Switched on Pop - Behind the Scenes of Switched on Pop on Harman Audio Talks

Episode Date: November 28, 2023

Nate and Charlie were recently featured on Harman Audio Talks. While our team takes the week off, we wanted to share that conversation with you as we pull back the curtain on how we make the show and select songs for the podcast. Sign up for the Switched On Pop Newsletter Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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from the first instant and he has a wella. Good Girl Jasmine Absolute, hypnotica, irresistible. Discover it now and let you know about for susentia. Team is taking a break this week. We'll be back to our regular schedule next Tuesday. But Nate and I were on the Harmon Audio Talks

podcast recently. And I wanted to share that conversation with you. It's a bit about the background of the podcast, our own entry into the world of music, and how we go about listening to songs and identifying hits. I thought you'd enjoy hearing us pull back the curtain. And so here's that conversation on Harmon Audio Talks. Hi there. My name's Ushin Lundy and welcome to Audio Talks presented to you by Harmon. And in this episode, we speak to two musical mavens whose passion for pop has ignited the airwaves since

2014 with Switched on Pop, a critically acclaimed podcast that has broken down hundreds of top 40 songs to figure out what makes a hit and what is its place in popular culture. Welcome to the podcast, musicologist Nate Sloan. Thanks so much for having me. Great to have you here, Nate. Where are you joining us from today? I'm calling in from beautiful, sunny, Los Angeles, California. outstanding. And welcome to the podcast songwriter Charlie Harding. Thank you so much. I'm very happy to be here coming in from equally beautiful, much chillier, Brooklyn, New York. Nice. Fantastic. Well, thank you both so much for joining us over the airwaves. So before we get into Switched-on Pop, I would love to hear a little bit about your backgrounds. You do so much of a deep dive into the backgrounds of the songs we all know and love. But what about your good selves? Now, Nate, how did you get to where you are today? I fell in love with music listening to the jazz and classical records that my parents played in our house. And this is confusing. even though Charlie is calling from New York, I grew up in New York City and then we swapped coasts eventually. Now, growing up in New York City was a privilege for someone who's interested in music. I got to go hear symphonies and go to jazz clubs and just hear some of the greatest musicians in the world. And I played jazz and pop and I never had that burning desire to be a

musician. So I was like, where do I fall? You know, how do I make music a part of my life without playing it for a living. And then the golden moment was when I went to college and met a young man named Charlie Harding and discovered a study called musicology, the study of the sound and the cultural meaning of music. This is my calling. And I pursued that ever since. I now am fortunate enough to teach music history at the University of Southern California here in Los Angeles. And Charlie and I have had the incredible privilege to make a podcast about the making and meaning of popular music together. So that's my circuitous route to this conversation we're having today. Outstanding. Thank you so much, Nate. That's brilliant. And Charlie, let's hear that story from

your perspective up to the moment where you collided with Nate and you decided to make this amazing podcast. So I know you're a songwriter, but what kind of elements go into that backstory? I'm deeply grateful for having had a very strong music education system in my middle school, which required me to play an instrument. My guitar became my best friend in middle school and high school years that are not always so socially easy for everybody. And I think the guitar ended up being a great excuse to take control of my life through the world of music, which I fell in love with. And past those early days of being required to learn an instrument, I really became an autodidact. love learning about music. I have a passion for learning new instruments up to the point of mediocrity and moving on to another instrument. I kind of play all things with strings,

love twiddling with synthesizers, music production. I was very lucky to take music classes with Nate in college. He was the real star boy of the class. I was encouraged by my professor to drop my major. They're like, oh, we don't know if this is going to work out for you. And yet, Nate and I formed a very strong musical relationship over the years, playing in bands and eventually starting our podcast. And for me, I've had a great sort of turnaround after dropping my music major. I am now also teaching as a professor at US University teaching music as well. And I songwrite and produce things with friends on the side because it's the most fun thing to do. Absolutely. That's a beautiful symmetry about both your stories there. So you're kind of drawn together by this passion for music, this friendship. But what actually inspired you to launch the first switched on podcast? episode and to actually make this into a thing. The genesis for the podcast was a conversation that Charlie and I had driving down Highway 1 in Northern California. And I was telling Charlie about a class I'd been teaching to high school students. And I had this kind of light bulb moment, I guess, when rather than

teaching theory through examples from Mozart and Scarlatti like I'd been doing throughout my pedagogical career up to that point. I thought, you know what, I'll use something that these students can relate to. I took one of the biggest hit songs of that moment, which was about a decade ago. It was Carly Ray Jepson's Call Me Maybe. And the students unpack the different musical elements of this song. I was telling Charlie, like, I also came to this conclusion that there was a lot more going on under the surface of hip-pop songs that I had given credit for. Charlie was equally, excited about this idea. And if I can give a little context, this was a moment that we might call the second wave of the podcast boom. So Charlie and I were very excited about this medium.

And Charlie was like, you know, we could write about this. We could blog about it. What if we made a podcast? Then we could actually play the music that we are breaking down in these conversations. And we recorded our first episode really just as a lark to a degree, as something fun. for us to do. And the longevity of the show, I think, I won't speak for Charlie, but it's really taken me by surprise. Yeah, I'll just add briefly that the whole thing is born out of friendship. I think so many great musical collaborations are the same. And we made two episodes, I think, very quickly back to back in a very echoey room, because Nate was actually moving away from California. Our story is very complicated. He was in California. Then he moved to New York,

and I was moving from Northern California to Southern California. We were going to break up. We had this band that was breaking up. And so we had these early recordings done in his packed up apartment, very echoy, as I said, if you listen to those early recordings, they don't sound great. But we figured this would be a great way of maintaining a long distance friendship. And as we have moved from city to city, coast to coast, the podcast has kept on going. It's been a great way of keeping the band together and to develop a lifelong love of pop music. Definitely. I love it. And the friendship that you have and that real genuine passion and love for pop music that you have really jumps out of every episode. I was listening to your one about

flow today and I can't remember who did it, but one of you made a drum kit to match the flow of black thoughts rhymes. And it was a big light bulb moment there, but you kind of really give music a huge amount of respect and love and you kind of celebrate it deeply in every episode. But But to put it my elite, there's a lot of music being released today, every single day, hot records. How do you deal with the avalanche of content and how do you pick which tunes to cover in your podcast? We consult a lot of different sources. Obviously, at the very top, we look at what's happening on Billboard.

That does a quite good job of, you know, counting what are most people listening to at any given moment. But it doesn't also capture maybe what's bubbling up. And so we have many playlists that we consult. we look at the TikTok chart on both Billboard and Spotify has playlists, as well as the sort of viral songs that are happening on Spotify. But then we trust our listeners. They're constantly writing in with requests. We trust our team who has a very diverse set of ears and are constantly pitching things that are of their own taste. And so whether it's coming from the very top of the Billboard gatekeepers,

the things that are bubbling up in various playlists, or just what we're hearing in our musical lives, they all make it into the show. And usually, what is it about a song? It's just, does it spark something that makes us say, huh, what is that? And usually if we have that question, a whole episode can unfold from one little musical insight and curiosity. I think music discovery right now is a very challenging prospect, as you suggested. We're lucky that we can open up our email inbox or our DMs every day and we have a dozen suggestions from listeners of music that we should listen to and think about. So that's definitely been one of the perks of making this show is getting exposed to a lot of really exciting music that we might not discover otherwise. Yeah, I love that kind of

involvement of the community and it does very much feel like there's a big community globally of people who absolutely love these conversations and feed into them in this kind of a way. And you do also have some really stellar guests on the podcast, folks like Helen's, Zossmann from the Illusionist podcast. She was talking about a doja cat there. That was brilliant. Caroline Pollacek, he was incredible. Disclosure. Such a massive band. Recently, Tina Weymouth and Chris France from The Talking Heads, talking about Stop Making Sense. That was just wonderful. I know this is really an impossible question, the first of a few that I'm going to ask, but do you have a favorite guest or a moment with a guest, something that really resonated with you personally?

You just thought, wow, this is why I'm doing this. For me, the clear answer is, El Casello, someone who I was a huge fan of growing up. My dad was a huge fan of, you know, sometimes that can backfire. There's that phrase, don't meet your heroes. There's nothing more disappointing than when you try to talk to someone you admire and they just don't give you the time of day or turn out to be a just deplorable person. It's happened to us, but we won't name names. So that's always a danger. Talking to Elvis was a joy. He was very thoughtful, very funny, deeply musical in the level of detail and deliberation that he puts into his craft. You know, his publicist gave us like a certain amount of time and he said, no, we're going to

go over that because he was having so much fun in the conversation. So I don't trust that that will necessarily happen again, but to have that moment is very satisfying for me. And that's definitely a standout in terms of the interviews that we've done on the show. I'm very curious to hear Charlie's answer to this. There's so many that I love whether it's getting to me. meet the origin point of the story. Carly Ray Jepson, we had a great interview with her. St. Jepson, we...

Speaking with Jack Antonoff, who was just sort of a philosopher on music, I recently had a moment of doing a guitar lesson with Noah Kahn that was a real delight. But I think my favorite conversation was probably with Caroline Polichick that you mentioned. There's all kinds of artists. There's artists who are just simply deeply intuitive, who sometimes maybe in an interview, struggle to articulate that intuitive moment. What was that spark? But Karen Polichick is one of these artists where every little moment feels entirely deliberate, whether it's the stage design and choreo in her show to the soundscapes that she created on her album, Desire I Want to Turn Into You, she is a complete artist that everything comes together

to evoke meaning. And I particularly appreciate it. her because I was having a really bad day going into this interview. And rarely can you have a good interview when you're feeling low. And I stepped in and she brought the energy up. It was truly, I think, one most delightful interviews ever had and turned me around. So I'm very thankful for Kellyan Pollitton. She's one of the most talented and working artists right now. Strong agree. I mean, both of those answers were exactly what I was hoping to hear. They've kind of affirmed my fandom and two sensational artists there. But has there ever been an occasion where you've got to the end of the interview and just kind of, you know, looked at each other and thought, whoa, or like,

has anybody really surprised you with what they've come out with? Has it been totally unexpected? I actually wasn't part of this interview, but when I listened to Charlie's interview with the country singer Mickey Guyton, who occupies what at this moment is sadly a kind of marginal position within the country world as a black woman artist. Her story was really moving to hear and the vulnerability and the candidness and the honesty with which she described the feelings of exclusion she felt from this corner of the music industry where her heart and her artistry really belonged was kind of heartbreaking but also really inspiring to listen to usually our conversations are a lot about music this was a conversation that was about something

a little deeper and more human and that really always stuck out to me when I like listen to it. I listened to that almost as another listener rather than a co-producer because I wasn't there and when when I heard the final product, I was arrested. Have you found any particular topics or interviewees or subjects really resonate with your audience? Has there been one episode that's just been off the charts in terms of the response? I think one of our most successful, buzzy episodes was one that featured a number of voices. It's kind of unique in our catalog because some of them are not musicians.

It is a story about a very odd hit song from the 1990s called The Sunscreen Song. I'm not sure if you're familiar with it. Baz Luhrman, yeah. Baz Luhrman, exactly. A song that is not so much a melody as it is a speech. It's a article, a newspaper opinion piece

that was recited by an actor, and then remix by the film director, Baz Luhrman. We interviewed Boz in the process of making that episode. We interviewed Mary Schmick, the columnist who wrote the text that the song became. And over the course of this episode, I think people who maybe had been exposed to this song and always wondered, what was the story with that? How did that come to be? Why was it a hit? I feel like people listened to that episode and they were finally able to scratch that itch by,

hearing from the sources of this truly sui generis pop hit. That was an episode that we were really delighted to see just resonate with our audience. Fantastic. That's brilliant. Again, we will link to that in the show notes. This is such a treasure trove of back issues for the listeners to dive into. And one of the things that I really enjoy is, you know, you may describe yourself as musical nerds sometimes in the podcast, but it's so much fun because you take the musical theory behind the chosen tracks, but you really make it accessible. and engaging for your audience. Now, is there any kind of a process that you've developed around doing this, or is this a reflection of your own backgrounds as a musicologist and a songwriter? How do you think that kind of alchemy works?

It's a project that has taken years for us to codify and improve how our ears work. I think it really came about a few years into the show when we wrote a book, also called Switched On Pop. The subtitle is how popular music works and why it matters. And we document the sort of core musical topics of things like rhythm, melody, harmony, timbre form, lyrics, and so on, highlighting one essential pop song in each chapter, which elucidates that topic. And we've developed this way of listening where we always check to make sure that we are listening for each of the essential musical components, as well as the extra musical components, you know, who is the person, what are the business dealings behind the song? What is the larger cultural context that's happening? But we always want to make sure that we're listening to every musical component. And so anytime you listen to a song, as I said, oftentimes there's one thing that catches your ear.

Maybe it's a turn of phrase, maybe it's this beautiful melody. And I first zoom into that, right? And I listen to that my first listen. But then on my second, third, fourth, and fifth listen to a song, I'm listening through all of the other musical categories to make sure. that I'm really understanding all the way in which this song is communicating. Oftentimes, you'll find things that maybe enhance the meaning or contradict what you thought about the song. You're thinking, wait a minute, this song which makes me feel so good. I think about the song, Damn It by Blank 182. It was this upbeat pop punk song from, I think, the late 90s. And if you

actually take time to tune into the lyrics, it's very dark. And so often you'll find these songs where they're upbeat, they're in a major key. And then, wait a minute, the lyric is in contrast to that or vice versa, happy lyrics to a minor key and those things will communicate something you might not have realized upon for us listening. Convierre your passion in a new business with Shopify and bathe records of ventas with the form of pay with a better conversion of the world. Has heard it. The incredible system of pago of Shopify facilitates the shopify

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Minneapolis Tuesday. We will begin the process of returning millions and millions of criminal aliens back to the places from which they came. But what we want to do in this space is talk about America and politics beyond the current president. So what do most Americans think about deportation and border security, period?

I think that Americans are definitely against the kind of violent displays that we've seen in the street from ICE. When it comes to the question of deportation, the answer is more complicated. My sense is that people want border at the border. They don't like the idea of having no idea who's coming into the United States at any given time. The view on immigration from the bottom up instead of the top down. That's this week on America Actually. Every Saturday in your audio and video feeds. I know that you kind of, you do approach some really challenging topics.

You really disassemble things. Was there one topic that you found to be particularly challenging, that you really had to, you know, go deep. And how did you break it down for your audience? Oh, boy, there's so many. You know, sometimes the most successful things we do get made in just a few hours, the things where we have the greatest insight. And it's just we can, oh, there it is, and you put it all down.

And then there are lots of topics that just take months and months of production. One that comes to mind that I'm very proud of was a piece trying to look at the question of when an artist releases an album, they go in the, do these giant press tours, and they talk about how excited they are and how this thing represents them. But I know through my musician friends, what's happening behind the scenes is actually quite different. The insecurities, the questioning of one's own identity that happens and putting out this work that maybe you recorded two years ago, but now you have to go and represent as your current self. And so I did this fantastic project with Amelia Meath, the lead

singer of the band Sylvan Esso, where we went and interviewed artists. about this process of what are you really feeling this moment that you're putting out an album and the only way we could do this was through a trusted source like Amelia who was able to call her friends Jeff Tweedy of Wilco Barty Strange Katie Gavin of Muna and Maggie Rogers

and we had these really beautiful conversations over the course of about three months with these various artists while they were on tour doing these press tours and getting the behind the scenes and sort of real raw honest emotions about how it feels to put out a work that is supposed to represent you for the next couple of years of your life.

And I learned a whole lot of things. People aren't always saying exactly what they are feeling for various reasons. That was one of the most rewarding pieces that I've made that took months to put together. I love that piece too because Amelia from Sylvan S.O. took the role of co-producer and led some of the conversations with Maggie and Jeff and was able to pull out insights from those artists that we might not be able to because she was able to relate to them in this experience that we have never had. So that was a very cool and unique aspect of that particular episode to me.

Another one for the show notes there. I'm loving this. I'm getting a shopping list of episodes to revisit. But listen, I thought maybe we could move on to the biggest question of the podcast. It's one that I think you try and answer in every single episode or over the entire series and indeed in the critically acclaimed award-winning book that you guys have published as well, available from switchdownpop.com. My question is to you, I don't know who wants to jump in first. What makes a hit record? Well, we do know exactly. But we're holding on to that proprietary knowledge.

And we're saving it for, you know, when we need to put some money in the show, coffers. And then we'll write a number one hit. One insight I've gained over 339 episodes of the show that we've made. That's a crazy number to say out loud. is that I think a lot of hit songs demonstrate this quality, which is the music of the song supports the lyrical message of the song. There's this synergy. There's this marriage between music and lyrics. This is a song we write about in the book. The 2011 hit by Calvin Harris and Rihanna, We Found Love. One of the most notable and sort of path-breaking aspects of this song was that

rather than have a traditional vocal chorus, it has this wordless instrumental chorus, something imported from the world of EDM where DJs like Calvin Harris are very comfortable dropping these seismic instrumental sections for audiences to dance to. Why does that work in a pop song? Why is that song so successful? It's because the message of the pop song is about finding love in a hopeless place going on to the dance floor and finding salvation. and liberation and the instrumental chorus of that song represents that feeling of apotheosis for the listener. So all the elements of the song come together in this incredibly fluid and successful way. So I wouldn't say that a song has to be about a certain topic or has to feature a certain chord or

rhythm. I do think hit songs have to have this meld of music and lyrics that creates a coherent and indelible message for listeners. And by the way, that message does not have to be deep. No, exactly. It could be into club or get low. I want to get sedated. Whatever. Like, yes. It has to deliver the message of whatever the feeling is, whether that makes us think deeply and want to write dissertations or just party and celebrate with our friends. It just has to do it completely. It also helps if you have a viral TikTok hit and like maybe also you're dating a celebrity and there's all kinds of discourse that happens around the song. If your song is featured in one of the trolls movies that. Marketing is probably around 50% of it, maybe sometimes more,

but the music has to also hit. And we tend to focus more on the musical components because that's what engages our ear. Well said. Absolutely brilliant. Okay. Well, obviously you guys are going to make the hit records to end all hit records. in the near future. You mentioned there you're on episode 339 of Switched On Pop. You've released the book of the same name. It's picked up a bunch of awards. It is very, very cool. So aside from writing the hit record, what's next for both of you and for the team? Something we haven't had the chance to do because of geographic distance, because of, I don't know, maybe a global pandemic is a live show. Right before COVID hit, we were on our book tour.

tour and we were doing live events. We were having so much fun getting to interact with listeners and people unfamiliar with the show really directly and intimately. That is something we're looking forward to doing again at some point. When the stars align, we wanted to do something this year. We have little babies that makes it harder. But someday we will be hitting the road and bringing the switched on pop live experience to a city near you. And when we're to do that. I think that'll be really fun. I never thought that this project would run this long. And I also don't think that it would necessarily ever run out because right now I'm thinking about Nate, our calendar is planned out through the end of the year, but then we don't know what's going to

happen. We have a couple of long stories that were always in the background. Any moment where I'm getting kind of bored or tired of the sound of popular music, it constantly evolves. It seems to do so, like the week that I'm like, I have nothing to say about pop music right now. And then some song arrives that communicates some new feeling or some new sound in a way that I haven't anticipated and changes how I hear and listen, whether that's a song that I initially love or maybe don't like. Just there's so much to engage my curiosity with the never-ending release of music. And it's so fun to get to rather than feel hardened in my taste and think, oh, the best music

is of this era that I listened to the most when I was. 17, I feel like I'm loving and enjoying music more than ever in my life in my late 30s, including not my favorite things from youth, but the things that are coming out every single day. And so what's next for the show is just the relentless pursuit of listening and engaging with what's arriving. Wonderful. Those are two answers I was hoping to hear. That's great stuff. Thank you guys. So it's time for the final question. And it's one that we ask all of our VIP guests on the audio talks, podcast, and that is to choose a track for our title playlist. Now, it can be one that you've covered in an episode that means a lot to you. It can be one of your own compositions, whatever you like.

And I'm going to start with your good self first, Nate. The song that I've been listening to is actually from an Irish artist who I may be regarded as kind of a one-hit wonder. I'm talking about Hozier. His song, Take Me to Church, was one of the first songs that we ever talked about on our podcast, I think. That was, I don't know, probably one of the first like 50 episodes that we made. And I thought that song was really cool. I thought he had an amazing voice. He was an interesting songwriter. But I was like, okay, that was kind of a strange little phenomenon that that song had. And then I didn't really pay attention to him for a long time. And now I find myself totally obsessed with his new album, Unreal Earth. And I'll just name one track from that

album, Francesca. A lot of the album pays homage to his Irish roots. He sings in Gallic. And this song, to me, rings as a tribute to a great Irish band, The Cranberries. It's a joy to listen to it. That's what's in my ears at the moment. Bonus points for the Irish answer. I wasn't playing to the crowd, I swear. I love it. Charlie, how about your good stuff? I'll just go one island over. In London, we have Dua Lipa, and she has released this great new song, Houdini. I want to keep it pop for a minute. She's working with two of my favorite producers, Kevin Parker of Taman Paula and Daniel Harle, who also produced the Caroline Polichick record, which we talked about briefly earlier.

And this song, Houdini, is a fun evolution of her disco pop sound, but bringing in a lot more sort of indie synths and some illusion. to even Van Halen. It's a very fun song that breezes past you, I think, kind of like a magic trick where you're like, wait, what just happened? I got to listen to that one more time. I'm very excited about Dulepa's next big release. She's put out her first single, Houdini.

Check it out. It's a lot of fun. Massive recommendation there. Thank you so much, Charlie. And my own contribution to our playlist is a record that is as old as switched on pop itself from way back in 2014. it's from the debut LP Per by Doja Cat

and the track is so high because it just has these kind of ultimate screw face, smooth banger vibes it's wonderful R&B-flavored stuff and there's some interesting flow going on referencing another of your podcast there and I'm dropping that in of course

because I really loved your recent episode which looked at our number one smash Paint the Town Red and her whole kind of satanic marketing vibes there so thank you so much for joining us on the audio talks podcast Charlie? It's been a pleasure.

Thank you so much. And Nate. This has been so much fun. Thanks for having us. Listeners, don't forget to subscribe, comment and share audio talks with your friends and family. If you're enjoying the audio talk series of podcasts, why not pop over to Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcast to leave a nice review? It really does mean a lot and it helps new listeners get to know about the awesome guests we chat to in every episode like Nate and Charlie from Switched On Pop. For more exclusive content, some behind the scenes goodies and maybe even some competitions, connect with us over on the

Instagram. You can find us at Audio Talks Podcast. So this is the final episode of Audio Talk Series 8. We'll be back in the new year for some more pop-tastic audio talks. In the meantime, feel free to dive into the back catalogue for chats with A.R. Raman, Carl Cox, Martin Garrick, Suzanne Chaney, Sonnery and James, and much more musical royalty. Have a great end to the year and see you next time.