Switched on Pop - Is Beyoncé's music #sponcon? And other mysteries LIVE in Brooklyn

Episode Date: March 12, 2024

Live from On-Air Fest in Brooklyn, Nate and Charlie investigate listeners’ burning musical mysteries, such as: Is Beyoncé’s reference to Lexus in “Texas Hold ’Em” product placement? And, could we be tuning all our music the wrong way? These stories have twists, turns, and a live parody performance that no asked for. Thanks to Steve Stoute, Lucas Keller, Samer Ghadry, Helen Zaltzman, and Phil Pappas for contributing to this episode. Sign up for the Switched On Pop Newsletter Songs Discussed: Beyoncé – TEXAS HOLD ‘EM RUN DMC – My Adidas Busta Rhymes – Pass The Courvoisier Part II Taylor Swift – Out of the Woods Outkast – Hey Ya! Jason Aldean – Take A Little Ride Justin Timberlake – I'm Lovin' It Chris Brown – Forever Pitbull – Rain Over Me (ft. Marc Anthony) Lady Gaga – Telephone (ft. Beyoncé) Beyoncé – SUMMER RENAISSANCE Beyoncé – Crazy In Love (ft. Jay-Z) LFO – Summer Girls Aqua – Barbie Girl Moonlight Sonata (432hz) Here Comes the Sun (432hz) Deep Focus Music with 432 Hz Tuning and Binaural Beats for Concentration - Study Music Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

If you're tired of endless scrolling to figure out where to eat, same. I'm Stephanie Wu, editor-in-chief of Eater. We've just launched the new-ish and way better Eater app. It has all the restaurants we love, gives you personalized picks wherever you are, and serves up smarter search results just for you. You can find my list of the best places for martinis and fries in New York City. And save your favorite spots, share lists, follow editors, and book right in the app. the Eater app at Eaterapp.com.

It's free for iOS users. Welcome to Switch on Pop. I'm musicologist Nate Sloan. And I'm songwriter Charlie Harding. And we are so thrilled to be here live at On Air Fest in Brooklyn. Brooklyn, make some noise. What a thrill. This is our first live show in approximately five years. So how exciting to be here with you all.

And the good people at On Air Fest have given us a task. And that is to answer some musical mystery. the things that are scratching your brain that perhaps we can shed some light on. And we actually have a mystery that is going to be posed to us from Helen Zaltzman of the Illusionist podcast, who's here in the audience. Hi. Thank you. Hi, Nate. Hi, Charlie.

So I've been wondering, you know, we're very used to spawn in music videos where there's a loving shot of a cell phone or a car for two. long. But is there a spawn in song lyrics? Because I was listening to Texas Holden by Beyonce. And I thought, does she really have strong feelings about Lexus in particular as a car? Is it the most scannable car compared to like Volkswagen? Or did they pay her to write a lyric about Lexus? I have looked into this question for you. Is there a spawn in popular music? Wait, wait, wait, product. What is spawn? Sponsored content. Sponsored content. Okay. All right. Let's listen to Beyonce. This ain't Texas. Ain't no hold'em.

All right. So Texas, Lexus. We recently broke down this song on our show. We know that Beyonce has the first number one country single as a female black performer. Historical moment. Fantastic song. And she's making really black country music. This is a blues.

It highlights the roots of the African banjo. It's a big historical accomplishment. But it also features this line about Alexis. Do we trust that Beyonce would drive Alexis? I mean, maybe Beyonce Bugatti. I want to start with just getting a sense of the room. Please vote. If you believe this is a moment of sponsored content,

will you please raise your hand? Okay, and if you believe it's an organic moment, just written into the song, please raise your hand. Oh, okay, interesting. All right, so what I'm going to do... The people listening at home, the vast majority of people thought it was an organic moment. Yeah, I'll give it 70-30.

That sounds right. All right. So I'm going to make the case for and against sponsor to content in Beyonce's Texas Hold'em. So the first thing I did is I did the journalistic thing. I reached out to the executives at the labels. They did not email me back. I tried the three co-writers.

I messaged them on Instagram. Nothing. But let's make a case for why this ought to be product plays. But I think, first of all, we are collectively conditioned to assume that sponsored content is everywhere. It's in film and television. Even the voice of the most trusted man in Hollywood is not afraid. of some product placement in his films.

Welcome. Welcome. I must have drank me about 15 Dr. Pepples. Of course, that is the voice of Tom Hanks. You've got Mail, Forrest Gump and Castaway, all featuring great brand integrations. You know, if you're watching television today, the Wall Street Journal reported that Ted Lasso

in one episode had 36 Apple placements in it. It's an Apple TV show. We just expect product placement to be everywhere. where naturally following film and television, we'd expect that it would enter into a world of music videos. You may not know that actually one of the first music videos to have sponsored content was Smells Like Teen Spirit, itself a song named after a popular deodorant brand

features at the very beginning of the music video, a converse shoe. I don't know how you feel about that. The song, which is supposed to be the salve to the emptiness of consumerism, actually has a moment of product placement, which was unusual because MTV had very strict product placement rules. They didn't want to be too overt when MTV decides that they're going to stop running as many music videos and pivot away from video as music

videos went online and we're kind of thinking like a post-nappster era musicians are struggling looking for extra revenue product placements just appear everywhere right case in point you could see a beats Wi-Fi speaker in songs like turn my swag on by soldier boy Britney Spears work bitch and Robin Thick's blurred lines you might not have been paying attention but there was a very prominent Bluetooth speaker featured in all of these videos And there's a reason that this stuff works, that ad agencies want in into the music video side of it. The clothes that were being worn in music videos, fans of music would wear all the time. And they were dressed like the music video.

The music video was almost like a mannequin. That's Steve Stout. He's a record executive who came up in the business working with Will Smith, Moriah Carey, and Nas. He built a marketing agency called Translation to Translate the Culture of Hip Hop to Fortune 500 companies. and Steve told me that product placement in music videos specifically started in the 80s. The tipping point for this entire subject is Run DMC's song My Adidas.

Run DMC writes Adidas into their song My Adidas. It's an organic moment. We're here in 1986. But it did definitely help the brand. In the 80s, the German shoe manufacturer had no idea why their products were flying off the shelf of Northeast stores. And so in 1986,

at Madden Square Garden. An Adidas executive flew across the world the night of this run-d-MC performance. And when he sang the song by Adidas, he held his Adidas in the air and 18,000 kids held theirs in the air. And this is the moment I believe that it was super clear that music,

specifically hip-hop music, and product placement, that idea was cemented. And so Run-D-M-C, organic placement then gets a $1.5 million sponsorship from Adidas in the same. same year. Maybe it's kind of the tail wagging the dog looking for the sponsorship when you write your song. And this has happened countless times. I think there's a reason why it is safe to assume there could be

product placement in songs. I mean, take, for example, past the Cobasie. Same story with Buster Rhymes, past the Corvassier, part two. He said that it was an artistic choice, which happened to also double the sales of the spirit that year. And he also received a brand deal from the parent company of Corvassier. Taylor Swift's 1989 album, if you remember, the cover,

has a Polaroid picture featured prominently in it, and it's also in one of her lyrics on that album. Sorry, Polaroid. Taylor Swift got scooped up by Fuji film,

their competitor, and a brand placement not long afterwards. So I'm sorry, the, the apogee of Polaroids appearing in pop music is clearly Hayah by Andre 3000.

I just, shake it like a Polaroid picture. I don't want to interrupt your flow, but... I don't know if he got sponsored. I do think it helped. I recall that it helped the sagging sales of Polaroid at the time. Interesting.

Okay, yeah, all right. We did write a book chapter on this, but I don't recall. I vaguely remember it. Yeah. Then there's the case of Jason Aldeen. His song, Take a Little Ride, had an ode to his favorite Texas beer, Shinerbach. Swig by the Quickstop, grab a little Shinerbach. then he's on out your way.

And as reported in a great story by the late music podcast pitch, Aldine, he later received a sponsorship from Cores and changed the lyric of the song afterwards. Swing by the quick stop, grab a couple of rocky tops. Then he's on out your way. I mean, that's slick. That's smooth. Yeah, I mean, talk about not having allegiance to Texas.

That can't go over well. Very thirsty all this one. All of these songs are kind of after the facts, right? But if you want a song with a prepaid sponsorship, you need to go back to Steve Stout, the music executive we heard from earlier. Steve is behind two of the biggest premeditated sponsorship, sponsored material moments in music history. First, there's the famous McDonald's jingle. 20,000 Hertz, the podcast had a really great episode about this jingle. I'm loving it. And Steve's Stout's agency had a hand in putting that out into culture. The jingle was first,

released as a song originally with Justin Timberlake and The Neptunes to bring it to life. They released, I'm Lovin it, the song, weeks before the TV ad campaign came out. Have you heard this? No. Yeah. I don't think I need to again. The idea was to let the music marinate in culture to give it more legitimacy to the ad. Yeah.

But as much as that line worked as a jingle, it didn't work as a song. So the jingle, which we obviously all know, is way more popular than this song. That song didn't even chart in the U.S. So the idea of this campaign was not quite a success. The Justin Timberlake song was the right idea. It didn't connect. I said, literally said, let me do this same idea again. And let me go make a better song.

To lean more into the song and less into the jingle. So Steve took another shot. Rigley Gumm hired Steve's agency to rewrite all their jingles, which for Steve was a perfect musical brand partnership. You can almost use chewing gum like a metronome. You know where you're chewing? There's almost like a beat to it. They had Neo redo Big Red.

Kiss a little longer, love a little longer, something with Big Red. You know that one. And Julian Huff did Juicy Fruit. Juicy Fruit is going to move you. Juicy fruit will get right through you. But Stout's magnum opus was for double. mint gum. Stout brought in burgeoning R&B star Chris Brown. This is before the revelations about domestic violence against Rihanna. He was hired to write a jingle. For doublement, I said the way we're

going to launch this campaign is we're going to launch this thing as a full-length song. And rather than product placing the word doublement, we're going to product place the tagline. Double your pleasure, double your fun. So when people hear this they don't hear the brand, they hear the slogan, it's subconsciously associate doublement. That's how the song forever entered the world. With Chris Brown, we didn't call it on love it. We called it forever, right?

I said, we're going to make this thing, it's going to live authentically within the construct of a song, and we're not going to name it after the thing. And it was a home run. The song was released weeks before the ad campaign, so same idea with the McDonald's thing, and it was a number one top 40 radio hit. When the ad dropped later to get more exposure to the song, Steve actually would buy up radio slots ad time and play first half of forever

as if it was a natural organic moment if you're just hearing a song on the radio and then blend it into the Wrigley ad. But when the public found out about this bait and switch, they weren't always pleased. People were offended. They were like, how did you do that? Why would you do that?

I felt like I did something wrong because people were so taken back, and I honestly thought look, that's marketing. I asked Steve if anyone had ever replicated this success. You would think that if there's this Chris Brown case, there must be many more. And basically nobody

has done it since. Though there are artists that have definitely tried in promoting their own brands. We hear this all the time. Case in point, Pitbull's rain over me, shamelessly promotes his vodka company, Volley. And 40's the new 30, and maybe you are rocks. Billy's the new Millie, voleys the new vodka, 40's the new 30.

I agree with the last one of those. Jay-Z, Beyonce's husband, made a billboard for his own brands in All I Need. Let's run it down. Nike Airs. He has a sponsorship with his fashion company, Rock Aware, with Nike. My Bucket Hat, he was into bucket hats way before Gen Z. name checks rockware and as well as his vodka company in one chorus. So, you know, many have tried this. But, but what, okay, so we've got Jay-Z. But what about

Beyonce? First of all, her music videos are full of product placement. She's had Jaguars, Rolls Royces, liquor brands in various music videos. Probably most over-the-top was her collaboration with Lady Gaga on telephone. They had Diet Coke, Beats, Chevy, hostess Honeybuns, Miracle Whip, and Wonderbread were all sponsors. been a very bad girl, Gaga. The final song on Beyonce's last album, Renaissance, the song Summer Renaissance, is basically an ad for Couture brands. Most of these brands she's had a relationship with.

They've dressed her at various events, the Met Gala, and so on. Her song, Formation, of course, also named Drops Red Lobster. That did increase sales of Red Lobster by 33%. According to Billboard. The video for that song also was a part of a Tiffany & Co. ad campaign. So, Beyonce and her company Parkwood Entertainment are hardly allergic to spawn brand integrations. As for Texas Hold'em. Texas, Lexus, to get your question, Helen.

The song literally launched as part of a Verizon ad at the end of the Super Bowl. Brooke the internet again. Did you post this? No. Well, not on purpose. Well, it's coming in hot. It's Verizon 5G. network is crazy powerful. I bet you can't break that.

I bet I can't. Okay, they ready. Drop the new music. And they dropped those songs immediately after that, which was the most exciting part of the Super Bowl for me. Not the Usher Halftime Show? It was fun. Whoa, okay. It's a podcast for another day. Furthermore, Lexus, I'm just trying to think about why would Lexus want to get in on this. Lexus actually had an ad campaign in 2019 called The New Renaissance.

A new renaissance is upon us. Introducing the first ever Lexus U.S. Crafted for a new era of progress. Experience amazing at your Lexus dealer. So it makes sense that they would want to sponsor the Renaissance tour, which they did. If you went to the Renaissance tour, there were Lexuses, a Lexus experience, if you will, that you could partake in. Yeah? We saw some Lexuses.

Confir. I think it's Lexi. Lexi. The Lexus campaign, they had on-site Lexus there, and they also worked with TikTokers to promote this. TikTokers with millions of followers. They took Lexus to the Renaissance tour. Going to the Renaissance tour. My best friends meeting me here, and we're going with Lexus.

So we're going to have a full Lexus experience. I'm so excited. This has to be SponCon, right? I feel like this podcast is starting to sound like a Lexus pad. And given the state of our business, that's totally fine. Lexusware line coming out. And a few cents, that will be, you can sample. I mean, frankly, I would also just say that if this was going to happen at any point in music history,

it makes sense that this would happen now. Like, music video, SponCon picked up during the age of pirating when the music industry was just in huge decline. We all know that streaming is paying pennies on the dollar to musicians, most of it being captured by label. So this is the time that you would try. try to find some new lines of revenue. We remember during the pandemic, every musician tried to launch an NFT.

Part of that was because NFTs weren't written into their contracts. They would get all of the revenue. It would make sense that you could go, you know, maybe I can put a brand in my song, and I get all of that sponsorship. My label's not going to capture any of that. So it makes sense to me. So this is the case for Spancom.

The case against Spawn in Texas Holden. Here's the thing. In all of my research, I could only find two instances of a brand or an artist sort of acknowledging, oh yeah, we've really done this. And it didn't really pan out. In 2002, Sony Records was caught distributing a memo saying that their imprint, epic records would do a pay-to-play product placement in the Act B2K. Any of their songs that had a product placement, they were like, yeah, we're open to this. And it was a media hullabaloo for them.

In 2005, McDonald's reportedly said that they would pay anywhere from a dollar to $5 to artists that had put a Big Mac or other product in their song as long as McDonald's got final say over the lyrics. But B2K's career went about as cold as a fresh off the grill Big Mac, and this strategy was a, I'm sorry. The strategy was... It's okay.

Yeah, 40 is the new 30. So, Charlie, yeah. Why do you think that people are fine with seeing Apple products in a TV show but get incensed when they hear a product mentioned in a song. What's that about? Do you think there are a sentence?

I don't know. I feel like we hear it all the time. I think we're just used to it. I think the question is whether or not people are getting paid to do it. Well, I sense that there's more backlash when people hear it in a song. But maybe you're right. Maybe it is so subtle that we don't always... Yeah, I mean, I think there's the case of...

Certainly we have this case of the tail wagging the dog. Or people just looking for... Sort of announcing, I am available, as I just did to Lexus. But I think the real case of why this may not be happening is that it's frankly hard to do. I wanted to get another perspective on this, and I called up another music business veteran, Lucas Keller, he's been on the show before. He runs Milk and Honey. It's one of the biggest songwriter and producer management companies. And he says that it's just kind of like logistically way too difficult to pull this off.

It's just incredibly hard to put together. That's why I don't think anyone will do it. You know, you have to have writers who are going to to, to live. deliberate to an artist, and you can't really, like, say when you're writing that song that it's going to be a single, because the song may be no good. You know, I know professional songwriters that write two to 300 songs a year. It's not an exaggeration. That's really what it takes. And their hope is to get, like, 10% of those cut onto records, and hopefully one or two of those are a radio hit, and then you're doing fine. Hit songs are not easy to make. So, like, why would you try to integrate your brand at the

earliest stage. I mean, it's possible you could put it in after the fact. New York Times has reported that social media platforms are doing after the fact AI product placements now. So maybe you could like Lexus into the song after it's already a hit. Kind of like the Jason L. Dean thing that we heard earlier. But, you know, there's also the issue of just like songwriter integrity, right? What? Oh, oh, yeah. To your question, why do we get in sense? I mean, songwriters want to write timeless songs, like about timeless timepieces, for example. No, but for real, there is legitimate concern that, you know, a song is forever, but a brand's reputation is not necessarily. There are all these things dropped in songs that don't exist anymore.

If you were rapping about your pager in the 90s, that didn't, your Motorola pager, that didn't age too well. Counterpoint, Lucas, Beyonce is crazy in love. That's got me hoping you'll page me right now. But he has a good point. You know, brands' reputations can suffer, which could cause, you know, a decline. in your art, a great example will be the timeless classic summer girls by LFO. I like girls that wear Abercrombie and Fitch. I take her if I had one wish.

That shameless plug of Abercrombie and Fitch was denied by the brand who said they had nothing to do with it. But in the 2022 Netflix doc White Hot the Rise and Fall of Abercrombie and Fitch, it was revealed that the company used sexist and racist employee profiling practices. A real bummer to that summer hit. So it makes sense. You know, if you're like Beyonce, maybe it makes sense to just shout out Couture brands who have a legacy heritage brand that you can count on to stick around.

And Red Lobster, of course. And, you know, things could also go sour for you in doing this because you could be taken to court. You might remember the song Barbie Girl by Aqua. Mattel originally tried to sue Aqua over the use of the song. Of course, they later embraced that. And we all saw the movie and everything's chilled out. So what do I think?

about Texas Holdom. I've been holding on to something. I got a text from one of the songwriters. Oh, really? Yeah, just in time for this show. And I want you to read it for me. Okay, this is exciting. Question was,

specifically I'd like to know if the Lexus line in Texas Holden was an organic moment or a sponsored moment. Thanks. Just rhymed. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you so much. I just want to point out, that is not a denial. These people are ending. Indeade out to the Indromeda Galaxy. So with that, I would like to take another vote. If you believe this is a sponsored moment that Lexus has paid Beyonce ahead of time, please raise your hand.

Ooh, I think I've converted. There's more people than there were at the beginning. And if you do not believe, this is an organic moment. Yeah, it's just an organic moment. All right, about the same as, I've converted a few folks or some people held back last time, but I think it's about 6040. Helen, what are you feeling?

Charlie, I think you did a very thorough job. It was very interesting. It was also more upsetting than I was expecting because I do remember that Justin Timberlake song. And now I will have to exorcise it from my brain again. I did wonder if Beyonce saying all the Givanchi and Balenciaga things was referenced to, you know, the ball culture and they had the houses. Like House of Gimonsi. Yes, absolutely. Music scholar, welcome to join the podcast anytime you'd like.

Thank you. We did want to imagine for you if this were an extremely sponsored moment, if there were spawn everywhere in the song. And so I've asked Nate to bring out the smallest piano in the world. Okay. Can you turn it on? All right, what, Lord forgive me for what I'm about to do. Okay, so these are some lyrics that I'm going to sing for you now that Charlie wrote. All right, here we go.

This ain't Starbucks. Ain't no Goldman. To swipe your car down, down, down, down. Park your Lexus And eat your Reese Ride a gray Hound, hound, hound And I'll be glammed if I go to

Sephora with you Come call in an Uber up to Jet Blue It's a real dune buggy serving real royal Crown Don't be a Grinch Come take it down to Florida now Sponsored by the Florida Tourism Board That was mean I'm

I'm persuaded by the organic argument just because what else rhymes with Texas? I mean, I was trying to run through some different options, you know, like. It also would have been more organic.

She could have found a way to go to Alamo rent a car. I feel like the Texas Alamo. And they're not a rhyme, but... I don't know if Alamo quite has the clout of a... It's not a Hertz brand.

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Okay, well, that was fascinating. We have one more musical mystery for you all, and this one comes courtesy of our listener, Phil. Big Nate. It's Phil Pappas. Thanks, Phil. Dude, I've been watching tons of videos of Terrence Howard explaining harmonic frequencies and DNA resequencing and tightening to 432 hertz.

I have no idea what is going on, but I can't stop watching. I need to know if E is actually yellow and something else is chartreuse. Hope all as well. See you. All right. Thanks, Phil. I'm just curious. Is anyone familiar with this,

what Phil is talking about? Have you encountered... What's that? Sinisthesia? No, this is something even more opaque and potentially sinister than synesthesia,

but thank you for that. So maybe you've seen a video of Terrence Howard, the actor, you may recognize him from roles in Empire, Iron Man, hustle and flow.

He's doing these talks where he's talking about these kind of abstruse theories about music. We can hear a clip of one of these that Phil is talking about from a 2013 appearance on the Breakfast Club. Any album? You're doing another album or you're done with that album? Well, no, no, no. I'm working on some new music now, but we've got to change our understanding of music. 440 is wrong as a key tone. We need to get to 432. Y'all will understand that later. Okay. Yeah, and we just said, mm-hmm. I just didn't mind. Hopefully that your kids would be like dad.

Jimmy Hendricks tuned his guitar to 432 for a reason. And the beados made that adjustment after they went to India and did all their music in 432 instead of 440. Look it up. Okay. Got it. Terrence Howard, ladies and gentlemen, is the breakfast club on Power 1051. That's August.

I love that the host of the show are like, okay, bye. Okay, so there's one part of this. He's talking about 432 as opposed to 440 hertz as a way to tune music. And then the other part of what Phil was talking about, music sort of expressing different colors, different periodic elements. That's from a 2018 talk he did. Let's hear that.

Well, guess what hydrogen sounds like? It's the key of E. Guess what, and it's the color yellow. That's what proper physics gets you to. Oxygen is a sharp truth, and it's the key of F over F sharp. Okay. definitely green. Yeah, I'm inclined to agree. F over F sharp, literally no idea what that means.

Okay, so the second part of this, this keys being colors and elements, I got nothing. I literally have nothing to say about that. But the first part, the idea that music should be tuned to 432 hertz as opposed to 440, let's dive into that a little bit, shall we? Sure. Okay, so first of all, what are we talking about here? Like when you have a tuning fork and you hit the tuning fork and it goes, ooh, yeah,

that's it's at 440 Hertz and it's the, I'm guessing some international standard so that we all tune to the same thing so that an orchestra can play in tune kind of thing. Right. And what is Hertz, Charlie? The number of times that a wave oscillates per second. Holy, look at this guy. What a pro. He is, he is so smart.

Mom, mom, can you stop filming me? It's very, it's very distracting. I am flattered, though. So there is, right, I mean, Charlie just expressed this so succinctly. Like, there is, since 1939, when there was an international agreement made to tune music to the same hertz rate of 440, it's very comforting because you can go from here in Brooklyn and play an A, and then go to Beijing and play an A, and it'll sound the same.

That's very handy, I think, in terms of not having to retune an entire piano to fit with the rest of an orchestra, for instance. But there are corners of the internet that are very suspicious of this tuning to 440. I was recently fed a post on my Instagram Explore page about this. Here's what it said. Frequency 432 hertz is known as the beat of the earth. substantial healing benefits, and ancient Egyptian and Greek instruments were discovered tuned to 432 Hertz. However...

No. They're not still in tune. However, since all music has been tuned to 440 hertz, this frequency has no scientific relationship with our universe and actually causes the brain to become agitated. The Nazis in World War II use this frequency against their enemies to make them... feel and think a certain way. You knew that was coming. So all of our societal anxieties, ills

are due to this frequency? Just to be clear, there is, none of that is true. Okay, thanks. See you. Bye. Credits. Switch on Pop is brought to you. He is a PhD of musicology, so we can trust them. Yeah. No, no, I did look into this.

There is no basis. The Nazis were not involved. There's no basis for, 432 being more natural or more resonant with the earth or, you know, our bodies and minds. You're going to get so much hate mail. And yet this theory persists, and I feel like we do need to give it some credence, okay? So let's listen to some of this 432 music together. And we can form, as they say, as Terrence Howard told us, look it up, right?

Do your own research. Let's do our own research. Exactly. Let's do our own research. Very irresponsible. Let's do our own research. Okay. Here's what 440 hertz sounds like.

Let's just like hear a sign wave of that. I mean, audio doesn't get more thrilling than this. This is riveting stuff. Okay, 432 Hertz, Charlie. My ears are sagging a little bit more. I mean, we are talking about such a small... It's not even the distance between two adjacent notes on a piano. It's smaller than that.

It's like 30 cents or something. It's a very small difference. A lot of music... in 432 that you'll encounter is maybe what you'd expect. It's very spacey, tranquil music for meditating, for relaxing. Here's an example from a YouTube playlist that has a couple million views. Let's hear a little bit of this, Charles. I mean, I do feel relaxed already.

The bass is deep. I can feel it resonating in my body. This goes on for about three hours. And we're going to listen to all of it. Welcome to Switchdown Pop the Sound Healing Center. Oh, sorry. Okay. So this is one corner of the 432 world, this sort of hypnotic, relaxing, music, specifically composed within this key. Let's pause that because I'm getting very sleepy. And then there's another world, which is in some ways even more interesting. And that's the world of converting existing music that was originally recorded in the key of 440 hertz. and spitting it out in this 432 hertz.

Did I... Did I say that right? I think so. Let's listen to a few examples of these, and again, we can do our own research. We can judge for ourselves. I pick just a few kind of random examples. But you can go...

There are apps for this. You can get an app that will instantly convert your favorite songs to 432. You can go online and find 432 versions of probably most of your favorite songs. Let's listen to Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata and in the original 440 hertz. Still slaps.

Here's for 32 hertz. So many problems with this. First of all, I was really hoping you're going to actually tune the piano down and do all the hard labor of fixing the instruments. What has happened here? That was two hours. Someone was literally just taken an original recording.

It sounds to me, slowed it down and brought the pitch down. Yes. And added a bunch of ambient reverb to make it feel like it's more healing. that's what I'm hearing. I, yes, and? That's what else can I say?

Well, you're avoiding the question, Charlie. Did you feel your spirit lifted, your consciousness, unchained, your physical maladies exercised, and your DNA tightening? No, I just felt like I was like, it was like spa music. So yeah, I don't know. We've gone from spawn music to spa music. That spas. Okay, let's do another one. I know you like this band, the Beatles.

4.40 Hertz. Let's hear it. Wait, wait, wait, hold on. What just happened there? Did they just slow the vinyl down to pitch it down a little bit? That didn't sound like George Harrison. That sounded like a terrible cover. Yeah, well, I suppose I'm just grabbing these from YouTube, so I suppose there's different methods being used.

You're really doing your own research here. Well, this is what people are listening to, Charlie. I'm not going to deny them. They're the privilege of listening to these 432 songs. That was a desecration of a very important historical record. Right. I understand what you're saying. I knew you were going to say this, too.

Charlie's very concerned with the technological process of creating these 432 remixes and how it degrades the original audio and I totally respect that. But we got to listen to one more. Next example. 440 and 432.

That was subtle. You know, that was subtle. That was just a subtle downpitching. It makes the voice a little huskier. Yeah. A little huskier. Yeah. And this has been done a lot of artists historically have

often up pitched their vocals, like the Beach Boys, would use Verispe Technology to speed up their voices a little bit, make it a little brighter. So there's an artistic reason why you might want to do this, but I don't know that it's doing anything to resonate with my DNA. So it does, yeah, so I love that. It does change the sound of these recordings and it introduces new textures and flavors into them. Right. But is it healing? Is it more natural? No. There's someone I wanted to ask about this. That's our friend Sammer Goddry. He's a sound healer.

He sets up gongs and prayer bowls and harmoniums, and he creates these incredible immersive audio experiences. And I was like, if there's anyone I know who's going to be on board with this 432 Hertz thing, it's him. So I called him and he said, hey, I'm in Bangkok. I'm researching gongs at a temple here. But he was kind enough to talk to me about this. And this is what he said.

Do you really think that all the music that we've grown up on and been influenced by and love is wrong or is harmful or, you know, bringing you down? Can you really make that statement with confidence and be like, yeah, I actually don't like all the music that I grew up on? I think that we're really grasping for things we have no idea about with this whole 42 thing. You're going to look at a valley and be like, I like the frequency of those hills, but not those. That's what it's starting to do, man. I think people are really losing their minds to this whole thing.

And I like it in the sense that they want to find something good for themselves. I like that, but I don't think you have to be exclusive and say that some number is proper and then some other number is not. I think that's ridiculous. So I'm inclined to agree with him,

and yet at the end of this study, exploration, discussion, whatever we want to call it, I found myself more drawn to this idea of 432 music than I expected to. What? Charlie, can you play me out with another 432 playlist, please? Okay, perfect. So let me just read you some of the comments on this 432 Hertz YouTube playlist, okay?

The reason you are listening to this is to focus and concentrate. That shows your dedication and desire to improve. Congratulations. Stay motivated. If you make a start, you are halfway done. Don't give up. We believe in you. Another one.

If you're reading this, remember, you are never too old to set another goal or to dream another dream. Hey, you. Yes, you, reading this, everything is going to be okay. Have faith. Trust and believe. Stay strong. You got this. Beautiful human.

Wow. Okay. I thought that was very sweet. That's actually some of the nicest YouTube comments you'll ever encounter. I, for one, would listen to what just happened for my own inner piece. Maybe that's our sponsored content. And then it's just a little note. Brought to you by Lexus.

The most relaxing. Right, you'll have. So at the end of this, I'm like, I don't buy any of this, and yet I am moved by it. I might not listen to Moonlight Sonad in 432, but I might rock one of these 432 Hertz deep listening playlist and read some positive YouTube comments. And, you know, that would change my day around. I love it. I did during the pandemic spend hours programming synthesizers to do that to create non-repeating meditation music. so I feel like I need to send that to you as a gift.

All right. Well, next year we'll have our sponsor Spawn Spa. Switched-on-pop, spawn spa. We'll work out the kinks in the interim period. Thank you to the incredible audience here at On Air Fest Brooklyn. Thank you all. Switched on Pop is produced by Rana Cruz. Nate Sloane and me, Charlie Harding.

We're edited by Art Chung, engineer by Brandon McFarland, illustrations by Arras Gottlieve and community management by Abby Barr. Ashok Kerwa is our executive producer. a member of the Vox Media Podcast Network and a production of Vulture, which is part of New York Magazine. You can subscribe to New YorkMag at New Yorkmag.com slash pod.

Thank you so much to the folks at On Air for having us. We had an absolute blast and thank you to the entire audience. You can find more episodes of the show anywhere you get podcasts as well as our website, switched on pop.com.

And while you're there, put your email address into a little box that you'll find on the homepage and then you'll get a newsletter about once a week that has further insights into the world of pop music and a playlist of what our team is listening to. It's really fun and it's not going to bother you.

You're not going to see it in your inbox and be like, oh, it's so annoying. They're emailing me again. It's just once a week. It's pretty benign. And dare I say, even edifying and entertaining. We'll be back with an extra episode on Friday live from South by Southwest and then back to our regular schedule on Tuesday. Until then, thanks for that.

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