Switched on Pop - ICYMI 90s Music Canon

Episode Date: January 3, 2023

Matt Daniels, editor of the publication The Pudding, wanted to find out what songs from his youth would last into the future. So he designed a study that would test if Gen-Z had a grip on 90s culture.... Hundreds of thousands of participants provided over 3 million data points. Daniels parsed through the data for insights. Sadly, the majority of his most beloved songs have not survived even one generation. Though most had been forgotten, he found that just a few songs had staying power across generations — what he defined as the emerging 90s music canon. Find out what songs make it and which have fallen to the wayside.  MORE The Pudding’s study on Defining the 90s Canon Take The Pudding’s quiz yourself SONGS DISCUSSED Spice Girls - Wannabe  Mariah Carey - Fantasy! Lou Bega - Mambo #5 Los Del Rio - Macarena Boys II Men - Motown Philly Whitney Houston - I Will Always Love You Savage Garden - I Want You The Barenaked Ladies - One Week Jewel - You Were Meant For Me Jennifer Lopez - If You Had My Love Celine Dion - My Heart Will Go On Britney Spears - Baby One More Time Smash Mouth - All Star Nirvana - Smells Like Teen Spirit Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Starting point is 00:00:01 Attention Spotify. Has arrived the new Good Girl Jasmine Absolute of Carolina Herrera, a fragrance intense with character gourmet and addictive. Imagine a jasmine emvolvente, toffee caramelized, and tonka-tostata.
Starting point is 00:00:13 A combination that seduce from the first instant and he has aweller. Good Girl Jasmine Absolute, hypnotica, irresistible. Discover it today and let you involve for his essence. Welcome to Switched on Pop. I'm songwriter Charlie Harding.
Starting point is 00:00:43 And I'm musicologist Nate Sloan. Nate, I want you to take me back to your childhood. Okay, it's Manhattan. It's 1995. I'm playing pickup basketball in Central Park, just getting dominated, just getting schooled. But I comfort myself by listening on my Walkman to the first CD I ever bought from the HMV on 86th Street. And that, of course, is Seals, Kiss from a Rose. It's a beautiful song. I love this track.
Starting point is 00:01:34 So I have a question for you. Yeah. Do you think that the next generation, Gen Z, are they going to remember this song? Oh, man. I hope so because this is one of the strangest and most wonderful pop songs that I can recall. But I don't know. I don't know if a Gen Zer would be like, yeah, Kiss from a Rose. or say, it'd be like, what is, what are you playing me right now?
Starting point is 00:02:02 So I can actually tell you with some data. A friend of ours, Matt Daniels from the publication The Pudding, put together this really cool study that looks at the canon of 90s popular music. He surveyed a ton of people to figure out what is known and not known. What are the big gaps in our generational musical knowledge? Kiss from a Rose, it's having a tough time. Now, yeah, 88% of millennials know it. Gen Z, only 51% recognition.
Starting point is 00:02:31 Not bad, though. You're telling me, Matt has actually created a science of what songs have lasted from the 90s to the present and the years of the younger generation. Yeah, exactly. And that's why we're going to chat with Matt today about what is the 90s popular music canon? What is going to last? What are the songs which are going to fade away? We're going to find out today. Welcome, Matt, from the pudding.
Starting point is 00:02:55 Hi, thanks for having me. Okay, so Matt, you were inspired by a wildly successful TikTok meme where Gen Ziers show off whether or not they know a song by dancing along to it if they recognize it. And it inspired you to make a study that would take this anecdotal data and make it more definitive. So how did you scientifically go about defining the 90s canon? Yeah, so thousands and thousands songs were published in the 90s. We had to start somewhere. So we start with top five Billboard hits. I play a 45 second clip of the song
Starting point is 00:03:25 and then there's just four options Have you heard of this song? Does it sound familiar? And then are you singing the lyrics? And then we would rotate through about 10 songs And we did that for again all those billboard hits And how many people took your quiz? God, I think we're up to about a quarter million right now.
Starting point is 00:03:44 I'm really interested to find out the results But I think that we first need to really dig into this quiz and test whether or not our resident musicologist knows the 90s canon. So we're going to play a little game called Nate proves that he knows the 90s. So here's how the rules are going to work.
Starting point is 00:04:09 Nate, you're going to get seven songs. You get a point if you can name that song an artist. The bar is higher for you because you have a PhD. Sorry. And there's a twist. Oh, God. Because this isn't just about whether or not you know the song. This is about whether or not the next generation is going to
Starting point is 00:04:29 carry that song forward into the future. And so you have an opponent. Who? Who dares? Hello? Hey, Clara, it's Charlie. Oh, hi. Can you confirm that you are a member of Generation Z? Yeah. That is my cousin Clara, who is going into ninth grade. I gave her this exact same quiz last night. And so, in addition to having to name the song and getting a point, you also have to tell you, Hell me whether or not Clara doesn't know the song, has heard it, knows it, or can sing along to it. And if you can get that correct, you get another point. If she knows the song and you don't, you lose two points. This is a nightmare.
Starting point is 00:05:09 I really think I'm about to be shamed in front of everyone who listens to the show by a ninth grader. Because whenever there's music, you know if you do like pub trivia and there's a music category, Everyone on my team is always like, oh, good, you're a musicologist. You're going to answer all these questions for us. And then what invariably happens is I can't answer any of them. And everyone just is like disgusted with me. And now that's going to happen except times a thousand. So yeah, I'm really grateful you put me in this horrible position.
Starting point is 00:05:44 Let the shaming begin. All right. Matt, what I want you to do is I want you to be our referee. You know, the rules, you're going to keep score for us. Let's jump right in. song of the first i'm going to play the exact same clip that i played clara can you name the song an artist if you want to be my lover you gotta get with my friends making last forever friendship never ends yeah that's the spice girls song and it's called wannabe okay great and and how did clara respond
Starting point is 00:06:16 i think she knows that song i think that's canon how well does she know it she knows it well enough to sing along It's an empowerment anthem for the ages. I could sing along to that. Yes. Clara, coming through. All right. Doing well. We got two points.
Starting point is 00:06:35 Song number two. I know that song, but I don't know what it is or who sings it or any of the lyrics. Are you serious? See, even from my supposed best friend and co-host, see, I knew this is. Oh, man. It might be the end of our show, honestly.
Starting point is 00:06:59 All right. That is miraculous. Harry's fantasy. Yeah, I know. I know. Now that you said it, I know that it, that's what it is. And what about Clara? I'm sure she knows it. I'm sure she can sing along. I don't know that one. Okay. So basically here, you get no points. You got both questions wrong. Okay. But just for clarification, you'd heard of the song. You just couldn't give the name or... I heard, I had heard of the song. I just couldn't place the artist in title. Thank you, Matt. A lot of people don't know artists and titles. Matt, I appreciate.
Starting point is 00:07:30 that you're being kind to Nate. I have up to the ante for him because he has a special degree, he has studied for years and years and years and he should just know the answers. In historical music, I drop some Missouri in here and I will be on top of it, you know. Give me a cold train solo. I'll be all over it. Well, let's see how you do with song number three. All right. All right. What's our next? What's our next one? A little bit of Monica in my life. A little bit of Erica by my side. This is Lou Bega. Mamba, number five and I could sing along. And what about Clara? I hope I'm just gonna, I hope she did this song has not survived through the ages.
Starting point is 00:08:09 I know that one. How? How? All right, we're gonna up the ante. Song number four has no lyrics in this clip. That's Macarena by Los Bayside Boys. Los Del Rio. Los Del Rio. Bayside Boys remix
Starting point is 00:08:38 Matt, should we give a point? Yeah, definitely. It's not Jeopardy rules, you know. Right, okay, but what about Clara? Interesting. No, I don't think, I haven't seen anyone do the macarena in years. I'm going to say no. There's not even any lyrics, but do you know that one?
Starting point is 00:08:57 Yeah, I know. Do you know what song that is? The Macarena. Oh, interesting. Interesting. Interesting. The plot thickens. All right. Here we go. Song number five. I'm not sure that I've heard the song before.
Starting point is 00:09:21 Oh, my gosh. You never said part of the game is that you have to audibly groan every time I get one wrong. I think you lose a point for that, actually. Well, maybe I'm not being fair. I'm not giving you enough of the chorus, but this is boys the man's Motown, Philly. Oh, Motown Philly. I think if I had heard it. the beginning. Yeah, okay. No, I'll take the L. I'll take the L. I'll take the L. Plara doesn't know this. I don't know that one. Okay, so you got the song wrong, but you got her answer right. You get one point. Okay, I'll take it. All right. How are we doing, Matt? Quick check-in before our last two songs.
Starting point is 00:09:58 I'm trying to keep score. I think we're at like two, but don't hold me on that scoring system, you know? Let's go to song number six. Nate, can you redeem yourself? possibly that's Whitney Houston I will always love you and I could sing along and Clara she does
Starting point is 00:10:28 she knows this I could sing along to that yeah all right you get one point okay good all right last one here we go deep cut this isn't the top five
Starting point is 00:10:41 I hope it brings back some nostalgia I don't even think that's a song I think you just kind of whip that up in your home studio and they're trying to trick me I've never heard that before and do you think Clara has either? No, no, because you just made it up.
Starting point is 00:11:07 I've never heard that. This is Savage Gardens I want you. It has the famous line about the Chick-a-Cheri-Cola No, nothing Chacon Chirona No, Nothing
Starting point is 00:11:23 All right, Matt, how many points has Nate scored? You can just make up any number And we'll give it down. Yeah, I'll go with like four. Four, okay. That's good.
Starting point is 00:11:35 If you were playing along at home, here is how you could have ranked. If you had one to five points, you get a Nintendo game over screen. If you had six to ten points, you were saved by the bell. And if you had 11, to 14 points. You are a TRL junkie.
Starting point is 00:11:52 So, Nate, you get the game over screen. You lose the 90s. Yeah. How do you feel about your performance? That was exquisitely unpleasant. Thank you for putting me through it. Now, you might feel like, well, you had this other opponent, Clara. Like, this is just anecdotal, just like these TikToks. Maybe this isn't fair to the overall sort of sentiment of a large data-driven analysis of the 90s canon. However, in looking at Matt's data, Clara actually answered exactly in line on the average with every other Gen Z respondent. So I think she was a good representative for her generation. Okay. So now I hope we're going to try and unravel how this is the case because I need some explanation of how a ninth grader knows Lou Beggos Mambo number five. Because that's just breaking my brain a little bit.
Starting point is 00:12:45 We're going to dive into the findings of this study when we come back from 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.
Starting point is 00:13:22 Okay. Ready? 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.
Starting point is 00:13:43 I hope you'll join us. New episodes drop Wednesdays on YouTube or in your favorite podcast app. Immigration may be Donald Trump's signature issue. President Trump is now targeting predominantly Democratic cities for ice raids and deportations. Dozens of protesters clashing with immigration and customs enforcement agents in Minneapolis Tuesday. We will begin the process of returning millions and millions of criminal aliens back to the places from which they came. But what we want to do in this space is talk about America and politics beyond the current president. So what do most Americans think about deportation and border security?
Starting point is 00:14:25 period. I think that Americans are definitely against the kind of violent displays that we've seen in the street from ICE. When it comes to the question of deportation, the answer is more complicated. My sense is that people want border at the border. They don't like the idea of having no idea who's coming into the United States at any given time. The view on immigration from the bottom up instead of the top down. That's this week on America Actually. Every Saturday in your audio and video feeds. I think we're all itching to find out what these 3 million data points point to in terms of what is going on with the 90s canon. And so, Matt, I want to dig into a couple of your key findings. First, the sort of overall insights.
Starting point is 00:15:14 We also want to look at what has fallen farthest, what is that sort of lost millennial cultural knowledge, where are our big generational gaps, and what are our top five songs of the 90s? So to kick it off, what are some of the sort of larger insights that you found in running this data? I think the big insight I found was that, as you'd expect, most ninth graders, really most teenagers, people in their early 20s, have no idea any music from the 90s. There's obviously the songs that you played, Macarena, Mabo number five, that are still in rotation at weddings and bar mitzvahs and, you know, grocery stores. But for the most part, all of the music is between a zero and 10% recognition rate. So as you'd expect, the canon should be small. The songs that are remembered from earlier decades shouldn't be a thousand rows.
Starting point is 00:16:10 It should probably be like 15 rows. That was kind of the biggest surprise for me. Obviously, that's not surprising maybe to somebody that's been studying this for a while. But I was definitely sad to see most of my favorite songs not up there in recognition. rate. So there's a very strong correlation of how old you are when a song comes out and whether or not you know it. Is there like a pivot point at which a song is now part of lost cultural knowledge? It's interesting. For the most part, I think we're seeing songs fade when people were not alive when they came out like your cousin. In this instance, we see the drop really sort of happen around people who are five years. old or younger, or obviously not born yet when a song was released. But if you were maybe around 7, 8, 9, or 10 when a song came out, it's probably in the back of your brain somewhere. And then is there an age where there's sort of like peak familiarity? Yeah. So we went with 13,
Starting point is 00:17:13 which was also supported by another New York Times project that looked at Spotify data and try to figure out what music do people generally gravitate to on Spotify from their youth. 13 seems to be like, if it was a huge hit, you know it. And it's a downhill on either side from there. So what I love in your article is you have charted basically the gap in knowledge of those who are millennials versus those who are Gen Z to figure out which are these songs are lasting, which are falling. And so what are some of the songs that have fallen the farthest?
Starting point is 00:17:52 Yeah, it was interesting. I wanted to really highlight these songs, but they had fallen so much. I felt like there would be no personal relationship with these songs for anybody that wasn't a millennial. So, great example. One Week by Bare Naked Ladies. It's been one week since you looked at me. Cock your head of the sides and I'm angry. Five days that you laugh to me saying get that together, come back and see me.
Starting point is 00:18:17 Yes. That was one. where we actually see the biggest gap between millennials and Gen Z. Something like 80 to 90% of millennials know this song right off the bat. So there are situations where there are big generational gaps. Are there other examples? Yeah. Another one was most of Jules' music, unfortunately.
Starting point is 00:18:49 And again, there's a lot of reasons to, to debate why that's the case. You know, she didn't have the career that a lot of other famous vocalists had later in life. So that might be a case for why she's kind of fallen out of culture for a lot of Jem's ears. You mentioned already Motown Philly, so a lot of new Jack Swing. And maybe that's just a genre thing where that music had a moment in the 90s and didn't really find a place in the aughts in the 2010s. but that seems to be a common theme among songs
Starting point is 00:19:24 I have a big gap between millennials and Gen Ziers I find that really curious especially because Boys and Men have been collaborating with Charlie Puth You had the big new Jack Swing Revival song with Cardi B and Bruno Mars a few years back
Starting point is 00:19:46 True So I'm surprised people are aren't sort of digging more into that catalog. One that was really interesting to me about a song that has really just fallen from a lot of cultural memory is next to close, which was the most successful song in 1998. Yeah. And here, let me just play that for one second. I don't know, Nate, if you know it in your ear.
Starting point is 00:20:17 I do know this one. My wife Whitney introduced it to me. So there. This song is recognized by only 46% of millennials and just 14. percent of Gen Z years, and yet it was the most successful song 22 years ago. I mean, Millennials is a big range, so let's not forget that that song had a certain moment for a certain age range in 1998. So I think that might be accounting for that 46-percent-ish thing. But that also goes back to the idea that songs are not as memorable as you think they are.
Starting point is 00:21:02 And 46% is, you know, par for the course for most hits. Yeah, I wonder if this song, you know, didn't stand the test of time because there's certain elements that sound very 90s, you know, the drums, some of the synthesizers. Those kind of timbers tend to change really quickly. And it might be a marker of another era in the way that a young person today would like not be comfortable with. So these are some of the songs that have fallen off. There's others where the generational gap is so particularly large that it might say that there are, things that only millennials will
Starting point is 00:21:40 remember, they're highly recognized, and yet Gen Z have just no clue what's going on. Do you have a couple of examples of those? Yeah. Another 90s R&B hit, Casey and Jojo's All My Life. This is a disaster. This makes me so sad.
Starting point is 00:22:08 Again, one of the biggest drop-offs, so much so that you could argue that if you were to know this song, it would basically be a really good signal of how old you are. Right now we're defining millennials as anyone that is older than 1981 and born after 1981 and born before 1997. This is a great example of the entirely fun but totally useful side of data science. It'd be great if like that were like a question on some official government survey like do you know this song? Oh, we know your age.
Starting point is 00:22:46 In order to enter this site, you must identify. Too close by next. There were a couple of surprises on here for me. I was really surprised to see that Jennifer Lopez's, If You Had My Love, has become such a marker of generations. Still bangs. I figured, you know, Jennifer Lopez is an icon and someone whose career has really lasted. She was recently doing the Super Bowl.
Starting point is 00:23:26 She's been an endless film. Someone who's really culturally relevant, and yet this song has a 76% recognition by millennials and only a 30% recognition by Gen Z. Yeah. I mean, if you even go into certain age ranges, it just pulled up like recognition by year. And if you were born in 1982, you have like a high 90s, 90% chance of knowing this song. So basically everyone has heard of this song if you were born in their early 80s. but if just grab someone who says that they were born in 1998, it drops down to 20%. It does make me think that like we mentioned the Casey and Jojo track, the Jennifer Lopez track here.
Starting point is 00:24:07 It seems like there's something about like the 90s R&B, which is perhaps an era that is ripe for revisiting since there seems to be so much forgetting within the next generation. Yeah, I think I think forgetting is an interesting phrase too because it kind of points the finger at who's to blame. and I think millennials are to blame, actually. Because they're the ones not playing it for Gen Z. It's not that Gen Z is forgotten. It's that no one showed them the music. Or it's just for some reason the adults haven't played it. And yet some songs have succeeded overwhelmingly.
Starting point is 00:24:42 Let's run down the top five songs that are, according to your survey, 90s canon. Our job, Nate, is to see if we can figure out if they have anything in common, if there's any rhyme or reason to why this is happening. Okay. What do we have? All right. So we have My Heart Will Go On by Celine Dion. Baby one more time by Bertney Spears.
Starting point is 00:25:21 Wannaby by the Spice Girls. All Star by Smash Mouth. Mamba number five by Lou Bega. my side a little bit of fascinating yeah okay
Starting point is 00:26:03 here's one one idea yeah kind of an kind of an extra musical concept if you will yes okay we're talking
Starting point is 00:26:13 my heart will go on yeah smash mouth all star yeah and I think there was one other that were featured in massive
Starting point is 00:26:23 blockbuster movies yeah spice girls had a film as well and spice girls spice world saw it in theater I wonder if that gives these songs a little boost because they're like doubly lodged in our cultural memory movie hit song.
Starting point is 00:26:37 Yeah. You know, coming together to keep those in our collective consciousness. I think that's fair. So that's extra musical. I mean, I'm trying to think like from a genre or even any sort of like other kind of, is there any musical rhyme or reason as to why these songs succeed? Or are we completely outside of the reality? of what we usually do on our show. I mean, if you can draw a line connecting,
Starting point is 00:27:02 my heart will go on to Mambo number five to wannabe. Yeah, then you, then you've, that's like galaxy brain musicology right there. That's like pyramids on the back of the dollar bill level. Like, I would be suspicious if there was some secret chord that connected all of these songs. I'd be like,
Starting point is 00:27:23 no, that's too simple. Totally. Yeah. I mean, I feel like the only other extra musical thing, I can point to is that they were all after 1997.
Starting point is 00:27:33 And so these songs were all later in the decade and perhaps have a little bit more cultural memory than songs which were earlier in the decade. I mean, that's a simple answer. And it is worth looking at the sort of larger decade. If we go down just in like the top 20 in the list, there are some other songs from earlier in the 90s. So important candidates would be like the power by Snap,
Starting point is 00:27:53 which gets to play in a lot of sports arenas when people are, you know, safely going to those. jump around by House of Pain. Baby got back by Sir Mix a lot. So some of the stuff that's happening in the realm of hip hop is making it into the top 20 as well, just not there in the top five. I mean, I think the biggest question
Starting point is 00:28:29 that we're left with, though, has got to be Mambo number five. Like, the staying power of a one-hit wonder and yet it continues to have cultural resonance, that surprises me. Okay, here's a stab I'll take. You know, some of these songs have a certain kind of earnestness or sincerity that I associate particularly with the 90s.
Starting point is 00:28:52 In a way that I feel, if I can generalize, today songs have a certain ironic distance. The 90s, for better or worse, was just like wearing its heart on your sleeve. And it was a little corny and a little embarrassing at points. and yet now perhaps we find either a certain kind of comedy or even a certain kind of comfort in accessing that the earnestness of the flute that that starts my heart will go on or the electro swing beat that undergirds mombo number five or the eminently memeable beginning of all-star I think we find a certain kind of humor and also a kind of like solace in some of these songs. So maybe that's what they share.
Starting point is 00:29:56 I like that. Matt, do you have any overarching theory? I mean, these are very kid-friendly. I was thinking Mauo No. 5 was the only one that was maybe like not. I mean, it's dealing with a topic that's a little bit like not, not parent-friendly. but I think for the most part, I could see this on a kid's bop record. So all these songs are decently
Starting point is 00:30:19 like something I think could be like shareable with kids. I think as you go further down the list, you're getting into more sophisticated themes that just might not make sense to share with a 12-year-old. So that could be what's going on here in some ways, at least with 90s music.
Starting point is 00:30:39 That's a good theory. I dig it. That's very persuasive. Let's go with that. So I guess my final question, question here is how wrong might we be? What's wrong here? What are we missing from this study? Like, if you were to reconsider it or take it from a different direction, why might this canonical list be wrong? Yeah, I was thinking about what was wrong. Like, what should be at the top? That isn't. It's like, obviously bare naked ladies. What's missing are a lot of the nuance in how how we break down this data of, right? There's one which is, this is a cross-section of all
Starting point is 00:31:15 humanity. We didn't necessarily ask where people were born, what country they hail from, how all their parents were, their race, their gender, really all we have is their age. And there was some reasons for that, mostly because we wanted people to do this. And if you ask too many questions, people don't do what you ask of them. So this was really to get a high-level idea of like, all right, Of all the bangers from the 90s, what are the ones that are floating to the top? Can we get an answer to that? I think the next question would be, okay, how does this change based on who you are? And one of the main theories we had as a team at the pudding was that your parents have a big role in this answer, and how old they are as a big role.
Starting point is 00:31:59 With the 90s, maybe that's less of the case, but especially with what's remembered from earlier decades, who your parents are, I think, does affect your music taste. So that data would be very informative. And then probably the next level down would be geography. Are you growing up on the East Coast, West Coast, the South? Obviously, you're probably going to know Jule more, maybe, because there's some, like, country overlap there. Country would be a big thing, although this already is biased towards U.S. respondents. And then we can get into some of the other demographic things like gender and race.
Starting point is 00:32:33 I think from a survey perspective, that makes a lot of sense. Like, I would love to see that slice of data. The big thing that this approach has me thinking is whether or not we should even trust the data that's just 20 years removed. I guess the line of thought that's influencing me is from one of my favorite books, Chuck Klosterman's book, But What If We're Wrong, that basically posits that all of cultural canonical knowledge is utterly divorced from what was popular in its day and usually reflects the art. arbitrary cultural values of the future culture that it will exist. And so like a great example of this was like, Bach was utterly forgotten for more than a century, right, Nate?
Starting point is 00:33:16 Yes, it wasn't until Felix Mendelsohn discovered his, the St. Matthew Passion in the basement of a Leipzig church that his, his full oeuvre was really rediscovered. So, yeah. Right. Can we do a classical quiz now? So I can redeem myself? You can do that to me and shame you one day, I promise.
Starting point is 00:33:35 Okay. Next week? No. Thinking about it from that framework does make me think about what's lower on the list, what are the things that are really going to be remembered. Though I can't predict what our future values are, I definitely am the aspirational, hopey, changey, I hope that we like bend towards a more perfect world, a more perfect union kind of view.
Starting point is 00:33:58 And if that's the case, I feel like the most important thing that was happening in this era was the shift of hip-hop becoming a subculture to becoming the dominant force in popular music. And I feel like there would be a lot more representation of that music that doesn't make it into the top five and it's sort of scattered throughout the rest. I think that's what's missing most for me
Starting point is 00:34:20 about what the future cultural values might be that will reassess what's known and what's not. But I don't know. I don't have a crystal ball. One thing that is missing also from the data is also we're only picking Billboard top five hits. So to the idea that All right, hip hop is the dominant genre today What do we expect all of the
Starting point is 00:34:39 The songs from the Golden Era hip hop That maybe never charted To actually be really well known By your typical 16 year old My hunch is no Just because again, most of the data shows That anything that wasn't a massive hit Is pretty much not known at all
Starting point is 00:34:59 Now there's going to be exceptions to that rule Like Smells Like Teen Spirit actually only peaked at number six. And I would expect that to have pretty wide, widely known recognition, and we're actually collecting data on that now as an exception. I think that could be one thing. And I think hip-hop is probably one of the biggest gaps that we have, just knowing how much of a role it has in today's culture and how there might be a generation looking back to what influenced present-day hip-hop from the 90s. Yeah, this discussion makes me think about how to project into the the future, I really have no idea of what is going to stand the test of time from the music
Starting point is 00:35:49 that we're listening to right now, the music that's at the top of the charts now. And I thought I would find that kind of unsettling, but I actually find it very freeing, because, you know, as you said, people will find the songs that they need, the songs that are value to them, the songs that get them through whatever the hell life is like in 2040. and who am I to say what that's going to be? Let them figure it out. It can definitely be unnerving to think about the temporality of popular music. Many songs are just a fleeting romance, but they can be beautiful. Very few songs are a lasting marriage.
Starting point is 00:36:26 That's sort of my main takeaway here. And I don't know. I'm very curious. I feel like I need to do a deep dive and Mambo number five at some point because I just don't understand what's going on. And beyond that, Matt, I'm really excited to see the further musical cultural analysis that you all do. It is constantly fascinating. In fact, I should mention you were just nominated for an Emmy with our colleague Estelle Caswell for your work on looking at the trend of falsetto, a story that we actually also reported here on the show. And so I expect many more fun things
Starting point is 00:36:56 coming from the pudding and from you. Thank you so much for chatting with us. It's been a lot of fun. Absolutely. Thank you. Switched on Pop is produced by Bridget Armstrong, Megan Lubin, Nate Sloan, and me, Charlie Harding. We're mixed engineered and mastered by Brandon McFarland. Illustrations by Iris Scott Lee, social media by Epi Barr, and our executive producers are Nashat Kurwa and Liz Kelly Nelson. You can catch more episodes anywhere you get your podcast. Follow us on social media at Switch to On Pop,
Starting point is 00:37:23 and we'll see you again next week, and until then, thanks for listening. Convierte your passion in a business with Shopify and bathe records of ventas with the form of pay with a better conversion of the world. Has you heard of the best, the best conversion of the world. system of Pago of Shopify facilitates on your site web, in the website, in the
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