Switched on Pop - Oscar Week!: La La Land ft. Genevieve Koski

Episode Date: February 24, 2017

With the Academy Awards around the corner, Charlie and Nate try something new: a break down of the movie musical La La Land through two of its key songs, "City of Stars" and "Start a Fire." These numbers, one by composer Justin Hurwitz, the other by Hurwitz and John Legend, might represent the two poles of the film's dramatic structure. But a deep dive into their musical construction reveals leitmotifs and left turns that leave us staggered at the different levels to La La Land's score. Special guest Genevieve Koski, deputy culture editor for Vox and co-host of the film podcast The Next Picture Show, joins to help our hosts journey through the uncharted terrain of cinema. Featuring: • Start a Fire - John Legend • City of Stars - Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone • John Legend - Ordinary People • Backstreet Boys - Everybody • Ariana Grande - Side To Side • Die Walkure, The Ring Cycle - Richard Wagner • Engagement, Planetarium, Epilogue, Mia + Sebastian's Theme - Justin Hurwitz • Générique, Dans le magasin de parapluies, Final - The Umbrellas of Cherbourg • Tie Fighter Theme - John Williams Check out Genevieve Koski's writing on Vox and her great podcast on La La Land here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Empecies to start your period of month in Shopify. coms bar records. 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. Download the eater app at eaterapp.com. It's free for iOS users. Welcome to Switched on Pop. I'm musicologist Nate Sloan.

I'm songwriter Charlie Harding. And today we are joined by a very special guest. We have Genevieve Koski, a writer for Vox and a spieler on the fantastic podcast, the next picture show. Genevieve, thank you for joining us. Thanks for having me. Excited to be here. And today we have enlisted Genevieve's expertise because we are going a little far afield for our humble pop show. We are going to talk about a movie, a movie called La La Land, which is nominated for a whole bunch of Academy Awards, including Best Song and Best Musical Score.

and while this film doesn't immediately seem to have a connection to our world of pop music, I think as we start to break down a few songs from this modern day movie musical, we'll actually see that it actually has a lot to tell us about our relationship and a kind of understanding of pop music through a very old medium like a movie musical. Cool. Yeah, at this point we'll just say spoilers lie ahead. So if you're trying to see every Oscar movie in advance of the ceremony, stop listening right now. Yes.

So to kind of orient those out there who have not seen La La Land, Genevieve, we were hoping you could take us through a super fast synopsis of this film. Sure. La La Land follows two struggling artists. call them. Mia, played by Emma Stone and Sebastian, played by Ryan Gosling. Mia is an aspiring actress, and Sebastian is a jazz purist who's kind of making his way through the city's music scene. And they meet, they fall in love, they sing and dance, and their ambitions kind of cause them to drift apart a little bit. And yes, yes, it diverges from the classic movie musical tradition

in its ending. Yes, in a departure from the norm, this movie, musical doesn't end with our protagonist choosing one another, but in fact choosing their own individual artistic dreams. So this movie musical about a jazz purist, I think that's a perfect description of our main character in Ryan Gosling. Nate, do you know anything about jazz purists? We'll, no comment. We'll get to that.

Okay. And again, it's like, what does this movie musical with a sweeping orchestral score and a plot about a jazz musician have to do with the world of pop music, you might be surprised. And I kind of I didn't even think of this necessarily when we started researching this piece, but there's actually a pop song right

in the center of this film. Yeah. It might not be the first thing you think of after seeing it, but there it is sung by one of the most legit pop stars you could ever hope to have John Legend. Right, right. This ain't a movie no. No fairytale

conclusion, y'all. It gets more confusing Every day Take it slow We're just ordinary people We don't know which way to go I'd love to start this discussion of La La Land by talking about actually the one song

That's a true outlier in the whole movie Let's talk about Start a Fire The John Legend performed and penned He was a collaborator on the writing of that song along with the film's main composer Justin Hurwitz. Maybe first we'll just listen to a little bit of this erstwhile pop song. All right, Nate, take us into it. Start a Fire by John Legend, or as this band is called in the movie, The Messengers.

Genevieve, what role does this song play in the narrative of La La Land? Well, in the film, John Legend plays a successful musician who kind of has one foot in the jazz scene, but is not a purist the way that Sebastian is and has been able to make a go of it as a jazz fusion artist, which we know is obviously a much more popular road to fame. So he is an acquaintance of Sebastian and invites Sebastian to play with him in this group. and at, I don't want to say at Mia's urging, but it kind of in order to show Mia that he can be a professional and have a grown-up job, he takes this gig, and they end up being really successful, and he ends up playing keys in this successful pop jazz fusion band. And when we hear this song in the film, it is when Mia is coming to see Sebastian in this new role. And she hears it in, comparison to the music that she knows he makes and he loves. And she's pretty horrified in the moment. It's a very interesting moment in the film that this song is, it's a question that comes up a lot when discussing this song in the film. Like, is it supposed to be bad? Are we, you know, is she horrified because it's bad? Is she horrified because it's just so far afield of what she

knows Sebastian's music to be? So it's very interesting that legend and herwits were able to kind of thread that needle with this song. Yeah, that's so true. Like, it has to be a song that makes Emma Stone's character, Mia, react with horror that her BF, Ryan Gosling, has to play this music. So it can't be like too good, but it also can't be such drek, I suppose, that we can just completely reject this experience out of hand. So I think threading the needle is exactly.

the right kind of phrase for what they have what the narrative function of the song has to be well there's this great moment where she asks him hey do you like that music that you're playing and he's like i don't know do you and she says yeah i like that music it's fun so it certainly is supposed to act as an upbeat pop song and i think it does act that way let's talk about the song now because the way it starts is pretty brilliant from a dramatic perspective definitely because we as listeners and viewers are watching the character and play this very delicate piano intro that's full of jagged, sophisticated chords that suggests perhaps this is about to erupt into the kind of pure jazz that he would celebrate. Right. In underlying it, you have John Legend's vocal is basically a blues, right? He has this

refrain, and that refrain keeps coming back over and over, and so it's definitely a reference to an older style of music. and the vocal as well. Right. So we go from this piano intro and it's like there's a question mark, what is going to happen? And then immediately we see that, no, this is not the pure jazz

that Ryan Gosling desires. This is the fusion pop that he sort of has to hide from, he has to literally in a later scene hide his face during a photo shoot with a hat because of how embarrassed he is to play this music. I do love the transition into the modern pop song

is this way, over the top reverse synthesizer, bizarre thing that pulls us into a new reality. Yes. So now let's move into the song itself. I think the first lyric kind of establishes that this is a pop song. It goes, I don't know why I keep moving my body. And somehow that lyric is something that you would never encounter in a musical. It just doesn't belong.

I think part of the reason is that the word body doesn't. really rhyme with anything. Isn't this kind of funny though, Nate, right? Like the whole conversation about them not being professional dancers in the film. And yet the song seemingly acts as a performance of a piece rather than as a musical number. And yet it's obviously making a reference to, I don't know why I keep moving my body. Why do these funny people keep on dancing in this movie? Well, I did not think of that metal level. So we've got this line, I don't know why I keep moving my body and to me that immediately puts us in this pop universe because it makes me think of all the pop songs that have kind of a similar line it's at once like very generic and also so belonging to the

world of pop it takes us back to the back street boys maybe everybody move your body which is a brilliant rhyme because it just rhymes the word body with body and more contemporarily it indexes against Ariana Grande and Nikki Minaj's side to side, which starts, I see you there with that body. That's how it starts, yeah. This is like typical pop pablum, right? And yet, is there something, I oppose this to you, Genevieve and Charlie? Is there something to value, something of worth in this pop song that is kind of meant to be,

in many ways, a bad song? Do you find some musical value here? I think it's one of the most memorable songs of the film. Really? Yeah, but I mean, it's supposed to be. People argue about this, but I think as a musical La La Land only has a handful of discrete songs that work and that you are going to be humming or singing after the fact. And I really do think this is one of them.

And even as overblown as a production is, and that is obviously a choice, you know, to make this seem a ridiculous song. I think like kind of on a base level as a kind of an horror pop song, it works, you know, for me anyway. You think it succeeds in becoming a catchy but not particularly specific, I guess, pop song. Yes, it is to use me as word fun. Yeah. And I think catchy is probably the keyword here because even divorced from all those, you know, crazy synths. background singers, that hook is memorable. The chorus is memorable just on its own. Sir Charles,

what say you? Absolutely. This is a great pop song. It operates on a number of levels beyond just pop song. I think maybe subtly actually does act as a musical number, but on the pop song level, it's got great build that you don't know exactly where it's going to go. It has all sorts of cool references from 80s guitars to Stevie Wonder-style horns and backup singers. And it has a great refrain in pre-chorus and all. It just, it operates as a pop song very successfully. It hits all the marks. And I will say as a movie song, the production actually, I think, almost works as a joke to a certain extent, the way that things keep getting added. And I can remember in the film. You see

like Mia's faces, the synth comes in and then the guitar squeal happens, and then the background singers start and just every time her eyes just get like a little wide, like, whoa, whoa, what's happening? So just the way the song builds, is reflected in the film and kind of creates its own joke in the

film. Right. Yeah, that's, I love, I didn't think about it the way that, but it's totally true. In so many ways, Sebastian's character's transition from playing piano at the start of the song to rotating over to this incredibly tricked out synthesizer that is called, I look this of, it's called a R-O-L-I-C-B-E-B-A-R-A-R-I-C-B-A-R-A-R-A-R-D.

This is cutting-edge synthesizer technology. You press down a key, and then you can manipulate the sound after you press it down by pressing harder or wiggling your finger. It's pretty cool. And yet, as Sebastian plays it, he has this, like, incredibly disaffected expression on his face. I like that. As the song progresses, it's kind of him shedding all of his standards with every further indignity that this song throws at him. Well, I like that you use the word standards, Nate, because I think that there are so many references here to standards. And that part of what makes it operate successfully is this play on expectation.

right, we cannot escape the narratives of jazz purism, right? He hammers it really hard into his relationship as like, you have to go listen to jazz. It's essential. And so we open with this sort of jazzy number. It turns bluesy. It turns poppy into like feelings of neo soul. And finally we have this crazy synthesizer that we've gone through a whole progression of references to other traditions before we finally hit that really out there moment. It's a cool build.

Yeah, I completely agree. And thinking about it, the kind of genericness of the lyrics is at once something of a joke in the song. The chorus being, we could start a fire, come on, let it burn. We could start a fire, let the tables turn. That doesn't really mean anything, but it sounds good. I disagree. And do you disagree? But I suppose at the same time, that is kind of the point of a lot of pop music.

It's to be generic and universal and not too specific. It serves such a different function than the rest of the score to this musical and to most musicals, which need to be incredibly specific, incredibly relevant to the details of what's happening to the characters in that moment and to push a plot forward. By contrast, this song doesn't move anywhere. It is perfectly content to kind of stay in place. Oh, but I disagree. I think this is a wolf and sheep's clothing.

You mean this song has a dramatic thrust to it? Absolutely. It is acting as a pop song. as a performance in the film, really almost in this sort of interludey way, right? Some relief, just something nice to listen to. It might say, obviously, plot-wise, it says something about his transition as a musician, but I actually think lyrically there are lots of references to the narrative progression of the characters. Wow.

Okay, you're going to have to talk me through this nonsense. I'm very skeptical. Well, okay, so you're totally right. These lyrics are universal and kind of empty. Feel the heat of passion, baby. we could start a fire. Right? Yeah, I rest my case.

Anybody could sing those lyrics. But at the same time, like, they say that his next line then is let the tables turn, let it burn, baby, I feel so good tonight. So one of the scenes, not far from this pop music scene, is when they sit down to have dinner together at the table. And it is sort of a back and forth scene where it begins as a, we haven't seen each other in so long, and it's great. You've been out on tour.

I'm so glad you've come home. So when it's to be home. And then the tables turn, and it turns into this nasty fight. Why do you care so much about being light? You're an actress. What are you talking about? And literally, the meal that he's cooking at the time burns. So let the tables turn, let it burn, baby. And the lyric, I feel so good tonight, I think it's really important that this is, I feel so good tonight.

Right. He's talking about the heat of passion. The lyricist here isn't saying, we feel so good tonight, or we are celebrating our love. It's actually about the sort of individual feeling of, hey, I'm feeling good. And right when he says, I feel so good tonight, Sebastian takes his solo. I think this is actually Sebastian's song. It's a Wolf and Sheeps clothing. It's actually trying to indicate what's going on for him internally.

I love that. Wow. Dan Brown. You just da Vinci-Coded this song. Genevieve, you're buying this? I love tying that song to the dinner scene that comes after because that is such an important scene. And it's a very interesting scene just for how it's filmed. And if you think of how that scene is filmed, the apartment is lit very blue-green. But Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling's face are lit very orange. Oh, wow.

That's true. Yeah. There's just like a heat emanating from them, the way that they are lit inside of this very blue room. They could start a fire. Yep, yep, exactly. So putting that interpretation of the song with the visual of that scene just, that works

for me. I can't say that it was intentional, but this interpretation for me works with the film very well. I'm still on the fence, but I am coming around. I think most of the choices in this film are actually more intentional than we could imagine. And I think that if you go into this movie thinking,

oh, everything is going to turn out great in the end, you just haven't listened to music because the music operates as foreshadowing throughout the entire thing. Well, I completely agree. And at this point, I think it would be wise to take a brief break, recollect ourselves after this epiphanic moment we're all experiencing. This moment of passion. And speak a little further about the principal, kind of dramatic fulcrum in this movie

between these two characters and their relationship with each other and their relationship. and their relationship with their dreams, their ambitions. There is a lot of musical foreshadowing that helps us as viewers kind of internalize that conflict. So let's return and talk about that through the lens of another number from this movie, City of Stars. 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.

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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. Welcome back to Switch on Pop. Now we move away from this movie's pop delicacy, the John Legend fronted start of fire,

and move to some more typical fare from La La Land. And this is a song that reappears throughout the movie, as so many of its themes do. It's called City of Stars. And I thought we could listen to the version that's sung by our two leads, Sebastian and Mia. Let's listen to them singing together, City of Stars. City of Stars, are you shining just for me? In the bars, and through the smokescreen of the crowded restaurants, yes, all we're looking for is love from someone else.

Somebody's eyes to light up the skies to open the world and send it really a voice that says I'll be here and you'll be all right. In City of Stars, we are very far from the world of Start of Fire. Yeah. This is not pop music anymore. How would you describe the musical qualities of City of Stars in comparison? It's kind of a melancholy love song, I guess. It's written by Ryan Gosling's character, Sebastian. It's the only song of his we actually hear.

It's the only expression of the talent we are told he has. So that right there is important, I think, just for, a character perspective, but from a musical perspective, I mean, it's their duet. And the fact that it is kind of sad and melancholy and is not a joyous or necessarily a celebratory song, but yet still being a song that features a connection between the two of them, I think foreshadows their relationship, the arc of their relationship of it. And then obviously just the lyrical content speaks very strongly to the setting and the character's individual dreams.

Spot on. Yeah, absolutely. Let's talk a little about that lyrical content. What is the central image of a city of stars? Charlie, you're a Los Angeles resident. Tell me about the city of stars. Well, despite the movie poster and album cover, which shows them dancing in Griffith Park

at the top of the city where you can see the fully lit night sky full of stars, That almost never happens in Los Angeles. We are famous for our smog. And so the City of Stars is obviously a reference to the creative thrust of the film about aspiring creatives that live in the city, people who are aspiring to be stars. And Mia and Seb are aspiring stars and the people all around them, certainly beginning in the opening number, another day of Sun. Everyone here is an aspiring star. It's a city full of aspiring stars.

But I guess City of Aspiring Stars wouldn't be such a good rhythmic. choice so city of stars i think does it a little bit better so yeah and and again we come back to i think this central tension i guess in the city of stars yeah trying to become part of that firmament to become one of the luminous beings but most of them are dimmed out by the city itself yes and to make a connection with another person at the same time and how those two things can often seem at odds so i feel like this song captures both sides of that duality. Yeah, for sure. And in some ways, it's built to do so.

It's built using one of the most classic forms of musical theater going back to the 1920s. It's called an A-A-B-A form. Enlighten us. So in our A section, we have City of Stars. Are you shining down on me? Mm-hmm. City of stars, are you shining just for me? And then we have a repetition of that, City of Stars.

Are you shining down on me? City of stars, there's so much that I can't see. And then we have this contrasting B section. And this is the part where they start singing together. Dan, da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da That's the one Charlie wow I love I love your rendition of that This is the part where they sing a look in somebody's eyes to light up the skies to open the world and send it reeling So I think these two sections the A section and the contrasting B section

Kind of represent the two poles of the movie Right The B section is that trying to find a connection moment. Right. And the A section is the more kind of lonely pursuit of success and fame and artistic success and satisfaction. He literally says, are you shining just for me in the A section? City of Stars. Are you shining just for me?

It's individual. Later on, the duet is about togetherness. Yeah. And again, this works as thematic foreshadowing because in the end, Sebastian and Mia, They have a happy ending with their own dreams, with their artistic dreams, but not with each other. And like the soul selfish, it's about, are you shining just for me, you know? And then the other person is brought in as a support. Right.

It's like, I'm looking for someone to say, I'll be here and you'll be all right, to have the stars shine down on both of us together. Right, right. The stars are shining just for me. and I need you to support me as the stars shine down at me, kind of, which is a very cynical reading of Sebastian and Mia's relationship. But if you kind of cut to the heart of it, like their connection is based on their artistic dreams, and that eventually wins out in the end.

It's their dreams, not their relationship with each other. Yes. And at this point, I feel like it would be prudent to turn to some of the influences that La La Land is assimilating into pieces like City of Stars. Because far from the world of Neo Soul and contemporary pop that we heard in Start of Fire, City of Stars seems to be drawing from an entirely different tradition. And Genevieve, you have expounded at length on the antecedents for this film. And one in particular seems to be pretty unshakable.

It's the film The Umbrellas of Cherbourg. Can you tell us a little bit about what you think Lollahland is drawing from this, let's see, 1960s French movie musical? Yes, the Umbrelsyborg is a 1960 French musical by Jacques de Me with music by Michelle LeGrand. And it is a sung-through musical recitative, I believe, is the term for it. it's not like a direct comparison because there are not necessarily musical numbers and Umbrellas or Chaborg the way there is in La La Land and many of the other classic Hollywood musicals it is calling to like singing in the rain or even like swing time and top hat and stuff like that

umbrellas is almost has more in common with opera which is I think kind of funny in that in Umbrella's opera is kind of brought up as a musty old art form the same way that jazz is invoked in La La La Land. But the real strong comparison point, the reason that Damien Chazelle, and pretty much everyone who talks about this movie in terms of film history brings up Umbrella's Schaborg, is that it has a very sad ending in which the central couple does not get together. The first act of umbrellas is kind of showing us how in love they are. We meet them when the central couple, Guy and Genevieve, are already deep in the throes of love, and he has to leave to go fight the Algerian war, and she has left behind, and their love doesn't last, and then in the end,

they come together, they meet each other again around Christmas time when they each have continued on with their lives, and it's just this very sad, melancholic reunion. So the finale of La La Land is very strongly evoking that. There are lots of other little things from umbrellas that it is evoking, but that ending and the tone of that melancholy ending is the strongest connection for sure. I think there may be another connection, though. And I love that you brought up the operatic references in Umbrellas of Sherbourg, which we don't have in La La Land.

Instead, as you point out, we have jazz, is the fusty old music. But nevertheless, there is a certain operatic technique present throughout law. La La Land. And that is something called light motif. Okay. So, Nate, are you taking us on a classical masters? We are. We are.

It's inevitable. Yeah. We're going to go back. We're going to go back. This is why I came here. We're going back to a composer almost as controversial as La La Land itself. Ricard Wagner, the great late romantic composer. He would not have liked us to call his pieces operas, though.

he was adamant that they were not part of that genre. What did he call them? He came up with his own term, music drama. Oh, please. I guess I'll respect his wishes and call it a music drama. One of his pioneering things that Wagner added to these music dramas was this technique called light motif or guiding motive. In his sort of quest to reinvent the genre of opera,

he replaced the aria, which was kind of like actually the pop song of the art of the opera. He replaced it with this just kind of endless melody. And in order to structure this new form, he drops in these repeating light motifs, different themes that are associated with different characters or different emotions or sort of different dramatic points of the music drama. So every time you hear those,

you immediately get this association. association with a certain character or a certain emotion or a certain dramatic plot point. Do you have a favorite Wagner light motif? I think the installment of his ring cycle, the epic four-part series of music dramas, The Valkyrie, which features the famous ride of the Valkyries, but also has this brilliant use of two themes, one for the character Siegmund and one for his paramour Zieglinda. They each have their own theme. When they meet, the two themes actually come together in this kind of musical counterpoint,

just as the characters are. It's completely beautiful, except for the fact that those two characters happen to be brother and sister. So it's a little awkward in that respect. But musically, you know, unimpeachable. Didn't John Williams borrow heavily from a lot of Wagnerian light motifs to make his soundtrack to the famous space opera. Oh yeah, absolutely. Musicals and movies are totally

built on the back of this technique in order to sort of thread continuity through a drama musically, you use this technique of light motif. And La La Land is no exception. Charlie, you've been hunting down the light motifs running through La La Land. What's the most important musical

theme in this movie musical. Probably the one which is directly named, which is Mia and Sebastian's theme. That's what's playing when there's a planet. And how does that one go? Yes, exactly. That's what Sebastian slash Ryan Gosling is playing on the piano in the beginning and kind of lures Emma Stone into his club.

It's what's playing in the planetarium. It's what returns in the epilogue. This love theme kind of goes throughout the movie musical. What I want to propose is that there's two main themes running through this musical that correspond to the two main dramatic threads here. The two that appear in City of Stars, the ambition and love. And are these reconcilable? So we have the love theme, this like languorous three, four. Honestly, it sounds, thinking about it now, it sounds very French, doesn't it?

Da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da. Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh my God, Michelle LeGron would like be all over that melody. So that's our love theme. And then we have this other theme that pops up again and again. It pops up first in the opening number, another day of the sun, then again in someone in the crowd,

and then appears again and again instrumentally. It goes bup, bu, bu, da, da, da, da, da. By contrast, this is very rhythmic and strident. And to me, this is like the ambition light motif. You know, this is like, I'm going to make it, I'm going to follow my dreams, no one can stop me. It's like always moving forward and pressing always upward. It's not the kind of languorous, impressionistic, indulgent love theme that Ryan Gosling is want to play in like dimly lit cafes by himself. This is driving.

This is ambition. And then in City of Stars, something. something remarkable happens because we get a version of that ambition theme. Whoa. In what we were calling the B section of City of Stars. Look in somebody's eyes to light up the skies to open the world. Wait, this is strange because the B section of cities of stars is supposed to be the part where it's about the two of them. It's about love.

And yet the theme which is underlying it is about ambition. Yes, exactly. What? Oh, it's the whole movie. So my question is, does this mean, is this trying to suggest that they have found a way to reconcile the two for a moment? Or does it suggest rather the opposite that these two can never meet, that they're not reconcilable? It makes me think of Genevieve, in your podcast, The Next Picture Show, in your discussion of La La Land, you talk about this scene, which is really unlikely in a musical, which is where, they navigate and actually talk about their relationship sitting up over Griffith Park.

Yeah. Where are we? Where is Park? Where are we? I know. I don't know. What do we do? I don't think we can do anything.

Because when you get this. If I get this. When you get this. You got to give it everything you got. Everything. It's your dream. The relationship in Lala Land, it's a pretty, modern relationship, you know, like their careers are taken into account and they do talk about

their relationship. And it's not that, you know, necessarily like contrasted, for example, with the umbrellas of Sherborg where the characters are in love when we meet them, we're told they're in love. And there's this a love that will last forever. And that's pretty much it. So La La Land engages narratively, and it sounds like musically, with this idea that just because a character is in love, that is not their soul quality. They're still a character and they still have their own dreams and desires and ambitions and faults. And La La Land incorporates that kind of split. You know, you are not just subsumed into a couple when you are in love. You still are your own person. Yeah, I'm just, I'm just digesting that as a life lesson for a second right now.

I didn't know that the music was operating at the same level, though. That is so cool. I think it's supportable because you have to recognize that B section of City of Stars where the melody goes da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da as somehow being fundamentally composed from the same

cloth as da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da- which I think is an argument you can make. You can basically layer those two themes on top of each other and they work perfectly together. I think this is definitely intentional. This is a Rhythm Cotiv that is playing on this idea of that initial ambition set up in the opening number another day of sun where everybody's hoping to be a star. Yeah, I'm buying. I'm buying, Charlie. You're buying your own argument? Yeah, I get high on my

own supply. What can I say? Congratulations. So let's wrap up by thinking about La La Land as a modern movie musical. And in this sense, Genevieve, I'm curious, like, based on the discussion we've had, do you see La La Land, it has certainly been talked about as being the kind of modern iteration of this classic Hollywood formula. Is that a fair assessment, or is this musical actually doing something different? It's not just pastiche. It's kind of maybe blazing its own trail a bit.

I'm curious how you feel about that. I think it's more the latter than the former. It is definitely doing its own thing within a broader context that allows Damien Chazel to call to a lot of other musicals and not even just musicals. I mean, Habel without a cause is a big reference point in the movie too. But by setting it in L.A. and giving it this Maloo of the Hollywood musical, he's able to tap into a lot of both the emotional aspects of the Hollywood musical and the filmmaking aspects.

Like, this is, like, a movie musical is a ambitious thing to film. And Chazelle does a lot. Like, there is a lot of filmmaking in this film. So he is calling to those reference points that inspire him in the filmmaking without necessarily trying to update those reference points for a modern sense. Thinking about what you just said, in a way, movie is like a great pop song even though it probably would not want to be described as such because like a great pop song it's like a perfect blend of form and function because the music kind of supports the dramatic narrative in this unique way that ties it all together and makes it

a really satisfying movie to watch whether it will hold the test of time I don't know but man when you were watching this it is really fun and I wonder if part of the reason is because of how closely blended the musical narrative and the dramatic narrative are. I mean, by that, you know, interpretation or viewing Start a Fire is kind of la-la land in miniature. It is the song because it starts out, you know, calling to this jazz tradition and then it just piles up sonic reference points, I guess you'd say. And it becomes a really fun, enjoyable thing that, as we discovered, maybe has its own down. but is crafting that depth out of other sources. Wow.

One of the things I was curious about Nate was your take on the use of jazz, because I think when I first saw this film, I was like, oh, this is a movie about jazz that's telling me to go listen to more jazz. Well, no one likes jazz, not even you. I do like jazz now because of you. And this is what I thought you wanted me to do. But after listening through the soundtrack, I realized that jazz is really just a plot device.

And that musically, yeah, there are references to jazz, right, that even their song, City of Stars is in an old song form, that A-A-B-A-Song form that you might have heard more an old style jazz songs. The soundtrack, the music here, isn't operating as jazz music. It's doing something entirely different. It pulls references from all sorts of places, from Vognarian Opera to French film to John Legend Pop songs. Right.

And I realize that, I guess I care less that it is a film about. jazz. Yeah. What do you think? I mean, I think talking about the role of jazz in this movie would probably be an entirely separate podcast. We would have to release. But yeah, it's, I think it's fallacious to think of this movie as like a jazz soundtrack. It's not. It's, as you said, many things with a little bit of jazz thrown in there, but it's not. This music isn't jazz. The discussion or the internal conflict within the jazz world of what the philosopher Bernard Gendron has called on one side the moldy figs and on the other the modernists is a powerful discussion.

Incidentally, Sebastian slash Gosling. Gosling would be a modernist. Legend would be a moldy fig in fact. Wait, really? Yeah, because the moldy figs, so this is what's really, so follow me down this garden path for a second. So this all goes back to the rise of B-Bit back after World War II, which was a very new kind of jazz challenging, cerebral, angular, hard to follow.

It was such a departure from what had been up till that point of popular music. I mean, jazz was in many ways kind of the defining American popular music. That changed after World War II. Jazz became an art music. Jazz became autonomous. Jazz became a discourse. Jazz was no longer popular music, and it's just gotten further and further from popular music since then. And so that's the modernist sensibility, right?

That's Gosling. Gossling is so suspicious of commercialism and popular success in selling out. He's a modernist true to heart. Conversely, the moldy figs, in a way, are the ones who believe in the pure sensual and visceral pleasure of jazz as a popular music, which represents a good half of the century, so it's no small portion of that repertoire. Right. That sort of temporal stylistic divide that jazz musicians have to navigate works so well in this movie kind of standing in maybe again for the same kind of love ambition dichotomy that these characters have to face. I don't know why I keep moving my body.

I don't know if this is wrong or if it's right. Could I update your metaphor and suggest that perhaps John Legend is, like a rehydrated moldy fig. There we go. Because he's updating. Yeah, I'm all for jazz becoming popular music again. So unlike Sebastian, I celebrate the fictional John Legend and his messengers attempt to bridge that gap. It sounds like you're of a mind with Chiselle, who is a big jazz aficionado in his last film, Whiplash, was set in the world of jazz musicians.

too, although at a music school. But as a director, as an uteur, this is definitely something Chazelle has made a little bit of a fixation of his. It's kind of the bridging of the past and the present when it comes to this musical form

that he really knows and loves. I think in some ways that this film is even more successful because the jazz played in a lot of whiplash is sort of more of that more complex, discourse of the music. And here he's uniting the poppiness of original jazz music with the early Hollywood cinema. And the pairing, I think, help bridge the divide for audiences that may not be as accustomed to the music. Well, jazz opera, neo-soul, French film scores. The musical

palette of La La Land is rich. I recommend now go to see this movie with your eyes closed. just listen and see what is revealed. It seems like after breaking this down with you, Charlie, and our special guest, Genevieve, there is a whole world of music criticism embedded within this movie. I'm glad we got to tease some of it out, and I really want to go see it again now. Once again, Genevieve Kosky, thank you so much for joining us. Oh, it was great. I'm a big fan of your guys' show, so I'm very excited to get to bring some of my

film criticism to your music criticism. It's like peanut butter and chocolate. In the case of this very specific movie. And I definitely want to plug to encourage you to go watch the next picture show. Go listen to the next picture show. If you are into film as you are into music, they do a great job breaking down old movies as they connect to new movies. Really fun, also on the Panoply Network. So go check it out.

Charlie, should we take it out? Let's take it out. Switched on Pop is produced by me, Nate Sloan. And edited by me, Charlie Harding and Bill Lance. Our design is done by Luke Harris. You can reach out to us on Twitter or Facebook at Switched On Pop. And find episodes on whatever device or platform or thing of a bob you use to listen. Switched On Pop is a proud member of the Panoply Network home to such great podcasts as Backstore, an amazing history show.

Go check that out. And while you're at it, check out Genevieve Koski's The Next Picture Show, a brilliant breakdown of modern film with its historical antecedents. And lastly, stay tuned two weeks from now as we dive deep into the glitter and doom of Katie Perry's chained to the rhythm. Attention, Spotify. Has arrived on the new Good Girl Jasmine Absurd of Carolina Herrera, a fragrance intense with character Gourman and addictive. Imagine a jasmine emvolventy, Toffee caramelized,

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