Something You Should Know - Should You Stay or Leave? & Songs That Changed Music History - SYSK Choice

Episode Date: March 14, 2026

A simple trip to get your hair cut can instantly make you look years younger — and it may have little to do with the haircut itself. There’s a subtle psychological shift that happens in that moment that changes how people see you… and how you see yourself. https://www.youbeauty.com/beauty/psychology-of-hair/ At some point, everyone faces the question: Do I stay, or do I go? A job that feels off. A relationship that’s complicated. A place that no longer fits. But discomfort doesn’t always mean it’s time to leave — and comfort doesn’t always mean you should stay. Emily P. Freeman, host of The Next Right Thing (https://emilypfreeman.com/podcast/) and author of How to Walk into a Room: The Art of Knowing When to Stay and When to Walk Away (https://amzn.to/43a6d1p), shares a thoughtful, practical framework for making life’s hardest decisions with clarity instead of panic. Some songs don’t just climb the charts — they change music. Tracks like “Good Vibrations,” “Rocket Man,” and “What a Fool Believes” didn’t just become hits; they shifted the sound, the production, and even the business of rock and pop. Marc Myers, longtime Wall Street Journal contributor and author of Anatomy of 55 More Songs: The Oral History of Top Hits That Changed Rock, Pop and Soul (https://amzn.to/3TrynC4), takes us inside the stories behind these landmark recordings and explains what made them transformative. When you walk into a store, you think you’re making rational choices. But before you touch a product or read a price tag, your senses are already at work — especially your sense of smell. Retailers carefully design scents to influence how long you linger, how you feel, and how much you spend. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/12/091214143732.htm PLEASE SUPPORT OUR SPONSORS QUINCE: Don't keep settling for clothes that don't last! Go to ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://Quince.dom/sysk ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠for free shipping on your order and 365-day returns. Now available in Canada, too! SHOPIFY: See less carts go abandoned with Shopify and their Shop Pay button! Sign up for your $1 per month trail and start selling today at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://Shopify.com/sysk⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ EXPEDITION UNKOWN: We love the Expedition Unknown podcast from Discovery! Listen wherever you get your podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Starring Samara Weaving, Catherine Newton, Sarah Michelle Geller, and Elijah Wood. Ready or not two, here I come, only in theaters March 20th. Get tickets now. Today on something you should know, how getting a haircut can make you look younger, even if you don't actually cut your hair. Then, how do you decide whether to stay or to go in a job or a relationship? It can be a hard decision.

I think it's helpful to remember something that a friend of mine, Holly Good, said to me when I was questioning a situation that I was invited to be a part of, and little tiny red flags started to show up. And she said to me, tiny red flags rarely shrink. They only grow. Also, how retailers appeal to your sense of smell to get you to buy. And a look at some of the most iconic and important songs in rock and roll. They changed music history. Each one of these had a fundamental role to play in either influencing everyone else or becoming an influence on those who came after.

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Today, Something You Should Know with Mike Carruthers. Hi, welcome. It's time for another episode of Something You Should Know, and we're going to start today with something, well, it's just kind of cool. It turns out that a trip to the salon to get your hair cut can cut years off. your looks. A study was done by Harvard and MIT. They sent women to a salon to get their hair cut and colored, and the results were astonishing. After the hairstyling, before and after photos were scored by strangers, and in every case, the age of the women were guessed lower in the after shot. But what's so remarkable about this is that the hair was cropped out of both photos. So it turns out,

out that the new hairdo had nothing to do with the youthful glow. It was the pampering in that sense of change that gave women a boost of confidence in their appearance. And that's what made them look younger. And that is something you should know. There comes a time in everyone's life, probably multiple times, actually, where you have a choice to make. Do I stay or do I go? could be a job or a relationship or a friendship or where you live. You have to choose to continue as is or walk away and move on. And it can be a very difficult choice to make. Here to discuss how to tackle this life situation is Emily Freeman.

She's host of a podcast called The Next Right Thing. And she's author of five books. Her latest is called How to Walk Into a Room, The Art of Knowing When to Seafood, stay and when to walk away. Hi, Emily. Welcome to something you should know. Hi, Mike. It's so good to be here. So let's start with you explaining this issue a little deeper, this dilemma of should I stay or should I go and why it's so difficult. Well, first, I think why it's so difficult is big picture, as long as we live, we will be making decisions. And I know your intelligent and curious listeners

want to make really good ones, I think the decisions that give us the most trouble are often the ones where we're deciding whether or not it's time for us to move on from a space or to stay put. And I think, I mean, this idea of decision making, every one of us has the responsibility to some degree or another to continue to do this decision making. We can't graduate from it, retire from it, age out of it, or delegate it. And so this idea of, okay, I'm the one who needs to decide. to move on or to stay. And a lot of times we feel really lost to know where to begin.

And I think one of those reasons is because when we are holding that decision about, is this a space for me now, still, or next, that is often tied deeply to our identity. It's tied deeply to our sense of belonging. And oftentimes, it's something or someplace that we may have worked really hard to get to, And so when we start to question it, it feels like the stakes are really high. So let's get really real with this and talk about the situation. Should I go or should I stay from what? What kinds of things are we talking about?

Stay or go from things like a job or even a particular vocation, a faith community, even a volunteer position, stay or go from maybe. Maybe even a friend group, relationally, there can be questions about whether or not I should stay here or go. And again, some of these have higher stakes than others. But I think they all are questions that, you know, in my conversations with people over many years of being someone who talks a lot about decision-making and discernment, I have found that those are the types of questions that give people the most trouble. When I think about the times in my life where I have had that struggle to figure out. out, do I stay or do I go? I hear this voice. I think it's my father telling me, you know, quiters don't, you don't quit. No, you've got to see this through. You've got to push your

way through this. You don't just walk away. That's the chicken thing to do. And that's a very strong voice. You just perfectly illustrated a narrative that you have. And it's a script that you've hand it or one that has developed over time, we all have them. And it's not bad to have a script. But I think what's important is for us to, as you so eloquently did, be able to name what the script is and to look at it almost as if it's other than us because those scripts, those narratives of, for example, what it means to quit or leave and what it means to stay, at least to be able to look at those can give us a really great starting point so that our narrative of either leaving, being a lever or being a stayer, isn't the only thing that determines our next right thing.

When you talk to people, or maybe there's research about this, that generally speaking, do people make the right decision or do they regret that later on, do they regret the decision they made in these kind of situations? you know that's an excellent question and i i don't have a i don't have a research answer but i will say i think that the fear of regretting the decision when i've talked with a lot with people and you know i interviewed my i surveyed my own audience and and ask like do you consider yourself to be a decisive person or an indecisive person 30 percent of them said i i consider myself decisive but the rest said no i'm indecisive and

The number one reason they cited was, I'm afraid I'm going to regret my decision. I'm afraid I'm going to make the wrong decision. And oftentimes it was because their decision was going to impact not only them, but someone else or a group of someone else's. And that can be really scary. And that's when the stakes do feel really high. I remember hearing a long time ago someone say, and I've always liked this advice, that it's not so much the decision you make to stay or to go. or any decision. It's really your commitment to the decision.

Do you make it and run with it, or do you always second guess and look back and wonder what if you had done something else? That's a big factor. I think that you're really on to something there. I think we tend to think it's about a binary choice. It's between, and the choice is something that's right and something that's wrong.

And I love the phrase, just do the next right thing. It's one that I have hung my hat on for many years. It's something I have borrowed from others. I didn't come up with it. We know many have said that before us. But I think a lot of times we get hung up on that word right. But I would love to encourage us to think about the word next. And when we just think about what is the next thing?

Even if it's a large, big decision to make, a lot of times we're not really tasked with making the final decision right now. we just need to do one next thing, one next right thing. And you're right. I think it is, in hindsight, when I look back over my own life and I look at the decisions I've made, the rooms I've entered in and out of, if I think about all of all of life is like a house and every room has a story and some rooms we're in and we're in forever. In other rooms, we begin to question and we decide maybe we ought to leave or it's time to try something different for various reasons.

But when I look back on those and I think, you know, maybe there wasn't a specific right or wrong. Perhaps it was less about the final decision in the end. And it was more about both, like you said, committing to the decision that you choose. Like, this is what we're doing. We're going to move forward with it. But I would also add to that. It's also about the person who I am becoming. And I think sometimes we lose sight of that, that it's not just do I do this or that.

Do I go here or there? But it's also, who am I becoming in the process of making that decision? I think one of the struggles people have when they have these decisions to make, you know, to quit this job or not quit or to stay or to leave this friendship or relationship or stay, is they don't know what to base it on. They don't know what criteria to use. And just because, you know, I've got that voice in my head, I don't know that that's, you know, worth listening to in any one decision.

that I don't know what the criteria is. What should I be considering? What should I, how do you make an answer reveal itself in those kind of situations when you don't know how to do it? Well, I think a few things come to mind. I think it's helpful to have a simple framework. I think it's helpful to have some questions that you always ask yourself. I think it's also helpful to remember something that a friend of mine, Holly Good, said to me years and years ago when I was questioning a situation that, I was invited to be a part of.

And in that situation, little tiny red flags started to show up. And I was like, oh, I don't know if I should enter into this commitment because I'm starting to see a few things that make me uncomfortable, but they're small and little and maybe I should ignore them. And maybe it's just me. And she said to me, Emily, tiny red flags rarely shrink. They only grow. And I have found that to be quite true, not only in my professional life, but in my personal life.

But what I've also found, I've added to that statement because it was so hard. helpful for me. Okay, tiny red flags rarely shrink. They only grow. But every hesitation is not a red flag. And so I think that can be the first step when you are like, I'm having a question about the space or this group of people or this commitment, but I'm not sure what to do with it. I'm not sure what to base it on. I think the first thing to do is to notice and name where the flags are, but don't immediately call them red. Just name them yellow. This is a caution flag. This is something that I want to slow down, and I'm going to question and I'm going to spend some time with and just assume that it's a yellow flag at first. And yellow flags, this is my flag math, yellow flags can become green flags.

But once you recognize something as a red flag, even if it's very tiny, it's rarely going to shrink. It's almost always going to grow. So I think it's important to pay attention when we do find a red flag to pay close attention to those and let those be an important arrow, at least, as we consider what to do next. We're talking about those life decisions we all have to make to stay or leave. And my guest is Emily Freeman, author of the book, How to Walk Into a Room, the Art of Knowing When to Stay and When to Walk Away. At Desjardin, our business is helping yours. We are here to support your business through every stage of growth,

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Well, I think it's the first step of a framework that I like to use. And that's the first step is point and call. And that's based on, and this is a way of paying attention. It's based on James Clear talks about it actually in atomic habits. But it's based on the railway system in Japan. It's one of the best in the world, thanks at least in part to its safety system of what they call pointing and calling. And it's where every detail of the operation of the train is identified, pointed out, and named out loud, almost like what you would see at, a toddler do if they're playing like, oh, there's a ball, there's a dog. It's soft. This is fun. Just very simple things. But these train operators, they identify, they point out and they name out loud using various human senses. And the purpose of doing all of that is to minimize mistakes. And it actually works. It reduces the workplace errors by up to 85%. And the idea is they're just raising their level of awareness in the job that they're doing so that they do it more carefully with more mindfulness. We can do the same thing in the various spaces and relationships in our lives, raising our level of awareness of attention, okay, here's what's true right now. And the reason why

paying attention, you know, that does sound kind of nebulous, but the reason why I think it's important as that's a first step is because oftentimes we make our decisions about staying or leaving based on a feeling or based on maybe one or two hard things that happened there. And we don't take the time to evaluate the whole room. I'm just using room as metaphor here, but the whole room of that space, whether that's a job or a vocation. And so we kind of hone in on the squeakiest wheel and maybe we might rush out of that room too quickly because we haven't actually point and called to the whole thing. And so I think that's when I say paying attention and it came like, well, pay, do what with it? Well, I think first you name it. And then second, I think rather than

trying to look ahead into the foggy future and figuring out, okay, so what's my next thing? Instead, when making decisions, I say our best indicator of our next right thing is to pay attention to our last right thing. And that's remembering our path, is looking back and thinking about, well, what has my life taught me already? What decisions have I already made that can help me inform what decisions I'm going to make next? Because in many ways, the path, the only path we have available to us is the one we've already walked. So there's a lot we can learn there. And once we do that, the third step in this framework is to acknowledge presence because we can't, we are not always meant. Sometimes we're required to make decisions alone. But man,

we have communities around us. We have families around us who can really come alongside of us and help us to discern, okay, here's what I've pointed and called. And here's what I've discovered about myself in the past. So, okay, friend or family member who I trust and who knows me, what do you see happening here? What do you see that I don't see? And can you support me as I move forward into my next thing? And that sort of brings us to that final piece of the framework, which is yield to the arrows. And what I mean by arrows is, you know, when we have a decision to make, so often we are, we have a decision and we want an answer. And we're looking for the straight line, step one, step two. But so many times in life, when it comes to deciding to go or to stay,

it's more like I live in North Carolina and if I'm going to travel to Florida, I can't leave my neighborhood and see a sign that says this way to Florida. Instead, I see a road sign that I'm familiar with and then maybe I'll get to the highway and I see a road sign that might take me to Charlotte. But I'm not going to see any, I'm not going to see the final step. I have to follow arrows along the way. And so that's sort of what I mean by yielding to the arrows that we may not know today or tomorrow, whether or not it's time for me to leave. But these are some things we can pay attention to. We can look back at past decisions. We can depend on people around us who know us, and then we can discern, okay, what's my next right thing now? Well, I like what you said about

depending on people around us, because isn't it interesting how if somebody else had the same decision to make and they came to you for advice, often the answer is just so crystal clear. Like, why are you even asking? Why are you even saying this out loud? And when yet, when it's your decision to make, it gets all fogged up and it's hard to, it's hard to see on the other side. Well, and listen, I feel like, I mean, I've hosted a podcast for almost seven years now called the next right thing.

And people are like, oh, you're the decision-making person. You must make great decisions. Absolutely not. I feel like sometimes I know too much and I think about this stuff so much that I so often have to go to some of my closest friends or to, you know, my husband and be like, what do you see that I don't see? Help me to. And they'll say to me, honestly and truly, line for line, things I've said to them. But you're exactly right. There's just something about our, and we just can't, we can't read our own label. We can't see it for ourselves. So it's so helpful to have those people in our lives who can see it on our behalf. And but ultimately, you know, you have to, you have to make a decision. And I think one of the things that comes up is like, what are the consequences of the decision? In other words, it's not just does it make you feel better, but, you know, what happens to everything else, the cascading of events that happen from the decision you make, you're going to lose a friend or you're going to, something's going to happen, you're going to have to move.

I mean, there's a lot to consider. And it isn't just the decision. It's all the other things that fall as a result. That's exactly right. And that's what often keeps us procrastinating our decisions, is because we are so aware of either the fallout, the repercussions, the whatever comes on the other side of it. I have found a few practices to be helpful for me when I'm considering

or when I've gone through my own endings, you know, I've, I sold a business I helped to start. We left a faith community that we were, we loved and thought we would be at forever. You know, we've made school decisions for our kids. My husband left a job about 10 years ago. So we've done this a lot. And I'm sure, you know, many of us have done this at various times in our lives. I've found a few things to be helpful. And one is to kind of reframe my idea of closure.

I think a lot of times we imagine that an ending didn't go well because it didn't feel good or it was difficult or hard. And I think we often hope that our endings, the endings of things, will look a lot like the final episode of our favorite sitcom where like the people get married or they have a baby and they leave their apartment and it closed the door and the music plays and all the loose ends are tied up and all the stories. lines have a lovely bow. And we know that's not true in life. Like we could, we know that's not true. But when we feel that disconnect of an ending where we didn't get to explain ourselves, or the finances were tougher than we thought they would be, or people think we made a bad decision, even though, even if we feel good about it, there are things we can't take with us when we walk out of rooms. But there are a lot of things we can take. And so for me, I have found it to be helpful to make literal lists like on a piece of paper with my hand make a list of

here are the gifts I'm bringing with me as I leave this room whatever the room is and write them down here are things that wouldn't be true if it weren't for this room that I had and then writing a second list of things I'm going to leave behind I would bet that just about everybody has some decision in their past that they made that they wonder what could have been? If they had done something different, what could have been? And that's hard to live with, I think, sometimes. That what could have been, it's such a trap. Because once you've chosen and taken your step forward, it's almost like you have to pretend like there was no other option, because this is where we're at now. And that's really hard for particularly some personalities. That's harder for

other personalities, they never look back. And I would say, I would invite that person to maybe practice a regular habit of reflection, see what you can learn when you reflect. But then there are those of us who live in the past and we're constantly evaluating and reevaluating what could have been. And I think that's equally as equally not helpful, I would say, as not looking back at all. Right, because any story you create in your head about what could have been is always going to be wonderful. It's never going to be real. It's just going to be, oh, imagine how great it would have been if I married Susie instead of Betty. And, you know, well, you don't know. Susie could have been a real nightmare. You mean, how do you know? Susie could have been a nightmare. That's exactly right.

Well, as you've been talking, I have, well, and maybe other people have been doing this too, with thinking of times in my life where, you know, those stay or go moments and thinking about the choices I made and some I think were the right choice and maybe others weren't but we'll never know. I've been speaking with Emily Freeman. She is host of the podcast The Next Right Thing and she's author of a book called How to Walk Into a Room, The Art of Knowing When to Stay and When to Walk Away. And there's a link to that book in the show notes. Thanks for being here, Emily. Awesome. Thank you so much. At Medcan, we know that life's greatest moments are built on a foundation of good health. From the big milestones to the quiet winds. That's why our annual health assessment

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Marvel Television's Wonder Man All eight episodes now streaming Only on Disney Plus Everybody has their favorite rock and roll songs or pop songs, and some of those individual songs actually had an impact on music and on the world. As a former disc jockey who played rock and roll music on the radio for several years, I love talking about music and what went on behind the scenes of some of those iconic songs. And someone else who likes to talk about rock and roll is Mark Myers.

He's a regular contributor to the Wall Street Journal, where he writes about music and the arts. He's author of the critically acclaimed books, Anademy of a Song, Why Jazz Happened, and his latest book, which is called Anatomy of 55 More Songs, The Oral History of Top Hits that Changed Rock, Pop, and Soul. Hey, Mark, welcome to something you should know. Hey, Mike, great to be with you.

So first, I should say that I'm sure most people know that we are restricted from playing the music that we're about to talk about because we would have to obtain the rights to play that music, which would be a monumental task. But actually, the songs we're going to talk about, I bet most people know anyway.

You picked 55 songs, and obviously we can't talk about all 55, but we can talk about some of them. And so why did you pick these songs? Because how iconic or how important the song is can be pretty subjective. So why the ones that you picked? They changed music history.

Each one of these had a fundamental role to play in either influencing everyone else or becoming an influence on those who came after. So let's start with good vibrations by the Beach Boys because that is an iconic song. It sounds different than any other song you had ever heard up to that time. There were stories going around that it took forever to record. It was recorded in several different studios. And so talk about that. It was the most costly single ever to have been produced prior to that time. It was something like $400,000 for one single.

The thing that makes it so interesting is that it's not so much the many different studios where they recorded, but the amount of layering and the amount of overdubbing and the shift. and the shifts that are going on in this particular song. It's quite fascinating when you hear how many times this song changes mood. Quite interesting. Do we know, is this one of the songs that the wrecking crew people played on, or did the Beach Boys actually play on it? The Beach Boys themselves appeared on the covers of their albums,

and they appeared on stage in concerts. But in the recording studio, when you listen to the records, the people who are playing on there aren't the Beach Boys. It's the so-called wrecking crew, which was a euphemism or a nickname for studio musicians in Los Angeles who got things right the first time and could invent new things on the fly. That's why Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys decided to use these guys because his, for lack of a better word, hero or his mentor, Phil Spector was using these guys, and Brian felt that if he was going to produce, he needed things to be just right, and he didn't want to spend endless amounts of time trying to get it right. So by using the wrecking crew, he had pros in there. And that was true of many of the songs of that era, and may still be true. I don't know, but, I mean, there were lots of stories of artists who didn't play music on their own records. And to some extent it is still true today. I mean, you have, you know, it's true to the extent that a lot of what you hear is done by studio musicians.

But back then, groups, most kids back in the 1960s thought that the people whose faces appeared on the record and whose name appeared on the record were actually playing. And they weren't. And I guess the first group, you know, that exposed that accidentally. in an article in Look magazine were the monkeys. It turned out none of the monkeys were playing on those records and kids were, I think parents were more aghast than kids.

I don't think kids cared one way or the other. It just sounded good and that's all that mattered. Yeah, and interestingly, they got to be a halfway decent musician so they could tour. Eventually, correct. How about a song that maybe is one of your favorites or, you know, a song that really changed music history? Look at the spinners, I'll be around, which I think is a favorite of yours as well, right, Mike?

Yeah, well, I've always been a big spinners fan, and I got to know them back in my disc jockey days. I got to know them really pretty well, and there were really terrific guys who struggled. I mean, they were with Motown records for a long time and really didn't do much. They had one pretty good-sized hit with Motown, but really until they moved to Atlantic records and got hooked up with their producer Tom Bell, that's when their careers took off and did pretty well. And in fact, we're inducted into the rock and roll Hall of Fame last year. Yeah, I mean, I'll Be Around comes out in July, 1972.

It goes to number three. It was actually began as a challenge. Tom Bell was challenged by Vince Montana who said, I bet you, music is getting so complicated, Tom. I bet you can't create a hit with just three chords. And Tom took up that challenge and wrote, I'll Be Around, wrote the music for it. The lyrics were by a guy named Phil Hurt, H-U-R-T-T. And the whole point of the song, which was sort of radical for the time, is that, you know, in the song,

the guy who's singing his girlfriend wants to see other people. And instead of blowing his top, he says, sure, go ahead. and if things don't work out, I'll be here for you. Now, what's interesting is the lyrics are written by Phil while he's watching a 76ers game with a volume turned down. He's watching basketball and writing the lyrics. But the biggest game changer here, Mike, the biggest game changer is Earl Young's drumming.

Because what you hear on this particular song, when you hear Earl Young playing the drums, he came up with this Native American beat on the drums, and it became, really is the very first disco beat prior to the disco movement. This is what I mean by changing music history. What a Fool believes is one of those songs that as soon as you hear those first,

whatever that is, you know, here it comes. And I don't know anybody who doesn't like what a fool believes by the Doobie Brothers. it's one of those songs it's like up up and away by the fifth dimension it's like one of those songs when it comes on the radio nobody would ever turn it off in other words you just listen to it to the end

even if you've heard it a million times it's just so good and catchy and fun and changes in just the right places what was interesting about this particular song is that Michael told me this is Michael McDonald the co-composer of this song and a member of the Doobie Brothers that when he was writing

the song in 1978, he came up with that introduction that you like so much, Mike, but he only had the verse and the melody and the lyrics that he came from somewhere back in her long ago. That's the first verse. That's all he had, and he couldn't get beyond that. And instead of constantly trying to rework it and rework it and rework it, he said, why don't I team up with Kenny Loggins? Let me see if Kenny Loggins will write with me, and maybe we can move this thing, you know, to another point. So he calls up Kenny.

Kenny comes down to write with him. And the whole point of that song is that a guy, the guy in the song, believes because his ex-girlfriend had coffee with him, she was going to get back with him. But the point of the song is that's never going to happen. Because it's not a breakup and it's not a makeup song, but it's a fool trying to get back. to get back together when it's so apparent that it's never going to happen. And both the Doobie Brothers and Kenny Loggins each released it as a single. Kenny Loggins was the co-writer, as I just mentioned, right? So Kenny decides to release this song, his way, on his album Nightwatch, six months before

the Doobie Brothers released it in December of 79. So in July of 79, Kenny Loggins releases it on Nightwatch. The song goes nowhere. And when it came out in December, I said to Kenny, how did you feel when that song came out? You know, when you heard Michael's version. And Kenny just paused and he said, when I heard Michael's version, I wished I could have re-recorded my song. I totally got it wrong. I mean, Michael had it right on the nose.

Come and get your love by Redbone is, you know, my 14-year-old son, a few years ago. Love that song. And I think it, because it was in a movie that the kids were watching or something, but there's something so timeless about that song. People, it's catchy, people love it. You can't get it out of your head.

Well, the two writers were brothers. That's Pat and Lolley, L-O-L-Y, Vegas. Pat and Lolly Vegas wrote that. The Redbone is a group made up entirely of Native Americans. And at Vegas wanted to show that Native Americans were about love, not the stuff of westerns, of scalpings, of all the stuff that was being portrayed, that he wanted to show the peaceful love side. And when you hear that opening, most people don't know what that first word is that is being sung. And it's actually hail, H-A-I-L, hail, what's the matter with your hair? Right? So it's kind of interesting what the lyrics are because it's coming from this Native American perspective.

But the whole point of that song just illustrates all of the trivial things that women worry about in relationships like their hair or their astrological sign. And the point of that song is, forget about all that junk. Just how do you feel? Come and get your love. If you feel the love, come and get your love. And there's a lot of fascinating, you know, as you point out, in terms of instrumentation, there's a lot of interesting instrumentation on there. If you listen carefully, there's an electric sitar, the Indian instrument that you hear. It's electrified, and it's matched against a Fender Telecaster, which is another type of guitar. So as I look at your list of songs, I agree and I like most of them. It's kind of my taste in music.

But with one exception. Well, it's not really an exception. I just never thought it was much of a song, and that is smoke on the water. I just thought it's kind of, eh, it just didn't do much for me. So I want to hear how it changed music history because I never was a big fan.

I remember when this song came out in 1973. And other than a couple of groups that were starting to play a little bit hard, harder than pop rock on the radio, keep in mind, all you had in the 1960s was AM radio. And even into the early 70s, all you had was AM radio. It wasn't until the import of Japanese component systems like Pioneer and Sony, where they started including the FM band on the integrated receiver or that part that you turn on and turn up the volume. There was

suddenly an FM band. Much of what you heard was AM radio. So American woman was harder, you know, slightly harder. But no, hard rock didn't exist. yet, didn't exist yet to the extent that it would in the 70s. Smoke on the water. That was the first hard rock song I heard on AM radio. It was a complete game changer. And it too opened the door for harder stuff like Led Zeppelin and the Who. So you pick one.

You pick one that has a good story that might surprise me. Let's look at September, Mike, by Earth, Wind and Fire, which came out in 1978 and went to number one. And there's something magical about the chemistry of that thing where you're constantly uplifted. And there's a reason why people use it at weddings and, you know, there's just something about it. And at this particular time in 1978, Earthwind and Fire was going to put out its first greatest hits album. And they wanted to add one new song so that people would buy it. That was kind of the trick back then.

Greatest hits albums would come out. but the group would add one song, and that would be a new song, and hopefully it would be a hit. And this is the song that they wanted to put out. And Maurice White of Earth, Wind and Fire, had some notes in terms of the lyrics. The music was already written, but he needed a co-writer, and he turned to a woman by the name of Ali Willis to come in and help him write the song. Now, when she took a look at the lyrics, and she's a pro, but the fascinating thing is that when she takes a look at the lyrics, she says to him, oh, so, Badiya, that's just holding space.

You know, you want me to put lyrics in there. And Maurice Wai says, no, Badiya stays. That's not going. And she goes, yeah, but it's just not happening. It's just, he said, leave it in. I really want it in. So she writes the lyrics, you know, the lyrics that you hear. on the song. She wrote the lyrics. And when it was time to record, she went into the studio,

dropped to her knees, grabbed him by the legs and said, please, Maurice, please let me put words to body ya. It's just, it sounds like yada yada, it's just filler. And he goes, leave it. And the song turned out to be a huge hit. And Ali said the lesson she learned there is never get in the way of the groove as a lyricist. If the groove, if the groove, It doesn't matter what the lyrics are. Don't try to change what's there, which is kind of funny. There is or there was, you can probably clear it up. Some mystery over the lyrics and the date in the lyrics.

Talk about that. I think the most fascinating thing that nobody knew prior to my interviewing Allie and then Maurice White's widow, nobody quite understood what the 21st day of September meant in that song, the lyric. And when I asked Ali, Ali said for the longest time, she just thought, it just sang better than the 23rd or the 20th. Like, it just had a better, better sound. And when I interviewed Maurice White's widow, she said, oh, no, no, no, no, no.

There was a definite meaning to that. And I said, what was it? She said, I was due. You know, we were due to have our first child on the 21st of September. And I kept reminding, Maurice, look, whatever you're doing, whatever you're touring, whatever you're in the studio, you've got to remember the 21st day of September is when your baby is due. You've got to be freed up. You've got to be around.

And, you know, that's the lyric line. Do you remember the 21st day of September? Don't forget. Isn't that fascinating? Rocket Man, Elton John. Well, you know, what's interesting for me about this is the timing. It's 1972. And you have to remember, people think of Americans landing on the moon in 1969 as a one and done.

But what many probably don't remember, I do, I live during this period, is that the Apollo program had six manned landing. So after 1969, there were five more. And what fascinated Bernie Toppen, as he wrote the lyrics, because with Elton John and Bernie Taupin, Bernie Taupin being the lyricist, Elton John being the composer, is that Bernie, the lyrics always came first. Bernie would write these abstract poems or he'd put these lyrics together without any sense of music in his head, and then go into the next room and hand the sheet of words to Elton John, and Elton John would read the words and get a feeling for how he wanted to express that music, and he'd add the music.

So, Bernie wrote these words at this particular moment in time, partially inspired by Ray Bradbury's short story, the Rocket Man, science fiction story from the early 1950s. That's important because rocket man's story is about the drudgery of being an astronaut. You know, that it was almost like, you know, back then in the 50s, being outer space was so far. fascinating. Everything was about outer space. It was about Martians. You know, America was captivated by outer space. And what Bradbury was saying at that particular moment in time is, eventually astronauts are going to be like truck drivers. It's going to be just boring to have to go off into space and leave your family for extended periods of time. People who do it aren't going to enjoy doing it, but they have to because that's how they pay their bills. So this whole concept

that space travel, as fascinating as it was in the early 1970s, because it was actually happening, that it would become drudgery is what prompted Bernie Taupin to write the lyrics that he did, and Elton felt it as a power ballad. I mean, keep in mind, this is one of the great power ballads of the early 1970s. This is a slow song that builds and builds and builds and just explodes in energy. Well, one of the It's not for me to say, but I like Elton John, I've always liked Elton John,

but he does not enunciate. Out with it, Mike, out with it. He does not enunciate lyrics very well. I don't have any idea what he's saying in many of his songs because of the way he sings, it's hard to hear the words. And so, Rockett. Completely agree.

Completely agree. But you want to know something? something, that's part of the charm of a lot of British rock. In other words, do you really know what Bowie is singing without looking at the lyrics? And do you understand half the Beatles songs after 1966? Probably not without knowing the lyrics. So part of the charm of some of these is that as a kid listening to the radio or listening to the music, most people just sang, they sang lyrics.

they came up with their own lyrics to the songs based on what they think. I mean, does anybody know the lyrics to Benny and the Jets without looking at a sheet of paper? Right. That's my thing. Like, if you're Bernie Taupin, you've got to be thinking, come on, Elton, I spent all this time writing these. Could you say them clearly so people can hear the words I wrote? Hey, you know, I say it a little differently, Mike. It's part of the sculpture.

You know, it's part of the cubist interpretation of it. It doesn't matter. You know, it turns out people didn't, you know, if you look at a list of songs that people buy and bought and didn't buy over a hundred year period, it had nothing to do with the words because many of the biggest hits, the words are unintelligible. Elton John wouldn't have been as successful as he as he was and is if all that mattered was, can I understand what he's saying? So it's the expression. it's the emotion combined with the music that matters most. Everybody I know, and I'm sure the same, just came up with different lyrics for it.

Well, I get what you're saying, but to me, Elton John is like kind of beyond the limit of, like, even if you try to understand what he's saying, and even if you look at the lyrics and listen to him, it's like, really? That's what he's saying? It's a little past acceptable to me, but everybody's different, and it certainly has worked for Elton John. I mean, what a career.

This has been fun, Mark. I've been speaking with Mark Myers, who is a contributor to the Wall Street Journal, where he writes about music and the arts. And the name of his book is Anatomy of 55 more songs, the oral history of top hits that change rock, pop, and soul. There's a link to his book at Amazon and the show notes. I appreciate you coming on and talking about all this. Mark, was fun.

You're excellent at what you do by, It's just a joy to do this with someone who brings a level of sophistication and familiarity and closeness to the music that, you know, makes it that much more interesting. And it pushes me, you know, to be as articulate as I possibly can. You may have noticed that some stores and even the merchandise that they sell in those stores are smelling better than they used to. Savvy manufacturers have figured out that many of us are suckers for sweet smells, and they're adding scents to some everyday items. You can smell some of those trendy teen stores a mile away, but there's a more subtle approach, too.

Some manufacturers even use scented embroidery thread woven into their product. Research shows that items like scented pencils and facial tissues have increased sales. scent is one of the best ways to make a product's name and shape linger in your memory and increase the chances that you will buy it again. And that is something you should know. I'm sure you have a very long to-do list, but if I could ask you to just add one thing to it, and that is to tell somebody about this podcast,

a friend, a neighbor, a family member, and ask them to listen. You can share by using the three little dots on Apple Podcasts, or Spotify, and just share a link to an episode, it'd be greatly appreciated. I'm Mike Rothers. Thanks for listening today to something you should know. Walters-Cleward knows the accountant's dinner all too well. Lukewarm coffee, cold takeout, and endless manual data entry. It's time to change the menu.

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sex scandals, and maybe the worst king in British history. And on the Vulgar History podcast, we're going to be looking at the balls, the gowns, and all the scandal of the Regency era. Vulgar History is a women's history podcast, and our Regency Era series will be focusing on the most rebellious women of this time. That includes Jane Austen herself, who is maybe more radical than you might have thought. We'll also be talking about queer icons like Anne Lister, scientists like Mary Anning and Ada Lovelace, as well as other scandalous actresses, royal mistresses, rebellious princesses,

and other lesser-known figures who made history happen in England in the Regency era. Listen to Vulgar History wherever you get podcasts.