Switched on Pop - Click With Dick And Other Campaign Anthems

Episode Date: January 29, 2016

What do presidential candidates, professional wrestlers and improv comics have in common? Walk on theme music. As the primary season heats up we dig into the history, meaning and controversies of campaign anthems. Also, comedian and guest co-host Chris Duffy shares some of his favorite lyrics with hidden humor. And we time travel with Nate to 1931 to visit late night Harlem jazz clubs. FEATURING Baha Men - Who Let The Dogs Out? String Quartet No. 19 in C Major K 465 IV Ride Of The Valkyries - Wagner Conducted by George Szell John Williams - The Imperial March Howard Da Silva - Tippacanoe and Tyler Too Oscar Brand - Rockabye Baby Peter Janovsky - Get On The Raft With Taft Woodie Gutherie - This Land is Your Land The Police - Every Breath You Take Tom Petty - Won’t Back Down Bruce Springsteen - Born To Run Metallica - Enter Sandman Mozart String Quartet No15 D Minor K. 421 I. Allegro Moderato Metallica - Master Of Puppets Kelly Clarkson - Stronger Zac Brown Band - Homegrown REM - End of the world Phantom of the Opera (Single Album Version) Carly Simon - You’re So Vain Beck - Devil’s Haircut Brad Paisley - Working On A Tan Quindon Tarver - Free To Wear Sunscreen Neil Young - Rockin’ In The Free World Edgar Winter Group - Frankenstein Lil’ Jon - Get Low Lil’ Jon - Snap Your Fingers Rihanna - What’s My Name (ft. Drake) Van Halen - Why Can’t This Be Love Pitbull - Give Me Everything David Guetta - Sexy Bitch (ft. Akon) Don Redman - Song Of The Weeds Don Redman - Shacking the African Sir Mix Alot - Big Butts Nikki Minaj - Anaconda Flo Rida - Low Project Pat - Twerk It Don Redman - Nagasaki Don Redman - Song Of The Weeds Don Redman - The Man From Harlem Don Redman - Gee, Ain’t I Good To You  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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app at eater app.com. It's free for iOS users. Introducing in the red corner at 187 pounds he hails from Los Angeles, California. He's not even close to being a midweight champion or much of an athlete at all for that matter. In fact, he could probably stand to lose 10 pounds. Please welcome Charlie Hardin! And in the blue corner weighing in at a measly 143 pounds, hailing from New York City. New York, he may have slightly more athletic ability than the Red Corner, but certainly less muscle mass. Please welcome Chris Duffy. Welcome to Switched on Pop. I'm songwriter Charlie Harding.

And I'm comedian Chris Duffy. So you might be asking, where is Nate, our resident musicologist? Well, he's off finishing his dissertation. So I asked our friend comedian Chris Duffy to join us again. You might remember him from one of our episodes a few weeks ago, where we recorded a live segment about Max Martin. Chris is the host of WBUR's You're the Expert, an amazing show where he pairs comedians with leading scientists to make us laugh and teach us something about the world. Chris, thanks for being here with us.

Thanks so much for having me, Charlie. I'm so glad to be back. So much fun. All right. So let's just get right into it. The electoral primary season is heating up. You might think, well, what does this have to do with music? Well, I think it's the perfect time to explore campaign walk-on music. You know what I'm talking about?

Oh, yeah. This is one of my favorite things. Basically, you know, every time a politician comes out onto the stage, they've got some sort of music backing them up. And every election cycle, there's always some big controversy where a musician doesn't want their music to be used by a politician. And that controversy is at the heart of what we're going to get to. What I want to look at today is, first of all, what's the purpose of walk-on music? Where does it come from? What's its history?

And we're obviously going to look at what is our favorite this season. And then later on the show, Nate will check in with us for just a moment to see how he's doing on his PhD. So stick around. Chris, when we first started talking about this, you pointed out that there's only a couple of people that actually use this walk-on theme music. Yeah, I think one of the things that's so interesting about walk-on music is that I can only think of three groups of people that I know that use it, right? There's politicians, there's professional wrestlers, and then there's improv comedy troops. And I feel like those are three groups of people who have nothing else in common. I mean, except for maybe like wildly inflated senses of self.

Unhealthy self-esteem and walk-on music. That's what they've got going for them. So you know something about especially the improv troupe walk-on music. Totally. Oh, yeah. When I was in an improv troupe in college and after college, we would like have these long existential debates about which walk-on song would best capture the spirit of our improvised comedy.

I remember literally once we were doing a show about dogs. And someone was like, should we have the theme music be, Who Let the Dogs Out? Who Let the Dogs Out? And then someone else was like, well, actually, technically, they're letting us in. And then we scrapped that. And it's like, that's totally insane. And yet we took it so seriously. What do you think the purpose of the walk-on music and improv is all about? Well, I mean, I think it's the same with all of them, right?

Is you want to get the audience to be psyched. Do you want them to be all hyped up and ready for you once you're on stage? And I think as a performer, you believe that which song you choose really affects the quality of the performance and what the audience thinks of you. but every time I've been in the audience, I have not even registered the music at all. It's just what happens afterwards. I get the idea that walk-on music is basically a pump-up song for comedy, and that in politics and wrestling, it's there to pump us up, but also to incite drama. Of course, I'm naturally curious about the history of dramatic walk-on music. And so I did a little bit of research, and I thought we could turn it into a piece that we call classical masters.

Are you familiar at all with the operatic term light motif? I think I've heard it, but I actually don't know what it means. Back in the late 19th century, the biggest opera composer was Wagner. And Wagner had this way of using themes called light motifs. And basically what they were is they were little snippets of music that were a personal theme to a character in the opera. It's like the original ringtone. Oh my gosh. You're right on. Yes, exactly.

Because the best example of Wagner's light motif comes from his, opera called The Ring. Oh my God, it really is the original ringtone. It truly is the original ringtone. And the one that we probably all know the best is the ride of the Valkyries. So you know this theme, right? I feel like that that theme has been repurposed a thousand times, especially whenever there's a helicopter coming in on a movie. Oh yeah, that's helicopter music. Yeah, true and true. So that is the helicopter light motif. That is this idea of someone's personal theme music has played out across all of popular culture, perhaps most famously. in the Star Wars saga, right?

Every time Darth Vader comes on the stage, he has a particular song, the Imperial March. And its job is to create a memorable melody that reminds you that this is the bad guy. Totally. And actually, there's an amazing video, Charlie. I don't know if you've seen this online. That's like a little baby girl in her crib who somehow has learned to sing that song.

And on the baby monitor, the parents just hear her singing that alone in her crib. And it is the most terrifying and hilarious thing I've ever seen. Strongly recommend YouTubeing that. That is exactly the purpose of a light motif. The idea is that when you hear the song, the introduction, it tells you the character that's coming on stage. And if it's successful, it becomes an incredible mnemonic device.

Yeah, I mean, it's just this little girl in a crib humming to herself. And I'm instantly like, oh, she's crossed over to the dark side. We have to be careful. That little girl singing the Imperial March is exactly what presidents of old. It's exactly what they were looking for. They wanted their supporters to hum their songs as they were falling asleep in bed at night. Is that really a thing they wanted? Because that seems so bizarre and creepy that Grover Cleveland is like,

I just want you humming my theme song. That's what I imagine his theme song being. He's a big guy. But think about it, the political rallies back in the day, it's not as if everybody could see each political rally on CNN on an endless stop. Instead, they had to distribute music, which would have talking points. would have negative messages about the opponents. This was the way for people to spread their message before mass media. Hmm. That does make sense.

I mean, songs stick in your head in a way that words really don't, so I can kind of see that. Exactly. The history of political walk-on music actually runs really deep, basically back to the very beginning. And the whole point here really is to place memorable talking points in people's ears and to incite a little bit of drama. So you were talking about the drama of modern campaign music and the content. controversies of who can use what music, this has been going on since the very start. It does seem like every election cycle, there is a musician who is outraged somehow by the politicians who are using their music. In fact, people have been borrowing popular songs from the very beginning.

One of the best musical controversies actually starts back in the 1840s with our ninth president, William Henry Harrison. Have you ever heard the song, A Tipper Canoe and Tyler, too? I can't say that that is on my iTunes playlist, no. No. No. It was, so this is a political song. that was an adaptation of a popular folk tune called Little Pigs. When you hear the song, at first it sounds, I don't know, it's old, so it kind of sounds innocuous. It is the ball that's rolling on for Tippy Canoe and Tyler too, for Tippy Canoe and Tyler too, and with them we'll beat little Van, Van, Van, Van, oh, he's a use of man, and with them we'll beat little van.

But if you actually look at the lyrics, it's a direct attack song. So the lyrics of Tiper Canoe and Tyler 2. Our referencing Harrison was called Old Tip and his running mate John Tyler. So they're saying for Tipper Canoe and Tyler 2 and with them we'll beat little Van Van Van Van Van Van. Van. Van is a used up man. Do you know who Van Buren is? Martin Van Buren.

Exactly. They're saying that Van Buren is a washed up dude. So Van Buren comes up with his own song as a retort. Oh, this is like the original disc track, right? This is like a rap battle basically. Exactly. And he adapts the song Rockabai Baby, but puts on some new words. Rockabai baby, daddy's a wig. When he comes home, art cider, he'll swig. When he has swog, he'll fall in a stew. And down will come Tyler and Tippin Canoo.

He says, Rockabai Baby, Daddy is a wig. When he comes home, hard cider, he'll swig. When he has swug, he'll fall in a stew, and down will come Tyler and tip a canoe. That is a very, very bizarre attack. I mean, I'm sure that there's some inaccurism here in the way that I'm interpreting it, but seems like swug is not a word. And falling in a stew is a very strange political attack. Well, what he's actually saying here is that, William Henry Harrison is a drunk. It's so funny that it's like one of them, you're washed up, well, you're a drunk. And it's just like, that's really not, neither of those is a political point at all. Since when are these political controversies ever actually substantive? Let's be honest, right? I guess that's true. Yeah, that does make sense.

That it's rare that they get attacked on policy points. It's always like, this person is not trustworthy or this person's a flip-flopper. Character attacks start from the beginning. Yeah, this is the original flip-flopper was you're going to pass out drunk into a stew. Okay, but what's amazing about this is that Harrison then takes the song and flips it. So in some ways, you're right, kind of a flip-flopper. He comes back with another song that says, sure, let him talk about hard cider, cider, cider, and log cabins too, to only help to speed the ball for Tippa Canoe and Tyler, too.

And basically what he's saying here is that, you know, everyone in America drinks hard cider. Get with me and we're going to drink together and we'll all have a lot of fun. Amazing that there was a time where America could be united where everyone can agree on hard cider. Only in the 19th century and in modern day Brooklyn. Ever since we stopped drinking cider, we opened up a political chasm that we can't bridge. All right. So controversies from the very beginning, I think one of the most important questions is, did they work? Are these songs effective?

I don't know. Are you asking me? I'm not sure. You tell me, you're the, I'm just a comedian. You tell me you're the historian. You tell me you're the historian here. Okay. Songwriter and historian Charlie Harding.

Uh, historian, that's Nate, but I'm sort of filling the shoes for the time being. So the fact of the matter is these songs were wildly popular. One of the best songs is Lincoln's Battle Cry of Freedom. It actually kind of sounds like a modern country song. It was a unionist song about abolitionism, and it was also a popular song that was adapted for Lincoln. The lyrics go, yes, we'll rally around the flag. boys will rally once again shouting the battle cry of freedom.

Yeah, I've actually heard this song. Yeah, it's very popular song. In fact, it sold over 700,000 copies of sheet music. Which, at the time, that had to be an unbelievable percentage of the population. I think that there was only like, I don't know, 50,000 people back then, right? Yeah, and each one owns multiple copies of the sheet music. Exactly. These songs were super popular. People would buy the sheet music and play them in their homes.

What has today becomes sort of these political walk-on songs. songs were more full campaign theme songs that represented the entire candidate. It seems like they were almost serving the role that television commercials serve now. Exactly. Okay, thank you for the perfect segue. Because what happens in the 20th century is that these songs basically become modern day jingles. If you think back into old campaigns, what is perhaps one of the most famous campaign slogans of all time? I like Ike.

Yeah, Ike had one of the best modern campaigns. And he supported this with an amazing song called They Like Ike by Irving Berlin, who was one of the biggest songwriters of the time, who wrote multiple songs for Ike. And it's totally ridiculous. It sounds like a Coca-Cola commercial. They like Ike, and Ike is good on a mic. They like Ike. The Mike says he don't want to. I want to share two of my favorite of these jingles. So the first is Taft's jingle.

His song was called Get on a Raft with Taft. He'll save the country shore, boys from every kind of graft. So all join in, we're bound to win. Get on the raft with Taft. That definitely does not feel like a good thing. Like, Get on a raft with Taft seems like a way for all of you to die. People are never on a raft when they're happy. It's normally like, our boat sank, now we're on a raft.

I've never thought like, we should be rafting now. Yeah, right. Taft was almost 3,850 pounds. So if you're going to get on a raft, you probably don't want to get a raft with Taft. Yeah, I mean, Taft himself is basically a raft. You could use Taft as a raft, but you're not going to have much raft once you're on the raft with Taft. I mean, he could have easily said, ride a large watercraft with Taft. That's much safer.

I would have been a lot more assured. I feel like this introduces one of the most important parts of campaign walk-on songs is that so often they are full of contradictions and embedded in them is an incredible amount of comedy. My absolute favorite of some of the older songs was Nixon's theme song. Okay. Have you heard Click with Dick? I've not heard that song. I'm guessing it's probably getting blacked in my span filtered. This is referencing that Richard Nixon's supporters were all given these clackers that made, you know, basically spoons that made a loud clacking sound. And at the rallies, they were asked to click, for Dick. Again, seems like

not as well thought through. They could have checked this one in a middle school classroom and instantly known this was not a good idea. It gets worse. If you don't mind, I have to try to get through these lyrics. It might be impossible, but we're going to give it a try. Okay, let's see. The lyrics for Click With Dick go, come on and click with Dick.

The one that no one can lick. Again, that's just, you really, I mean, any other word you could have rhymed. There's just so many other ick words. So it's come on and click with Dick, the one that none can lick. He's the man to lead the USA and Dick we have the one who truly gets things done. Every time he has the say, he's a man of peace and reason, on the job in every season. But he knows how to fight when he is sure he's right.

So let's all click with Dick. Come on and Dick. It ends, come on and dick. We lived in a simpler time back then, didn't people? That is a much simpler, more innocent time for America. And you know what else is great about that is, you know, one of the things that was so shocking to people I've heard about the Nixon tapes is just hearing the president be so vulgar. And it's like, were you really surprised that he was so vulgar on the tapes? Listen to his theme song.

That's what you elected him on. So around this time, and I don't know if it was because of Richard Nixon and his song Click With Dick, but basically the presidential theme. song went out of vogue and top 40 songs came in to fill the void. Yeah, well, they were like, after that one, they were like, we really can't beat that one. He pushed it right to the limits of what is even credible as a song. I mean, you cannot top. No. Click with it.

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So, and basically in the 70s and 80s, these theme songs went out. So what caused that change then? I mean, was it just that they couldn't come up with good theme songs anymore, or was it something different? I think it gets more into the business of how music licensing works. What happened is that the presidential candidates realized that they could secure their venues, blanket license, to play any music at an event. So basically, you go to Madison Square Garden. Madison Square Garden has deals with ASCAP and BMI, the music licensing organizations that

says you can basically play any song. You just have to pay some basic royalty that is at an event rate. Wow, and that's regardless of what's going on at that venue. Doesn't matter what's going on. It gets more complicated, though, because before an event, it kind of makes sense. People are waiting around who's coming on. They're going to play music in the background. That seems totally natural.

It gets more controversial, of course, when people start to associate those songs with the candidate and really create real walk-on music. Yeah, it's like warming up the crowd with their playlist while everyone's walking in, totally fine. But when you walk out to the song, that's kind of your song. And basically, since this has happened, it's created controversy. Two of the most famous are from our legacy presidents, both George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush. George H. W. Bush came out to the song, This Land is Your Land. This land is your land, and this land is my land, from California to the New York Island, from the Redwood Forest. Do you know the tune?

I do. Woody Guthrie. What do we know about Woody Guthrie? He is probably not voting for George H.W. Bush. Moreover, he associated with the Communist Party. Yeah. This song just astounds me that George Bush was associating. a folk pseudo-communist song about shared land as a Republican candidate. I mean, it just really seems like, I think this happens a lot with music, where people

kind of don't really listen to what it's saying, and they're just like, yeah, that's a tune. And like, this land is our land. Yeah, America. And then they don't listen to any of the other lyrics. Like, I know, I think I've told you about this before or off the air, but I have a friend who at their wedding, they played, you know, the police is all be watching you. Which kind of seems like a romantic song just based on the notes. Right.

But it's actually about a stalker. And I was like, that's not romantic. Do not dance to this. That shouldn't be your song. Gosh, that's a bad omen. Yeah. And this is the same thing, right? George H.W. Bush is like, oh, this land is your land.

This land is our land. But forget the rest of that. So he wasn't the first to get in trouble. In fact, his son also got in trouble. He was known for walking out to the song, I Won't Back Down by Tom Petty. Now, by the time that this land is your land was using a campaign, it was actually no longer in copyright. But the Tom Petty track was definitely in copyright, and he threatened to sue George W. The irony of two people facing off over that song is so perfect, right?

Because eventually someone had to back down. That's perfect. And Tom Petty is like, I've kind of ridden myself into a corner here. I can't back down. You have to stop using this song. Yeah, absolutely. And it's tricky rights about who actually. You can, this issue of the sort of venue licensing and who really can claim it, it's challenging.

It's not totally sorted out. A lot of the candidates just claim fair use. But they also don't like the negative press when someone like Tom Petty says, hey, I'm not voting for you. Don't use my song. But it kind of goes both. I think it sometimes goes both ways, though, where like then the candidate supporters are all like, you don't want them to use that song. Well, now I hate you.

And then they stop listening to the music. Man, the political controversy runs deep. Right? It cuts both ways. You've got to be careful, Tom Petty. Might be worth backing down occasionally. All right, so we've dug deep into the history, and I think I would like to get into what are some of the best songs from this year's election cycle. You with me? Definitely. Let's do it. There was a great article in the Washington Post by Amber Phillips. She looks at the music that each 2016 candidate chose and why, and we picked out a couple of the songs on that list to dig into them a little bit more deeply. I want to actually start with a candidate who is struggling in the polls right now, Chris Christie.

Yeah, Chris Christie. You know, a thing that's so sad, I actually know a little bit about his music, because I think that's so sad about Chris Christie is that he just loves Bruce Springsteen so much, and Bruce Springsteen hates his party, and so he'll never be able to use Bruce Springsteen's music. And it's just like, oh, in some ways he's such a Shakespearean character, loving someone who he can never have. And you know this is actually a running trend with Springsteen? Yes, I did know that. Yeah, so Reagan tried to use Born in the USA and same sort of thing.

Springsteen says, I'm sorry, but I think you've totally misread those lyrics. Yeah, in fact, I think Bruce, I think Bruce Springsteen did not even say, I'm sorry. I think he used some saltier language. He probably did. That's not a very New Jersey word. Sorry is rarely uttered in the Garden State. What do they prefer? Oh, I'm sure that I can't say it on this podcast.

Yeah, we try to keep it pseudo-family friendly. Okay, Chris Christie chooses the Metallica song, Enter Sandman. Oh, Chris Christie. Do you know the tune? I do. It's just, you gotta know. Look, I understand that I'm not cool enough to use that song. Chris Christie, you have to know. Like, you have to be a hardcore dude to use Enter Sandman. You can't just walk out as an overweight GOP candidate. That is not, you're not doing yourself any favors, man. It's also a really dark song, right? It's basically about all the nightmares that are coming true. Totally, which I think is probably happening to Chris Christie right now in his presidential campaign. Oh, bad omen. There's definitely some sort of carmic revenge. to these campaign songs.

Totally. You have to read them closely, right? You got to know what you're putting yourself up for. I actually love the Metallica choice, and it goes back to the roots of music theory. Do you mind if I take you there? Yeah, tell me why you love this choice. I'm very curious,

because I would not have picked a Metallica song for Chris Christie. So tell me why you think it's such a good call. So I'm going to take us back to Plato. Plato believe that each scale corresponded to a certain mood, and that playing that scale could actually induce feelings and certain behaviors and people. He said that certain scales

fittingly imitate the utterance and accents of a brave man who is engaged in warfare. And it's believed that upon hearing one of these scales called the Phrygian mode that a Greek king was once roused to war. Just by hearing the music.

Just by hearing the music. Wow, that seems like a dangerous song. You'd want to be careful when you played that song. So fast forward into sort of neoclassical period, when people are starting to codifical, music theory, and they want to find a beautiful name for the different scales that they're hearing

in the music of the time. And so they go to reference the past, and they use these Greek names like Ionian, Dorian, Phrygian. Well, it turns out the Phrygian mode, one of the scales of the ancient Greek period. This is the scale that brought that Greek king to war is now most associated with heavy metal music. No. When you hear Phrygian music, you think heavy metal. One of the best places to hear this Phrygian sound is in Metallica's Master of Puppets. That is so awesome. I would have never guessed that. That's amazing. Now, it's not entirely sure that they are the exact same scale. In fact, it's probably unlikely that they were. Nonetheless, there's this karma runs throughout. I love the idea that if we had a time machine and brought like a Greek king to a Metallica concert, he'd be like, just as I suspected, time for war.

In some ways, it kind of feels like that is what Chris Christie was trying to summon. I really do think that Chris Christie is in some ways a figure out of a Greek tragedy, just destined to love the things he cannot have. I want to get into the two big legacies, the Clinton legacy and the Bush legacy, because we have some really interesting music here. Cool. So you pointed out to me that Hillary Clinton is using Kelly Clarkson's What Doesn't Kill You Makes You Stronger.

You know, the bed feels warmer. sleeping here doesn't kill you makes me i just feel like that is a very poignant choice for hillary i'm guessing it was probably not chosen by her but she had to sign off on that and even just the title what doesn't kill you makes you stronger i mean the parallels to her political life here are blatantly obvious i think that both of these legacy songs you'll see actually really do deeply go into the lyrics and have considered their meaning the clarkson song starts you know the bed feels warmer sleeping here alone. I think we all know what she's talking about there.

Obviously, a reference to Bill's transgressions. You know I dream in color and do the things I want. You think you got the best of me. Think you left me broken down. Oh, she's not broken down. I can tell you that. Oh, she is not broken down. Think that I'd come running back.

I mean, that one is explicit. She's definitely running again. Baby, you don't know me because you're dead wrong. What doesn't kill you makes you stronger. It's actually like the song was written just for her. I feel like there's so much of the Clinton legacy wrapped up in just this verse and chorus. Yeah. In fact, she does keep running for office.

It's like every time, oh, it doesn't work. Run in back again. What does it kill me makes me stronger. Whenever people say that, I know that's a pretty common phrase, but it always kind of seems like a thing that a terminator would say. What are you inferring? What doesn't kill me makes me stronger? Do you think she'll ask Arnold as her running mate? Oh my God.

That would be quite a duo. I'm sure they would win. So let's move on to the next legacy. candidate Jeb Bush. He's using a song called Home Grown by the Zach Brown Band. I hadn't heard this one, but I think it's a really interesting choice.

The lyrics go down by the river side. Sit whiskey out and bar. Live in like we'll never leave. It kind of feels like he's directly addressing the Bush family dynasty, right? Like, come on and stay a while. Why would I ever leave? This is my White House. Does he honestly think he can pull off a country song? He can't be like, my dad was a simple man, just the president of the free world.

My brother's also the president. But I just drive my pickup truck and like a cold beer. Yeah, I don't think so. There's not really homegrown. You're pretty blue-blooded, dude. No, come on. They're here to stay a while. They're never going to leave.

And I think there's also this sort of weird moment celebrating. rating sipping whiskey out the bottle, especially as his brother was a known alcoholic. Totally. And there's no way that Jeb sips whiskey out the bottle. I mean, look at that guy. There is no chance that he's putting a bottle to his lips. Maybe a fine glass of white wine. Oh, absolutely. Yeah. Maybe he's sipping out of a glass of white wine. There's no way that that is a dude who throws whiskey back out the bottle. He's not, listen, he's a dude where there was a controversy in his campaign where he couldn't

pull off an exclamation point. What was that? When he had his logo was like, Jeb, exclamation point. I mean, if you can't pull off an exclamation point. There's no way you can pull up chug and whiskey from the bottle. Oh, man. Maybe, again, a little bit of a misread in the choice of song. Moving on to the candidate with the most amount of play in the media and potentially in music as well, the Donald. Yeah, and he's already had some controversies where people are like, do not use my song. Just one or two. What's your favorite one? Well, I love one that I think is amazing because it's like,

why did he choose this song in the first place? And why did he not think it would be a problem is he used REM's, it's the end of the world as we know it. And then REM was like, please don't use that song. We hate you. I love that his campaign choice was it literally the apocalypse is coming. It's fantastic. It reads two ways, right? Yep. I mean, I guess I'm maybe giving a generous interpretation. He thought it was like, it's the end of the world as we know it and not just the end of the world. But it really sounds like he was like, I am just going to burn this country to the ground. See, I think that supporters are hearing the world's going to end if we don't get the Donald. Everyone else is like, the world is going to end if we do get the Donald.

It is. In some ways, it is maybe the perfect song for him. R.E.M. should let him use it. Michael Stipe, back down on this one. All media is good media, right? Yep. All press is good press. That's what they say, I guess. He has another really funny choice.

Vox just wrote a great article about his love of Phantom of the Opera. It turns out that the Donald loves Andrew Lloyd Weber, who used to actually own an apartment in one of his many towers. Oh my gosh. And over and over and over again these days, before he comes on stage, we're hearing Phantom of the Opera. That is unbelievable. I don't know what this means. There's really something. Sometimes I think that Donald Trump is playing a joke and that he is trying to make sure that everyone else gets in on it at some point.

Because that really feels like the fact that he's waiting backstage in the wings and that he's playing Phantom of the Opera. for the people outside. There's something so perfect. You know, I'm a comedian, but I think that I wouldn't be surprised if Donald Trump revealed that he's actually the greatest stand-up comedian of all time because he is making some great comedic choices, which are only terrifying if he's serious about them. And if he's not really, truly genius comedy. There's probably some sort of parallel that he's thought through here of the removing of the mask of the phantom and the removing of his hair and seeing the true. Yeah, or maybe the fact that it's just like, here's the disfigured face of America, bringing it out from the shadows. You thought racism and hatred were done.

Well, take off the mask. The Phantom of the Opera is real. Oh, man. Yeah, he's a brilliant comedian. Or just a horrible demagogue. We'll see. We'll see. There's a great playlist that I found while researching this episode. It's a Spotify playlist called the Donald Trump presidential campaign playlist. So I obviously looked at it and I was like, oh, this must be the official list of songs he plays. I'm sure it was not the official list of songs. And at first, I was like, oh, this guy is funny. The top of the, the top of the list is Carly Simon's You're So Vane. Perfect. Oh, that should be his walkout music. I think that people would dig it. His second song was Beck's Devil's Haircut. I don't think he has a sense of humor about his hair.

I don't think that's something he takes as a joke. No, it's not there. And I love this. There were two references to his fake tan. Brad Paisley's Working on a Tan. My favorite, though, is, I think it's the Class of 1999, the sunscreen song, and the true title of that song is Everybody's Free to Wear Sunscreen. If I could offer you only one tip for the future.

sunscreen would be it now. Oh, yes, I remember this song. So we had the R.E.M. controversy. But there was another one, too. I remember there have been a couple of artists. I mean, Trump is certainly not popular amongst many recording artists. No, definitely not. And there's no shortage of controversies that we could go into.

But let's stay out of the politics, keep it in the music. One of the best was actually when he announced his run for presidency. He walked out to Neil Young's rocking in the first. free world. Yes. Amazing. Yeah, that is. And Neil Young, another famous liberal, definitely is not going to be happy with this. No, absolutely not. So he, he denounced the use of the song. And when he denounced it, said, I'm actually supporting Bernie Sanders. And then Bernie co-opted the song and is now using the song all the time, which I just love. Oh, that's, I think that's really great that Bernie tried. But come on, Bernie. I love you, but you're not rocking in the free world. Yeah, Bernie is more like

shuffling in the free world. Yeah, rock, I mean, he's ranting, shuffleboarding, but like, rocking, that's not a word that comes to mind with Bernie Sanders. No, no. Not really with any of the candidates, I have to say, rock star is not, not often a political president. So of all these songs, I'm wondering, do you have a favorite or is there one that we missed? I think maybe my favorite of all of them is one that we haven't talked about. What's that? And it's probably because he's not very high in the polls. But I love that Rand Paul chose Frankenstein as his walkout music. Yes, the Edgar Winter Group. Unbelievable. And isn't he a bit of a political Frankenstein?

Totally. I mean, I guess he's hoping that he'll come back to life, but that can't have been why he chose that song. It's in some ways kind of perfect, right? Because Frankenstein is both seen as a monster, but as also a tragic love story. Hmm. And that's how you read Rand Paul, the tragic love story of Rand Paul? Yeah, definitely. I feel like for the last couple of minutes, we've been in some potentially dangerous territory. Yeah. They say that you're not supposed to talk about politics, money, or religion and polite company. and we've been doing that for most of the show so far. So maybe to move away from a potentially very divisive subject, we could have a little pallet cleanser.

Sure. So one of my favorite things about hanging out with you, Chris, is that you have such a unique view of the world. Oh, thank you. So I follow you on Instagram at Chris I. Duffy, and you're always taking pictures of the most absurd, tiny moments that I would totally miss. Recently, you took a picture of a hieroglyph at the Brooklyn Museum,

which you claim looks most definitely like an ancient hot dog. Oh, I stand by that. It definitely is. I was looking at the Egyptian tombs at the Brooklyn Museum, and then I was like, that has to be a hot dog. What else could that be a hieroglyph of? Well, so you see the world in such a funny way, and I was wondering how you hear the world. Well, first of all, thank you for saying that. I really appreciate that.

You know, part of my job as a comedian is to try and notice little things that other people might not notice. And a lot of times it ends up being weird signs or things that I see around the world. But, you know, I sometimes hear things in music, too. I think maybe as a comedian I pay more attention to lyrics than other people might. Right, right. Yeah, here are a couple songs that I have always, over the years, have always made me laugh when I hear them, just because they sound so bizarre. All right.

Or I just think there's something like weird that other people don't notice about that. All right, give it to you. What do you got? So I've actually got two Little John songs that make me laugh so much. Okay. So Little John, a rapper, I think he makes, you know, maybe not the most critically acclaimed rapper, but I think he makes songs that are really fun and get people pumped up. So I'm kind of a fan of his music.

And he often says things that I think are hilarious and insane. Like in his song, Get Low, he says, he's talking about how many times he's been to the club. And he says, I done been to the club about 15 times. And I love that that's the number he chose, 51. What does that make of me? First of all, just not a real number. There's no way that 1511 is a real number. But I also love that he says, about 1511 times.

Like, he's like, it's an estimate. It's not exactly 51, but it's somewhere around 51. That's just my favorite number, I think. Beautiful. So that's one of his songs that I'm obsessed with. I love that. But another one of his songs where he says something that, okay, so the song is called Snap Your Fingers.

Right. I swear, it is called Snap Your Fingers. And if you look online, the lyrics will say, snap your fingers. But I guarantee you that he is saying the words, snap your bagels. There is no chance that he's not saying the word bagel. It's amazing. He definitely says, snap your bagels. That to me, Liljohn, great comedy there. You did a great job. This is great. I feel like he really embraces absurdist comedy.

Well, I think, I do think it really in general that rappers have great senses of humor, right? Like, there's so much wordplay and rap. And because of that, people come up with really funny lines. Like, there is a Drake verse on Rihanna's What's My Name, that I genuinely think is one of the funniest jokes I've ever heard, comedian, not comedian. It's Drake is doing the best math joke around. You say math joke? Yeah. So Drake literally is going to make the nerdiest math joke, and it's just perfect. You would not expect it. It comes in the middle of this kind of dance song. And he goes, I heard you good with them soft lips. Yeah, you know word of mouth.

The square root of 69 is eight something, right? Because I've been trying to work it out. The square root of 69 is eight something, which is filthy. And just, I think that is one of the most clever possible lines because that actually is the square root of 69. Like, it's not just dirty and funny, but it's also mathematically accurate. And the only way I can imagine that he came up with that is he was like doing square roots of different numbers until he saw something funny about that one. That is just genius. Thank you, Drake.

Oh, totally. And, you know, it's not just rappers who do this. Like, Van Halen has a great lyric where in Van Halen's, why can't this be love? One of their lyrics is, only time will tell if we stand the test of time. And it's like, yeah, that's kind of how that works. Nice work, Van Halen. That's like almost like another math joke. It's like a recursive math problem.

Yeah, well, it almost feels like a Zen proverb, right? Every time we'll tell if we stand the test of time. A song that I really kind of a guilty pleasure for me is Pitbull's Give Me Everything. This was like a huge hit on the radio for a couple of years. It was everywhere. But I love how Pitbull has this great idea for one of his fans where he's like, me not working hard? Yeah, right. Picture that with a Kodak.

Or better yet, go to Times Square. Take a picture of me with a Kodak. And you're like, those are the same idea, Pitbull. Do you realize that? He just repeated himself. He not working hard. Yeah, write picture that with a Kodak. A better yet.

Go to Times Square. Take a picture of me with a Kodak. Yeah, literally, he's like, take a picture of me with a Kodak. Or take a picture of me with a Kodak. I don't know. I mean, I think he's saying that he's like on a billboard in Times Square, but come on.

People really need to consider these lyrics, from the politicians to the writers themselves. Like, what the heck is going on here? Totally. Well, here's my favorite one of all time. All right. He is David, David Guetta. I think I'm saying his name right.

David Geta. Something like that. Yeah, David Geta, David Gretta. I'm sure someone will tell you in the comments that I'm saying it's totally wrong. Oh, no doubt. Acon has a verse on a David Geta song. And the song is called sexy bitch, which I don't think is very appropriate. But in the song, he says, the lyric is,

I'm trying to find the words to describe this girl without being disrespectful. Damn, you're a sexy bitch. And it's like, you tried, but not that hard. You really didn't try that hard to not be disrespectful, did you? You get like an F for effort. Totally. I mean, you could have literally just said, damn, you're sexy. But nope.

He was like, I think I need to put this one in. I don't even, my, I'm, there's so much cognitive dissonance right now. I don't even know how to respond. Yeah. It's just there's something great about saying that you're trying hard and then not trying at all. Oh, Chris, thank you so much for coming on the show and sharing with us your favorite comedy songs.

Just absolutely fantastic. Oh, thanks so much. Thanks for having me, Charlie. This was really fun. Attention Spotify. Has yeted to the new Good Girl Jasmine Absolute of Caroline Herrera. A fragrance intense with character gourmet and addictive.

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dot. S bar records. Check, check. Nate, is that you? Hello. Greetings from Brooklyn. Ah, good to hear your voice.

Yes, I've been reporting from my hermit hole here. Not just buried in snow, but sort of in the depths of musicology, PhD writing. Yes, dissertating deeply, seven years of hard work coming to fruition, no pressure. I had the crazy idea that maybe you could present some of what you're working on in a way which is uniquely switched on pop. Let's dig into Harlem Jazz of the 1920s and 30s. I think it's particularly pressure. You look at jazz between the wars and Harlem, and there's some stuff here that we unpack, and it feels so relevant to today and an awesome story in and of itself.

Yeah. I mean, absolutely. As a musicologist, you're constantly looking for connections between musical change and social change, and so often those are continually being repeated in all over the world and all over time periods. Take me there. Where are we starting? And just a quick disclaimer before we jump in the time machine. As we explore the music of Harlem between the wars, we'll encounter some things that will make us very uncomfortable. But I do want to be honest and to give a really truthful appraisal of the racial dynamics that were happening at this time.

So, you know, we'll be very straightforward about that. All right. Well, I'm ready to go back in time. and I feel okay sitting in a bit of discomfort. All right, let's start in 1931. Back in time. And let's imagine that we are two wealthy white Park Avenue types, okay? Ah, yes. And we walk out of our deluxe apartment and our chauffeur driver comes and picks us up.

let's say it's about, like, 11 o'clock at night right now. All right, so we're going up for a night on the town. Oh, we're going up. You have no idea what's in store, Charlie, because we're hopping in this car in midtown. We're driving to Harlem. What are we doing there? Well, we're going to pull up to a club called Connie's Inn. This very ritesy Harlem Cabaret, big cover charge.

Who's covering? Well, you know, as the sion of an oil fortune, I think you can get tonight. All right, all right. I got the cover charge. We join a line of cars lining up on 133rd Street and 7th Avenue deep in the heart of Harlem. A doorman comes, opens the door, and we walk into Connie's Inn, grab a seat at one of the tables surrounding the stage covered in a white and red, red checkered tablecloth, which along with the southern mansion portico on the stage and even the fake cotton trees, starts to give us the sense of where we are.

We're in sort of a fake plantation vibe. It's very strange. And as we look around at this club in the Heart of Harlem, which features hot jazz music played by star African American entertainers, you'll notice that there's not a single black person in the audience. It's only other rich white people like ourselves. So we're in a segregated club? Depending on who we are, this is either really appealing or really disappointing.

Yeah. Because either we've come to Harlem to get the experience of black New York without actually having to rub elbows with an actual black person. Huh. Or we've come in search of the authentic Harlem, and we find ourselves disappointed that this isn't one of the black and tan cabarets, which are integrated, Gated clubs.

Man, I was getting so excited about going out with you, Nate, and now I'm feeling very conflicted. Well, it's a very charged moment that we're living in. Okay, well, I'll continue to pretend that we're time traveling back into, uh, when are we right now? Well, we're in 1931. It's Jim Crow America. Even in a urbane, sophisticated city like New York, I mean, this is before the civil

rights movement. There's a lot of noxious portrayals of black difference to contend with. Oh, wow. Yeah. like you said, at the beginning, going back in time, doesn't necessarily match with our faux nostalgia of history. Here we are confronting some very real stuff. But I'm ready to keep going. Let's go back in time.

And why don't you tell me, what are we listening to at the club? Well, the first thing we will hear is the music of the Don Redmond Orchestra. And they might be playing a song like Shaken the Afrikan, which he recorded in 1931. And as we're listening to Don Redmond play and sing, shaking the african, we chuckle because we get the joke. It's a terrible joke. The afra can. And we marvel at the sexualization of the black body on stage. Again, the historical versions of the two of us going out.

I mean, I just feel so wrong. But it also, it's amazing how the emphasis on the body and the shaking of the can. continues to persist in modern music with twerking and other things like this. So, all right, I see where we're going. Yeah, totally. We may think of these jongolistic African references as so dated, but in many ways, they're thoroughly modern. Wow.

I like big song. Tuck it on it. Tungo's local, man. If it started shaking the African. Wow, the historical parallels are just uncanny. This old school jazz, which to my ear sounds somewhat tame, was obviously really pushing boundaries. And as we listened to Don Redmond's orchestra,

probably a chorus line of maybe 20 women are going to come out, and they're going to be very scantily clad, Charlie. Oh, boy. Oh, boy. Doing these amazingly tightly choreographed dances to a song, again, called Shaken, the Afrikan, which sounds a little something like this. Boy, it looked like I've been picked out the raw spot, is in. Of course, there's sweet.

Music is all right, but man, we want to go where there's some peps excitement. And I really know the spot, too, what is some really excitement. Get your hat and cold. Let's get out of here. I want you to come along with me. I'm really going to take it to a place where it's just too bad. That a better boy? The guy's hiking it. So as we listen to this song, we actually hear the journey that we just took. Right.

We hear the journey from Midtown Manhattan with its sweet jazz. Yeah. This kind of on the beat, very smooth, very legato, very inoffensive jazz. And then we hear our journey uptown as exhorted by Don Redman himself. Let's go someplace with Plenty Pepp and Excitment, aka Harlem, where we have arrived. That's where we are, yes. And that is accompanied by a torrid blast of hot trumpet. Which signals this new kind of music that was taking hold in the 19th.

What a rude interruption. It's very brazen. It represents a new musical order. Harlem is the capital of hot jazz. Fast, syncopated, fiery, impoverisitori. This is the soundtrack of what F. Scott Fitzgerald called The Jazz Age. We're basically in the Great Gatsby. Yeah.

And as we listen to Don Redmond, we hear this musical shift from sweet jazz to hot jazz. We hear this geographic transition from Midtown New York to Harlem becoming the epicenter of New York's nightlife. And in a sense, we also hear this larger phenomenon, what was known as the Great Migration, where millions of black Americans moved from the south to the north in search of better employment and better treatment and turned Harlem into this unprecedented center of black density of cultural. production of political movements of social life. We are there to listen to music, to watch beautiful girls dance on stage, but also to experience this Black Harlem,

to have a touristic encounter with a racial other. Something tells me that it feels like a very constructed music and experience. Oh, absolutely. This whole thing is very highly staged, highly monitored, highly policed, actually. We may think that we are experiencing authentic Harlem, but in Connie's Inn, listening to the Don Redmond Orchestra, we're experiencing this very manufactured vision of black difference of what some scholars have called the primitivist myth of black culture.

We go to Harlem to regenerate ourselves, to be cured of the ills of the mechanized society in which we live. This hot rhythm sustains us, gets us in touch with our inner fire. Hearing about this primitivist idea of hot jazz really reminds me of reading Jack Kerouac's on the road in high school and how he and his buddies would go out to these clubs and they would talk about, oh, that pure authentic identity music which just flows from the soul, which is unpractice and and harkens back to Eden. Yeah, totally. This is an earlier incarnation of that same phenomena and one that has made. many later iterations as well as you can look at the history of American pop music as continually turning to black culture when its music is, when mainstream music is in need of invigoration and invention. Cycle which has gone on and on and on.

Absolutely. But then in my research, what I'm interested in is showing how this music at once was an expression of this primacy. myth was supporting this staged encounter that you referred to, but at the same time is drawing on the incredible diversity, the nascent political movements happening in Harlem. This idea of the rich social life of Harlem, the collision of southern culture and northern. culture precipitated by the Great Migration. I mean, even as the hot jazz of 1920s and 30s, Harlem was being used to support these stereotypical visions of black culture, at the same time, it was creating a new vision of black culture, one that was thoroughly modern, incredibly sophisticated, and musically,

unlike anything anyone had ever heard at that point. Let me just be grout. It's not a grower. It's not a mess in it. So we're at Connie's Inn, listening to Don Redmond's shaking the african. Let me tell you, this is the biggest craze in New York City, boy. And as the night goes on, Charlie, we're going to go through a number of different clubs in Harlem. We're bar hopping.

We'll move from these fancy white-only cabarets to the smaller black and tans. We'll go to cellar clubs. We'll go to fried chicken shacks. We'll go to what we're known as rent parties, where you just have a solid. Pianist playing in someone's apartment and by the end of the night as the sun comes up We'll probably head to Smalls Paradise for the breakfast dance Where we'll eat eggs Drink whiskey and listen to some more hot jazz

Oh, this is a long night. I don't know if I can stay out that late Well Charlie it would be easier for you to stay up until nine in the morning if you could cut a rug and listen to hot jazz at the breakfast dance at Smalls Paradise at seven in the morning every day. Hell yeah. I mean, it's going to be decadent. And Charlie, as we check in the next three episodes, we'll hit up different clubs and we will hear from three of the most fascinating figures in Harlem at this period. Duke Ellington, Cab Calloway, Harold Arlen, some of the most important musicians in the

first half of the American century. and they all got their start in this Harlem scene, and it really shaped the sound of their music. I'm excited to go out and check out the jazz clubs with you. Ditto. All right. Until next time. This episode of Switched On Pop was produced by me, Charlie Harding, with help by Nate Sloan and Chris Duffy.

Our design is done by Luke Harris. You can check out his work at Luke Harris.com. All of the articles and playlist reference will be on our website at www.Switchdownpop.com, where you can check out back episodes. A big thanks to Chris Duffy for co-hosting today. You can find more of his work at chrisduffeycom.com. You can follow him on Instagram and Twitter at Chris I. Duffy.

And if you've listened this far into Switched on Pop, I promise you you're going to love Chris's show. You're the expert. It's absolutely hilarious. You're going to learn something to comedy and science. It's a beautiful thing. Check it out. And join me again in two weeks. When we have a special Valentine's Day episode, we're going to look at some love songs

and we're going to even take you to the biggest night of your life, your wedding night, and help you think about how do you choose your DJ set? We're going to talk to an expert DJ who's going to help us think through how you get everybody out on the dance floor and shaking their thing. Until then, thanks for listening.