Switched on Pop - Good Artists Borrow, Great Artists Steal

Episode Date: October 20, 2016

Host Charlie spent the last two weeks listening to every song on the Billboard Hot 100. What did he discover? That the sonic similarities of most chart-toppers sound closer than ever. Except for the #1 song in America, as of this episode's release - "Closer" by The Chainsmokers, ft. Halsey. This one is different than the rest...or is it? We dive into the styles of the moment to re-learn the old maxim that "great artists steal" - whether that artist is a 2016 DJ duo or an 18th century Classical master.  Featuring: •Tory Lanez - LUV •Shawn Mendes - Treat You Better •Frenship - Capsize •Maroon 5 - Don't Wanna Know •Cheat Codes - Sex •The Chainsmokers ft. Halsey - Closer •Charlie Puth ft. Selena Gomez - We Don't Talk Anymore •Jack U ft. Justin Bieber - Where Are U Now •Drake - Know Yourself •Amine - Caroline •MO - Final Song •Mike Posner - I Took a Pill in Ibiza (Seeb remix) •The Weeknd - I Can't Feel My Face •The Chainsmokers ft. Phoebe Ryan - All We Know •Antonio Vivaldi - "La Primavera" Concerto •Vivaldi - Giustino •Vivaldi - Dorilla in Tempe •Vivaldi - Orlando Furioso Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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It's free for iOS users. So Nate, when you asked me to put together an episode this week about something happening on the charts, I have to admit that I kind of struggled. Nothing catching your interest there? Well, you know there's the old cliche of too many things on the radio sound the same. Yeah, yeah, that's every generation has, I think, said that for the last 100 years. I was feeling it really strongly recently. You're in a pop music on Wii.

You know, a lot of what we do is often finding trends of things that are going on. But when I went for my first listen of just what's happening in the world of popular music, I heard everybody making the exact same rhythmic variation of a dance song. We are having a moment. So here's just a couple of examples. We've got Love by Tori Lanes. This is Treat You Better by Sean Mendez. Interesting.

I won't lie to you. I know he's just not right for you. This is capsize by friendship. No way. This is don't want to know by Maroon 5. Sex by Cheapodes. Everybody's copying each other. Wait, Charlie, this is blowing my mind. These are all, like, top 100 songs right now?

Yeah, and they basically all have the exact same rhythm. Dun, done, done, done, done. Wow, that is fascinating. Sort of a variation on the clave that we talked about in our episode about Drake. Right, right, yeah, totally a 3-2 clave pattern right there. So, I was feeling down. Oh. Because, you know, I wanted to find something that was,

sounding new and different. Right. And I actually had missed the pinnacle of pop music, meaning I had completely glanced over the top song on the charts. Uh-huh. And lo and behold, I found something really pretty special, something different. Wow. At least so I thought. Oh, okay. Whoa, so many twists and turns here.

Welcome to Switch on Pop. I'm songwriter Charlie Harding. And I'm musicologist, Nate. So Nate, the song at the top of the charts is the chain smokers closer featuring Halsey. That's a lot of words. A lot of words. And to be honest, I actually didn't really know a lot about this group other than I kept seeing this name, the chain smokers, over and over the last couple of months. Turns out they are a DJ duo from New York City.

They only have one EP out. They don't even have an album, but they have, I think, more. dance singles on the charts than any other artist has, like beating records by Calvin Harris and other big EDM producers. Really now, okay. And I think that they have something to teach us. And this song closer to me is an incredible study in how to make something unique, how to make a lasting hit.

Okay, yeah, let's break this thing open. And, yeah, there's a little bit of a twist in here. But let's start off before we get to the twist. Okay. I think what we just need to do is to listen to the song and describe what we're hearing. And then we're going to investigate. Very good. Step one, you always return to the scene of the crime.

All right. What are we hearing? Okay, I'm hearing this kind of spacey piano. Yep. I'm hearing these kind of sounds filtering in and out, crescendoing. Yep. Getting louder than fading out. It sounds like the primordial ooze before.

something big is about to happen. Yeah, there's a, underneath all of it, there's this little synth line that is really super memorable. It is very simple. It has this almost nursery rhyme like quality to it. Right. The one that goes, do-de-de-do-do-de-de-de. Exactly. Yeah, it is kind of like a nursery rhyme.

I like that. And then all of a sudden. Stephen just fine before I met you. I drink too much and that's an issue, but I'm okay. All right, so what happened? Whoa, radical textural change. All the washiness and oozyness of that intro is suddenly tightened into this, like, high pressure, space full of tightness and silence. Yes, we have entered the verse, and we obviously get a vocal.

It is a dry vocal, no reverb, no effects, very present and in our face. Crispy. Crispy. As a fall day. Speaking of crispy, some snaps and claps in the background. Yeah, totally. Right. Providing some rhythmic oomph. And a synth chord thing going on.

Right. Kind of what I would describe as a wonk-wonk sound. I was doing just fine before I met you. I drink too much and that's an issue. But I'm okay. It's a little wonky. Not a technical term, but effective. Yeah, let's keep going. What section do you think we're in?

Four years, no goals. Now you're looking pretty in a hotel bar. I guess we're in the pre-chorus now, kind of? Yeah, exactly. Because it sounds similar to the verse, but it's kind of grown in intensity. We've got a bass and a snare. The vocal is getting a little more impassion.

Sounds like we're building up to a chorus. We're also getting the sort of main subject of the song. Ah, right, yes. Yes, absolutely. This is the pre-chorus. We are building in intensity. One of the other things that's going on is that, synth line that we heard in the intro is starting to build this crescendo that's going to launch us into

the chorus. Yeah, yeah, totally. And we're also finally getting a sense of what is this song about? Yeah, yeah, right. It's getting a good, it gets very specific. I like that about this song. It's very specific references here. I know it breaks your heart, move to the city in a broke down car, and four years, no calls. Now you're looking pretty in a hotel bar. So basically, we have an ex-couple meeting up again four years later. Yeah. Where is it going to go? I don't know, but I'm dying to find out. So, baby, pull me closer in the backseat of your rover that I know you can't afford, bite that tattoo on your shoulder.

So if we just heard the pre-chorus, this must be the... The chorus. Kind of. Except, is it? It's odd. It's like, it kind of goes back to the texture of that primordial opening because that piano comes back. kind of big and washy again. That nursery rhyme synth line becomes very present.

Becomes the melody, in fact. Exactly. The singers take that line and make it their melody. Right, but it doesn't sound like a chorus. It sounds like another pre-chorus or something. Because we're still building to the next moment, which should aptly be titled the... Pop drop.

The Pop Drop. Yes. A couple episodes ago, we talked about the Pop Drop. this EDM-inspired section where the chorus is replaced by this instrumental section that we are supposed to dance to. Right. The non-chorus chorus. The non-chorus chorus.

It's the big moment of the song. Yeah, it's enlightening. I like it. And that little line that we heard in that primordial intro has come full force and is in our face and is the main hook of the song accompanied by the line, we ain't ever getting old. So the song continues. Ooh, I just got excited. The song does continue.

It becomes a duet. The singer Halsey then enters. Right. And it's great because then we get the other side of the relationship, the other person's perspective. Totally, right. We have the exact same kind of texture and melody, but now being sung by the mirror image, so to speak. Yes. Okay.

At the beginning of the show, I said that this is a study in how. to make a hit. Right. I am loving this track because the message of the song runs throughout it completely, from the lyric to the musical compositional structure to every little moment. Do you know what that nugget is? I'm assuming it has something to do with that memorable line from the non-chorus chorus, we ain't ever getting older. It's even simpler than that. It's the title of the song. Oh. obviously it's like the clues are all right in front of you and you're just you know trying too hard to investigate it's interesting because is the is the word closer actually anywhere in the lyrics of the song yes it's in it it's in that uh what we titled the kind of chorus oh right so baby pull me closer in the backseat of oh yeah yeah closer in the backseat of the rover totally

okay but kind of glanced over in the lyrics and yet picked out as the title so what how do you interpret this. Well, we already established this song is about an ex-couple getting back together. Right. The song is about getting closer, bringing the past into the present. Ooh, okay. Right. So when we started with that intro, we heard this sort of fading into presence. Right. And hidden in the background, this little nursery rhyme synth line. Whoa, okay. Which then disappears and we hear the first narrator. And that's, that's the present, I guess. Or that's the past, rather. He's, wait. This is the narrator sort of catching up.

He says, hey, I was doing just fine before I met you. You know, I actually, it's hard to know exactly what time frame we're in. Right. Yeah, it's not perfectly linear. It's more kind of imagistic. He's saying, hey, you tell your friends, it was nice to meet them, but I hope I never seen them again. I don't know where we are in the state of the relationship. but I know that we are in a place of reflection

and in the transition from the verse to the pre-chorus that synth line starts to come back in bringing that past into the present. That's the past intruding into the present. Exactly. Cool. And in the pre-chorus, it gets louder and build. It gets taken over about what might be a guitar line.

And finally, when we get to the chorus, that melody has become the vocal melody. The nursery rhyme has become fully present in that dry, just super in-your-face vocal. Word. So the past has fully kind of exploded into the present at that point. And you suggested, well, maybe this song has something to do with that lyric in the pop drop. We ain't ever getting older. Well, at that moment, in the pop drop, this main melody, the closer melody, the nursery rhyme past being brought in

to the present. That is the hook of the song. And what's happening here, the singers are reflecting on, we ain't ever getting older. They are in the present. Whoa, yeah. They reject any future

state. They're never getting older. Right. And that's like both kind of a sort of sad sentiment to me and also sort of an empowering one. Maybe something about like recognizing that you need to stay in the sort of what can feel like the miasma of youth sometimes.

Well, and this song makes many allusions to nostalgic relationships, right? And the duet, the female narrator says, stay and play that blank 182 song that we beat to death in Tucson. Right. So there's all these allusions to their past relationship. Very nice lyric right there. Yeah. Lots of shout out to cities in the southwest in this song from Boulder to Tucson.

This is really a mountain time and time. them right here. Yeah, I think that those allusions to places are further connections to geographic past, and what I love about this song is how they're always pulling you closer into the present. I think the best

moment that this happens is in the pop drop. In the chorus, we're basically getting the description of a couple making out in the backseat of their car. Right. Moving to a mattress, scandalous. You mean in the chorus, which turns out to be a pre-chorus? The pseudo-chorus.

The pseudo-chorus. The thing before the pop drop. They say that they're going to be moving to a mattress, which is very scandalous. Right. And I think that this closer synth line, that nursery rhyme synth line that we're hearing, stands in for what happens next. Whoa. It just got a little hot under this blanket. The climax of the song, the pop drop, is where they stop sharing, they stop singing what's going

on in that present moment, it kind of feels like when you're watching a PG-13 film, when the sheets are pulled over, the camera pans away, and the music begins to play. Whoa, right. And then there's like fireworks going on outside or something. Oh, okay. Wow, there are some twists here, Charlie. I did not see that coming. Yeah, as you can tell, this melody, this single creative nugget has been used throughout the

entire song hinted at an intro verse. the pre-chorus, the chorus, and finally lands in the pop drop where it becomes the central narrative of the song. The music replaces the lyric. It's really, I think, quite brilliant. Yeah, the music replaces the lyric. Okay, so what was that nostalgic nursery rhyme becomes this, like, anthem of, like, coital bliss or something in the... Which is, I mean, I guess... Yeah, it's summoning the past love of the relationship in...

to the present. It's really extraordinary. And as I was saying, you know, I had been listening to the charts and I was thinking, wow, this song really is different and people are loving it. It's the top song. It doesn't sound quite like anything else. And then, well, you know that misattributed Picasso quote that good artists borrow and great artists steal? Indeed. I think here we might have a case of very crafty, good borrowing or maybe even great stealing. Either way, a sure sign of greatness. And we will explore that right after the break. Tension.

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and while I do hear it as something completely original and really interesting, I hinted that maybe, well, actually, it could be borrowing from a lot of other work that has come before it. As all great art does. Yeah, so I made this allusion to the Picasso quote, this misattributed Picasso quote, which I actually, as I was researching, was not aware that this is misattributed, right? Supposedly, according to, I think it was propagated by Steve Jobs, Picasso said that good artists borrow in great artists steal. I think I've also heard that attributed to Stravinsky.

Also to Stravinsky, correct, and also to T.S. Eliot. Supposedly, Picasso never said it, which I think is this like meta commentary on the quote itself, because it translates. formed and moved and actually the words of it changed. That's pretty hilarious. In any case, the chain smoker is closer to me is almost like a meta pop song where you can start to hear the influences of how it was created. All you have to do is either run down the pop charts of what's happening right now or go back to the last two years of musical investigations that we've been doing together.

Right, right. So check this out. There are five things that I immediately heard. that I think this song is borrowing from. Okay, number one. Thing of the first. The single motif relationship song. I think we could go back to our episode number 10

on Taylor Swift's blank space and how the motif of blank space permeates every little bit from the drums to the song structure to the bass line to the lyrics. Right. That whole song is constantly expressing in every cell, so to speak, of its being this idea of blank space. And of course, writing a song off of a single motif is not a completely original thing.

Many have done it. But there's a recent song in the past that does this very well. Other songs on the charts are also talking about reunited lovers. We have the Charlie Puth duet with Selena Gomez. We don't talk anymore. Have you heard this? No, I haven't heard this one. Check it out.

which funnily enough actually uses some of that same rhythm that we heard at the beginning of the show also has a pop-trop moment oh yeah there it is wow yeah you could like just create a whole subgenre something like elegiac electronic duets or something elegiac electronic duets of estranged lovers you know as we've seen with drake and adele fall is the season for the kind of nostalgic pop song. Yeah, you're totally right. It's funny. I think like we've moved from Song of the Summer to a breakup song of the fall. Right. Yeah. That autumnal jam.

The leaves are falling. Yeah. Kind of looking back on everything. Feeling nostalgic. Okay, so thing of the first single motif about a reunited relationship. Right. Check. Number two. Getting into the detail of the song, the intro. Right? We listened to that,

that spacey, ethereal, funny thing going on in the beginning. Right? Yeah. We established that there is this piano line and this synthi-billy stuff. Indeed. Does that sound familiar from our past? Maybe episode number 21 about Justin Bieber's existential dread

and his piece with Screlix and Diplow called Where Are You Now? Oh, totally. Yeah, that piano is a dead giveaway. Check it. Has that same sort of meandering, non-resolving piano line? Yeah, totally. Yeah, that piano just immediately. takes you to that kind of lackermost place somehow.

Absolutely, yeah, for sure. And on top of it, we have, we described this sort of production where it sounds like it's almost in the background, something coming into the foreground. And that really reminded me of the episode that we did on Drake, number 40, in which his producer describes how he intentionally creates these underwater sounding effects so that the voice sits on top of the music production. Yeah. Yeah.

Running through the six. So the chain smoker's intro is a sort of combination of Justin Bieber plus Drake. I can totally see that. Moving along. Yeah. Thing of the third going into the verse. Here you established that there were sort of these strange synthy chords. I was doing just fine before I met you.

I drank too much and that's an issue. But I'm okay. And we can hear that. And another track that was released about just a couple months before the chain smoker is called Caroline by anime. You just made that up, but I'll allow you to play it. No, it's for sure real.

This is the won't, won't, won't want, won't exactly. You got me? Don't you see that? I won't still be my... You got me? Yeah, there it is. Wonk, won't. Totally.

And of course, this is not... Other people have made this sound before, but it's also on the charts at another position in another song. The other part that we heard in the verse were the snaps and claps. And of course, again, many people using snaps and claps, but I really love Mo's song, final song, which does something very similar. So we got the snaps and claps from Bo.

We got the snaps. It's like West Side Story on the pop charts right now. So much snapping. Okay, that's thing of the third in the verse. the fourth, we talked about this quite a bit, the pop drop, right? This idea that we came up with in our 43rd episode, this replacing of the chorus with this synth line and distorted vocals in the background. And I think that we had at least two really great examples of this.

DJ snakes turned down for what was the first that we could find anywhere in the charts. And of course, we spent the entire episode talking in great detail about Mike Posner's, I took a pill on a visa. So, all right, they've got the blank space motif. They've got a Justin Bieber Drake intro. They have a verse mixing these production techniques of two other songs in the charts. It's a pop drop, which is just like the hottest thing happening right now. And the last thing, actually, we didn't get to listening earlier on, is the bridge of the song.

Ooh, okay. Let's go there. Okay. So here's the bridge of the chain smokers, right? So this is basically, you know, typically in a bridge we experience. expect to hear what, some kind of new musical material, right? Right, and maybe like a lyrical contrast. Right. So the bridge comes right after the second pop drop.

So what's that? Whoa. Big bill. Big bill. And I think it's a bridge. I don't know, what do you think? Well, I can hear why you say that, but, I mean, it has to be acknowledged that this is the same as the non-chorus chorus or the pre-second pre-chorus.

Oh, we got to come with some more terminology. you here. I'm tripping over my words. I know. It's tough. The pre-pop drop. How about that? The pre-pop drop, which we've called the chorus, is that same stuff that we're hearing here, but within a new context, which is kind of muted. Right. It is quiet and then slowly build. And so in some ways, I think is serving as a bridge, which typically provides some sort of contrast to get you back into a final chorus for that last hurrah. I'm persuadable on this account. Okay. Well, Well, you should be because about a year ago on episode 20, we talked about the weekends I Can't Feel My Face produced by Max Martin,

who is pretty famous for dropping the bridge and replacing it with a pre-chorus. Huh. Remember this? Yeah, yeah. Oh, I do. Yeah, there it is. And build back to the climate. Okay, so the chain smoker's closer.

And I see you're illustrating this misattributed Picasso quote in another way because we are literally stealing from our old shows right now in the course of this episode because we are great artists, obviously. Clearly. Okay. So I'm pretty convinced by your argument here, Charlie, five ways in which this track can be seen to be sort of cobbled together from different influences of the pop landscape of the moment. Is that, do you think that is distinct? Is there something special about this brew here? Well, it is the number one song. It definitely sounds strange and different, right?

Even that contrast that you described at the beginning from this spacey piano line to this very in-your-face, wonky synth and present voice. The actual sounds of it are constructed from all of these other pieces in a way which creates. something that I have never quite heard. Interesting. Kind of like a Frankenstein monster of pop success. A beautiful Frankenstein monster. Yeah. I mean, I find Frankenstein to be very attractive.

And the copious slash fiction that I write about him and Dracula should be sufficient evidence to that fact. So yeah, beautiful Frankenstein. There's a problem, though. Oh, man, you are just impossible today. Okay, what's the problem? Well, once you've figured out this formula. Right. Even if you're the one that figured it out, do you think it's okay to repeat it?

Do I think it's okay? Me personally? Yeah, absolutely. I think it's perfectly okay, but I'm as an inveterate borrower. I fully support it. I think it's totally okay to borrow from yourself, especially pieces of what you're doing. But when you wholesale copy the formula and redo it, I don't know. and that's exactly what the Shane Smokers did with her next hit called All We Know.

Okay, take me there. This song has basically the exact same structure as closer. Okay. Ready, check this out. Yeah. Intro. Intro. Intro.

Nostalgalgic buildy stuff. Indeed. Verse. Okay. Yeah. Duet. Okay. Indeed.

Just a few seconds later at about the exact same time stamp as closer, we get the pre-chorus. There it is. And then right after the pre-chorus, we get that, like, kind of chorus. And that chorus has, like, kind of the exact same nursery rhyme-like quality of the chorus of closer. Yeah. But Charlie, that, I mean, this chorus references Midwestern cities, so, I mean, it's

very different. Okay. If we're talking about variation, then let's just grab the next moment, the pop drop. Yeah. You get that pop drop with a synth line and some nostalgic, cute, tweet, single line. This is how we know. Kind of similar to we ain't ever getting older. No doubt.

I totally see your analogy. These songs really closely parallel each other. But I might poke back a little bit because I think our perception of that could be colored by the nature of this music, which is, you know, on the face. of it very, very dancey and very kind of cookie cutter a little bit. Yeah. You know, we don't object to someone who we perceive as an artist like Lady Gaga, reusing the same kind of techniques over and over again. No, of course not.

I mean, song structures are mostly repeated, right? Verse, chorus, verse chorus, bridge, verse chorus. But if you map this thing out by timestamp, each section is about the exact same length. Interesting. So, like, the intro is 10 seconds. The verse is about 20 seconds. The pre-chorus is another 20 seconds. The chorus is about 30 seconds.

And then the pop drop last for about another 25 seconds. And the whole song is basically the same moment by moment. And borrowing the nursery rhyme thing, the duet quality. It kind of feels like someone said, like, you had a really awesome hit song. Can you do that one again? Right. It's like formula in the truest sense of the word, 25 seconds of A plus 25 seconds of B, plus 30 seconds of C equals

Mixing the duet and a funny little synth line. Yeah. And listen, I like this other song. It's definitely good. But it doesn't have that single motif that weaves through it. It doesn't have that synth line which both moves and turns into the narrative

and also represents the entire structure of the piece. So for me, it's not quite as fruitful. Very interesting, Charlie. Nice sleuthing here. Well, and listen, I think it's totally cool. to borrow. It's totally cool to even take things from yourself, right? Their first song, Roses, does a lot of this exact same stuff. It has that introverse, pre-chorus, chorus, chorus,

pop drop structure just the same as all we know, just the same is closer. And it's a great song. I agree. And I can see from an artist's perspective, if you find something that works, you know, just do it again and again until people stop listening. Well, and they're not the first to do it, right? No, and in fact, part of the reason I think I'm not quick to censure these young men in the chain smokers for finding something that works and sticking with it is that I think in a lot of ways this whole bric-a-brac aesthetic of the 21st century pop scene is very reminiscent of another musical culture. What's that? That's much older and much different, but I think you can draw a lot of parallels. What if we go back in our time machine? I've got a little classical masters here

to 18th century Italy. We're going to talk about opera seria. Let's do it. So what have you found? So in the scene of 1700s opera in Italy, the idea of authorship

and originality was very murky, just as it is kind of today on the pop charts. And, you know, who pioneered what and who uses what and who gets to profit off it is also kind of very, very murky today, too. You think there were obnoxious songwriters and musicologists,

blaming other people from taking from other people? Oh, absolutely. I mean, there was all sorts of legal battles over different composers saying, no, you can't use that aria. Get out of here. I wrote that for this piece, and it's playing in London, so no, you can't use that for, you know, this opera you're doing in Hamburg. I mean, music was very...

I had no idea. Yeah, the operative tradition, like pop music today, was highly transnational. transportable and transposable. I mean, there was this whole phenomenon called the aria di Bala. I think I'm probably saying that wrong, but it means the suitcase aria. Yeah. And basically singers, like virtuastic singers, would travel around Europe, and they would show up.

They'd get hired to be in an opera. And they would say, yeah, you know what? I'm just going to be doing my aria. Yeah, they're going to take, you know, this is a great opera and all, but like, this is my specialty. And I'm going to do it. And they would just do a random aria from out of their suitcase in the middle of some other opera entirely. It's like they're traveling salesman of the operatic past. Right, exactly.

So there's like some narrative going on and then they just break it with a random cover song in the middle. And that just speaks to, again, you know, how it's sort of pliable these forms were and how the idea of like borrowing and stealing was very mixed up. But in terms of this chain smoker's example of kind of the self-borrowing, there's one composer in. in particular, who I think is a great example of how normal this was as a practice in the 1700s. There's so many greats. Who's your favorite? And that would be Antonio Vivaldi. So let's take a very famous, maybe the most famous Vivaldi piece. Honestly, maybe one of the most famous pieces of quote-unquote classical music ever.

Yeah. This is one of Vivaldi's four seasons violin concertos. This is the first one, Spring La Primavera. Yes, of course. It's like if a classical radio station is doing their pledge drive, that's what's playing in the background. Right. And as this is a popular composition now, this was a very popular composition when Vivaldi debuted it back in, well, he wrote it in 1723. And published a few years later, hugely popular.

Yeah. And Vivaldi, like the chain smokers, realized he had something good here, right? Yeah. He had a good formula. Yeah. So when he writes an opera in 1725 called Justino, what do we hear in the opening to the opera's first aria? Get out of here. Yep.

That's absolutely hilarious. Yeah. You'll notice it's slightly different, but I mean, basically, this is exactly the same, right? So clearly, Vivaldi had no compunction about reusing his own material in a completely different work. Yeah, he's like doing best of Vivaldi in his next piece. Right. But then he has the bravado. to do it again. No way.

Because fast forward another year and we've got his opera Doria in Tempe and this this takes it to the next level because first he does it instrumentally and then now they're singing it. It's almost like the chain smokers taking their little

funny nursery rhyme synthesizer and then turning it into the vocal. Yes and I might be pushing it a little bit at this point but I think we might even hear this musical motive popping up in one other Vivaldi opera called Orlando Furioso. I leave it to you to decide. He's clearly hinting at it. Yeah, I totally agree. Thank you. That's very validating. So, yeah,

and I think it's instructive to go back to these so-called classical masters, who we think of as being, you know, so invested in the originality and genius of everything they touch. Right. But really, they have something in common with pop masters of the present, which is when they find something that really works, they'll use it again and again and again until people say, okay, enough. You know, I have to say, I feel like I was being maybe a little too snarky about the chain smokers, and your erudite connection to Vivaldi has made me reconsider. That's what we're here for it, Charlie. I think we should record an emotional duet now about the experience.

Stealing works. If it's good enough for fake Pablo Picasso and it's good enough for T.S. Eliot and Igor Stravinsky, it's good enough for me. And you know, thank you because you put this song in a whole new light for me. This is one where I was like, this is the number one song in the nation. Like, I don't get it. But I think I understand it now. I appreciate you walking me through that. Yeah. And you know, the thing about so much pop music is it's always in conversation with the rest of what's happening because it's only popular in as much as it is recognizable. It has to both be not. novel and reminiscent of something that people have heard before. Right. So what I think is so cool about this track is that it does that. It borrows from all these other things.

It borrows from the artist's own song structures and constructs this whole world, this world of closeness. Right on, Chuck. All right, that's all I got. That's all I need. We should do some credits. Let's sign off, baby. This episode of Switched on Pop was produced by me, Charlie Harlow. Harding. And edited by me, Nate Sloan. It was mixed and edited by Bill Lance. And our design,

as always, is done by the wonderful Luke Harris. You can check out more episodes of Switched On Pop on our website, switchedonpop.com. You can speak to us on Twitter at Switchedon Pop. If you listen to us on iTunes, we would really love it if you would leave us a review. Yeah. Switch on Pop is a proud member of the Panopplead network. There are so many good shows. Go check them out. And out the survey. We are in week three of our tell a friend campaign where we ask you to tell a friend about our show. Please, every friend you tell, every enemy

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