Switched on Pop - Lizzo And The End of Genre (with Sam Harris of X Ambassadors)

Episode Date: May 7, 2019

On her new album, Cuz I Love You, Lizzo shows off her genre bending musicality. We speak with X Ambassadors lead singer, Sam Harris, who helped co-write three songs on the album, including its eponymous track. We discuss how Lizzo's songs glide across sixties soul, seventies rock rock, eighties new wave, and nineties hip-hop. But we find that her music is much more than a history lesson in genre. Lizzo's writes vulnerable and courageous lyrics about self love, body positivity, female empowerment, and black identity. Rather than craft a singular sound for her album, Lizzo utilizes the genre that best fits the message of any given song. Her subversion of genre to the mood of her lyric matches changes in music consumption. According to Chartmetric, more people than ever are listening across genres to context based playlists. Does this mean genre no longer matters? Nate and Charlie try to find out with the help of Lizzo's genre busting music. Songs DiscussedLizzo - Better In ColorLizzo - Cuz I Love YouLizzo - JuiceLizzo - TempoMissy Elliott - Get Ur Freak OnLizzo - JeromeRadiohead - CreepLed Zeppelin - Royal OrleansPrince - When Doves CryLizzo - Exactly How I Feel (ft. Gucci Mane)Aretha Franklin - RespectAretha Franklin - Say A Little PrayerAretha Franklin - Chain Of FoolsAretha Franklin - I Knew You Were WaitingEurythmics ft. Aretha Franklin - Sisters Are Doin' It For ThemselvesListen to our Lizzo playlist that pairs each song on her new album with a song from the past. 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 Switched on Pop. I'm songwriter Charlie Harding.

And I'm musicologist Nate Sloan. So Nate, one of my favorite episodes of Switched on Pop that we've ever done was speaking with Lizzo about Janelle Monet's Make Me Feel. 100%. Yeah. And Lizzo has just come out with a new album, because I love you. It's number six on the charts right now. Nice. It's awesome. And I want to break it down with you today because not only is it noteworthy in its message, and intrepid in its songwriting and production, it's also had me questioning some fundamental issues about the role of genre and pop music. Totally, all right, take me there. Okay, for those of us who may not be familiar with Lizzo,

she is a singer, rapper, and classically trained floutist. She has an alter ego called Sasha flute, which is off of Sasha Fierce. I like, Beyonce. Her music covers topics like self-love. Body positivity, female empowerment, and sex positivity. Her new album is, I think, pretty stunning. It was met with largely very positive reviews, but there was one that caused a bit of a stir.

Oh. Pitchfork. Classic. Right. They gave it a 6.5. And they made this sort of interesting assessment, which was that this album was sort of genreless. And here's how they put it in their words. The shiny soul pop of Lizzo's major label debut

is something of a thesis on internalized and externalized confidence. Okay. Okay. So much so that the music can feel like a means to a greater end and that her music performs an important social function, but that the sounds kind of disappoint. Okay. So like sound versus substance?

Yeah. Yeah. And this review did cause a little bit of a hullabaloo online. Really upset Lizzo. She actually kind of attacked the review. Wouldn't be the first time. What in terms of... In terms of artists going after bitchfork reviewers.

Yeah, right. And probably often fair. However, I think what would be a much more sort of interesting way to evaluate this is to look at the music and to look at questions of genre. So here's what we're going to do. Cool. First, we're going to take a sampling of three tracks from Lizzo's new record and see if the music stands up to her message. And second, I want to see if... her album really is a sign that maybe there's some genre slippage happening more broadly.

Cool. So what do we need to do? We've got to listen to the opening track. Yes. Because I love you. Trying to open up a little more. Sorry up my heart a little slow. That is power.

You're right. This song is powerful. Oh, yeah. And I didn't feel like I could do it justice, breaking it down on my own. So I actually went and spoke to one of the songwriters and producers on the, the track. No way. Yeah, you might recognize who it is. Okay. My name is Sam Harris. I'm

Leight Sane from Ex-Ambassadors. Whoa! What was the impetus for this song? Where's it come from? That song came from her. She was like, I have this great idea for a song. Like, our title of a song, like, I'm crying because I love you. Because I was sitting in the car with my ex-boyfriend, and I was, I was like crying uncontrollably. And he was like,

why are you crying? And I said, I'm crying because I love you. And I said, yeah, that's a fucking great title for a song. And it could go something like this. You could go like, I don't cry because I love you. Just like kind of making shit up. She was like, that's awesome. Let's make that. Tell me about the soundscape of this song. It seems to be pulling from a handful of different genres. What were you thinking about? When I pictured that hurt in my head immediately when she told me that lyric.

I just pictured like, you know, the cover for the way that I Love You, that a recent Franklin record. So I immediately, I was like, okay, it's got to start. We got to start. And so we did, we kind of like, figured out the chord changes on piano, slowed it down. We did

like a really slow kind of version of the, like the verse vibe on the piano, and then sped it back up and kind of made it sound like a sample. So it kind of started in that world of like very like almost like minimalist kind of weird Kanye sample territory that we just made ourselves. And then we'd add these like crazy digital horns for the chorus that kind of come out of nowhere. The thing that really struck me about this song was the harmony.

And I was wondering if you could speak to how the harmony is functioning to, how the harmony is functioning to, reinforce this message of crying because I love you. I think that was all just cock Casey. He's a wizard. And we were kind of messing around. I have the idea for just the chord changes. The bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb, very dramatic, theatrical kind of chord changes.

I did a lot of musical theater when I was younger and college and even a little bit after college. and I've always loved the, you know, the, uh, the, uh, and,

uh, and, Gershwin and that kind of like, vibe and the how that kind of feeds into, um, into this song, I think is a really, really cool thing.

Charlie Wiley Minks doing a secret songwriter interview without me. All right. Yeah. I'm sorry. I love this. He wants to bring a drama into the song. And in order to do so, he is citing musical theater. Hell yeah.

Let's listen to the intro of, because I love you, just for more time. Okay. Is that familiar? Nothing specific comes to mind, but it does feel very redolent. Whoa. Don't worry. This is a common chord progression. In fact, Andrew Lloyd Weber was hounded by Pink Floyd, who also used the same thing in their song echoes.

Cool, chromatic descent from the tonic note down. down and then back up. Cool. It's a cool sound, right? Dun, don't, don't, don't, yeah.

I love that they're using this chromatic movement. We can hear a musical theater, we can hear rock and roll. It's a common chord progression and not exactly the same as the others. But I thought maybe I could challenge you to get over on that keyboard

and give us a taste of what that chromatic sound really, yeah, how's it come across? Yeah, totally. No, it's great. It's just literally taking that one tonic chord and then just replicating it,

but down and down descending each time. and then right back up. I love this because I feel like this idea of I'm crying because I love you has this happy, sad quality, right? Like, I'm crying, I'm sad because I love you. I'm joyous. Yeah, yeah, no, that's good.

And we have this chord progression, which is in a major key, but it has this dark chromaticism and modal mixture moving between notes that don't fit so warm, and no, cozily into the major scale. And it adds that emotionality to me. Yeah, there's attention there.

That's cool. We're not done. Good. I want to move to the pre-chorus, and I asked Sam about, how did this pre-chorus come about? Because it's kind of different from the material that came before. So here's Sam talking about how he produced the track with his brother Casey from ex-ambassitors. I said to him, I think I said something like, do some kind of like classic shit in the pre-chorus. and he just kind of adds the like

bum, bum, bum, blah, wow, like these just descending chords that just fit so perfectly with it. So we went some classic shit.

Yeah, I think we're going to start to hear a little bit more of that soul kind of sound. Let's go to the pre-chorus. Check this out. Right. Isn't that nice? Classic shit indeed. You want to play that for us?

So we've got, what, D-flat major? and then D flat minor, just change one note. But that kind of like aching feeling brings you back to the home chord of A flat. Cool. Isn't that pretty? I like it. But it would not be complete if we do not arrive into the chorus with something that sort of swings the emotionality into another direction.

We've got a lot of descent. I think we probably need to start going back up. Climbing back up. Okay. All right. this is my favorite part of the song. This idea of connecting the emotional quality of the eponymous song is because I love you. We swing down, we rise back up, and she does this in this beautiful way with rising inverted chords.

So I'm going to send you back to that piano. And we're going to give me a little bit of a B-flat minor. A-flat. with a C in the bass. Give me a little D flat. B flat 7 with a D in the bass. And finally, E flat. What's happening here?

We are for, like you said, I mean, we're like, we're ascending. We're rising up for the first time. The baseline is taking us up and up rather than down and down. And in order to do that, we're using all these like inverted chords, which are really rich and sort of pungent. And it gives like, like you. I think you said earlier, kind of like this new emotional level to the chorus. This is my favorite thing about harmony.

It's that sometimes we actually want to maybe subvert the harmony to the melodic thrust, right? So if harmony is happening on a vertical level and melody is happening on a horizontal level, the song needed to move back up. And so it wanted this rising baseline. And so you start to have these like math problems. Like how do I fit chords that will work over that rising base?

And to do so, you start having to invent some really colorful, beautiful things. And when you combine the rising melody and those colorful chords, you get something, as you said, pungent, it's emotional, it's strong, and it fits this message of, I'm crying, because I love you. And I think Sam would agree. Oh, yeah, yeah, that's the other thing about it. It's like it kind of descends in the pre-chorus, and then you got to rise,

like rises again. Yeah, I wanted it to feel like just big. You know, like the emotion behind the song, it is vulnerable, but it's big in its vulnerability. And I think that's something that I love about Lizzo. And she can be so, so vulnerable and broken sounding on this song, and yet still so herself and not have been very confident in her brokenness. And so that's what I wanted the core changes to really feel like. And also just, you know, classic.

Isn't that nice? I hear it too, you know, there's this duality to Lizzo of like super confident, unbeatable top of the world and then also like scared, vulnerable, raw. That's why it's so successful, right? I think to be really strong leader, you have to show what's going on for you. You've got to be real. Yeah. She's both.

All right. So right now, for me, the music and the message are really connecting on this song. No doubt. And when we go to another song, we're going to go to totally new territory. We're going to go a little bit more to that, like, big empowerment song. Nice. We're going to go to Juice. Yeah, right on.

I feel that rhythm guitar, man. I love that opening line. If I'm shiny, everybody going to shine. Do you know that line? From that song, or is it from something else? It's from something else. It's from some friends, actually. Wait, what?

Do you know, call your girlfriend, the podcast? Yeah. From their words, they say, Shine Theory is a practice of mutual investment with the simple premise that I don't shine if you don't shine. They wrote it to describe a commitment to collaborating with, rather than competing against other people, especially other women. Yeah, wow, no, I didn't shine theory.

That's awesome. So I love that she has a sort of activist message in this song. But the song is also, it's about getting loose. It's a really fun dance song, right? The video is this sort of like 1980s style. Everyone in neon spandex doing exercise. It's really, really fun. Totally.

It looks like it's all VHS style. I want to figure out how do you build a sonic landscape that evokes that quality of getting loose, you know, javing on that juice. Yeah, I don't know, but I'm very curious to find out. Let's talk about funk loops. Cool. This song is built off of one looping chord progression.

And, you know, I think some people might think, hey, you just have four chords gone in a circle, the entire song. That's not very creative. I'm going to counter. Okay. I guess it's really hard to do that and do it well. Yeah, yeah, because...

Make it boring. The ear gets bored. So check out these chords. I play them on guitar. Juicy. Very juicy. Ooh, sweet. Tangy.

Yeah. Those are pretty chords. So we base this loop off of just wonderful, thick, beautiful sounds. Yeah, that's lush. But then you need to animate them. Okay. You've got to bring them alive. So let's see how we do that.

First, you got to double. it up. Add a second guitar. And then add some chorus. Now we're in the 80s. Yeah. Put some reverb on it. And delay it. There we go. And now the thing is animated and alive

and even with those beautiful juicy chords start to wobble and move and have a life of their own. Totally. We never get bored of it. The loop, of course, would be incomplete if we didn't have a consistent groove. And a super,

funky bass line. Don't you want to hear that bass again and again? Yeah. Wow, it just gets. I love hearing those elements kind of add up because you just hear it just gets funkier and funkier and funkier. One really smart thing about a good loop is that there are moments where everything converges. Right.

So if we listen to that kick drum, the kick drum is sort of like the beat that continues and recurs. Yeah. And then the bass starts to fill in all these extra little notes, starts to make it feel syncopated. You have this guitar line which is cycling through chords and then a baseline which is moving stepwise, linear, upwise. And these different contrasting motions mean that our ear just wants to keep on hearing it because each thing is moving slightly differently at every given moment and there's just no other way of saying it, but it's juicy, right? It's a funky loop.

I'm with you. Like the repetition of a single loop is simple, but the complexity within in each of those loops keeps you engaged. Yeah. Keeps you, like, actually rocking out pretty much. So for me, this is another example where I really felt like the message and the music, they converge. Yeah. I see where you're going with this. Yeah.

Let's go to tempo. Good. I'm a thick bitch. I need tempo. Fuck it up to the tempo. Fuck it up to the tempo. Fuck it up to the tempo. Slow songs.

I'm a skinny house. Fuck it up. To the tempo Fuck it up Fuck it is Fuck it up Boyfriend watching Oh now you want to knock a love

Get on this ride baby You don't have to Fuck a lot This album is stacked man Do you know who's on that track? That's with Missy Elliott Isn't that amazing? Yeah

Oh it is It is something Now where have we gone This is I don't have any juicy chords No this is very minimal Yeah I've got thick bass

Sparse in a way Yeah I mean it sounds like a missy track Yeah totally It definitely feels like a great sort of throwback. I tried to produce this one and just to figure out like what is going on. How'd you do?

Well, not a bad facsimile. The thing that I realized about this is that the baseline is kind of just like thickly moving down into an almost like inaudible part of the sound spectrum to where you can only feel it. Like there's not actually a note that you can sing that is exactly the note that is exactly the note. is happening. It's just sliding. Blonde. Beyond pitch to just pure vibration. And I mean, this song is about like, I need a big song to dance to.

Yeah. I think that, I think it succeeds. I, yeah. I mean, I'm like, my whole body is just like kind of pulsating after listening to that. So we've moved between three songs that feel like the same person with, self-empowerment messages, but also like a fun, upbeat, positive attitude, which is Lizzo. I mean, having spent time with Lizzo, that is her. What you see is what you get.

But the music is kind of all over the place. And so when we come back, I want to look at, is there any sort of common ground here? And what do we do? How do we conceive of this shifting genre-bending music? What does it mean? 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.

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Yeah. And you have two jobs. Okay. The first job. You need to say what genre is it. And given the title of the song, which should be the hook, which should sort of, you know, encapsulate the message. Yeah. Do they match?

Okay. What is the function of that genre and that song? Okay. So let's just start with the first three songs that we've covered so far. Let's go back to because I love you. genre one word four letters soul yep there's another word which i put down extra points one word four letters another four letter word that describes this song there's trap in here too oh oh okay did not see that coming trap horns and trap hats they're both in there huh so she takes the soul

sound and she contemporizes cool yeah yeah and we've talked a lot about the song but soul what's the function of this genre for this song. I think that that message, you know, doesn't index any particular song, but it feels like of that era, you know, like try a little tenderness. And even maybe like more modern iterations of that soul song like Rihanna's love on the brain. Sort of this like bitter, this certain bitter sweetness. Yeah, absolutely. Part of that maybe because we're also getting the shuffle feel. Yeah, that six, eight vibe, totally. And that that really does take us back into it. a soul world.

Okay, let's keep on moving. Let's go to the second song we listen to. Let's listen to Juice. Okay. Name that genre. Oh, man. What's, okay, what's the right word? Like, electro-funk or something?

Yeah, sure, yeah. Funk pop. Yeah. Electro-funk. Why not? Disco, late disco. It's like that middle ground between late disco and early R, like 90s R&B or something, whatever that is.

Yeah. And it's function. And it has another modern analog, I think. Like Bruno Mars comes to mind, too, right? Who's also mining that terrain. Definitely. Function for juice? I mean, it makes me think of like Zapp and Rogers sort of...

It's funky. You're supposed to be moving. Put the bounce in your step. There you go. All right. I answered for you, but I'll give you a point anyway. It's a generous game show. Okay, and let's go to tempo.

Yeah. Fuck it up to the tempo Fuck it up Fuck it up Boyfriend watching Yeah just like Hip hop I guess Tempo for me is

Get Your Freak On Right Right Is that a genre Missy is it the genre Of Missy Elliott Missy putting it down I'm the hottest round

I tell your motherfucker Y'all can stop me now Listen to me now So Get Your Freak on is Borgh Because there is Oh deep Okay wow

There's Indian instruments on the track. And this actually has a very similar syncopated rhythm and a very similar melody, but played on synthesized elements. I actually think the melody here is Lizzo playing the flute and then it being completely played with in a sampler and whatnot. But yeah, so we'll call it Missy Elliott Music slash Bangra slash. Cool. The early 2000s hip-hop. Yeah, I love it. And it's function. Bongra, when I hear that, I just think of like, intense. intensely syncopated, percussive, meant to just, like, get you out on the dance floor, get you sweating, get you, like, exercising all of your cares and troubles away. So, yeah, move it to the tempo.

Okay, great. We're going to go to another song. This is Jerome. Another one that the ex-ambassadors worked on with, uh, buzzet. Back to soul, right? Aretha, Otis. They're like, absolutely this, this 60s, that 6-8 shuffle vibe is they. again. Definitely. We've got a daily double. There is another genre in this song.

Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Play it again. What is? I got nothing. I'm a creep. This is the same chord progression as creep by Radiohead. No, we got to chat. We got to bring up the producers. We got to me. We got to challenge this. A chord progression is not a genre. I object. Tushay. I think you're correct. The genre is not there. Although if Missy Yelly gets her own genre, but Missy Elliott does stand alone. A chord progression is not a genre.

I think you wanted to show off. I do love that core progression. I would say function-wise, back to the soul, this chromatic core progression, song about a lover, Jerome. What's the function? the function here so using soul here i think again in this sort of you know there's this sort of nostalgic lacrimose kind of vibe here yeah and it works so right now i'd say i'll give you four for four uh my daily double is bad uh let's just do a couple more this is cry baby honestly i don't cool wow that's fun i mean once again i feel like i'm

not going to name a genre but an artist okay who is prince Oh, yeah, yeah. But, you know, what do you call that? 80s, new wave? I don't know. It's like... You know, I think this is rock and roll. This is like...

This is the extension of rock and roll into the 80s. And actually, I definitely hear the prince the most. Yeah. There's so many print songs I hear in here. But I also heard Led Zeppling. Start with the open riff, do a little blues thing, but also funky. Here, check it out one more time.

Here's Lizzo. Okay. There's a little riff. Totally different tempos. Slow it down. But I hear the royal... Orleans in there from Ledzheflin. On your face, there is doubt.

I'm skeptical. I mean, no, no, I think rock and roll is accurate, but I think it's that, you know, late 80s, princified version of rock and roll. Right. And then crybaby, genre function. Crybaby is a little more of maybe one of the more aggressive tracks, a little more confrontational. So tapping into the sort of, yeah, the energy and spunk of like 80s Prince Rock could work for that. Yeah, definitely. You said you like Prince, yeah? Yeah. Do you recognize the

intro to tempo? Cool. Certainly reminiscent of the beginning of when doves cry, right? Yeah, cool. You know Lizzo worked with Prince. Yeah, yeah. I remember talking to her about that because when we, you know, we're analyzing Make Me Feel by Janelle Monet with her. That was like. like another very print indebted track. I mean, it's like, it's wild to do this because you see you, I'm just thinking now about how much his fingerprints are all over the sound of, of music, of our time now. And somebody who also moved across genre, though I think you had a maybe identifiable production style for different periods.

There, there was funk, there was soul, there was R&B, there was rock, there's, there's I mean, they're romantic ballads. There is everything in there. Totally. Let's just do one more. Yeah. Let's play exactly how I feel. Nice.

Featuring Gucci Man. That's exactly how I feel. Nate, name that genre. I'm going to say New Jack Swing. Yeah. Old school hip-hop, new Jack Swing. Something about those, bah, those orchestral sampled hits is just screams like mid-90s are. and B. And exactly how I feel. What's the function of that genre in this song?

I don't know. What kind of question is that? It feels right. It's exactly how I feel. It's like, that's how she's trying. You are so out at sea right now, man. You've given up on the game. Yeah. But at the same time, I appreciate your point here. I think what you're And beautifully arguing, though, like, what new Jack Swing has to do with exactly like I feel I don't know. But I do, I do get what I think if I may be so bold, because this is cool, there is a sort of overwhelming and even just like multi-genre approach to this record, right? But and that maybe exposes the record to criticisms of like what is the sound here? Like, what are you going for? What are you trying to say?

And the answer, I think that you're proposing is that, like, something different on each track. And each track is motivated in that genre choice by its particular message. Yeah. So Lizzo herself says, I'm the genre. My voice is the genre. I fuse to let you all put me in any genre at this point because all you're trying to do is place me somewhere because I'm black or place me somewhere because I'm a woman or because I make bops. Place me somewhere to make you feel comfortable. Damn. Yeah.

I just want to ask you, like, what do you think of the function of genre is anyway? Man, you are asking some, some, this is the hardest game show I've ever been on. The game is over. Now we're just chatting. The function of genre, I suppose to provide a sort of set of sonic and, you know, cultural expectations for a listener that an artist can either then, you know, take advantage of or maybe subvert in some ways. Right. That's exactly what I was thinking about.

Well, usually my sort of like more cynical mind will be like, it's a marketing term, right? Sure. Because genre is a marketing term. We've talked about this in the past. But the thing that I actually went to first was it's a way of paying respect to a tradition. Right? Yeah, yeah, totally. Like if we think about like Preservation Hall in New Orleans is all about paying respect to the earliest era of jazz.

Yeah. But I think I liked how you framed it as well. It also is something that gives us a framework in which to understand it. Right. Which is exactly what Lizzo is pushing against and saying like, I don't put me in a box. I find it's so interesting that she says, you know, I am the genre. And one thing that did strike me listening to all these examples is that she is the sort of continuous factor here. Right.

Her voice. is so distinct and it's a manifold voice. She's like Kendrick or Nikki Minaj or someone who's able to have these different tones and timbers. And it's really exciting to listen to her because she's not just doing the same thing constantly.

That is, yeah, I think that is precisely why I'm drawn to this. It makes me think about another function that genre sometimes serves, which is something to skip every other album so that it looks like you're progressing as an artist. And one of the things that we're hearing on this album

on Lizzo's album is she's changing genre every song. And in a couple of examples, especially this picture for example, it maybe was unsettling in a way of hearing that read perhaps as inauthentic.

To use the words as like, you know, shiny soul pop, pointing out sort of first major label album. It's sort of like a coded way of saying they're like inauthentic, right? By moving between all these things, you don't have a consistent voice. True, true, yeah. Right.

I was doing some research on how are people listening today? And I bumped into this interesting report by a company called Chart Metric, which is kind of trying to do like an updated billboard thing and providing really detailed analytics on how people are listening to music. Gotcha. And these maybe are suggesting that the way that people are listening to genre is also changing by examining Spotify playlists. And they look at the rise of new categories,

which don't fall in traditional genre boundaries. So, you know, hip-hop, pop, funk, whatever. They talk about context-based playlists. And these are playlists that happen around either an activity, like running or working or napping, or something that might be time-related. So Women's History Month, or even the time of the day, There are playlist for, you know, having a nice Sunday morning brunch.

Right. Right. Yeah. And so some of their most popular playlist right now are peaceful piano, beast mode, songs to sing in the shower, relax and unwind. And this is a personal favorite? Yeah. No, it's not really. Your favorite coffee house. Mm. Isn't that funny?

Yeah. The, like, your favorite coffee house is an algorithmically generated, mass distributed coffee house. soundtrack. Basically, Starbucks. So, and what's amazing about these

context playlist, though, is that at least when they reported this, there had been more people subscribed to genre-specific playlists, but there was greater growth

happening in the context-specific playlist. But even more interesting, is that while more people followed the more traditional

genre-based playlists, the followers didn't follow through and actually listen. Right? They're like, oh, I intend to

to this thing and actually the context-based playlist are listened to significantly more. Now, if we're thinking about songs that pump us up, songs that pump us up don't have to just be New Jack's Wing, right? They could be Prince's funk, pop, electro stuff. Yeah. Right? Yeah, no, totally. It could be Bangra.

Could be anything, yeah. So I think what we're seeing is a way in which listeners' habit, are inviting more fluidity of genre within a single body of work. Now, it doesn't mean that we're not paying respect, right? Like, I'm, at least for me, I hear a lot of respect to naming and citing references in Lizzo's work. I love, you know, the doves cry little homage. Bringing in Missy Elliott. Like, these are things to say, like, hey, these are my references.

This is what's important to me. even though she's comfortable moving on to another genre and the next song, but she's going to do that genre well. Finally, I started to think about, like, is this actually a new phenomenon? Are these boundaries that strong? Yeah. And it took me back to one of the most important forbearers in pop music and someone who Lizzo names as one of her great influences, which is Aretha Franklin.

Cool. And I think she's really following in the footsteps here of Aretha, who in her sound, and in her message, there's significant connections between the two. Aretha was an outspoken feminist. She had many songs about self-empowerment. She just celebrated black beauty and especially women's independence,

especially at an era where it was even less socially acceptable and there were real dangers to speaking out about all of those issues, as there are today. In looking at Aretha's music, though, it made me realize her body of work is So broad. All over the place. Right.

Like, in order to really understand the genres that Aretha crossed between, I thought an interesting way of listening to her music would be to just grab the intros. The little sections that tell us, hey, what are the timbers of this song? What is, what are the genre connections that we're going to make? Maybe even before the voice comes in. Everybody knows respect, right? And it's a commensurate soul track. I mean, here we have a soul song.

song, right? And it makes sense, like, connected to the gospel tradition. Yep. And asking for respect for women. She just deserves it because of who she is. Uh, it's the, like, they're perfectly connected. And yet, then you go to her second most popular song, I say a little prayer. Yeah. This is a Burt Baccarac song. Yeah. And it sounds, this is like sort of Bossa Nova, lounge music, right? And I don't know, like, I know that I'm maybe I'm being a little ridiculous and like, I don't mean to force, like, the genre. sound must absolutely have an overlapping function. But I do hear like, it makes sense to like say a little prayer. It's like quiet. It's internal. And the, the sound of Basanova lounge music is a

perfect fit for that message. And far from the sound of respect, right? Yeah, totally. I just want to give a few more examples of how these careers moving across genre bear a lot in common. Let's listen to Chain of Fools. Chay, chain, change, chain, chain. Oh, funky. If you just played that opening guitar line, yeah. That's like John Lee Hooker, blues,

but it's also like Credence-style rock. Yeah, a little hillbilly country there. And I feel like Chain of Fools, it also connects for me to Sam Cook's chain gang, another blues, and it makes sense where chain of fools, love song, blues, She's, but also rock.

Like, where she evolves constantly. Yeah. I hadn't gone into much of her later career. I really didn't know Aretha's later work. Yeah, I don't know. I wouldn't say I'm very familiar with it. Do you know she collaborated with George Michael? I think I was dimly aware of that.

I haven't heard in a long time. I knew you were waiting for me. So I hear this George Michael, Aretha Franklin song. And it's like, this is like 80s R&B, right? Like, you know, it's like Whitney-esque. gets a totally different thing. Will Phil Collins and the, yeah.

Yeah. And, you know, for me, this sort of says like, what it says to me about Aretha is like, she is, she was always with her time and always progressing. Never stuck in any sort of one sound. Yeah. I want to play just one last song called

Sisters Are Doing It for themselves, which she did with the arithmetic's Annie Lennox's group and actually on this track, we'll also hear three of the heartbreakers. Nice. Here's another feminist anthem from Aretha, but moving from Seoul into 80s, new wave. This sounds like the talking heads. Yeah, a little bit.

It's is energetic, it's exciting. And I think, again, communicates progress, right? It's like women are doing it for themselves and what sounds like a new way here and trying to demonstrate this sort of self-conscious movement towards a new identity in the 80s and updating her message to the sound to be heard by people to resonate.

Right on. So I want to wrap this all up. Yeah. And I want to end with a little bit of the interview that I had with Sam Harris from ex-Advasitors, asking him about his experience with Lizzo and how she is contained or not contained in my genre. Nice.

Everything is pervasive in pop music in general or whatever, but I know for, you know, one of the early conversations that we had, you know, about the type of music that she ended up making with us that leaned kind of more towards the soul stuff, she was so dead set on, like, making sure that she was not put in a box. You know, she was like, I don't want to just be the big black girl who can sing, you know, who can, like, sang. I want people to know that I am multifaceted, that I have men. many different layers.

And that is something that she set out to do on this record to show people like all the different sides of herself that she can do anything. And she can. And she did. I don't know how it leads into the rest of the pop world. But if she's kind of at the forefront of that, then, you know, like that's so awesome.

Hearing that, it's so interesting, even to hear from one of her collaborators, like about, you know, that specific goal of not being sort of boxed in, makes you listen to this album in a different way. And I feel like she really succeeded in that respect. Yeah, absolutely. I agree. I will say, obviously, we invited Lizzo to come back on the show

to talk about this album. She's busy. She's quite busy. She's on tour right now. Yeah. And we hope that she'll join us again because I would love to hang out again. I think getting to focus in on the music

and discover what it has to say for itself and hearing a bit from her collaborators is a great way of understanding the work, seeing how it exposes its own message from within its own way of sounding and speaking. And in listening to those three tracks in depth and some of the other tracks more cursorily, I really do get the sense that she is earning

the right to move across different sounds in order to communicate what needs to be said. And we can see that it's connected to a larger history and her idols like Aretha Franklin who made these same moves decades ago. And we also might be hearing that it's influenced or primed to succeed in how people are listening now, which might not be as bounded by the aisles

in a record store with particular labels. I really like this record. Yeah, me too. I'm going to listen to it a lot more coming up. Ditto. And when I do, I'm going to kind of be thinking about the genre play that's here and what it means about Lizzo as an artist and what it means about music more broadly. Switched on Pop is hosted and produced by me, Charlie Harding. And me, Nate Sloan. Our producer is Julian Weinberger.

Our engineer, Mix and Master, is Brandon McFarland. Our community manager, Sarah Terry. Our executive producers are Nashat Kerouah and Allison Rocky. You can find more episodes of the show on the Apple Podcast. app, Spotify, Stitcher, Radio Public, basically anywhere you find podcasts, we're there. And you can talk to us on social media at Switched on Pop on Twitter and Instagram.

One thing we'll post up there is a playlist that I've created of all of Lizzo's tracks on her album and the genre influences that I was hearing on each of them. So if you want to sort of traverse the history of music by listening to Lizzo, you'll find that on our social media accounts at Switchdown Pop. Right on. We'll be back next week with another episode.

And until then, thanks for listening.