One Song - The Response Episode: Listener Mailbag + Songs of the Summer

Episode Date: June 20, 2024

What good is a format if you can’t break it every now and then? On this special episode of One Song, Diallo & LUXXURY break out the listener mailbag, answer some DMs, and bring an entirely new angle to the "Buffalo Soldier"/"The Banana Splits" theme song connection. Finally, they react to the early contenders for the Song of the Summer from Tommy Richman, Sabrina Carpenter, and more. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I'm actor-writer-director and sometimes DJ DiLiolrude. And I'm producer, DJ, and songwriter Luxury, aka the guy who talks about on the internet. You talk about what? I talk about interpolation. Or if you like, I talk about... Oh, yeah. So, guys, we have a drum machine and a sampler here today.

We're going to actually try and do some stuff that's fun and this slide. But before we get started, this is one song, Luxury. How are you doing today? I'm doing awesome. This is going to be a really fun show. We're doing a little bit of like a different thing today. and I'm excited to touch on a bunch of new material in the world, new songs. I like these sort of episodes because I feel like they almost functioned the way my brain works.

It's like when we first started talking, you know, as friends, like we would talk about one song, no pun intended, but then like we go down rabbit holes. And another tangent. Today we get to talk about so many different new songs, old songs, songs you guys have told us about on Instagram in our DMs when you guys are being polite and not a pornographic. Just be polite and won't respond usually sometimes. Yeah, today we're doing something a little different. Think of this episode is sort of a melange. If you will. Yeah.

A melange. It's an eclectic mix of musical analysis. So here's what's coming up. We're going to open up your DMs and respond to your messages. And Diallo and I are going to react to some of the hottest new music releases. That's right. We love new music, whether it's new this year, this moment, or just new to us. Exactly.

You know, I was driving into work today, and I did something that I love to do sometimes, which is I turn my radio all the way off. And I just listen to what other people in their cars are listening to. Just in the car next to you? Yeah. And it's like a weird anthropological study because you really understand that like people, listen, whatever. Not like us, Kendrick Lamar, everywhere you go in L.A. right? You hear that song out of cars, out of bars.

But, you know, today I heard a song and I was like, what is that? Is that like an Irish rock band from the 80s that I never knew before? Did you shazam it? How did you figure out what it was? Shazammed it. In your car as you're driving. I like surreptitiously like put my hand out the window and put my phone out the window. It's like it's never cool when you're shazamming something.

I'm always a little bit ashamed of it. I'm always a little bit hiding. You don't want anybody to see you doing it. Why is there so much? We need to remove the shame from Shazam. I feel embarrassed. No more Shazam shame. It is a real phenomenon.

It turned out it was a song called La Danza del Fuego. Ooh. It's a fire. Mago de Oz. I don't know what this is. I think. I think it's a Mexican goth band, but according to Shazam, their albums called Foltergeist. Can we hear a little bit?

Sure. Okay. I can see why you'd be like, what is this? So you can hear from that clip why I thought it was like maybe like some weird river dance band because I couldn't really make out the lyrics, but, you know, half the time you can't make out like an Irish accent. You know, so I use the word maylaunch for the second time already. there's an interesting melange that sounds going on here. There is.

And by the way, I just looked online in the YouTube clip, Muppets. They have Muppets singing this song. They're not hins and Muppets, but they're puppets that are not married in us. But we are going to talk about a couple of songs. We are going to talk about. All right. So this first section of the show, we're going to share some messages we've gotten from you, The One Song Nation.

What's something that came your way? So I have a couple stories that are kind of continuations of previous episodes. Love it. So if you call back to our Empire of the Sun episode, we do. did Walking on a Dream. On that episode, I talked a little bit about how there's a third less seen or unseen member of the band in addition to Luke Steele and Nick Littlemore, who are the main guys, the guys in the video and on the um covers, there's a third person named Donnie Sloan. And I gave him his

flowers. And he ended up writing to me. First of all, we did a great episode. We did a great job. And he wanted to sort of add some more kind of data to the story. So he told me that it is him playing all the instruments in doing all the production on this song. And I alluded to in the episode how there was an acrimoniousness, a little falling out. So he mentions how he's playing all the instruments and he talks about how, quote, that was the hard part. This is a quote from what he wrote to me. As quote, I had my own sound taken by another band and they never asked me to be in the band. And then he went on to say, it hurt a lot at the time, but it's the best thing that ever happened to me.

So he goes on to talk about how what hurt the most was when Empire of the Sun would say in interviews that they wanted to combine. daft punk and Fleetwood Mac, and Donnie was a quote from him in the email to me in the DM, that was something I had been saying to Nick for many years before Empire of the Sun even existed. So the good news is that as we discussed on the episode, they figured out how to be friends, and he stayed in the picture, he's working with them to this day. But he also just wanted to add some fun facts about how that song was made. So we just heard a little snippet of the guitar. And on the episode, we were talking about, you mentioned that it sounded like, I think you said a ukulele.

It still sounds like a ukulele. You know, the reason why that happened is because he didn't have a pick, so he used his credit card. And that contributes to the sound being... So that's not a ukulele, that is a guitar played with a credit card. Being plucked with, being strummed with a credit card, which is really interesting. Sir, that is Foncy. I'm going to say Long A, Foncy. It is Foncy.

We also talked about, we were speculating about the Synthi loop that we also just heard at the very beginning that then transitions into the drumbeat and the song starting. Mystery solved, it is not a sample. It is, in fact, him playing a triple track to Yamaha, CSA. a little bit out of tune. So he added a layer of chorus to hide the fact that it was sort of wonky tune-wise. Love that. And he said he was inspired by some of our favorites. He said, we talked about how that synth loop was really hypnotic because it goes

through the entire song. He said he was inspired by all that Bongaltor stuff, like, so much love to give, which is a 10-minute hypnotic loop, sounding a little like this. And that's Together, which is Thomas Bongalter with DJ Falcon. the song is so much love to give and what you just heard was the beginning of an almost 11 minute song where that's just looping with the drums coming in and out basically

yeah no that's what made it there there are songs from that period I'd say late 90s early 2000s dance music before dance music felt like it had to in this idiom way take over the planet yeah it was just a little less ambitious it was a little more psychedelic yeah hypnotic

I'm very I love it it's cool hearing it back to back too with the beginning of walking on a dream. Because you can absolutely hear the four chords, even sort of the sonic range that it's in, even the fact that it's filtered, very similar. I mean, I would say it's been 20 years since that music was 20 to 25 years.

It's time for a good retro movement, guys. It still sounds so good. Let's bring that sound back. French touch is coming back. I'm into it. What about you? How about some more letters from readers? I love getting your suggestions,

your comments on shows, as you're learning from some of the DMs that Blake's talking about. We learn from, the things you guys throw in there. The story continues. These episodes are our chance to sort of like highlight y'all and be like, hey, after that episode, everybody was, you know, saying, hey, I really appreciate y'all talk about the

connection between Blondies Call Me and Doctor Who theme. Right, a lot of people talk about the Doctor Who connection. A lot of people got in on that one. And people were always throwing out like, hey, can you do this band? Can you do this band? A lot of requests for R&B. We are definitely going to do some great R&B episodes because, you know, it's all about when we can get the stuff.

guys like you know trust me our our taser diverse we're just working with the stems we got chromium uh letigra your latigra shirt yeah fired off a lot of people like let's do the septicod we'd love to get kathleen hand on the show oh my gosh a book just came out so like kathleen if you're listening or someone knows kathleen please we would love to have her on the show huge fan i mean the remix the lcd i think james murphy did that the septiccon the remix of decepticon is in some ways the soundtrack uh for my mid-aughts like i still love it yeah and Edit. I love the fact that he left it the word edit. So that's really cool. What other messages do you have going on? So we talked about on a previous episode, the Bob Marley song, Jammin. And one of the kind of fun...

Fun episode. I feel like we both learned so much about Reagan that episode. Oh, man. I had a great time with that one, too. If you haven't listened to it yet, go back and check our feed. It's a few episodes ago. And we talked a little bit about how we speculated, we should say, about the connection between the song Buffalo Soldier, which sounds like this. So we were speculating on the connection between that song and this song. That's the banana splits, a TV show from the late 60s. Opening theme song, which sounds very similar. I mentioned on that episode that songwriting credit is given to Mark Barkin and Richie Adams,

who were the show's music directors. There's also a contention from the son of the gentleman who worked at Leo Burnett's agency, who actually played one of the characters on the show who says, no, my dad wrote it. So there's some kind of back and forth about that. So we had the daughter of Mark Barkin, who was credited, wrote in and said, my dad wrote that song. He told me this great story about his lawyer calling him, playing him the Bob Marley song and saying,

we have to sue. But my dad said, I can't sue him. It's Bob Marley. He's changing the world. So thank you, Bridget Barkin, for writing in and telling us that side of the story. However, there's more to the story, even in my DMs, even in the comments, because then a woman named Namfuyo Aisha, McCray wrote in and said, hey, wait a second, King Sporty is my dad.

And we talked about how King Sporty may have heard the song because he lived in Miami. Right. It was an American TV show. And might have turned on the TV and heard that tune. Because those melodies are very similar, as are the rhythms. She wrote in to say, hey, King Sporty did not steal anything from the banana splits. I will vouch for that. He was my father.

He wrote the words but did not make up the backgrounds. But then we went on to discuss a little bit. And she said, do you think that Marley came up with the I, I, I, I part? and she said, oh, maybe it was the backup singers. So we're working this out. And what's really fun to me is that these are stories that we may never know the exact answers to who exactly did what. But to me. Who was in Miami on Saturday morning?

Right. Who was watching the banana splits in Miami? Or possibly because, as Walter E. Heimann pointed out, as a quote from him, who wrote in, as a boy visiting Jamaica early 70s, banana splits was on in Jamaica. What? So I don't know if we'll ever get to the bottom of really what happened here. And the person who will be disappointed is my brother, Tony, because he's been telling this story ever since I can remember. Oh, no, this is additional. This is add to the story. No, I know. I'm saying like this is like we've been talking about the Banana Splits-Marley connection for so long.

Yeah. We'll have to find answers. We have more theories now, not last. Folks, we will not let this be an unsolved mystery forever. We will find out in time the real story. Maybe we'll have to bring someone on the show. Exactly. You got a DM about Sister Nancy, didn't you?

I did. Actually, I was communicating with Sister Nancy's manager, Dave Susser, who wrote me after he saw me wearing a knockoff version of a Sister Nancy shirt, which I didn't realize it was a knockoff. And he offered to send me the real deal. So recently, I think I wore the knockoff in an old TikTok. You won't see me wearing knockoffs on this show. The real deal, Sister Nancy, I wrote her on a recent episode, was from him and his company Large Up.

It's the Sister Nancy management company. He wrote in to talk about the question we posed about who are the horn players on Sister Nancy's Bomb Bomb. Again, previous episode, if you haven't heard it yet, another one of our favorites, go back and listen to... It would be like not knowing who play guitars on my generation. It's almost like that. Exactly. Yeah, those horns are so iconic. So crucial.

But famously, these Jamaican records, you'll have 10 songs on it and it'll just list all the instrument players on all the songs. And it doesn't connect who played on what. So you just have a list of like four horn players, but there's not four horns on the song. So he wrote in to say that he thinks that perhaps my speculation about Tommy McCook sounds right. He is listed on the cover. He named a few other instrumentalists potentially. Anyway, he also just wanted to point out that there is a sister Nancy documentary, which is literally premiering right now at the Tribeca Film Festival.

I cannot wait to see this movie. And apparently on camera, they've got the musicians hashing out the credits, like literally going through this exact question that we've all been speculating about for decades now. Apparently this documentary is going to shove a little bit of light on it. I have not been paid to promote this, but I just can't wait to see it. So there will be a sister Nazi documentary about bomb bomb, and it's called bomb bomb, so coming soon. That's going to be exciting. Yeah.

So before we move on, I just wanted to say that Diallo and I really love getting messages from you guys. It shows that you care about this podcast. We just really love hearing from you. So keep sending the messages in apologies in advance. We don't always get to respond to all of them, but we do see all of them. We do see them. All right. We'll be back.

And after the break, Lecture and I will talk 2024's Song of the Summer. And is there maybe more than one this year? There might be more than one this year. There might be more than one. There might be more than one. Stay tuned. All right. Welcome back to One Song. Lectury. Who do you think are the contenders

for 2024's Song of the Song? I was about to say like anyone who's left their house would know this song. But the fact is, you could have heard this song without leaving your home because it's ubiquitous all over TikTok. All over social media. It started as a TikTok little teaser that like actually they brought up the release date by three days because it got so huge so quickly.

Damn. Of course I'm talking about Tommy Richmond and his song, Million Dollar Baby. This is the big debut. He's been around for a minute in the background, but this is coming to the foreground. This gentleman had two million first day streams on Spotify, 38 million in the first week,

and we're only six weeks in, 400 million. Nearly half a billion streams already. He is living the dream of so many people, artists in the past, the present of the future, like just that dream of like I do a song it blows up completely on TikTok and all of a sudden my life's not the same

and it came into the Hot 100 at number two in the middle of all the Drake and Kendrick stuff like in the middle of that occupying everyone's attention it was like Kendrick Drake it was like and Tommy Richmond right that was insane I mean good for him it's a catchy song

can I say like I think I'm the king of hearing lyrics wrong famously said I'm Blondie that like and I thank you guys for hearing me and being there with me. A lot of us didn't know those wani lyrics. From the second I heard Tommy Richmond, I thought,

I ain't never been the same, baby. I was sure those were the lyrics. Yeah, I can hear that. What does he really say? He says, I ain't never rep the set, baby. Like, I'm like, gang talk? I mean, like, I did not see that coming. I did not hear it.

I actually heard a, you know, him talking. I wasn't him talking an interview, but somebody talking about when they interviewed him, and apparently, like, they had been working on all these other songs, and when they got to the end of the session, he was like, let's just do a feel-good song that feels like, you know, yeah. It was just not a throwaway, but like a last-

Yeah, it was just like, let's have fun in the studio, let's just do this song that reminds us the songs that, you know, we knew growing up, which brings me to something I want to bring up to you. Almost for the second I heard, I was like, I got to call a luxury about this, because I heard, I heard pim juice. I heard pim juice by Nellie. From the first time I heard Million Dollar Baby,

Tommy Richmond. I thought it was like the tempo. I thought the tempos were the same. I'm not even say that we're not music snitches. I say that almost every episode. We're not here to snitch. But I thought that there were like similarities. There's the falsetto.

Spoiler alert. There's nothing to snitch on. But go ahead. Yes. There are similarities. We just played a million dollar baby. Before we go any further, and I want to get your reaction slash answer because I know that you have one.

But I do want to play just a little bit of pimp juice by the artist known as Nellie. Here's Pimp Juice. Pimp Juice. I mean, it was not even like your typical Nelly song for like 2002 because it was like, I mean, he wasn't even rapping. He was singing most of the things. So it was like he was going from Nelly to Barry Gib and back. Lots of characters, different voices. A lot of different voices.

But we're talking Tommy Richmond because he's got one of the biggest songs out there today. Is it my imagination? Are there any similarities? Not in a snitch sense, obviously. Okay. M. Nijs, Shama. Yeah. But are there any similarities other than just the general vibe of Pimp Juice and Million Dollar,

Yeah, because it evokes the question of evoking. Like, why does somebody think that this song sounds like this song? By the way, evoking would be like a dope song. Evoking? That's like a new way of saying, you're stealing my style. You evoking. Anyway, I'm sorry. No, go ahead.

I think you should run with that idea. I know. Let's work on that after the show. Let's pause the show and work on that. That's a topic. Who you're stealing from? Evoke, vote, vote, vote. All right, sorry, keep going.

Sounds like a perfume ad. I was going from it. Evoke. Evocation by Ralph Lauren. So it made me think when you asked me what's similar about it, because I heard what you were hearing, but I did a little breakdown, which I'll give you in a second.

But the question that it raises is like, is there something in general that people think is similar to other things when there isn't anything? There's no sample. There's no interpolation. It's not a cover. There's nothing directly related. Yes, exactly.

What is the lowest common denominator of things that will make you think something evokes something else? I don't think that there's a single answer to that. But a lot of times, And I think in this case, the tempo has a lot to do with it. The fact that they're very similar within a few BPM of each other. Yes, and these tempos, they're not the same. Pimp juice is a little faster.

But they're almost the same. I think that a million dollar maybe is 69. I think that Pimp Juice is 74. So they're not drastically different, but they're definitely close enough where, like, you might sort of feel like, oh, this reminds me of that. So when it's not a specific melody or a specific sample that's being used, what is it that's making us think that? It's a combination of a handful of things.

It's the tempo. It's the fact that we're using some similar sound sets. There's probably an 808 kick, 808 high hats, possibly. There's a throaty bass, as we like to call it here. There's a throaty base, but they are different. There's also the falsetto that we were just talking about, right? The falsetto goes a long way. I mean, I don't know why both of these songs are probably classified, for the most part, as hip-hop.

You know what I mean? And yet, they're both singing. They're both singing. They're not even rapping. Right. Yeah. And so that evokes in turn, it evokes some Marvin Gade, evokes some, you know, Prince. it evokes Curtis Mayfield before both of them. So there's a lot of evocation.

Yeah, exactly. There's a lot of evocation going on there. And one thing I will say about Pimp Juice when I was doing more of a direct analysis, I was breaking them down. What is it that's similar? What's different? So you already mentioned the tempos are roughly the same. So they're both slow synth funk songs.

Those are slow tempos. Yeah. Right? So we're kind of in the range. They're close enough that you could do them back to back in the DJ set and it would fit perfectly. They both have a little bit of a teaser intro with the bass. the vocal switch between the falsetto and the regular voice. The beats are the same basic tempo,

and they both have the 16th note high hats. Million Dollar Baby, it's a little bit louder. Yeah, you know, the high hat. A little bit more pronounced. Well, you said Million Dollar Baby's a little louder. Yeah. I mean, that gets towards what we've talked about in the past. I think we call it like wavelength inflation or something.

Like back in the day, like you can go listen to your favorite hip-hop songs. You're talking about the loudness wars? Yes, the loudness wars. Like, you know, everything now is just a solid wall of red. It's a louder song. If you look at it. Right. Yeah, everything is like the,

The drums are based on. We're all just trying to feel something. We are. The baseline is similar, but different. Yeah. The rhythm is similar, but the million-dollar baby's bass is much bigger, to your point. It is much fatter sounding. You go back and listen to them back to back.

It's like, this feels the same. I think the main thing besides the tempo and maybe the 16th notes. And the falsetto. And the falsetto. What's sort of building towards is that there's a little bit of a similar rhythm in the baseline. It's different, though. On the Blondie episode, on Call Me, we talked about how there's that clave in the drum machine that da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da. This is roughly the same rhythm. It's slightly different at the end. But it's called a clave, as I mentioned on that episode. And that's the part that the bass is playing. The bass is basically playing that rhythm all the time. So it evokes, it evokes Afro-Cuban rhythms. It invokes kind of a Latin feel. It can evoke the-and-and-pimping in 2002. It can evoke that, except the Pimpin bass line doesn't have the full clave. It has. It's a little bit different.

If you listen back to back, here's the million-dollar baby baseline. Now listen for that clave rhythm. By the way, it's emphasized. Another difference I just noticed is that it's emphasized by that keyboard, which is playing these kind of almost jazz. It's got like a seventh in it.

Compare that baseline with a clave, that dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, two. So now I'm going to play the Pimp Juice baseline to compare to what you just played. It's different. You're getting done. It's totally different. Done.

So even the three part of a three, two clave, it's just not there. But by the way, this goes again towards why I think that the blurred lines verdict was completely off. I will say that every episode. I will say it every episode because vibe-wise, you totally see where these two songs are related. And yet, musically, you cannot point to any one thing. And I just think it ties an artist's hand too much to say that the vibe is the same than somehow that there's some stealing going on. These are two distinctly different songs.

songs that you can enjoy one after the other. And like, no one is buying one and deciding to not buy the other. There's a million reasons why any sort of like ownership, you couldn't nail down what it would be that you'd own. What do you own 69 BPM? 16th note hi-hats? You own falsetto? You own, you're going to own a tempo?

You own the first half of a three-two clave? Like, none of it would even make any sense. They need us in court, man. They do. Yeah. Maybe that's where we'll start making our money. It will just go to court and represent artists. One more important distinction is that there are no court changes.

in Pimp Juice. The Nelly song, we never leave the tonic. We're in E minor the whole time. Oh, wow. And a billion-dollar baby's got three chords. So there is a chord change, which is all you really need it. That's cool. So that's an important distinction. But I think this is a function of us getting older. Can I just say, well, we were going over the songs that we are saying are in contention for song of the summer. Every song reminded me of another song. One of the other songs on our list is Sabrina Carpenter's espresso. I mean, just a catchy tune. So catchy.

Admittedly, I do find myself sometimes when, you know, packing up the kids to send them off to camp. You just be put on espresso by Sabrina Carpenter. I'm literally imagining this song playing out. This song plays in my head. I mean, I think we're going to see a lot more Sabrina Carpenter in the time to come. Oh, yeah.

She's just getting started. To me, she occupies a lane that, you know, 15 years ago would have been Katie Perry. Like, she's like sort of like the pop diva, but she's like kind of edgy in her own little. away, you know, and also, I think she's playing it really smart. First off, she has an espresso ice cream coming out. That is a brilliant collab. That's really smart. Here's something I didn't know. She played the best friend on the reboot of Boy Meets World, which was a girl meets world.

Okay. And she played the best friend, which I think is the new lane if you want to become a pop. We all know Ariana Grande was not the star. Like, she was like the best friend. I think that that's the lane now. Like just play the best friend, you know? I know that we have had Miley. I know she was in Montana, but I think nowadays play the best friend. And you're on Wade or Pop Superstarter. Before I say, which song this reminds me of quite a bit. What can you tell us about espresso by Sabrina Carpenter? Well, one thing that I found really fun as I was investigating the songwriting process. So Sabrina is co-writer, along with Amy Allen, Julian Bonetta, and Steph Jones. But there's actually an unacknowledged fifth songwriter of this song.

And I just love when I find little details like this. So I mentioned my friend, Mr. Von Oliver, on a previous episode. He is a producer. If you're a producer, you have definitely used his splice packs. And that's relevant because his splice packs, by the way, are called Power Tools. They're always, for five years or something,

they've been in the top five most used splice packs. And by the way, I should back up and say, for those of you don't know, Splice is a place on the internet, splice.com, you can get them not being paid for this. But I use it all the time. It's a great place to get legally cleared samples. So it's a great place to get song starters like you can get not just drum beats,

and loops and one shots like kick drums and snares to build a drum kit. You can get entire eight-bar loops with chord changes and sound and everything. You can really start at Splice and build a song. And I'm saying that now because that's how this song seems to have been written. I'm going to play for you now a splice sample from what I'm considering the unacknowledged fifth songwriter of Espresso, my buddy von Oliver, check out the splice loop they used. Now again, to be clear, what I just played for you is not the song, Espresso, but I will now play. for you the song Espresso, and you'll hear how the sample, which you can get on Splice, and which these producers obviously used, is just in the song. And here it is. So again, that is

how a lot of music is made these days. That's how I've written songs where I've found a splice loop and it's inspired me to use that as a starting point and then add drums and bass and chord changes and a whole new vocal top line. But what's really interesting I'm finding, especially in this AI moment is how there is a huge percentage of songs I would say that I hear on the radio where I'm like, I hear a splice sample in that. And a lot of times I hear Avon Oliver's place. One last thing to say about that splice loop, which is used in espresso. The name of the sample is actually pop loop surf dad. So this got a surf dad vibe to it. I can totally hear that. It's available for anyone to use. Like you can go online and find it. And it's literally 10 cents. One thing that I really

like about this era we live in is we can find all these great samples. I just think it's funny that the word surf is in the thing and the video takes place at the beach. Yeah. So it's literally just like, it's baked into that sample. Okay, we can do a pop song and do the video at the beach. And why don't we go with a pop surf dad? Like that's-pop surf dad, exactly.

That's funny. Real quick. So at the beginning of this, I said the espresso reminds me of another song. Let's just hear one more quick snip. And then you've got this song, which immediately came to my mind. it reminds me of a few songs, and I'm dying to know which one jumped to your mind first. This one jumped to my mind. You're not me.

You're not a yon. It just sounded so similar to that. It's right in the same pocket. Yeah, same exact pocket. I betcha, you know, next DJ said, I'll take the vocals from one and place them over the instrument for a night. Again, we're not saying about copy anybody. No, no, no.

But it is so similar. It's not even close. This is a similar situation to the Tommy Richmond Pimpchews thing where it's also similar in that they're both in the same tempo. zone because espresso is 104 bpm and that was calvin harris with katie perry right feels absolutely this is a funk song the tempo is funk the fact that it's not four to the floor it's boom cat boom cat there's a backbeat to it which in the disco days you would have four on the floor and there'd be an evenness to the beat this is boom cat it's like billy jean almost right but a little slower and there's a lot of songs in this range what

i actually thought you were going to say and this is the first song that popped into my mind when i heard it was this one. So here's Doja Cat Say So. Of course. And I think the second we leave the studio today, we should find a fun, you know, light, sunny patch on Splice. You just listen to all these songs in row. We should start our song off with a filter. Yes. And then eight bars in, we should bring in like a nice, you know, poppy baseline. Yes. By the way, like a nice loud baseline. Because we know we need that solid wall. And drop the kick snare on the, get that back beat on, boom. In that tempo range, this one's a little faster. That one's a little faster.

Say-so is 1-11, but it's very much in the same zone. Yeah, they play with the Chimbles a little bit, but there's definitely a similarity there. We can't talk about the song of the summer, 2024, without mentioning the ubiquitous. Kendrick Lamar, not like us, huge song. It's so important. I mean, like, we're also, we record out of L.A. There's no escaping the song. There's no escaping the song.

It is ubiquitous. It is almost a theme song. There's a lot of L.A. pride, I feel, in this song, right? Compton Pride and L. the Juneteenth concert coming up like I can't tell you how many people I know are like you know willing to sell out their cousin to try and get into that show but it is going to be live stream so I think once they announced it was going to be live stream it got a little less crazy but yeah I mean like literally whether it's you're in a bar driving down the street

in a gym like it's everywhere yeah it's everywhere it's impossible to miss it's an incredible song interesting I don't mean to contrast it to the other songs we listen to but there does seem to be a little bit more of a, shall we say, depth to the track. There's something about it that feels a little bit more weighty, that it may have longevity. We may think of the other two songs as wonderful songs that are kind of confections that make us think of this summer of 2024. This one may have some longevity to it. I think you're probably right with that. And I also think that, like, you know, if we end up talking about five songs of the summer, four of them are going to remind me of another song. Not like us, does not really remind me of any song that has ever

come before. It's pretty unique. Absolutely. Another. Another, song that was given to aspire producer is Shibuzi, a bar song, Paranthesis, Tipsy. I want to play a snippet from that. Now, obviously, it's called Tipsy, because it uses a, you know, a lot of words and concepts from Jay Kwan's Tipsy. So obviously, J-Quan is up in there, but I'm going to go back to a bar song because it has this part. Today is going to be the day that it's going to throw it back to you.

By now you should have somehow realized what you got to do. Everybody feels the way I do about Shibuzi. So listen. Like between espresso, Shibuzi, every song sounds familiar. Is that because we're old? Or is everybody just like going back and like sort of reusing little bits and pieces. Look, you're asking the big question. And spoiler alert, here we are. We're, you know, halfway through the episode that I'm about to take a little bit of a hiatus because I'm

working on a book. And the book's working title, by the way, is that song sounds familiar. And it's literally going to be a book about answering the question you just posed. Sometimes it's a sample, sometimes it's a cover. It's obvious. We hear the original. Sometimes it's a little bit in the middle. There's a melody we recognize. But sometimes like this, what is the thing that we all immediately heard Oasis's Wonderwall with those first two chords. And the answer is, in this case, you know, it's an acoustic guitar,

it's the strumming pattern, and it is the first two chords. But then it's not Wonderwall after that. Nothing else is Wonderwall. By the way, I'm not even saying that they like, you know, went in and like, again, no snitching, but just everything reminds me of everything else.

But here's the thing. We need to have some comfort because everyone is thinking what you're thinking. And it is in this era where part of what leads to that phenomenon is, yes, you are previously, in your brain, you walk around with a jukebox of previously heard music. And over time, it's not just the core changes in melodies, but like the stylistic attributes, the fact of it being an acoustic guitar. All this stuff does over time contribute to being like, oh, your phylofacts of a brain can connect the dots between things. But, you know, we talked about it on the Beyonce episode. We said, like, you know, if you look at the songwriting credits, like she goes out of her way.

to say, oh, by the way, in case you even for a second think this might, you know, interpolate or use something for this song, that person got a writing credit. The one sentence takeaway you need about this topic is that it is filled with musical borrowing. It is filled with intertextuality. If you listen to our Miley Cyrus episode, it is filled with references to other music and usage of other ideas and quotations. This is how music has been made since the beginning, since Gregorian chant, like literally. I can't wait to our Gregorian Chan episode But I even don't You know there's a thing on social media now

Where they're like Oh you know Jay Z stole all these biggie lyrics Because he's with the rimmy's in the system Ain't no telling him what you know I'm like guys that's his oldest hip hop It's like people have always like It's not stealing

I mean like we It's not like he took like a rare Biggie verse And tried to appropriate it He literally took one of the big bigie verses And it's just like Sort of drawing a line between Biggie and himself. So I think that, yeah, I can't agree more. I think that...

Yeah, and he's not trying to fool anyone. He's not trying to say, hey, I wrote these original lyrics. He's literally, it's a communication. It's a wink to somebody who knows the Biggie line. It's communication that he's having with the listener who is aware of what the song came from, or the lyric came from. It's like when you see a scene from an old black and white movie, and then you watch that scene with John Travolta and Huma Thurman dancing in Pulp Fiction, and you realize, oh, he shot that scene specifically to reference that old black and white All that Tarantino stuff, all the Star Wars stuff, where then you see the actual World War II footage, and they use the exact same cuts. Exactly.

So all of that is meant to be an homage, and so too with music. We should start a law firm and defend the artist, I think. Yeah. First, I would need a law degree and to be interested in passing the bar. You play by the rules too much. No law degree. Just get out there and start talking. Or start a podcast.

Hang up your shingle. Bail bonds, come on. There you go. Everything you hear on one song is pre-a-law. perfectly appropriate legal advice. Do what we say, not what we do. So for our last segment, admittedly here at one song, we usually cover the classics. We actually keep up with a lot of new music, but it's hard to write history in real time

and definitely hard to get our hands on the stems for a lot of current songs. But today, we're going to be listening to and reacting to some of the hottest new releases. Now, D'allel, I have not heard these songs and neither have you, but our producer John pulled them from a variety of Billboard Music Chart. and we are going to listen and react in the moment. First time ever hearing. Are you ready? I am a little nervous.

I am not nervous. Let's hear our first song. Afro beat. I think it's actually Afro beats. Yeah. Afro beat is the Falakuti. Well, yeah. Just for those like me who sometimes confuse the two,

Afro beat is Felakuti and sort of like, you know, these artists that we've been listening to. some of these Nigerian kind of long form. Yeah, sometimes Janayan. It's jazz in them. Usually West Africa, and even though there's so much coming out of Ethiopia and South Africa. But Afro Beat is sort of like the legacy music. Afro Beats is the contemporary music.

And the way I remember that is Alien was the first movie. Aliens was the second movie. S is more than no. When they added the S, that's the sequel. That's the current stuff. So this is Afro Beets. I have a love-hate relationship with Afro Beets. I hope that y'all don't come from you about this.

I like the stuff that feels more aggressive, almost like dance hall on reggae than some of the stuff. Some of Afrobeats feels a little too calm for me. It's just a little too relaxing. It almost seems like spa music sometimes. You know what I mean? And that's just me.

Look, I grew up in the South. I grew up listening to two live crew. That was like my, like, kak, kak, kak, kak, kak. Like, I'm a, you know, I love a good aggressive snare drum. You're not getting wild up to Applebeats, though. Yeah, sometimes it can be hard. But you know, I also, I love watching people dance choreography to Afro beats because there's something about like the smoothness and the movement that I really appreciate.

Just when I'm driving around though, I'm usually trying to amp up. Yeah. You know, so that that's just my take. What's yours? I couldn't tell if that was English with a strong patois or if that was, well, we'll find out who the artist is. We're going to find out momentarily. But one thing it made me think of when you were talking about the emotional content or like how it makes you feel basically. Like what mood you get put in.

First of all, now in this day and age, I mostly go to Spotify to listen to new music. I'm not thinking genre. I'm thinking, what's my mood? I'll be like, oh, I need to write for the next couple hours. I don't want lyrics. So I'll find, like, you know, writing friendly music. Wow, that's cool. So there's some, like, a tempo component to it.

There's the absence of vocals, et cetera, et cetera. In this case with the song, I just was thinking that this is definitely more chill, even though it has lyrics to it. This is, I can imagine myself kind of making dinner to this and not wanting to get too pumped up. No, no, I'm glad you bring this up because I had never really thought of it like that, but I think I'm the exact same way without thinking literally what mood do I want to be in. In some ways, I want to think, like, who's the Diallo am I right now? Which version?

Yeah, which version? Because sometimes it's like, I want to be that dude who was like at Tower Records trying to find like the far side B side that I couldn't find on the vinyl. But oh, it's on the Japanese CD pressing. Like sometimes I want to find like my 90s hip-hop. Sometimes I want to find like what is the new electronic artist that will be to me now what, you know, DJ Falcon was to me 20 years ago. So I do think to a certain extent without thinking consciously, I am constantly thinking what's the music that's going to put me in the mental place that I want to be right now.

It's like a functional decision sometimes we make. Sometimes I lean in and I'm like, I know I want to hear this Megadeth song or whatever it is. Like I'm in the mood for something very specific. But there are other times, like I mentioned, the writing example. And this song kind of strikes me because it's sort of fun that we know nothing about it. It's completely stripped of information. I don't know what the singer or singers look like or where they're from or even what language they're speaking. So it's just purely the sonics of it.

I'm thinking I can imagine picking this to listen to on a car ride to Syria X time to tape a show where I just want to kind of clear my mind. I don't need to get too pumped up, but I want to be kind of calmer. I want to be a little more mellow, as you mentioned. I almost never want to be calmer. No? Almost never. One thing also I should point out is we were talking about that clave earlier. And what I didn't get a chance to talk about was how the clave, although it is a Latin and Afro-Cuban beat, it has its roots in Africa.

So we're kind of coming full circle because that three-two clave is also in this beat. So kind of interesting. It originated in Africa, goes to the Caribbean. It makes its way into New Orleans and the bow dittily beat. So these beads circulating through the world, it's just a fascinating thing. And it's fun on this show. We've heard it in a couple of different contexts. Absolutely.

All right, John. Who was the artist? And what was the title? The artist is E-R-Star, and the song is Bad Vibes, featuring Saye Vibes. And it's spelled V-I-B-E-Z, that artist. And where are they from? They're from Nigeria. It's an Afrobeat.

Plural song. Yeah. And the song, or the language that you're hearing here and there is Yorba, which is a Nigerian language. All right. All right. That was super cool. Let's hear the next one. Gotta work.

Gotta make that money. You know, all I heard was the chorus. I was like, this song was literally made for TikTok. Like, he says, you gotta work. You gotta make that money. So it's aspirational again. A little six-second snippet is all you need. It uses the word work, which can be interpreted by many different groups

in many different ways. And it's got like a hip-hop beat so you can almost see like those dancers from the 7M TikTok cult documentary, like dancing to this song. But then the verse. kicks in and you realize, oh, wait, this sounds like, I'm not sure if it's Japanese or Korean, but like, they're clearly rapping in another language.

So at that point, I was like, oh, well, this is interesting. And then, like, I like it when, like, you know, kind of like, like that, like, the base shift, too. It's like a base shift, and all of a sudden, I could help move a little bit. So, you know, I don't know the, I don't know which group this is. Yeah, excited. I'm going to guess an, an Asian

hip-hop group or Asian pop group dabbling in hip-hop much as later in sync did. And I wasn't hating it. Actually, it's ironic. Once I figured out it wasn't American, I liked it a lot more. Yeah, no, it's funny. I was feeling the same way.

Because I was getting some, like, thrift shop, Malcolmor vibes at the beginning, right? It's about that tempo, I think. It's about this. And that clarinet or whatever, the bassoon. Oh, totally. It's like, that's, the melody there is very thrift shop. It's very Malchamore.

Totally. And if it's Korean Macalmore, that makes it cool to me. I think we're agreed. We're kind of feeling this. What, John, do you want to? I like the whimsical nature of that, of that, of that melody basically. I like the fact that the beat switched up,

and I'm dying to know what's happening with the lyrics. Yeah, John. Why don't you tell us the artist in the title? Sure. The artist is a tease. They are a South Korean K-pop band that does hip-hop. Yeah, no, I've heard of a tease. Okay.

And the song's called Work. This is like their newest big single. And it's a mix of Korean and English, right? A mix of Korean in English. I love that. I'm hearing a lot of that actually recently. And they actually just played, they either just played or are going to play Los Angeles

because I saw like, I saw the B-M-O stadium, a tease. And I was just like, oh, okay. I love it when there's a massive, massive band somewhere else, and you've never heard of it. I know. They have, like, billions of followers and listeners. I'm sure they sold that stadium out.

I love the eclecticness of that tune. I'm a fan. I'm a new fan of whatever. Tell me the name of the band I've already forgot. A-T-E-Z, I believe it is. That was cool. Yeah, I've seen it in print. Didn't know I was going to hear it today.

All right. I think we got time for one more. Let's do it. That one scratches every inch for me. straightly from the arpeggiated beginning just like Madonna's Lucky Star into the Lindrum also like Madonna's Lucky Star

I first started I actually I turned to you and I was like Is this you? It is absolutely something I would make and I'm flattered that you would say that But the sounds like grab me right It's like 1983 in a box right there chronically. It's definitely got a retro

80s boogie to it And I wouldn't be surprised if we know the singer Or if like to a certain extent And I know we have you know Varing views on some of these groups But to me, this is like what Chromeo was trying to do, like, in the late 2000s and stuff. So it's definitely, it's retro. Yeah, it's picking, it's all the, like, it's Atlantic Star we just talked about.

Yeah. It's like it's a little Paul Abdul, a little Taylor Day and a lot of Madonna. It's a lot of that, it's the jelly bean, you know, sidewalk talk, a song we played on in earlier. I remember Sidewall Talk. There's so much in there that is very evocative of like New York, 1983. Totally. Like seven-inch single from, like, you know, a new singer and then hope maybe they become a big star. You know what's interesting about that.

is that there was a time when we were a little younger and our retro was really in vogue. So like we could walk out there into the streets and be like, I have a song that sounds just like, it's sort of what you hear LCD sound systems losing my edge, which is like, I want to make a new romantic song. Like there was a time and now I feel like our retro's like kind of not cool anymore. Like it's something you can take off the shelf. There's something interesting about this, what you're saying coming right in the same episode as talking about Splice. going into splice. Or I was talking more even about

Tommy Richmond's younger than us and he's going to the songs that were popular. So right now he's in the age group where like their retro is Pimp Juice and that if you can figure out a way to make a 2024 Pimp Juice then that's like the biggest song on TikTok

and I feel like you know look we've all seen stranger things. We've all lived in the 80s. We've lived in 80s retro at least going back as far as Adam Sandler's the wedding singer. But that's exactly what I was going to say is that we've had there was the 80s

80s. There was 80s retro one. 80s retro one. Yes. 80s retro too. It's now no longer, there's no such thing as 80s retro. It's sort of like a choice you can make to evoke a certain era or a certain type of artist or a certain emotion. And the connection to Splice I wanted to make is that that's available to a songwriter in the same way that like you might have chosen, like your sonics can dictate an awful lot

of the emotional content and an awful lot of the evocation of an era nowadays. And it's much, it's easy to find, I would say. Like you're saying, like you can find. things on Splice that will evoke the 80s or even the 70s like you surf dad and sure yeah absolutely you can literally find like maybe a wah-wah guitar from the 70s and if you can find a way to put it with like a nellie type baseline and maybe more late 20 teens female voice thank you you're helping me that's exactly what I was trying to say you have a brand new thing you're recombining different things different genres creatively and it's a genre thing it's a sound thing it's a lyric thing it's a singing style thing. That's a lot of what

2024 music is. It sounds 80s, but then suddenly it doesn't because there's elements that aren't 80s. And by the way, one more thing about that song, and I'm dying to know who it was, because I have no guess. But I was listening to the first couple of ideas, and I'm like, I was hoping there would be like a chorus. I was hoping there would be one more melodic idea because I was like, oh no, if we just cycle

back to that first idea again, it won't be enough for me. And then we hit the chorus. But then there was like a post chorus where they added even more. So I was really happy that there were like four or five different melodic ideas in there. I saw it on your face. Those melodic ideas were working in it. All right, John. Tell us who the artist was and what was the title?

The artist is Gavin Turek from here in L.A. Okay, Gavin, I've done a remix for Gavin. She's my friend. I did not recognize your fucking. How did I know one of us knew somebody with this song? Awesome track, Gavin. Good job. Oh, my friend.

Amazing. And the song's called Disco Boots. I knew it's called Disco Boots. I mean, I figured. Which actually proves our point because in the 80s, you would have never had disco in the title because the term disco was a dirty term, even if people still liked the sonic. It wasn't retro.

I did a remix for Gavin called of her song Whitney. So go check out the luxury remix of Gavin Turek. Add that to your playlist in addition to Gavin's new song, Disco Boots, which was great. We loved it. All right. So yeah, that was us reacting to new music. Remember, it's the philosophy of the show that there's new great music coming out all the time. There's nothing fun like discovering new music.

So keep your ears open. Keep them open. All right, luxury. It's time for one more song. This is the segment where we share a deep cut or a hidden gym with you, the One Song Nation, and with each other. So you go first. All right.

My one more song is I Know by Trent Rezner and Atticus Ross from the Challenger's original score. I love it with a little tennis sound effects in there because it's from the soundtrack to the movie. Challenger, which I recently saw, really great movie, really intense. and the music goes so perfectly with it. It's one of those movies where you... I generally actually, even though I'm a musician, and we talk about music on the show, I rarely notice music in movies.

Like, it's supposed to not be noticeable, except sometimes it's supposed to be noticeable. And in this movie, it really, like, ramps up the intensity in a lot of the scenes. It's great. I actually drive my wife nuts when we're watching movies at home because I'm constantly pausing

and going back 10 seconds to Shazam the song that I hear. I'm very aware of the music in all time. I've done some music, supervision. though. So I think it's probably only natural. I'm like, ooh, that went so well there. Sometimes I'll be like, mm-mm, this song doesn't fit at all. Oh, I'm sure you watch movies the same way I listen to music where it's like there's some enjoyment, but there's a lot of analysis and a lot of like thinking about your own project. I'm always thinking like, ooh, they nailed this sound and this song.

For my one more song, I'm going to go with an artist that I just discovered. Her name is Malie Zan. And she's a house music artist. I hear she's based out of Atlanta, my hometown. This song is called Work. I mean, I'm out of gas, I'm impressed. If it's in the press, we play in chess. When I'm breaking necks, I break the net.

Unless it's about to check, I ain't checked. Peace free. I mean, I just love to see people trying to take dance music and how smith into direction. And I love when people, my friends, share new music with me. So shout out to my friend Raphael Delac Cruz. I didn't know this song. He dimmed it to me the other day. And he should know that I really appreciate it.

And I appreciate all the songs that you guys send me. This is how I discover new music. As always, if you have an idea for one more, song or have questions for us. You can find me on Instagram at Diallo. That's just six letters, D-I-A-L-L-O, and on TikTok at Diallo Riddle. And I'm on Instagram or you can find me at L-U-X-X-U-R-Y. That's luxury with two X's. I'm also on TikTok, luxury with two X's, but then you add two more X's after that. So it's luxury X-X. Last but not least, I'm on the music streaming platforms, luxury L-U-X-U-X-U-Y, and I've actually got a new single that just dropped.

The song is called Say Goodbye to These, and here's a little bit of it. That's my new single. I'm playing around with little instrumental ditties with little funny melodies these days. And yeah, check me out on the streaming platform. I love it already. All right, luxury. Help me in this thing. I'm producer, DJ, and songwriter luxury. And I'm actor, writer, director, and sometimes DJ, Diyala Riddle. And this is one song. We'll see you next time.