Switched on Pop - Pop Drops and Chipmunk Soul

Episode Date: August 25, 2016

A strange syndrome is wreaking havoc on the voices of our biggest pop stars. From Rihanna to Justin Bieber, no one is safe from having their beautiful vocals chopped up, screwed down, repitched and repurposed. As dance music takes over the charts and new software grants vocal manipulation at the click of a button, this uncanny production technique has become nearly ubiquitous. But is this ultramodern sound really that new? We dig deep into the roots of the sound of the moment. Featuring: • Kiaara - Gold • Coldplay - Hymn for the Weekend (Seeb remix) • Hailee Steinfeld ft. Grey & Zedd - Starving • Calvin Harris ft. Rihanna - This is What You Came For • Mike Posner -I Took a Pill in Ibiza (Seeb remix) • DJ Snake ft. Justin Bieber - Let Me Love You • Cold Crush Brothers - MC Battle (Live) • Cerrone - Rocket in the Pocket • Wu Tang Clan - Tearz • Wendy Rene - After Laughter • Kanye West - School Spirit • Whistle - Just Buggin • Nu Shooz - I Can't Wait Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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It's free for iOS users. Welcome to Switchdown Pop. I'm songwriter Charlie Harding. And I'm musicologist Nate Sloan. And today I want to get right to the center of the question, which is, Nate, what's wrong with everybody's voice? It's weird, man. I don't know.

There's some epidemic. Do you know what I'm talking about? Yeah, I think I do. Tell me about it. I mean, I think you're referring to a pandemic that we're experiencing in which people's voices become distorted, pitched up, chopped, totally altered, and yeah, completely. So I'll just play you a couple of songs that I think exemplify this pretty well.

This is Gold by Kira. We also have Coldplay's hymn for the weekend, remixed by Seed. Also using this technique, Haley Seinfeld and Zed starving. Then of course we have Calvin Harris featuring Rihanna. This is What You Came for. A snake featuring Justin Bieber, Let Me Love You. And finally, we have Mike Posner's.

I took a pill in Abiza, also remixed by Seed. Nate, these songs are all on the charts right now, and they're all using the exact same technique. This is crazy, Charlie. I feel like we've stumbled in on some secret Illuminati DJ meeting or something. So we've got Cole play, Rihanna. Justin Bieber with DJ Snake, Mike Posner, Haley Seinfeld.

I also might add that there's a number of songs that we've discussed on this show that use this technique as well, from Robbins Call Your Girlfriend to Justin Bieber. Where are you now? Where are you now? That's what I think you have. So I think a lot of us are familiar with the technique of auto tuning as a way of distorting people's vocals, which is something that's like a very contentious issue, whether or not auto tuning is okay. but this is something entirely different. Yes. How do we describe this? What are we going to call this phenomenon? Well, people's vocals are being completely distorted in an entirely new way.

And basically, I mean, the technique is vocal sampling and taking a sample of a vocal and basically messing with it in software. Vocal sampling. Okay, good. So now we have a name for this and we can just begin to unpack this a little bit. And my theory is that if we thought that the saxophone was like the big thing, that was coming back and taking over mainstream music just a few months ago, the vocal sample is the new saxophone. It really does seem pretty ubiquitous. It makes me kind of worried, like, you know, are these singers okay? Because they sound increasingly out of sorts as you listen to them.

Basically, their vocals are warped, altered, distorted, and are we destroying people's beautiful voices? Some of our biggest stars? So what I want to do today is investigate this question. And look at how Can we recognize this sound? Why are people using it and where does it come from? Are you down for this investigation? I am deeply down. Let's get weird. All right.

So for the sake of time, I don't think that we can look at every single song on the charts. No. And I think that it would be fruitful to maybe select just one. Great. I haven't selected one. Okay. How are we going to decide? Well, I just played you a bunch of really hot tracks.

Yeah. And I want to see if you have a favorite. Oh, man, no pressure. Okay. You think it's Mike Posner? All right, let's do it. Yeah. Now I feel like it's a great.

I think it's a great choice. Is it though, Charlie? It's a beautiful choice. No, it's not. I failed. All right, let's do it. Let's take a listen to Mike Posner and get a sense of what's going on. Right on.

Okay, so that's Mike Posner's. I took a pill and a Biza. They're remixed by Sieb. I want to ask you what is happening here and what purpose does it serve? I mean, I have to be perfectly honest that we, in discussing this, we get into areas of the Arcan of musical production that I find completely mystifying. Okay, I've been studying up on this. Yeah, so maybe I can.

This will be, yeah, edifying for me. In the most rudimentary way, I hear in the breakdown of this song, the like amp-up post-chorus moment, DJ Sieb, I guess. guess, taking Mike Posner's voice and manipulating it into this kind of composed little melodic section where he like takes a little snippet of his voice and recrafts it into an entirely new melody. That's exactly right. How that is accomplished, I have zero idea. I am going to show you today. Okay, I've figured it out. Where does it land in the song? Okay, good question. It's, um, It's not in the original, right?

In that acoustic original, there's no section like this. I don't believe so. Yeah, so this is right after the chorus, right? Right. So in the original, it's all I know are sad songs. That's the chorus. Yeah. So in some ways, I feel like the chorus is almost becoming like a pre-chorus to this new moment.

Yeah, totally, because that is the central hook of the song. That vocal sample. main hook. So what's happening in a significant portion of these songs, which are using this technique, is that they are completely replacing the chorus. Yeah. We have lost the chorus. Where has it gone? It has dropped out. So I actually asked our web developer, like Mapitone, who is an absolute EDM fan and knows this stuff so well. What the heck is going on? So we'll actually go to him for the answer. That's awesome. Hi guys, this is Mike Mavitone. I do some development work on the Switch on Pop website, and it's nice to finally be on the podcast.

So I think the reason why I'm going to replacing the chorus is because of the similar song structure to what EDM has become. And that's sort of centered around the drop. The drop is something that we heard emerge in the EDM scene around 2010, along with the success of DJs like Steve Ioki, David Getta, and Swedish House Mafia. United States. We heard like the subgenre of progressive house start mixing with electro, and we heard a number of producers start to, quote, perfect the formula for the ultimate festival anthem. And the kind of song structure that we're hearing is sort of like an intro, a simple main melody, then a harmonized synth power chord melody, then the lead up, and then the drop. And then that all repeats itself a second time before the outro comes. The drop becomes EDM's version. of a chorus. Audiences expected to hit hard and at least twice in a track.

It plays for as long as the average person can sustain jumping up and down in place about 30 seconds and then gives the audience a break to rest before the drop hits again and the audience has recharge and can jump all around. That's awesome. So in short, he's saying that the chorus in electronic music is basically this section they call the drop. Right, which is the most moment where everybody's supposed to jump up and down and dance for as long as they possibly can until you're completely worn out. And the drop is basically this like heavy moment where the beat hits, the like crazy synthesizer moment happens. And that EDM producers are moving into the pop realm. They are taking this drop and sort of superimposing it upon the traditional

chorus that we expect in a pop song. Right. So in a remix like that, this, we're even hearing he's taking what is chorus material and actually making it a buildup to an even bigger moment which hadn't previously existed in the song. Right. Which is crazy because for like 40 or 50 years, the

chorus has been the most essential and important element of a pop song. That's the part that you sell, that gets stuck in your head that everyone sings along to. But this is sort of changing the script because it's putting the emphasis on this

part after the chorus. And it ends up, I think, being more important. I mean, it's the hook. As we said, like, the part that you sing is really just the buildup to the moment where you go totally mad. Okay. Yeah. Okay. So now let's identify. What are we going to call this new section of music? Oh, I hadn't thought about that. I don't know. I'm very into defining things right now. Okay. So we've got this, we've got this like more micro level musical technique of the vocal sample, which tends to be used in songs in the specific section that comes after the chorus. Maybe the post chorus?

The post chorus? Yeah. Okay. Yeah. You want to roll with that? But I feel like there's probably other songs out there that actually do have a post chorus, which is like a section of material,

which would be related to the chorus, but is not the main hook. Right. So then should we just call it the drop? I think it's the drop. Okay, great. That works. The pop drop?

Wow. This is the drop. moving from EDM into pop music. So it's a pop drop. Wow, I'm way into it. All right, we got the pop drop. So in summary, we've got these weird vocals happening at this moment of a song called the pop drop. And it's happening all over the place.

Yeah, precisely. You listen to Top 40 radio. Everywhere. Whether you're listening to your earbuds or you're just at the mall or whatever, and you're going to start hearing this effect. Yeah. Okay. So I think in order to move forward, we need to have a better. idea of what the heck is actually going on. Yes, that would be very helpful. Right. Like, you are a

profoundly better musician than I am. Thank you. But I think I want up you in terms of production skills. Yes. So you can describe the musical elements, but have no idea how the heck did they make that. Yeah. Here's what's going on. I need to ask for a volunteer. Well, since there's no one else in the room, Hey, I guess so. Do you want to introduce yourself? Yeah. Hey guys, I'm Nate Sloan. I'm from New York City.

So I have to ask something fairly embarrassing. Yeah. I need you to sing a song for us. Ooh, man. Okay. What do you, what have we? What's been inspiring you recently? Have you written anything?

Have you been listening to other songs? Do you have a karaoke favorite? What have I been singing? You know that Bobby Caldwell song? Open Your Eyes. No, what's that? Oh, it's so good. It's like, I see you in a lonely place.

And I will be by your side. Beautiful. No, that one. That's a goody. That's been suck in my head for some of it. Is this a recent song? There is a light. No, it's from the 70s.

Bobby Caldwell was like this kind of blue-eyed soul singer that for a while, like, never, like, never showed his face. Never made a music video. Never appeared on any album coverage because he was. white guy, but who was like really popular in like African American market. So, so his producers were like, let's just like keep it kind of a secret if you're like, no one that no one knows that you're white. Okay. Well, maybe this is an appropriate choice because we're going to continue to disguise and disorient the, the sound of, of his songs through your voice. Are you ready to give this a go? Yeah, let's do it. Okay. So to show what's going on,

let's take that line and see if we can turn it into. our own little EDM drop. Okay. All right? Yeah, let's do it. So the first thing I needed to ask for you is actually to, let's just, let's just hear that line one more time. Okay. Me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me. Okay, ready? I see you in a lonely place.

Now I will be by your side. Shout out to Bobby Caldwa. Okay. So what I want to do is I want to take that. that vocal that you played with me. Yeah, that's beautiful. I want to show, I want to show you what people are doing.

Great. Okay, so the first thing I'm going to do is just, I'm going to grab that file. Seed me. I'm going to seed you. Calvin Harris me. Basically, every modern computer software has a thing called a sampler.

Right. Probably the most popular that DJs are using right now, producers are using, is in Ableton Live. I actually once was on an airplane, and Scrilix was on the plane. And he worked the entire time on his Ableton session. When he got off the plane and walked down to the section to catch a cab in LAX the entire time he had his laptop in front of him working on his Ableton session.

No. Yeah. Dude. How have I never heard this story before? I don't know. I don't know. I don't tell you that. Wait, I have a lot more questions.

First class? He was in first class. I was not. Yeah. You were just spying on him through the great. Exactly. Wow. That's really, so he's a workaholic, huh?

Yeah. There's an amazing thing about this, which is that the audio production software that the biggest producers use is the same thing that, you know, any kid can get on computer at home. Right. That is kind of fascinating. Cool. So given this, this fairly affordable audio production software, which is like a multimillion dollar studio from the 1970s in a box, which you can install on your computer, you can very quickly and easily take someone's vocals and turn it into an entirely new instrument. Cool. I want to give it a go? Yes. All right. So here's what we're going to do. I'm going to open up this software called Ableton, where I make beats, right? Yeah. And I'm going to grab an instrument called a sampler.

All I have to do, I grabbed that piece of audio that you had recorded. Yeah, beautiful vocal. Grab that piece of audio, which you sang. And I have exported it into a wave file. And I'm literally dragging and dropping it into the sampler. It's true. And right away, just check this out. Yeah.

I see you in a lonely place. I will be by your side. Oh, my God. in an EDM track. Yeah, that's Chipmuck Nate. Charlie, since,

for those listening at home, Charlie literally just pressed a button and transformed my voice. But it gets worse. Okay. I see,

I see you in a lonely place. So that's a little bit more like what words like to do. Oh, yeah. Without doing anything, this software just took that and mapped it onto a keyboard.

Yeah. And repitches the entire thing. Right. So basically, you can play my voice as if it were a piano keyboard. That's exactly right. In other words, anytime you press a key on the piano keyboard, it triggers a different aspect of my voice. Yes. Yeah.

One of the cool things is that it also mapped out that sample so that it plays back at the same speed always. Typically, one way of changing the pitch of something is you just play it faster. right and this is where like if you hit the wrong button on your turntable you'll have the Beatles be like love you yeah yeah so it actually knows to play it back at the exact same speed with some fancy computer algorithms that I don't understand but it just automatically if I play you in your normal voice I see you or high up or low and we and it's worth stopping a second to just note how revolutionary that is. I mean, I can't even imagine how complicated that actually is to do.

It used to be if you increase the pitch of something, it sped way up, and if you decrease it, it slowed way down. So DJ's problems were always how do I get the beat to be the same and the key to be the same? Because they are basically two variables which are connected to each other. You can't control separately. Well, with

this software, all you have to do is hit one button and boom. That's crazy. Okay. So the next thing I'm going to do in order to make this more fun, Right now I can play that entire thing back But what if I want to chop up different elements of it? Yeah Right

So like if you look in like the Mike Posner song Right That part Yeah The Ui All of a sudden it's actually A different thing going on The first part is sort of playing around the same note

And then there's another part of what he sings Is playing Another silly Basically the first part of the melody is one syllable That's right And the next is another Yeah So say I want to play different parts of what you sang.

Right. Another good example is this is used throughout the Rihanna Calvin Harris song. Yeah. She goes, you, you, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, right? Okay, I go into slice mode. Yeah. Change the sensitivity. Yes.

I have to play with it for like one second. I have now mapped out every single word you say. Okay. into a different key and I can basically play it however I want. So this will give you an example, ready? Okay. I see you in a lonely, in a lonely place. Oh, that's awesome.

Okay, so this is the other part of the Posner song where you just take a little snippet of my voice. Yeah, so I want to make two different instruments of you. Yeah. One is going to be turning your voice into an instrument and the other is going to be playing different portions of the parts that you sang in a new arrangement. Right. And that's what makes the Pill and Abiza song so good is that it uses a bit of both of these techniques. So what I've done here is I've taken just a tiny portion of your voice where you're going,

and all of a sudden, we now have an instrument. Wow. Can I play? That's nuts. So I just played your voice. So all of a sudden, you're now an instrument. Yeah, that is surreal. Pretty cool. Very cool. What if we tried to just really quickly make a song? Yeah. Make a pop drop?

Make a pop drop. Yeah. That's probably not going to be a Calvin Harris pop dropper, a C pop drop. But let's just give it a go. Great. So the first thing we need. A vocal. A beat. We need a beat. We have a vocal. We need a beat. Okay. So to make a beat, I'm going to take some drums. We're going to take a classic 808. Great. And kick drum. Nice. Four on the floor. Snare. Yeah. Get that in the mix. Yep. That's the ticket. High hat. This is the simplest beat you could ever possibly make. Yeah. But effective. And we need a clap, right?

Yeah. But the clap is like less frequent, right? Yeah. Yeah. You got a beat. I'm shaking my hips, man. This is the simplest beat you can possibly make. Do we want to make it a little bit more interesting? Let's make it one thing more interesting. We probably need one.

another element. Yeah, some background synthesizers or bass or something. Let's make a bass line. Okay, good. All right. Great. We can only take so much of this. Okay. I think in order to make

this interesting, we're going to have to best with your vocal so long. Yeah. Yeah. First thing I think is we need to slow it down, right? All right, so here we got something. Cool. So that's my voice transformed into. That's your voice transformed. And then we'll add the last element. Yeah.

Okay. Okay. In summary. All right. All right. So, okay, this is very, this is fascinating and illuminating. So we've seen, we've identified the sound, the vocal sample sound. We've identified where it occurs in the song.

That's this post-chorus pop drop. Right. And we've broken down how it's constructed in Ableton in a matter of minutes. Right. I guess my next question would be, what does it mean? Why? Why? I think why because producers want to always have their own sound.

And in order to create your own sound, if you're able to make a synthesize something, which nobody else can recreate, you kind of have your own staple. Yes. Another way of putting it is like, you can't cover this song because you don't have the sample of Mike Posner's voice or in Calvin Harris to say, he has. Rihanna's voice. Like you and I can't just go and get a pure sample Acapella track of Rihanna's voice totally new. Though it's funny you say that because at the same time, if this is sort of a sonic signature of a DJ slash producer,

then it's also become sort of devalued as everyone does it. It's less easy to like stand out from the pack. It's a funny thing. I think the technique was originally used for people to stand out and now it is as it is so easy to do it has become ubiquitous. Interesting. In order to understand why it has become so ubiquitous, I think we need to go back in time and figure out where this whole thing started. Hell yeah. And we'll have to do that right after a message from our sponsors. Boom, and that's how you do it, people.

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Your period of Prue by a month in Shopify. coms bar records. Back to our investigation of funny manipulated voices,

overtaking choruses, creating this pop drop. I said, we were going to figure out where is this thing coming from? It might seem

ubiquitous on the charts right now, but it is by no means a new technique at all. No. Okay, cool. This is actually goes back in history. I don't feel like we have a segment for going back to the recent past. Right.

We've got classical masters if we want to go back into your esoteric stuff. Yes. What should we call this segment? That's a great question. Back to the future? The new classics. I hate that. Okay.

Wow. Okay. There's no bad ideas in brainstorm. but sure. Okay, what about... What if we alter it and make it modern masters? Modern masters, great. Modern masters.

Wow, that was like excruciating, but we got there. Okay. So we're going to look at both these techniques. We're going to look at the technique first of what happens when we sort of reorient the phrasing and the sound of someone's entire vocal track. Yeah. Which is sort of the second half of the Mike Posner part. Right.

And we're also going to go. into the history of how did this turning a voice into an entire keyboard happen. Yeah, very cool. So let's go back to the early hip hop days when in order to create a track, you had to have two turntables running two vinyl tracks at the same time, beat matching both of them so that you could replay the backbeat over and over. Do you know what I'm talking about? Yeah, I think.

Can we break that down a little bit? Okay, so basically early hip hop. Yeah. This is before sort of consumer sampler software that made it incredibly easy to repeat a section of a song in order for you to create a section where there is a constant beat. What you would have to do is you want to sample a record. Well, you play that record and you play a section of it and then you have to scratch back to it again. And so what great DJs are doing is oftentimes playing a beat scratching back to it so that beat is repeating. or having the same beat on two vinals at the same time.

So one goes, then the next one goes. They scratch back one. The next one goes. I mean, like, basically you had to be a total... Virtuoso. Yeah. To be able to beat match on the fly. Yeah.

Right. It's kind of like in the modern era, it's like if you had two versions of Spotify open at the same time, you like play one, pause, play one. Pause. In order to keep the music going. Yeah. Right. And so the section that was repeated, right, that would be the break.

Yeah. And so I've got an example. of an early break being played by the Cold Crush Brothers from 1981 in their MC battle and they're sampling a track called Sorone's Rocket in the Pocket which has a vocal sample on it

and you're going to hear that there is a manipulation of that same thing. Okay, cool. You hear it's kind of mellow in the background it's kind of mellow in the background but it sounds kind of like

this manipulated vocal right. Clearly it's like it has that chipmunk vocal sound right. Totally. So that is a sample of Saron's rocket in the pocket, which is actually a live track.

So there's a vocal. Let's just go back and listen one more time. To a cold crush, yeah. Cool, right? Whoa. And the reason why this is going on is that in order to get to the tempo they wanted, they actually had to play the turntable,

move it from a 33 to a 45, basically means the turntapel's playing faster. It's going to speed up the vocals. It's going to speed up the tempo as well. Right. So this is the earliest example I could find. of a weird, manipulated vocal and sort of modern pop music.

Of course, I don't mean to say that this is the first. I'm sure there are many other great examples out there. The world of sampling goes way back into the 40s and 50s, and with music concrete, and the whole academic music world, and certainly rock bands like Pink Floyd

and even the Beatles, we're using sampling techniques early on. So it's not to say this is the first time it's ever been done, but it's sort of an early indicator in the world of popular music and the world of hip-hop. and it's going to evolve from there.

Yeah. Good, good disclaimer, Charlie. Cover our tracks. Cover our tracks. Okay, so that sound, I feel like is the, what's a really smart word for like the first instance of something, which inspires a much bigger or something? The germ, the Don, the...

Yeah, this is... Harbinger, the... I think this is the... Herald. This is the creative germ, which fully block... in the 2000s, we're going to get there in a second, but begins to be even more prominent in the 90s. Sort of the godfather, I think, of this sound,

would be Riza from Wu Tang. And I want to listen to a track where this repitching of a phrase is very much in the forefront of the track and becomes a sonic characteristic, which will recognize even more as we move into the later era. So this is off their track tiers. And it's sampling a woman named Wendy Renee, her track called After Laughter, Came Tears.

So you can see they've played with and manipulated that vocal a little bit and made it the backing track to their song. Wow. Cool. Now, this sound, I don't know what you think, I think is incredibly familiar because this whole style from the early 2000s called Chipmunk Soul became the sound that you heard everywhere on the radio. Yeah. So I think the sound which was germinated through the Cold Crush brothers and evolved through Riza really was popularized by Kanye West. All road to lead to Kanye. So we'll just listen to off of one of his earlier albums, the song School Spirit.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Alpha step. Omega step. Kappa step.

Sigma step. Gangsters walk. Pimp's going to talk. Oh, hecky now. That boy is raw. A.k.a. St. Delta step. S.G.O. Step. Stap. Zeta step. Gangsters rock. Pemps going talk. Oh, heck you know that. Chipmunk soul. Right. And so I think we have a better idea of what that. Why does this sound exist? Well, it's coming through this early seed of records having to be warped and played at different speeds. Yes. Eventually, certainly, you know, by the time Connie is making this track, he's got modern software. Yeah.

That's doing it for him, but it comes through this old technology and through the realm of hip hop. Dude, everything new is old. Everything new is old. And it's not just like, let's make chipmunk sounds because it sounds interesting. It actually has a lineage to this earlier era. Right. When it was a technological necessity. Exactly.

So technique number one, manipulating a sample, changing, pitching, reorienting, the phrasing of a piece. Which we hear in, as I was saying, I think in the second half of the Mike Posner line. Second, turning a vocal into a keyboard. Yeah. Right, this is where we took an ooh section of what you were singing and mapped it out into the keyboard and you can play your own voice. Well, this two is by no means a new technique. It comes through many different genres. And we're going to start off with an early hip hop track called Just a Bugin by the band Whistle.

This is from 1986. Wow. And this is true. We love to do the things that we're not supposed to do. We don't mean robin, stealing or mugging. In fact, they'll take it seriously. We're only bugging. Wow.

So if this kind of repitching of people's voices and turning it into a synthesizer sounds like It's popular now. It wasn't just popular now. It was popular then. So from the same... That was 1986. That was 1986. And from the exact same year in 1986,

a pop track called I Can't Wait from New Shoes uses exactly the same thing. By the way, this is New Shoes, N-U-S-H-O-O-Z. So earlier on, you asked, why are people using the sound? And I had responded, well, I think it's because they want to differentiate and develop a producer style that is hard to copy. Right. Now that everybody's doing it, I wonder does this effect actually

fade into the background? Like, has we reached top pop drop with manipulated vocal sound? It does seem like we could be reaching a saturation point with this technique. Right. That it's so easy to identify. Yes. It becomes harder to know which producer actually produced it in some ways. Right. And yet

it does, as you pointed out at the beginning of this episode, it does serve a very specific function in this genre of EDM dance music, which is creeping into the mainstream pop charts. Right. It has crept in. It is there. It is there. Right.

It is taken over. And so that that pop drop section doesn't seem to be going anywhere immediately. Right. So maybe there's some other thing to insert into that song. Maybe that section rather. Yeah. Yeah. Whether it's a saxophone or, you know, a bassoon or a kazoo.

I don't know. Maybe there's some new sound around the corner. French horn is my favorite instrument. Maybe it's like a cat meowing. Yeah, why not, right? It could be anything. Yeah, interesting. No, I agree.

I don't see it going anywhere. There is this attraction to maybe the uncanniness of it. That it will probably be endless to just hear a voice doing something that a voice isn't supposed to be able to do as kind of transfixing. And that's the beautiful thing about it is it is impossible to replicate each version. Every time that somebody does this, it's going to take on it. different. A subtle characteristic to it. That's what I got.

That's our investigation. That was a lot of fun. Thank you for taking me down that garden path. All right. Pop drop. Yeah. Investigation closed. Switch on Pop was produced by me, Charlie Harding.

And me, Nate Sloan. Thank you for support from Mike Maffitone, our great web developer and part-time producer. artwork, as always, by the amazing Luke Harris. Switched on Pop is part of the Panoply Network, and you can listen to more of our episodes on Switchedonpop.com. Of course, anywhere you get your podcasts, in particular, if you go to iTunes and leave us a review,

it would mean a lot to support the show. And if you want to connect with us on the internet, you can reach us on Twitter at Switchedopopop. Otherwise, we'll be back in two weeks. And until then, thanks for listening. And big birthday love to Charlie Harding. Birthday, Earth Day, Earth. birthday birthday.