Switched on Pop - Growing Pains with Lucy Dacus

Episode Date: July 2, 2021

Growing up is never easy. But pop songs about adolescence too often gloss over the complicated moments. The “teenage dream” archetype is just a pop culture fantasy. And no one really wants to be 17 forever.  On her new album “Home Video,” Lucy Dacus talks about youthful growing pains. She remembers the uncomfortable moments. Dacus says that “a lot of childhood is crisis mode… you get pushed around by the world and the rules that are set for you.” Her songs examine unequal power relationships between parents and friends and lovers.  On the lighter side, the album opens up with “Hot And Heavy,” which takes us back to the scene of an early romantic encounter on a basement sofa, red faced and awkward. But by the next song, “Christine,” the amorous feelings fade: “He can be nice, sometimes / Other nights, you admit he's not what you had in mind.” Bad dads, bible camp indoctrination, and perpetual peer pressure all take the stage in Dacus’ coming of age album.  Dacus says that writing about those years is “a process of extorting control over things that I didn’t have control over at the time.” With untethered teenage dreams safely behind her, Dacus now gets to reclaim the meaning of youth: “I am the narrator of my own life so I get to say what this meant.” Songs Discussed Lucy Dacus - Night Shift Frank Zappa - Sharleena boygenius - Souvenir Lukas Graham - 7 Years Kendrick Lamar - Beyonce Justin Bieber - Baby Mandy Moore - Fifteen Hilary Duff - Sweet Sixteen The Beatles - When I'm Sixty Four ABBA - Dancing Queen Sound of Music - Sixteen Going On Seventeen Avril Lavigne - 17 Kings Of Leon - 17 Lake Street Dive - Seventeen Sharon Van Etten - Seventeen Alessia Cara - Seventeen Stevie Nicks - Edge of Seventeen Janis Ian - At Seventeen More Playlist of coming of age songs  Study on songs that references age Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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It's free for iOS users. Welcome to SwitchDumpop. I'm songwriter Charlie Harding. And I'm musicologist Nate Sloan. To start off today, I want to take you back in time. I want you to think about most awkward aged Nate. Okay. I think we're going back to like 12, 13.

Yeah. I mean, let's start with physical awkwardness, you know, limbs too long for my body. just looking like a full being born. Adam's apple, you know, the size of a literal apple. And socially, you know, equally at sea, unable to relate to people, didn't watch television, didn't listen to, you know, pop music. Yeah, I would say I was extremely awkward. Do you remember at that time of life, if there was a song where you're like,

this song really gets me. This is me. I mean, weirdly, the first song that pops into my head is Charlina by Frank Zappa. Probably the fact that I was listening to Frank Zappa at 13 was like a big part of my social issues. But, you know, hearing this now makes me think of like being at a bar mitzvah at the reception and the edge of the dance floor, like trying to work up the nerve to ask someone to dance. Hate that feeling. Yeah, that's what that brings up for me. Yeah.

There's no shortage of pop music in this world that tries to deal with this challenging period of adolescence. But I think there's few who do it really well. And one of my favorites is Lucy Dacus. She's known for her critically acclaimed album Historian, which Volter called one long tone poem about the burden of transients. She's also received a lot of praise. for her collaboration with Julian Baker and Phoebe Bridgers in their supergroup Boy Genius. Her third album is coming out.

And it's this contemplative coming of age record with songs about childhood from ages 7 to 17. It's called home video. I really love it. I want to play you the opening single, hot and heavy. I mean, just listening to an excerpt of, that I feel that kind of vulnerability of youth, just not even like getting into any of the actual content of the lyrics,

but just like kind of the amount of them. And just how it just unspools it almost this like kind of stream of conscious memory. It reminds me the way that teenagers talk, which is just like unguarded and just like, they're on a podcast. And I dug that. Even the way in which she places the words, hot and heavy in the basement of your parents' place.

Right. It's a little delayed, isn't it? Or it's like trying to cram in more information than the rhyme scheme allows. It does. And yet it has this rhythm to it that sort of has the awkwardness, if you will, of those early romantic encounters. And I love the way that she deploys metaphor. I think she has one of my favorite insults

that I've ever seen in a song. It just kind of breezes by. What's that? You used to be so sweet. Now you're a firecracker on a crowded street. Mm-hmm. A firecracker on a crowded street. That just kind of like, I went by that.

And I was like, oh, that means you're kind of like, loud and obnoxious and bothering everyone. And like, maybe you're kind of a problem. Yeah. That is some shade. So I'm going to speak with Lucy in a minute. But first, I want to situate the conversation and what it means to make a coming of age record in the world of popular music.

Cool. Yeah. So in researching this question of how popular music deals with coming of age, you could go more than a million ways because so much of pop music is literally about this period of life. But as I was thinking about it, I noticed sort of this cheap narrative device that a lot of songwriters use. What's that? It's specifically naming the age that you, you are in the song almost as a way of pandering to like, do you remember what it was like

when you were X years old? Oh, interesting. Is this a thing? Oh, it's a big thing. Okay. So like the songs in Lucy's record home video, I thought we could look at ages seven to 17. Okay. Very briefly. Okay. I'm so game. The first one that comes to mind is obviously age seven. Recently, we've had the breakout smash seven years by Lucas Graham. Uh, yeah, yeah, 100%. actually opens up with what sounds like a home projector playing back home videos. Whoa. I mean, you know, play like a real to real kind of. Yeah.

Once I was seven years old, my mama told me go make yourself some friends or you'll be lonely. Once I was seven years old. Plus maybe like a music box. Yep. I actually think Graham uses this idea fairly effectively. The age seven is just a place to ground the song. so that he can time travel into the future and compare what it's like to go through all these different decades, a lovey song.

Right, yeah. The next song that I actually really enjoyed, I had never heard before that does this, is, have you ever heard Kendrick Lamar's song, Beyonce? No. Let's fast forward to age 12. This is a no longer publicly released track. earlier. Oh, okay.

Yeah. I like this one here as well where we're using maybe some age difference to establish 16 years old, 12 years old. Yeah, it's fun to listen to this. I've never heard it before. And it like really does. If we're talking about, you know, capturing the feeling of being a kid, like that does it for me.

Because again, it's just like stream of consciousness. Like this is everything I was feeling. I'm not going to hide anything. I'm not going to censor myself. It just puts you in that mindset. one of the ways that these age references get used is as a way of indexing, hey, this music is safe for this age group. And so that does mean that we have to listen to Ludacris' verse on Dresson Bieber's baby.

You say that as if it's a bad thing. I say it as if it's not meant for us. When I was 13, I have my first love. There was nobody that compared to my baby and nobody came between us don't get ever come above. She had me going crazy. Basically, this is saying safe to play at middle school dance. Right. I don't know, man.

I just cannot get enough of ludic flow. It's great. Even though that is completely innocent, everything he's saying, it still sounds dirty to me. Just because that's like luda, man. All right. From here on out, the age references get a bit more on the nose. Are we moving chrono? Are we going to hit like 14, 15, 16?

We're going to skip 14. I'm sure there's references. But we're going to go right into 15. Okay. That's 15 by the bard of adolescence, Taylor Swift. It's Taylor's version. And song takes us back, uses 15 as a way of bringing us into freshman year. Freshman year.

And what happens after 15? Of course, we turn Sweet 16. This is, of course, Hillary Duff Suite 16. Of course. Engineer to be played at every. 16th birthday party. I think a song like this as well as babies definitely targeted two people in that age group and

often their parents as something which is okay to play around your parents. Yeah. It's got a little bit of an edge to it though with those distorted guitars. Process vocals. I'm into it. All right. So this brings this to 17. And when I was researching this piece,

I found that there was another person who had asked this question before. I had done a sort of non-scientific assessment of songs that reference age had compiled about 200 songs and made a chart of what age is most referenced in popular music. Okay, hit me. Can you describe what you're seeing? Okay, on the X axis, we have age, and on the Y axis we have number of songs that reference that age. It looks like there's a little like peak around maybe 12 or something, but then there's a giant peak.

the highest point of this graph comes right at 17. Yes. And then it rolls off into your 20s and basically once you're 27, pop music thinks you're dead. I like there's a little peaked out way down to the right when I'm 64. Right. Right. Right.

Beatles. Will you still need me? Will you still feed me? Okay. Pop music is obsessed with age 17. Huh. There are many references. One that I think sort of establishes.

this idea of like teenage dream, teenager dumb at 17, is Abba's Dancing Queen. Hmm. For me, this paints this sort of Katie Perry idea of teenage dream, the thing you want to last forever, you're in the prime time of your life, there's this whole world of songs like this.

And I have a playlist of just like dozens of songs with 17, not just in the lyric, but like in the title. Like 17 is sort of the end of innocence. Yeah. And then 18 is, yeah. Yeah, of course, right. I mean, that goes back to like sound of music, right? I'm 16 going on 17. Oh, yeah, sure, sure.

So we've got Averill Levine. Kings of Leon. Oh, she's only 17. Lake Street Drive. I wish I'd met you when I was 17. There's a great one by Sharon Benetton. All 17, by the way. Blessi Akara.

Of course, an extremely famous one, Edge of 17 by CV-Nex. Right, right. One of my favorites of the bunch, though, is an older one. Janice Ian's at 17. I learned the truth at 17. Their love was meant for high school girls with clear skins. Wow, I mean, I've heard this, but not in a while. And I don't know if this is just because you've primed me,

but this makes me think of Lucy Dacus. Unlike some of the other tracks we listen to, this has that vulnerability, that kind of sharing your innermost emotions, the fragility and drama of being 17, like comes across in this Janus Ian song. Yeah. In a way that reminds me of the Lucy Dacus track

we listened to at the beginning of this conversation. Yeah, I'm glad you made that connection because it also brings me back to what you were sharing at the very beginning of our conversation. And being an adolescent, is awkward, it's challenging. It's a place where we go through some of the most profound

change at the fastest amount of time. Each of those ages do deserve a song because 15 feels really different than 16 and feels different than 17. I promise you that 31 does not feel different than 34. Yeah. One of the things I like about how Lucy approaches this in her music

though is that she doesn't do the let's name exactly how old we are to be like oh yeah, I've been that age of four. Instead, she does this thing where she takes us to the scene of the crime. She'll take us into the details, into some unforgettable teenage moment.

Lucy pulls us into a specific memory. Back home, these memories keep coming back back, they're hot and heavy weighing on her brain. Right. She's in the gray areas, the complicated moments of adolescence. And I'm really excited to share this record with you all through my conversation with Lucy right after the break. Maria, you have a podcast now and you need to start acting like it. What's the first step as a podcaster? Well, you have to ask lots of questions. I'm Maria Sharpova, and I'm hosting a new podcast called Pretty Tough. Every week, I'm sitting down with trailblazing women at the top of their game to discuss ambition, work ethic,

and the ups and downs that come on the path to achieving greatness. I have a few pretty tough questions for you. Okay. Ready? Do not sugarcoat something for me. No, no. We'll dive into their stories and get valuable insights from top executives, actors, entrepreneurs, and other individuals who have inspired me so much in my own journey.

Pretty tough is your front row seat to the women who have demonstrated the power in being unapologetic in their pursuits. I hope you'll join us. New episodes drop Wednesdays on YouTube or in your favorite podcast app. I want to start by asking you about your motivations for this new record, home video. I always feel like a klutz when people ask like, what's your inspiration or how'd you begin? Because like I just tend to write songs and it doesn't really feel like a choice. And then once I notice a bunch within a theme, I start to think maybe there's an album there. And I'll just make a track list to realize if there's actually sort of like a through line and then record. But I guess what motivated it subconsciously was like feeling really weird in my hometown after starting to

tour a lot and trying to like circle back to old memories to see if I could like find out who I am at the core, like if there is anything that has never changed about me or yeah, just kind of like rethinking some memories that I have perspective on now. You jump right into the record with the song Hot and Heavy, and it takes us immediately into an adolescent past. How does leading off with Hot and Heavy set the scene for the rest of the record? Well, like, the first lines are like being back here makes me hot in the face. And so it's sort of saying, like, where we're about to go is maybe a little embarrassing or like, I don't feel settled about it. And it's just sort of about that feeling of like basically being triggered

by like going somewhere and be like, oh my God, who did I used to be? I don't know her. I think it's appropriate that we're feeling unsettled because we're going to look back on some of the more uncomfortable parts of growing up throughout the rest of the record. And even though you're looking to your past, musically, things sound very contemporary. You're not choosing to reference earlier eras and genre tropes here. Yes. That was so intentional. and I kept trying to explain this to everyone that worked with me on it. And it really put gutter guards on a lot of the sounds that we eventually got because I would be like, man, that sounds so cool, but it's kind of 70s or it's kind of 80s.

We have to rework it because I did want it to be evocative of nostalgia and warmth and like the past. But I didn't want any particular decade to be invoked. So even like certain synths that we got, I'd be like 280s and they'd be like, yeah, synths are 80s like they just are and I'm like no we can get a synth sound that has very little personality and like for thumbs basically we had all these synth sounds and I was like nah they're all too much like the point of this is we need to like basically not have instrumentation so we meet him at a bar you're holding my hand hard he ordered rum and club like if I could do it Acapella, I would. We just need the minimum amount of things.

Why did you want to avoid those more backward-looking references? I feel like I hear a lot of music that is kind of derivative or redundant, or like music lovers want to make music that they love to listen to, which I understand as like an exercise. But like, I don't know. I don't tend to like look to other artists for inspiration. I think I care more about songs and like doing whatever a song needs. Even like I think sometimes I try to make sure that there's not a specific genre going on. I just think it's like I don't want my fans to expect one thing for me because that doesn't sound fun in the future. A good example of not being limited to a particular sound, I feel like is the song partner in crime?

Could you break down partner in crime? What's the song doing? What's going on? Yeah, so the song is about a relationship I had when I was in high school with someone who was much older than me. And just about how, like, I got into that situation willingly. I just felt like I was ready to relate to people on a more adult level or I just, like, wasn't really finding anyone in my immediate surroundings that, like, I could talk to in the way that I really wanted to. And so I was kind of like hush, hush about my age getting into that, which is embarrassing now.

And like I know that that relationship at this point was like an abusive power. Does the auto tune provide some remove to make it feel safe to challenge the other person in the song about that power difference? I think so. Like it makes it feel like, oh, this is overtly fake. And so it's like you can kind of not have to follow the rules, which is maybe how I felt at the time too. Like I don't really need to follow any rules if, you know, if I'm lying.

So yeah, it's also about like making yourself seem more attractive to somebody, even if it's not the real you, which is what Autotune does also. Beyond the Autotune, there's a lot of other ways. I feel like you're not so-called following the rules. You've got a rock kit playing a sort of hip-hop beat. Sort of even Nashville style guitars. That ethereal pad that runs the commonality between lots of other tracks. You're not sticking to just one space.

I'm glad you're picking that out. That's what I really like about that song. And I like that it comes right after the song Going Gone. Sweaty palms, averted eyes. Wasn't sure if. He and I were going out. Which is like a single take, like all of us in one room. So it's like the least process song we've ever done

and then the most process song we've ever done. That contrast is kind of like fun and silly to me. One fun other thing about partner in crime is that the guitar solo, like I kind of wrote it, but I hate playing guitar. Like my hands hurt when I play guitar too long. So I just get Jacob our guitarist to play it. Who, by the way, listens to this podcast? Shout out Jacob.

Yeah. But he was like not getting exactly what I wanted. He was like, why don't you just come over here and play the fretboard and I'll play the strings? And so we didn't really communicate. And I just like, with my pointer fingers slid around on the strings and he just did whatever, like picking them. It's kind of like four-handed piano with two people except for on the guitar. Yeah, we just laid it on top of our laps. There's some challenging topics like we've talked about.

Power inequalities between families, relationships, lovers. How does writing about adolescence from a distance give you insight into who you were then? I feel like it's a process of exerting control over things that I didn't have control over at the time. Like, once you're out of crisis mode, you can either choose to never look back or turn around and see it for what it was. So I think like a lot of childhood is crisis mode. And maybe if it's not crisis mode, it's like autopilot. Like you just have to do what other people say. You get pushed around by the world and by the rules that are set for you. So it was kind of, yeah, a process of just realizing like I am the narrator of my own life. So I get to say what this

meant, what it means, what it will mean. I get to put words. to it now. Yeah, it felt really like embodying or something. Do you have an example of a song where you might be saying something today, which you feel comfortable saying but didn't have the words for at the time? Cartwheels probably that song is kind of about a few different things, but mostly about like my friend and friends who got into boys before I did and were just like trying to sexualize themselves really early and I was like, why are we doing this? Like, this is so dumb. Like, why, this isn't fun at all.

Let's just keep having the regular type of fun that we have. When my best friend told me that she had sex for the first time, I felt so angry and sad because it felt like the end of something. And it kind of was like the end of our friendship. Like, we were maybe like partners in a way. And then it was not that way after that. At the time, like, I believed in God. And I was just like, God said not to do that.

And at this point, I can say that it was just sort of like a different type of personal betrayal. Like, I was probably more hurt personally than on behalf of God. Yeah, you have this song, VBS, about going to Bible camp. And the lyrics are quite uninhibited. There's some really fun moments, almost antithetical to the purpose of being at Bible camp. There's references to heavy metal music. And there's this one lyric about a friend snorting nutmeg, trying to reach a higher power. I can imagine, it seems like when you were young, these moments were unsettling.

But today, there's quite a bit of amusement. Yeah, the circumstance actually was that I met my first boyfriend at that Bible camp. and he smoked weed. And I was like, if we're going to date, you can't smoke weed anymore because I was, I mean, lame. And like a child, I don't know, like afraid of breaking the law. And he said, okay, okay, I won't smoke weed, but can I still snort nutmeg? And I was like, give me time to think about it. And I took like a couple days to like weigh out, well, it's not illegal to snort nutmeg. Like, I looked up like, is this really bad for you? Like, if we were going to hang out, would you be acting really? Would I be in danger? Like, are you going to get so high on nutmeg that, like,

my life is in danger around you? I don't know. No one talked to me about these things. Like, no one talked to me about drugs. They were intentionally made very scary so that I would stay away from them. And it kind of worked for a really long time. You write about adolescence as a series of crisis moments, ones that we often don't recognize until after they've happened. And perhaps that's because of the way in which the sort of Disney narratives about what adolescence is supposed to, be is so far from the truth. Is this project trying to write some of those tensions of things you are grappling with as a young person?

Yeah, I think so. I feel like that tension is a good word. Somebody was using the word like trauma and I was like, I don't know if this album is about trauma as much as, yeah, just like highly nuanced experiences. You mentioned Disney Channel. I think about that a lot because that was so much of my learning was through, Disney Channel.

And like one of the scariest things about shows like that is that characters are archetypes. And so they don't have nuance. And so you're taught that if you're a certain type of person, that is who you are. You're something very small. And you like you have your little niche and you have your few. Like if you put yourself into the shoes of any character on one of those shows, you have a very small purpose. And like there's no room for nuance. So.

I feel like that's one of your. lyrical gifts is to take a story and put a magnifying glass on it into some very personal, palpable details. In such a personal project, what do you hope that listeners will take from it? I have a really hard time, like, hoping for anything specific because I don't like the feeling of disappointment. And so I try not to hope for things that much. But I do hope that people, like, just interact.

with the storytelling, like pay attention to the words and like come up with something in their heads. You know, like I think it'd be really cool if this could be like a visually evocative record. Like if the scene was set enough that someone can live in the world of the record, like a book, like that would be incredible. And then on a personal level, I hope people understand that like nobody has to share these parts of their lives. and so it is kind of like a gift. Is there anything else from the record that you want to highlight before we go?

Oh, one funny production thing, the solo and VBS, Colin, one of our producers, whispered into Jacob's ear, play like you're divorced. And I thought that was a really good production move. How does it sound to play like you're divorced? Just listen to the baritone guitar

that is on VBS, and that is, that's what being divorced sounds like. Thanks, Lucy, for sharing your new album home video with us. Yeah, thanks for listening and, like, taking some time with it. Switch on Pop is produced by Nate Sloan, Megan Lubin, and me, Charlie Harding. We're edited by Jolie Myers, engineered by Brandon McFarland Illustrations by Iris Gottlieb, Social Media by Abby Barr. Our executive producers are Hannah Rosen and Ashok Karwa, or member of the Vox Media Podcast Network and a production of Vulture.

This episode was made possible by JBL, who are hooking. us up with the gear we need to go on the road this summer to visit our families. Very thankful. We'll post extra material about Lucy Dacist. You just had a great profile in Vulture. Put all of it in our show notes. You can find those anywhere get your podcast as well as Switchedonpop.com. We're on social media at Switched on Pop.

And we'll be back next week, continuing our summer series with a new segment we're calling modern classics. We're going to be speaking with Sam Sanders host of It's Been a Minute with Sam Sanders and NPR. One of my absolute favorite people in audio about the artist. Labyrinth. It'll be a really fun conversation. Until then. Thanks for listening.

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