Switched on Pop - Chartbreakers (ft. Megan Thee Stallion and the Red Hot Chili Peppers)

Episode Date: March 1, 2022

Presenting Chartbreakers, in which Nate and Charlie listen to the Billboard Hot 100 chart from top to bottom and discover a TikTok controversy, a Nashville music mystery, a rogue duck-billed platypus, and Megan Thee Stallion's debut piano concerto. Songs Discussed Gayle - abcdefu Muni Long - hrs and hrs Ckay - Love Nwantiti (Ah Ah Ah) Dustin Lynch featuring Lauren Alaina or Mackenzie Porter - Thinking 'Bout You Red Hot Chili Peppers - Black Summer Megan Thee Stallion - Megan's Piano Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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euphoria. Welcome to Switch on Pop. I'm musicologist Nate Sloan. And I'm songwriter Charlie Harding. Songwriter Charlie Harding, you've been out of the game for a little bit. Yeah, just had a new little baby in the family. Mazel Tov.

Thank you. That's really exciting. I'm happy for. for you. Thank you. I'm shocked. You're here at all, to be honest. I don't know where I am, but here I am. Okay, great. So we're going to muddle through the fugue state you're in, and I'm going to catch you up on what's been happening in the world of pop music since this incredible life event. I appreciate it. And this is something we'd like to do from time to time. Check in with the billboard charts, right? Yeah, the Hot 100 is kind of like maybe the best thermometer we have for what people are listening to because it brings together all the stuff, the streaming, the sales, the social media.

And I love listening to the Hot 100 from top to bottom because it brings up all these surprising stories, right? It's not just the massive pop stars here. It's not just the weekend and Drake dominating the charts. There's so many unexpected songs and artists that the charts

can bring you to. So I feel like since this is something we do occasionally again and again, like we need to have a name for this segment. Can I pitch you some ideas? Chart Poppers. Nope. Switched on charts. Warmer.

Affairs of the chart. Chart the Harold Angel Singh. Seasonally appropriate, but maybe not year round. Don't go breaking my chart. Okay, that might be it. Chartbreaker. Chart breaker. Chart breaker, where we break down the pop charts.

Chart breaker. Okay. All right. So you need to catch me up. Let's chart break. As we make our way through the Hot 100, we're going to hear some TikTok controversies. We're going to listen to freestyled. choruses and we'll even get a taste of Megan the Stallion's piano concerto.

Ooh, that's exciting. I'm glad to catch up. Okay, we'll get there. Let's start with a song that you may be familiar with. It's called A, B, C, D, E, F, G. You by Gale. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.

As car and that's it's your car, Lord, fuck you and your friends that I'll never see again, everybody, but you thought you can all fuck. As of this recording, A, B, C, D, E, F, U by Gail sits at number seven on the Billboard Hot 100. I should note that by the time people are listening to this, that position may change. I mean, all the songs we're listening to get updated every week. So some of the selections we discuss may not be in the same position next week. Some of them may fall off the charts completely. But, you know, that temporality and change is part of the fun of it. You know, I'm really happy about the return of pop punk because it has this inherent contradiction,

which is that it is punk and anarchist. Right. And kind of just like, F you, I don't care. I'm just going to sing however I want. And then on the other hand, it's really well composed and has very catchy melodies. Right. And this song starts with a chorus as many songs are wont to do these days. But you don't really get the joke of the title until the second chorus.

A, B, C, D, E, F, you. Charlie. Yeah. Yeah. That's clever. I like that. I even like how it lands on the beat. You know, everything kind of drops out.

You get the A, B, C, D, E, F, and it's kind of nursery rhymeish. It's just the voice there And right when everything hits hard on the downbeat You get the F you It's a good payoff And like you said it mixes that kind of emo Pop Punk sound Which you hear really clearly in the pre-chorus section

It has this strummed acoustic guitar That's kind of recorded in this very lo-fi way Yeah And then all of a sudden when you get to the chorus there's a there's kind of a tonal shift. Is that what the kids are calling it these days? You're saying, oh, that's a great pop punk song with a interesting tonal shift right there

when they say, if you. That's Gen Z talk right there. We get the big synth bass and the electronic drums and it's like it's the best of both worlds, right? The pre-chorus gives you that angsty emo feel and the chorus gives you that kind of EDM world-conquering feel.

Yeah, iconic pop. I think the song works because it's got a mix of anger and humor, right? F you and your friends that'll never see again, everybody but your dog, you can all F off. Like, that's a great, that's a great line, right? I do like that, yeah. So this artist, Gail, she's only 17 years old, kind of a prodigy, a phenom, I guess, if you will. But Charlie, the song is not without controversy. Oh, well, I mean, it sounds like it's a product of the internet. So, of course.

It is. Like, so many of the songs we're going to listen to today, like, kind of a really shocking amount to me. This song's rise on the charts was fueled by TikTok. Yeah, of course. But with this song, there's kind of a wrinkle. Because I actually first learned about this song when I saw a meme about it. Okay.

And it was a video of Gail singing this song in her bedroom with an acoustic guitar. And the caption of the video said, she wrote this song based on a TikTok comment. And they show this TikTok comment. It's like, can you write a song based off of the alphabet? And she says, I got you. And then she starts playing A, B, C, D, E, F you. And people are like, oh, this is so cool, right?

This is the collaborative power of TikTok. Someone gives you an idea. And then you turn that into the song and then it goes up the charts. It's like, how cool is that, right? Wait a minute. Are you telling me that? The TikTok comment was a plant. Charlie.

The song had already been written. Charlie, the song had already been written. There wasn't much detective work to this. Someone just clicked on the name of the person who made that comment saying, hey, write a song off the alphabet. And it turned out that person worked for Atlantic Records, which Charlie, are you ready for this? Is the record label that Gail assigned to? Yeah, no surprises.

That's a terrible job of covering your tracks. It is. but ultimately I don't think it really matters. You know, I don't, yeah. I mean, everything on TikTok is performative. We're like, oh, let me just show you this thing that I happened to make. Here's my dinner. And then it's like, like, like, like, a thousand cuts.

And you're like, no, no, no. You didn't just make that. Like, you spent all day making that. Okay. G, G, G, you. Is our first TikTok hit, but not our last Chuck. Let's go a little further down the charts and see how the social media app is affecting the sound of pop by listening to a song that is,

is currently at the number 19 spot, hours and hours, spelled H.R.S. And H.R.S. I feel like that's important for you to know. Her first? By money long. I'm assuming she's talking about homework. Yeah. Very, very studious, Chuck. I like where your head's at.

It's a fun song. I like that song. It's somehow extremely slow, but very groovy. It's slow. It's groovy. It's repetitive. I feel like this song is really a showcase for the voice of this singer. And Money Long does some pretty impressive stuff here.

There's one moment I particularly like where she really descends into the deepest, recesses of her vocal range. What you do? I'm empowered. You give me a superpower. Ooh. Superpower. That's cool, right?

And it's like literally she's like showing off her superpower. I can hit this low E flat three. She's pretty really strong vocal. Yeah. Great alto. Pretty baller. And that, and I think that's the point of the song, right? It never, like this accompaniment never changes.

It's very cyclical. the same chords over and over again. It doesn't change for the pre-chorus, for the chorus. It's just like a showcase for how many melisma's can this singer pull off? How many vocal acrobatics can she do? And that maybe supports the message of the song, right? Like, I can do this for hours. And she's literally like, I could do this.

Just listen, I can just keep going. I can keep going. Longer militamas, deeper notes. I can do it. Wow. That's a cool song. So who's money long, Chuck? Never heard of her.

Few have, because this is the kind of rebranding of, pop singer and songwriter named Priscilla Renee, who has had already a long career in the music industry. She's written songs for Rihanna, like California King Bed. Worth It for Fifth Harmony. Oh my gosh. Timber for Pitbull and Kesha. She's written songs for country artists like Miranda Lambert and Carrie Underwood. She's really done the thing. Her songwriting talent has reached very far. wide. A lot of genres.

Yeah. And she released two albums under her original name, her OG name, Priscilla Renee, which sound very different than this Hours and Hour's song. Like, check out her song, Dollhouse from her first album, Jukebox. I'm just a girl. You're just a boy. This is my heart. It's not a toy. So what's with you playing with my... It feels like a reject Kelly Clarkson song. Totally. Or Katie Perry, perhaps. Yeah, especially because of the stuff, yeah.

So I don't know exactly what happened, but at some point, this artist, Priscilla Renee, kind of hung up her, you know, electro pop spurs and re-entrenched herself under this new alias, Money Long, spelled M-U-N-I, like the San Francisco Public Transportation Authority, Muni, but pronounced money. and maybe leaned into this other aspect of her diverse sound, you know, this more deep R&B vocal acrobatic sound. So it's kind of a cool story that I would not expect if you're just, you know, scrolling through the radio dial or the streaming charts and all of a sudden it's like money long. There's a fascinating backstory here.

I can appreciate that the world of pop gives you permission to infinitely reinvent yourself and even just give yourself a whole new name, trying to a new sound. Right. How inspiring is that, right? We can be whoever we want to be. You can disappear as one artist and reappear as another and create this whole new sound. Okay, Chuck, we're going to listen to another TikTok hit. Can you handle it?

Always ready. Look at my dance moves. The song actually came up on another episode we did back in November 2021 with friend of the show, Kat Zang, pitchfork writer. She brought to our attention the song by a Nigerian artist named C.K called Love Nantiti, parentheses, ah. Ah, close parentheses. And now, like, four months later, this song is still on the chart. So I think it's a cool opportunity to listen a little bit deeper to this unexpected hit, which, as of this recording, sits comfortably at number 26 on the Hot 100.

It's such a perfect little loop. It has so many intricate layers that you just want to hear it go on and on and on. In a Rolling Stone profile, CK actually talked about how he wrote this. Can I give a little quotation to you? Please. He said, I didn't pen a single word. I was in my living room making beats like I usually do. And I played the chords, built on them, and did my freestyle.

I recorded around midnight and I was really sleepy. So I decided I was going to put words to the a, ah, a part in the morning that we just listened to. Long story short, woke up in the morning and realized it was fire exactly how it was. end quote. I sometimes think that your sort of nah, nah, nah, la, la, la, ah, ah, kind of vocals can be cloying, maybe sort of, you know, a cliche, everybody sing along, there's no words. And yet in this case, I think perhaps that intuitive, this is just the thing I did, is maybe what is a big part of its global success.

It's really easy for everybody to participate in. I was so floored reading that because it, it, like, brought home. one of the continual maxims that I encounter about pop music. You know, it's like a good pop song is a mix of a really cold calculation. Like, what will people want to listen to, right? I'm going to really try and do that. And then these just moments of like random accident or inspiration. Yeah.

Or just being like, huh, I guess that random thing I sung, you know, late at night when I was super sleepy is actually going to be the thing that is going to give me like a hot top 40 hit. You know, that's like, that's one of the mind-blowing aspects about the Billboard charts to me. Probably works because it captures the feeling that I want to feel when I hear that song. Yeah. It's like, it's a little sleepy in a good way. Well, it brings us back to the first song we listen to by Gail. You mentioned its kind of emo qualities.

And C.K. calls his sound emo afro beats. Like, that's how he self-identifies. Okay, cool. I can hear the arpeggiated guitar, which is very popular in pop punk and maybe the very relaxed at-home recorded kind of vocal I'm not trying too hard. You kind of feel.

That kind of lo-fi off the top of your head, except this time it's emo that's in both English and the Igbo dialect. So it's like, it's a little unusual. It's also maybe indicative of the rising popularity of Nigerian Afrobeats, which is something we've talked about a few times on the podcast. And at this moment, we have like three Afrobeats songs on the charts. We have this CK song.

We have Essence by WizKid. And we have a song by Fireboy DML with Ed Shearin called Peru. So it's like kind of a cool Nigerian. takeover of the Hot 100. I'm here for it. I'd love to hear more of it. As is so often the case with TikTok, Chuck, the song also has its own controversy surrounding it. Okay. Because what are we bickering over? Because the original track that we just listened to wasn't the one that first blew up on TikTok. It was a remix by two DJs. And they took an acoustic version of the song that CK played on piano.

And they added percussion and sound effects. So that remix went viral on TikTok, but it didn't actually credit CK as the creator of the song. Okay. Yeah. Which is like an age old story on this platform. I mean, it's an age old story in this very young platform. I don't think it's an age old story of TikTok either.

No, certainly not. Music loves to not credit people. loves to appropriate and erase and who is often the person that gets a race well in so many of these cases it's global artists who have to fight to get their credit i think if you come from a non-western country it's even that much harder to assert your identity on these decentralized platforms something that's happened over and over again like i think a famous example is this viral sound called the laxed siren beat have you heard this one no i don't think so I do find that work to be obnoxious because it has the production quality of like a bad advertisement music library. And yet clearly it's very successful because it's everywhere. And of course it was remixed and used by who did it. Oh, truck, if you can tell me this, I will be so impressed and pleased and frankly surprised. Jason Durlowe.

Jason Durlowe. Wow, deep cut. Way to pry that from the recesses of your adult brain. He uses a lot of world music in his productions. Right. And once again, he didn't credit the creator of this sound, who is Josh 685 at the time, a 17-year-old Polynesian teenager living in Auckland, New Zealand.

Come on. Why not? Just so easy. And, Charlie, I appreciate that you find it kind of obnoxious, But I do need to tell you that Josh 685 is creating these beats by taking traditional Samoan melodies and putting them over these electronic drum beats. In fact, 685 is the phone, like the area code for Samoa. So there is a cool cultural connection here and it's worth celebrate. It's like why it's important to identify these artists and to give them credit where it's due, not just for the economic reparations that are due to them. but also because it's like we can learn so much more about the music that surrounds us on these platforms like TikTok.

And just like decolonizing pop music. It's just one beat at a time, check. Yeah. Okay. Let's take five. When we come back, I've got a country mystery for you. I've got the return of one of your favorite bands from middle school. And I've got Megan the Stallion's piano concerto.

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We're back and we have something that I've never seen on the Billboard Hot 100 before. Right now, it's at number 50 on the Billboard Hot 100. What's that? Okay, it's a song. It's called Thinking About You. That's pretty unremarkable. Extremely. It's by Dustin Lynch featuring Lauren Elena or McKenzie Porter.

What? What is that? I've never heard of these people. I've never seen an or on the Billboard Hot 100 before. It's like the song of Choose Your Own Adventure. Like you can listen to two different versions of it. What does that mean? Or like that doesn't belong there.

I was like, is that a typo or something? It was so strange to me. You know I really love country music. Like I play a telecaster. Like, okay, okay. Really easy. I love my chicken picking. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I don't know. That was not a particularly remarkable country song in my book. But I'm curious because I don't feel like has answered anything about this issue of the or. Right. Okay, so the song was originally recorded with up-and-coming country star Lauren Elena. But then Lauren Elena had another duet with country star John Party coming out at the same time. Okay. And her label didn't want her on two male-female country duets at the same time.

Okay. Charlie's brain just broke. Wait, I'm genuinely confused. I assume that it would be confusing for her fans or listeners to have two like duets with rugged male country artists at the same time that would dilute the impact of both of them. Is that the idea? Okay. It definitely hasn't resolved the issue of creating confusion. So Dustin Lynch, who's the main artist on the song, now has to find a replacement for the person that he actually recorded and released the song with.

Like it's already out in the world. Okay. Now he has blind auditions to find a new singer. Yeah. And he lands on Canadian country singer McKenzie Porter. All right. So there's two versions of this song out there. It is a choose your own adventure.

It is a choose your own adventure. And they're both. So you can listen to either one and it'll still go to the same song on the charts. Let's listen to both of them. Here's the original recording with Lauren Elena. I said I heard your song the other day and it put a smile on my face when I started reminisce. And here's McKenzie Porter. Hey, I just got to say, I heard you song the other day.

Put a smile on my face when I started with this. I've been on me. She's like the country halsey. Because she's got a lot of that yodily vibrato. Sure. She's like a little breathier, I think. A little. Yeah, maybe more vibrato.

I kind of like the second one more. I do too. I do too. I think this was a blessing in disguise for this song. It has a bit more character. I agree. So there's one of the weirdest things I've ever seen on the Billboard charts. Or.

The Or, the Mighty Orr. Okay, let's keep running down the charts. Charlie, I'm just going to play this next one for you. And tell me who you think of this. I mean, this is really strange. Why? Is this the Red Hot Chili Peppers? Yes, is the Red Hot Chili Peppers.

The funk rock band from the Night. Yeah, this is the one in the same. Black Summer. This is their new song that's managed to sort of creep into the lower reaches of the Billboard Hot 100. Number 78 right now. Really? They're back, baby. That's exciting.

And they are reunited with their longtime guitarist, John Frischanti, for the first time in 16 years. And he's like a big presence on this song. And I feel like he's really channeling the spirit of Jimmy Hendrix. Like, at the start of Black Summer, tell me if you hear any Hendrix tropes. A lazy rain am I. The skies refuse to cry. First of all, I'm a little bit distracted by Anthony Kedis' vocal,

which sounds. Okay, yeah, we probably need to talk about that first, don't we? Yeah, this is like an Irish. folk song? What is that? I kind of skipped the entree and went straight to the dessert because this needs

to be addressed. Okay, scratch that. We'll come back to the guitar and the Hendrix influences. What the heck is going on with that accent? It's piece of your supply. It sounds like he's doing some kind of Irish folk music, which I enjoy.

A lot of people are, commenting on it being a pirate accent, which has some truth. There's some conjecture that he's been influenced by the renewed popularity of sea shanties during the pandemic. No, I don't buy it. There will never be an explanation, but man, it is a fascinating accent that he has never used before in the history of his career with the chili peppers, as far as I'm aware. On the guitar side, though, yes. John Fichonti plays Stratocaster, like Henry said, I play the telecaster.

Redcaster. Okay, wow. Okay, Chuck, too. It's got a wobbly kind of lo-fi sound to it, which is not Hendricks-y. But he does a lot of the, what you call a hammer on. And you get one finger and it hammers on to the next fret. Yeah, like you can hear it in like a Hendrix song like When Cries Mary. Okay, that's that sound at the very beginning.

That right there. It kind of like is a way of like dancing around the strings. I mean, it's a technique that every guitarist is going to use, but Hendrix used it a lot, and John Furchanti is using the same guitar, same kind of technique. That's probably what's pulling out your ear. There's a great solo here as well, which is, I feel like it's something you don't encounter frequently on the Billboard Hot 100 these days. Oh.

That's cool. Yeah, very Hendricks-y, because it's got the fuzzed-out sound and the Univy vibrato thing at the end. But what's particularly remarkable to me about hearing this solo in the middle of a song on the Hot 100, which is, yeah, like the most you get is like

maybe a one bar solo and a country song between chorus and verse. Sure. This is unusual today. What's really unusual about it is how relaxed the rhythm is. Like it almost sounds like

they're not playing to a click track. It's pushing and pulling, going in front of the beat and behind the beat. Yeah, there's no overdubs. It's just the four of them. I think Anthony Ketus like picks up a tambourine and starts shaking it. I was so prepared to not like this song between Anthony Ketis's pirate accent and his lack of wearing shirts. His lyrics that like are kind of about the environment and the climate crisis, but also just like don't make any sense at the same time.

I can't help but loving this song and kind of being drawn into it. to it. And, you know, if nothing else, I think we have to celebrate it for perhaps being the only song to ever chart with an inclusion of a lyric about the duck-billed platypus. No way. It's really hard to write a song about really important issues. I don't know why. It's just earnestness in pop music is it's hard to pull off. I will say, though, I don't think he wrote one about the platypus, but Sting loves writing about the environment.

If you go to a lot of Sting songs and police songs, you'll find all kinds of mysticism and ecology and things in their lyrics. Okay, fair enough. But if anyone can give me a chart-topping song with the mention of a platypus, I would be most interested

to hear. Until then, I will say on record, this is the only one. Okay, we got one more song to get to. I promised you a Megan the Stalian piano concerto and I'm going to deliver Chuck here is Megan's piano a track off something for the hoddies which just popped into the Hot 100 it's at number 99 right now lucky 99 like making it's only you think that you do it's not rich and I don't need shit with the dick big ass stack in this purse so these niggas working I'm holding his gawk in my burglow okay so maybe I misled you a bit it's not exactly a piano concerto but it is Megan the stallion playing the grand piano and it is her first production credit and I don't have anything profound to say about

this song but I need any chance I can get to celebrate this artist now not just for her verbose skills as an emce but actually as a producer and melody writer pretty badass you know what it reminds me of no what's that another very important piano concerto in the world of hip-hop let me guess did you fail to watch the super bowl halftime show no i watched it out wow wow that was harsh calling me out and i don't think you did because i texted you and you're like no i'm too busy i just had a baby wan way but i watch it afterwards okay okay so what's this is this is uh dray's piano concerto moment? Yeah, when Dr. Dre sits down at the piano, like, play some great chords. He really, that was, that was, I was picking my jaw up up the floor. I was like, damn, I did not realize.

Now, supposedly has inspired thousands of young people to take up piano, because they're like, wow, check that out. Okay, I love that. I love that. And then goes into Still Dre. And Still Dre has that iconic piano sound at the top that feels like Megan the Stallion is sort of in conversation. with that kind of production. I'm totally down with that connection, Chuck, and I hope between Dr. Dre and Meg and the Stallion, yeah, it's going to cause more and more youths of America to pick up the piano. That would be an amazing outcome from this.

Oh, I buy it. It's going to happen. So that was chart breakers. Can we do it again? Right now? No, from time to time. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Definitely, Chuck. Absolutely. When things shake up again. Yeah, I look forward to it.

Switched-on-Pop is edited by Julie Myers, engineered by Brandon McFarland, illustrated by Iris Gottlieb, community management by Abby Barr. Our executive producers are Nash-Kara and Hanna-Rosen, or member of the Vox Media Podcast Network, and a production of Vulture. You can find more episodes anywhere you listen to podcasts or our website, Switchedonpop.com. Talk to us on Twitter and Instagram. What are your favorite surprise hits from the Billboard Hot 100 that you've been listening to?

we're at Switched on Pop, and we love hearing from you. So I'm going to be taking a bit of time off to hang with my family, and we've got a very special mini-series that we're going to run over the next month. Very special. For the rest of March, we're going to be listening to Brittany. Britney Spears has been in the news a lot the last few years because of her lengthy battle over the conservatorship that ran her life. but the one thing that we feel like has been missing in the Brittany discourse is an appreciation of the music that she's made over the last two decades and the way it's changed the sound to pop.

So join us for the next four weeks while we listen to Brittany. Thanks for listening.