Don't quantize.

Don't quantize. Just get into the groove. Absolutely, yeah. I also heard that they set up the drums in the middle of the room so they get like a really big sound, like, you know, more space to bounce off the wall. You hear the room sound. That's a big part of what you're hearing. Stephen Morris from Joy Division in your order has said, quote,

"'Lust for Life, the drum sound, not huge but massive. The loudest symbols known to man. I wanted to sound like that still do. It's such an iconic sound, and the hugeness of it is in many ways the result of it being recorded. That's so right. The symbols are like front and center. Yeah. Yeah.

Which is not typically the case. It's simultaneously chaos and order because it's also keeping everything else together. But when you listen to it isolated, it's like, that's chaos. That's a party happening. A fun party. A scary party. Can't Hurry Love came out in July 66. That's the Supremes.

It's a very Motown sound. So when in 1977, they're playing this beat. it's evoking all the things. It's got a retro. It's very retro. It's already sound, even though that was only 10 years ago, it was already retro sounding,

and I think that's clearly a conscious goal, is to evoke something from the past. But specifically that rhythm, the doon, doon, doon, doon, doon, doon to doon, it's connected to Barbara Ann. Barbara Ann, Barbara Ann, which is from 1961.

Which is from 1961. We also talk about how it's connected to the Bill Haley sax solo on 1954's, rock around the clock. I found a couple of new things, one of which, talking about the doors earlier,

this is the Doors connection. So Doors manager, Danny Sugarman, claimed to his deathbed that this song and that riff was ripping off a Doors song, and here it is. Come on, come on. Right.

Oh, that's so, I hear it. I hear it. Come on, come on, come on. Touch me, baby. That's Touch Me from 1968, which was probably evoking the Motown and the other thing. Of course.

From that lineage. Of course. And one last thing, there was a song that that song was accused to ripping off at the time, which was a four-season song called Come on, Marianne from 67. Here's that.

Because even with the break into the vocals, touch me, babe, there's definitely some connective tissue there. It's just one of those situations where there's a couple of ideas that are rhythmic. You can piece together to write a completely new song.

These are not ownable ideas, the rhythm, or the idea of stopping and then singing. But when you put them together in that order, it evokes the other song, but it's perfectly legal and it's a cool connection. So that's the trope, that evocation combination

takes us all the way through hollow notes, man eater, town call malice. Are you going to be my girl by Jet? They're just using that same rhythm. In some cases, not even on the drums, on the baseline in the Jett song. But that's why you think of them immediately.

It is such a melodic sounding motif, I would say. There's a part of me that thinks like, nobody should know, bop, bop, bap, bap. Oh, absolutely. You can own that. You know, that's just like, That's just a groove.

And it goes back to jazz, as we again mentioned. Exactly. I can guarantee you at some point. Some black jazz, man. Yeah, 100%. And other people caught on. So we have HUD sales on drums. We have Tony sales on bass.

That's right. And I feel like the bass is pretty prominent in this song. So what can you tell us about the bass? All right. Brother rhythm section. Let's listen. Little Phil coming up here. And he's kind of just grooving the whole time like that.

And then he goes up to the five. Can't not, this is snappy song. This song is snappy. Does it go up again? Okay, so let's talk about the arrangement. Yeah. Because you're going to ask me about that. It's a good question.

This is a weird song arrangement-wise. It's doing a funny thing that I was breaking it down. I was trying to figure out what it is. I think it's a little bit evoking that blues, 12-bar blues thing we've been talking about. But it's not a 12-bar blues. So it sort of breaks your brain a little bit. Broke my brain trying to break it down being like, oh, it's kind of doing what your typical 1-4-5 over 12-bars thing does.

Go back to our job. Janelle Monet episode, we talked about that in detail. But it isn't a 12 bar blues. It's not even 12 bars. The structure itself kind of fluctuates. It's definitely the sign of a live band performing and somebody raising their hand and saying, do that again. You know, kind of in real time reacting to the moment. And that's really clear when you notice that in the middle of the song, what had been a

really short chorus earlier was just four bars less for life. It becomes like 22 bars. It just kind of keeps on going. They keep on cycling. So it's not a 12 bar blues. it's one five, one five. And then when we get to the just of a modern guy, I'm calling that the pre-chorus.

That goes to the seven. And then it goes four. I had it in the ear before. That's just this little four-bar thing that breaks up the one-five, one-five with the rest of the song. And that happens about four times throughout the whole song. Got it. Yeah, I think this non-traditional structure sort of speaks to why he's the godfather of punk.

He's kind of playing by his own rules. And like you said, I hadn't really thought about it. But, like, yeah, at first the chorus is, like, pretty short. And then they do the chorus for a really long time. It's like a minute and change the second time around. Absolutely. Yeah, that's super cool. And then they kind of go back, and it feels like for verse three,

because verse three is verse one again, they just repeated verse one. For the last minute and a half of the song is then just going back to the beginning. And it just feels like a band going, hey, let's just keep playing the song. We're enjoying it. They're three and a half minutes in. They could have been done by them. Totally. Let's keep going.

You don't often think of, like, punk ever, like, crossing genres with, like, jam bands, but this almost feels like a proto-punk jam. Yeah. You know, a big part of Iggy Pop's music career from the Studez onward is a combination of jamminess that James Brown is in the mix, both in the musicianship too. It's a rhythmic, he's a rhythmic guy. All of his bands are rhythmic, they're groove-oriented. It's not big melodic, solos and wailing.

It's mostly about this groove thing. So the groove of this song is very Iggy Pop. My favorite Stoja song of all time is fun. house and that ain't nothing but a groove. I love that record. That whole record is great. My favorite one, since you mentioned it, is the opening track of that record, which is down on the street.

That song grooves so hard. It's one of my favorite intros of an album of all time. Yeah. Can you play us the bass on that pre-chorus? Yeah. Let's bring some drums in because there's some fun fills coming up. So good. You know what's crazy about that kick drum?

That's what it was. I'm now figuring out what I thought for years that Hunt Sales was playing like an overdub of a floor tom. Yeah. Because it's the kick drum is not muffled at all. Like if this were a Fleetwood Mac session happening simultaneously, by the way, in 1977, around here in L.A. It would have been dry. It would have been this like perfectly crafted tiny little big sound. It would be clean.

But that is a kick drum that does not sound like a kick drum. It sounds like a big kick drum where you don't have the back of it. you take the back off. Maybe you don't even put a pillow in there. It has so much tone to it, boom, boom, boom, that it sounds like a floor tom, which was probably intentional, given the George of the Jungle,

sort of in what they were doing coming from people playing Tom's on those other beats. So what's happening with the guitars? We have two guitar players on this tune. We mentioned Ricky Gardner earlier because he co-wrote the passenger. It's him and Carlos Alamar,

who is Bowie's longtime band leader and toured with him for many years and collaborated on many incredible songs. So the two of them are playing the guitars that you're about to hear. Who played which, I'm not sure, because they've both been credited in various sources as lead. But it's also hard to decide what the lead is. It'll make sense when we listen and you're like, what's going on here? It's a cool cacophony of cool parts.

I'll just jump in and let's listen to Ricky Gardner and or Carlos Alamar. So there's a twangy part that sounds like this. Swangy part. And then there's what I called a plucky part. And it kind of interplay. And I'll bring in the other guitar with that. And it's like wonderfully messy. It's like maybe three different parts that interplay.

And it sounds like honestly, it sounds like nobody ever really talks about John Lennon, the guitarist. But it sounds like early. Oh, I like that. Early John Lennon. It's got so much vibe to. Yeah.

It's just got that plucky stuff. It's plucky and vibey. I'll bring in some of the other instruments because this is one of those songs where everything on its own sounds a little bit like wonderfully messy and imperfect and human and maybe a little chaotic and then when they all lock in you're like, wow, how did that happen?

That really works. And you know what's so funny? You say like it's messy and literally in my brain I'm thinking like why is this the song that like AI couldn't produce? You know what I mean? Like there's so much messy humanity in it. It's ungritted. We go from 101 at the beginning to 106 BPM by the end. It's a bunch of musicians playing together in Berlin,

vibing with baby substances or sleeplessness in the mix. And again, I'll bring it in so you can hear how all these parts locked together. Kind of going back through it, I think what locks it in, earlier I mentioned there's that on the two and four, we have that overdubbed hi-hat chick as well as a tambourine. Those two elements probably keep this song from going off the rails into the Autobahn, fast lane, crashing in a violent mess. So I'll play that for you, and let's see how that.

happens. I love it. It's perfect. It's fucking rock and roll. That's what rock and roll is. You know, the remedy episode, a few episodes back, it's a similar thing when you have a bunch of musicians playing music. They will naturally fluctuate with their rhythms and their tempos. It's locking in maybe to the drummer. There's sort of one person whose job may be like a conductor or orchestra to keep it from getting too insane and that's usually the drummer. Yeah. And in this case, what we're hearing is like it's just barely not going off the rail. And that's the energy of the song. That's the energy.

It's so funny because I see my kids practicing their piano or practicing any of their instruments. Sometimes I'm a little sad because I'm like, will there be music made by real human beings? Or are we all just going to like put in prompts and have the AI created for us? But then I hear stuff like this. And I'm like, oh, I think we're safe for now because like you said, that's sort of like unplanned chaos. Yeah. Well, can I give you... It's really hard for a machine to duplicate.

I think it's impossible for a machine to duplicate. And can I just give you my really quick hot take on AI and music? Yeah, go for it. This is real simple. Because this is like the most un-AI song of all time. I think that when you separate process and product, it's everything. There are times when people or situations are functional. Like, I need to write a hit song tomorrow or just another track for this record.

There are reasons why you'd want to be fast. A deadline. Yeah. Right. No, I think that there are times when you have some deadline or something like that, and maybe you're looking for assistance. Then there are use cases where AI can perhaps generate ideas that you choose from and write a song on top, whatever it is. But as an artist myself, I'm almost never like in a hurry to get to the outcome and need, I don't need help. That's beautiful.

I'm enjoying trying to find it. And AI has like some functional tools, you know, like maybe no different from a splice sample, like prompt me to do something. or a drum machine beat. AI has some similar prompting tools like that that can help me on my journey, but I want to enjoy the process. I want to be just buried in not knowing where this goes and feeling it lead me somewhere. So that's kind of my simplified take at this moment. When my son comes up to me, it's like, well, AI is going to ruin everything. I'm like, I think there's still going to be artists. Yeah. Who want to spend time figuring it out. I've read AI generated comedy scripts and they're not fun. There's also that. They're real not funny. They're aggressively.

unfunny. So I think some things are safe for now. Yeah, it's a use case situation. Now, let me just say, as a casual listener to this song, I don't know that I hear a piano in it, but I guarantee you, when you play me some piano stubs, I'll be like, oh yeah, that's there. But I feel like the piano's not prominent in this song. What's the piano doing in this song? And that is Mr. David Bowie on the keys. Really? On the 88s. He's playing a little... He's not showboating because I'll tell you, right now, I'm trying to hear it in my head. I don't know that I hear much piano. Let's see if I can isolate a little bit for you. It is very much in the mix buried. It's very low in the mix. But it's there. Here's some piano. There it is. Just playing the motif. A little harmonization there. By the way,

there's a little harmonization on the guitar there, too. So they're just using the motif and varying it a little bit by going to the major third instead of the root note. But like motif drives everything. Hunt Sales is driving this truck all the way. He's driving the truck. Driving the truck. trying to not go off the side of the road. That's right. So we know that Bowie came up with the title, but Iggy was the main lyricist on this song. He said that the lyrics were based

on the novel The Ticket That Exploded and the Soft Machine by William Burroughs and also his personal experiences. So let's hear a little bit of the lyrics as sung by Jim, aka Iggy Pop. James Newell Osterberg, Jr.

From Ipsilante, Michigan. I've been hurting since I bought the gimmick. about something called love yeah something called love well that's like hypnotizing chickens so that hypnotizing hypnotizing chickens yeah apparently

that's also part of the Burroughs novel that's what it comes from that's one of the characters this party's fucked up can we just talk he's talking about hypnotizing chickens he's talking about lotion yeah there's some guy Johnny Ian is going to do another strip tease he's already done one strip tease Johnny Yen is quote from the

from the novel the quote boy girl other half strip tease god of sexual frustration. So a lot of that obviously makes it in the lyrics. You're saying a lot when the phrase he's coming in with liquor and drugs is not the most controversial part of the lyric. Like, this is so crazy. That actually might turn out to be the least controversial when I explain it to you in a second.

But that hypnotizing chickens line comes from the book, quote, the character says, quote, love, what is it anyway? It's just like when you hypnotize a chicken, as though that were to make sense. As one does. What is burrows we're talking about? right so the cut-ups. William Burroughs being the prominent beatnik poet, beat writer, yeah.

And author of Naked Lunch. Which is perfect because that's literally how Iggy Pop brought the lyrics to his singing. He stood there at the microphone with fragments of lyrics in hand. And what you're hearing is him in real time choosing which fragment to vocalize. And can I just say, I love the way Iggy sings this song. It's sort of like how it's one of the reasons I like Interpol. I like it when a person is not really singing so much as they're like talking with emphasis. So one thing to notice is exactly what you're saying.

This song doesn't really have, I would say it doesn't have a melody that is distinct from. It's literally the rhythm that's coming from, dun, dun, dun, dun, done. He's playing that back and forth. But the notes he's singing are 90% of the notes that he's singing are just what the root note is in the chord that we're at. So we're done, dun, dun, dun, down.

Here comes Johnny. He's going to the flat seven. We're in Ligar and drugs. Like, we just moved to the five. That's our root note in the bass. He's just going the flat seven and minor third and root. Those three notes as we cycle through the chords. He's basically just emphasizing those chords throughout the whole song.

It's borderline slam poetry sung. It's definitely slam poetry. But it's cool than that because it's still singing. I think Iggy Pop at heart is a poet. And by the way, I mean, that's a good time to talk about what it is about David Bowie and Iggy Pop. What is this connection? because to me that's such a like,

it's a fascinating thing that I feel like I sort of understand. They both saw a little bit of what they weren't in the other or something that they wanted. Aren't we talking about a duo again? I feel like on this show we inevitably talk about collaboration and duos. Collaborations. Because we're just trying to work out our own shit. We are.

We need another 5,000 episodes for that, I think. Let's face it. I think there's always these concentric circles, right, where there's what each person brings to it and then there's the overlap in the middle. But when I think about Bowie seeing Iggy, I feel like Bowie's Britishness was sort of like a stifling factor, even though he was this free dude. But he sees an Iggy like absolute free Americanness. Totally.

Michigan Jim. And it's the freedom and from constraint and just like he's doing crazy stuff. And Bowie's doing crazy stuff, but it's extremely controlled. Right? Like everything he does has like a mission and a purpose and controlled. And he's using all these core changes in colors and sophisticated. But he's a singer. And he's a singer.

He's got an incredible voice. And Iggy does what he wants and it's slap dash, but also art. Right? Yeah. It's also a modern guy. Can we hear a little bit of the chorus? Pre-chorus into the chorus. Then we'll talk about ears and what you do to them.

Well, I'm just a modern guy. Of course I've had it in the ear before. Because I've lost for life. I don't know why. the phrase, I've had it in the ear before. I don't know why that bothers me. Well, my whole life, up until researching this episode, I thought it meant something different. What do you think it means?

A penis in your ear, right? I thought it was either a penis in the ear. We're going to use the medical terms on this show. I either thought it was a penis in the ear. Yeah. But I actually thought it might have been like some, I'm not a heroin eye. So I thought it might have been a drug thing. Like you've run out of veins.

So like you put the needle in. I don't know. Never thought of that. It could have been a lot of things. it definitely felt either sexual or drugs or both. It had some sort of penetrative, penetrative, transgressive quality to it. Why is it never occurred to us? It could just be the music I've had it in my ear before.

It didn't, because it doesn't work. That doesn't work. It doesn't work. Contextually, that was a little too light. That was a little bit too fairy tale. But I did find out the actual meaning pop has described what that phrase comes from. He says, of course I've had it in the ear before. It's a common expression in the Midwest, meaning to give it to him right in the ear,

meaning to screw someone over. So we're not totally off base. We're not totally off base. That probably had its origins with some penis in any earth in Ipsolanti, Michigan at some point. They were doing weird shit in the Midwest. Wait, can I tell you? Play me a little bit of verse too,

because this is another line that I think I misheard. But it starts with I'm worth a million. I'm worth a million in prizes. Oh, yeah, my torture film. Java GTO. I wear a uniform. I've always been fascinated by the line I'm worth a million in prizes.

Yeah. For no other reason that I really want to understand what it means. I'll tell you, my theory is that, like, they used to have these things called sweepstakes. Yeah.

And they would come to your door with a big fake check and stuff. That language. We've got millions of prizes. That language sounds like language that would have been used to promote it in that era. Yes.

It sounds like he just co-opted like TV commercial. I'm worth a million in prizes with my torture film. Right. Yeah, there's something, you know, in the comments, by the way, tell us what you think I'm worth a million in prizes. But that's what it always meant to me. Well, also he goes on. I think that's where he grabbed it from. I think that could be right with the language. And then he's sort of twisting the meaning because he goes on to say,

wear a uniform all on a government loan. We're just out of Vietnam in this era. There's also GIs in Berlin that are stationed there that they're probably seeing on the other side of the wall. Maybe there's some sort of like him thinking about the military and soldiers and the war and everything. Could also be happening. Could also be, yeah. I just, I think like the best of Burroughs, there's definitely sort of like an abstract quality to these lyrics where you can sort of graft on whatever you want to take for.

Carnival Cruise is grafted on. They're like, hey, he's got a less for life. He wants to go on a boat and spend a lot of money. And now's a perfect moment to remind ourselves what we're hearing and where it came from. It goes from Burroughs who's already doing cut up beat poetry. Yeah. Where he's literally chopping things up and throwing, and he's also on heroin. There's already this poetic,

abstractness to the source material, which then Iggy selects material from and rearranged and writes new words to and stands at the microphone in real time deciding what the next thing sonically, it's all a poetic moment. So the abstraction is built into the process. So it comes out as poetry whose meaning emerges and maybe wasn't intentional. I think maybe that's what I spent most of my adult life trying to figure out what David Byrne was singing about. And then I found out later, like, no, he was intentionally, the reason he started singing, stop making sense is because he didn't want the lyrics to make logic. Absolutely.

Yeah. I'd never noticed this before. Listen, there's a huge backing choir. This is the whole band singing. It is about four minutes into the song towards the end. Oh, well, here comes Johnny. And a flesh machine. I know it's going to do it.

It's almost like a gospel choir. That's the band. That's the band. Okay, so now that we've heard the song, how did the splits break down? lyrics, Iggy, music Bowie, 50-50 between Osterberg and Jones. Oh, wow. Davy Jones. Born David Jones.

David Bowie. I'm saying David Bowie, but I'm using his birth name, David Jones. I'm so glad you said that. I know. I could tell I need a-not-noe who David Jones was. Because when he came out, there was already a David Jones, Davy Jones from the monkeys. I was like, the monkeys are the fun?

Yeah, that's part of why he changed his name is one of a number of reasons. But he's like, there's already a Davey Jones, he's going on a dumb TV show. I don't want to be confused for him. So, Diallo, what would you say the legacy of lust for life is. The legacy, I mean, listen, there's no doubt that Iggy Pop is the Godfather Puck. He's a larger than life figure that you can still go see out there performing. 78, and he's as good as ever. And he's a cool 78. There's some other 78 year olds that I won't

even mention. They're like, they're not cool. They're not cool. Chuck Schumer, not a cool 78 year. I do not want to see Chuck Schumer with a shirt off. I was like, yeah, Chuck Schumer. I mean, in some ways, he's like the antithesis of live fast die young. You know what I mean? Because he's still, this man is actually playing Coachella next year. That's insane to me. But listen, he's maintained his aura. He still looks great in his Iggy Pop way.

In some ways, I feel like Iggy has a lust for life. He definitely has a lust for life. He also is alive. And like, unlike so many of his peers in the punk moment, you know, the Johnny Thunders and the Sidious who did not make it pass out of their 20s, in some cases past 21. The fact that he's still going strong demonstrates the lie of this whole idea

that in order to be a punker, you have to be nihilistic. You have to beat your brains with liquor and drugs till the final curtain. Right. So we're so grateful that he's still with us. You mentioned the word aura and actually flashed on a moment,

which I'd forgotten. I had forgotten until you said that word aura that I saw Iggy Pop in New York once. I was walking down the street in the East Village. Wow. And he came around the corner with like, like, who! Like, you know, ah! Like this sort of godlight.

Did he have an aura? He did not have a shirt on. And he was with a hot Asian woman who I think might have been his wife at the time. I'm not sure. But they just were the sexiest thing you've ever seen on two feet. They've got to have been in their 60s when I saw this. But that's, you just, I had forgotten about that. You kind of unlocked this memory.

So Iggy Pop's aura. That was a great New York side. It's a great New York site. I have a friend who worked at a cafe at a coffee shop where David Byrne would come off. And I'm just like, oh, that's such a great. I was like, did he have the bike? And they were like, yeah. Bird had the bite.

There's a whole book about it. You saw Iggy walking down the street with no shirt on? I saw Iggy with no shirt on. And he was hot. What does he have against shirts? And shoes, doesn't like shoes either. He lives in Florida now, by the way.

He's been living there for like 25 years. Oh, that's the most uncool thing I've ever learned about. But it's perfect for a shirtless, shoeless man in his late 70s. Let's face it. And as you said earlier, we've got this prolific period in 1977. Between the two of them,

five records come out, four of which are collaborative and are iconic and some of the greatest records to this day. And definitely the beginning, I'd say a precursor to what we now know as post-punk, begins in this moment with those two dudes in Berlin. All right, One Song Nation, it's time for one genre. Our friends at Discogs challenged us to do a deep dive into a subgenre, share a few records that we think are essential listening.

Just a reminder, we at One Song use genre and subgenre as a way to talk about music with shared sensibilities, not as a way to rigidly define music. That's right. We felt it was necessary to have a bit of a disclaimer since genre can be a very polar, term, but we need for it to be expansive and inclusive. There are lots of ways that genre has porous edges and nebulous borders. So some of the albums and some of the bands we're about to talk about had songs and albums that were not necessarily in this genre. That's the way it works usually. So today we're talking about synth pop. Synth pop is probably one of my favorite genres. It harkens back to

my childhood. I grew up listening to like soft sell and human league and all this great, like pop songs actually were hugely influenced, like top 40 songs. At the time I was growing up, had this synthesizer-driven. Yeah, no, it was sort of like this British second wave. Yeah. And you've got everybody from like, you know, something about you songs like... Yeah, level 42. Level 42.

Yeah, and I mean, like, these are songs that if you're a certain age, they really mean something to. I remember the first time I heard Human League and the song True by Spano Bellet. Like, I was just like, man, these are great songs. So to the point we were just making about porousness of definitions and flexibility with language. Synth pop at its core generally means pop music made with synthesizers, often with drum machines, sometimes added to the mix, and of course vocals, and sometimes added to the mix, you get acoustic instruments or analog instruments like guitars and basses and drums. Gary Newman's a great example of that. I think of Gary Newman as being seminally synth pop,

but he's got a live drummer. He's got a live bass player. He just happens to be prominently playing the synth as like the lead instrument, replacing the guitar. That's kind of the primary anything. So again, very flexible, wide borders, wide parameters. So with that in mind, let's dig into our synth pop picks. Diallo, what is your pick? Well, mine comes from the group, Yaz. I think Upstairs and Eric, it's just really one of those almost perfect albums for what it wants to be upstairs at Erics. First off, the album art is iconic. If you can't see this, because you're not watching this on YouTube right now, on your own time. If you don't know Yaz's upstairs and Erics, take a look at the album art.

You've got essentially two mannequins facing each other across the table. What's funny is growing up, I always thought that they had a chessboard between them. They actually have a cake. I never noticed that. You're right. I never noticed it was a cake for whatever reason, maybe because of their body language. I thought they were playing a game. You know, they're also half of the mannequin is on top of the glass table and the legs are in the chairs.

So it just has this weird sort of like detachment going on. And honestly, a lot of scent pop is emotionally detached, you would argue. But it was very fun to listen to if you remember the 80s. Or actually, that's a great point because one thing about synth pop is that the music is often very cold. But Yaz is a great example of how a vocalist like Alison Moyet, who was, before there was Adele, there was Allison Moyet. I always kind of think of their voices as being very similar. Really? I've never thought of that. Very deeply soulful white singers.

And when that is put on top of this layer of literally, this is Vince Clark who had just left Depeche Mode. So think of early Depeche mode. Yeah. I just can't get enough. It's very Depeche mode. Mepish Mode-esque. Yeah, that mixture of the coal of electronic sounds and the emotion in the voice. So even if you don't think you know he has, you probably know yes, they have this song called Situation.

Yes. Which is a great song. You've probably heard it. You might have thought it was Depeche Mode. I remember the limewire years when people would like mislabel songs. Like that would sometimes get Depeche Mode right. It could have been a Depeche Mode song had he not left the band. Maybe he was saving it through the band.

He's like, no, this is for me. But Situation is not the only good song in this album. Like I said, for the year, 1982, it's kind of a perfect album. It has a great song called. don't go. I won't sing it. You'll have to listen to it on your own time. In My Room is a great song. Just really good songs on this album. Check it out. One other thing I love about this particular pressing is that, you know, you'll see this sometimes. This means that this was a promotional piece of vinyl, and it actually comes with this cool gold sticker provided with the hope that you will use this for

in-store play. I love that. I love that so much. And so I was like, I got to find the promo version of this vinyl. And to try and locate that, I had done. definitely use discogs because, you know, that's not something that you can often find. Yeah, you won't find that at the new, in the new versions. The new pressings won't have that. You won't find that. When you play it, say it. Remember that sticker?

I remember that. Yeah. We're to the radio station. Those are good times. My man, luxury. What is your selection for? I'm going to have to do a top three, and a process of elimination against number one. So let's start real easy since we were just on Yaz.

Before he left the band, he was in Depeche Mode. And their first record, speak and spell is a masterpiece, if not the masterpiece of the genre. lots of single note monophonic melodic lines. There's almost no chords on the record. That's not quite true, but most everything you hear is like a single monophonic line. Very simple sounding. The machines are simple. The melodies are simple, but it's so catchy.

And of course, the iconic song that you probably know from this record, if you didn't know that you knew it, was just can't get enough, which they put as the final song of the record because they were a little bit embarrassed about it themselves. They're like, this is so catchy and corny, but it's great. And that's the song that put them on the map. So Depeche Mode's first record, classic of the genre. that's my number three.

My number two, and this was hard, this was really hard for me, because this was close to number one, but it's got to be a human league dare. I remember when that album came out. Oh, my God. Such a good album. Such a good album. It's got, Don't You Want Me, Baby.

Similar thing, the last song on the record. Don't You Want Me Baby is one of the great duets, male female duet songs of all time. Yeah, kind of. It should be its own subgenre, like the male female. That's right. The first versus the male, the second versus the response from the female. Or reversed.

Into the choruses together, blending their voices in, harmony. Yeah, she was working as a waitress in a cocktail bar. Exactly. No skips on this record. Seconds of your time to take his life. Love action. And of course, we can't forget the opening track of this record, the things that dreams are made of. New York, ice cream, TV, travel good times is the refrain on that one. They name all the Ramones. All the good things in life are given a shout out by Phil from the Human League. But my number one record, I got to say, and I think Diallo and I share this, the love for this record, underrated gem of the genre. is propaganda. German band. This record is a secret wish. Boy, talk about no skips. This might be

the most listened to record in my brain. It came out on Zhang Tumtum Records. If you go back to our Grace Jones episode, we talk a lot about Trevor Horn. He didn't produce this, but his team did. And they used all the same early Sinclaviors and Fairlight. Tricks of the trade. Claudia Bruchin on vocals. Again, similar to Yaz, the music is German, Teutonic, cold, but the vocals are also teutonic and cold, but amazing. And one of my favorite vocalists, Claudia Bruchin. So this is my favorite record. And I will say that I'm such a fan that I've spent a fortune on discog spying some of the 12 inches,

like this 12 inch of the song, Dr. Maboussae, this one, which I couldn't believe when I found it, this is just the entire record remixed. In 1985, that was kind of a new thing. I would say outside of Jamaica, where it was fairly common. But this record is all of a secret wish just done differently. and I haven't even shown you all of my discogs purchases, but there are many. Again, propaganda, one of my favorite synth pop fans. Love propaganda.

So those are our one genre picks. Check out our list on discogs.com. And of course, there are so many more Sinpop gems. We would love to hear your favorites. Let us know in the comments what other synth pop masterpieces are out there for us to discover. What synth pop pops for you? As always, you can find us on Instagram and TikTok. You can find me on Instagram at Diallo, DIA, LLO, and on TikTok.

at Diallo Riddell. And you can find me on Instagram at L-U-X-X-U-R-Y and on TikTok at LuxuryX. And you can follow our podcast on Instagram and TikTok at One-Song podcast for exclusive content. You can also watch full episodes of One Song on YouTube and Spotify. Just search One Song Podcast. We'd love it if you like and subscribe.

Also be sure to check out the One Song Spotify playlist for all the songs we discuss in our episodes. You can find the link in our episode description. And if you made it this far, you're officially part of the One-Song Nation. Show us some love, give us five stars, leave a review, and send this episode to a fellow music fan. It really helps keep the show thriving. Luxury help me in this thing.

I'm producer, DJ, songwriter, and musicologist luxury. And I'm actor-writer-director and sometimes DJ Diallo Riddle. And this is one song we will see you next time. This episode is produced by Melissa Duanez. Our video editor is Casey Simonson. Our associate producer is Jeremy Bembo, mixing by Michael Hardman, and engineering by Eric Hicks. Production Supervision by Razak Boykin, and additional production support from Z-Tay, Taylor. This show is executive produced by Kevin Hart, Mike Stein, Brian Smiley, Eric Eddings, Eric

Wendings, Eric Weil, and Leslie Guam.