Switched on Pop - Purple Lemonade: Prince & Beyoncé

Episode Date: May 5, 2016

It has been a period of musical loss and celebration. On the same week we lost Prince, the world was gifted Beyoncé’s Lemonade. Both artists contain multitudes of musical traditions, collaborators and themes that weave throughout their song. In the first half of the show, we break down Beyoncé's “Hold Up,” an exemplary piece about Lemonade's main theme of marital distress. But the song is not as simple as it may seem. Its compositional restraint suggests more complex ideas about love. Speaking of love, Prince may have published more songs on the subject than any other recording musician. In the second half of the show, we speak with scholar and Musiqology contributor Matthew Valnes about Prince’s musical legacy. Featuring - Beyoncé - Pray You Catch Me - Beyoncé - Freedom - Beyoncé - Formation - Beyoncé - Love Drought - Beyoncé - Sorry - Beyoncé - All Night - Beyoncé - Daddy Lessons - Beyoncé - Hold Up - Major Lazer & DJ Snake - Lean On - Yeah Yeah Yeahs - Maps - Vampire Weekend - Obvious Bicycle - Beyoncé - Don’t Hurt Yourself - Prince - Musicology - Joshua Redman - How Come U Don’t Call Me Anymore - Prince - How Come U Don’t Call Me Anymore - Prince - When Doves Cry - Sly & The Family Stone - Thank You - Prince - Super Bowl Press Conference Performance - Marcus Miller - Jean Pierre (live at North Sea Jazz Festival) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G7Q8Ual3coM You can read Matthew Valnes' article "When Doves Cry" over at Musiqology: http://musiqology.com/blog/2016/04/25/when-doves-cry-prince-and-black-popular-music-history/ Also check out Behind The Linear Notes’s latest episode on the history of the Castrati featuring a clip from our episode on One Direction: http://www.betweenthelinernotes.com/episodes-1/castrato  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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I'm Stephanie Wu, Editor-in-Chief of Eater. We've just launched the new issue. 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 songwriter Charlie Harding. And I'm musicologist, Nate Sloan. I don't know about you, Nate, but I feel like we've had a relentless beat of

major releases and tributes so far in just the beginning of this year. And I am finding it hard to keep up. It is an embarrassment of riches, truly. I feel like I do best if I take time to let things sink in a little bit. Oh yeah, you're like a sponge, a sexy sponge. Thanks. So for the past two weeks, I've been really thoroughly absorbing Beyonce's lemonade, which we'll talk about in the first half of the show. And I have been steeping myself in Prince's seemingly infinite back catalog, which we will be listening to in the second half of the episode with the help of someone who literally wrote their dissertation on funk, scholar and writer Matthew Valdness. Beautiful. All right. Well, let's just kick things off. I am so excited to get into Beyonce's

new album Lemonade. Yes. It's one of those albums where I just wish that we lived in the same city because I would want to sit down and listen to this thing, track by track, and dissect every piece of it with you. A classic Nate Charlie listening session. Yes. Alas.

Getting into this album feels like an almost impossible task because it contains so many multitudes. Right, just to name a few, at this surface, there is a personal narrative. about marital infidelity and rediscovering love. Check. You can taste over your breath as you pass it off so cavalier, but even that's a test, constantly aware of it all.

There is incredible commentary on the multi-generational trauma of American race relationships and the modern black experience. Check. Open correctional gates in high desert. Open our mind as we cashed away oppression. Open the streets and watch our beliefs And when they call my name inside the concrete I pray it forever

It has a strong feminist narrative About self-determination In communal healing Check This is some deep stuff And on top of its many narratives It's also a work of multitudes It's in many mediums, right?

It's cinema, it's poetry, It's dance And of course it's also music I completely agree with everything you said except I have to point out that the plural of medium is in fact media. I'm such a jerk. I'm so sorry, Charlie. I appreciate that.

But to your larger point, yes, 100% this album is like galaxies wrapped in universes of sound. It's huge. There's so much there. And part of it is that there is a multitude of producers, collaborators, co-writers, unbelievable amounts of samples, and musically it moves across R&B, hip hop, rock, and even goes into the world of country.

Country! Who would have guessed? Well, that there is so much here and that we cannot bore people with a multiple hour-long episode of Switched on Pop. I think what we should do is instead look at just one song and see how it represents this

body of work which contains multitudes. And it is so hard to pick just one song, but I think the best candidate for us today is going to be hold up. Strong choice, Charlie. They don't love you like I love you. Slow down. They don't love you like I love you. Back up. They don't love you like I love you.

Step down. They don't love you like I love you. Can't you see there's no other man above you? What a wicked way to treat the girl that loves you. Oh love. They don't love you like you. I love you, oh don't love you like I love you. So, Charlie, why Hold Up? Why is this a paradigmatic track from this record for you?

I'm not sure I understood what you just said, but I'm going to infer. Well, so, okay, hold up is the second track on the album, and I think that it's an essential piece because it introduces some of the main themes. We talked about the sort of surface narrative of the album about, infidelity. And, you know, Beyonce sings, hold up, they don't love you like I love you. Like, yo, dude, what's going on? Why are you cheating on me? Those other ladies, they don't love you. Yeah. I love you. It's a heartbreaking hook. It's a heartbreaking hook. Part of the reason why I want to talk about this song, though, isn't because of its surface narrative about relationship. But instead,

I want to go into how there is more than a single narrative here that in fact we're getting multiple points of you aided by a long list of contributors. And, you, you're going to be a long list of contributors. and some really unique sonic musical elements. So I totally agree, but if the song can't have a single narrative necessarily, like what are the themes? What holds this song together? How does it cohere? The main theme that I'm hearing here is composed, frustration, and also emotional restraint.

I guess that's kind of two sides of the same coin. I like that, though. And it's coming across both musically and narratively. What we're getting is this song where we expect an outburst of anger, right? It's about cheating. And right, in the music video, Beyonce is walking down the street, smashing in car windows. Indeed. But what we're actually getting is this very interior song, a song about self-examination,

about looking at multiple points of view, about feeling jealous and crazy at the same time. So what I want to do here is see how she builds up this unique point of view with the music. and with the assistance of a bunch of collaborators. Excellent. Oh, they don't love you like I love you. Slow down. They don't love you like I love you. Back up.

They don't love you like I love you. Step down. They don't love you like I love you. So my first question for you is, what kind of song is this? Like what traditions is it pulling from? What are you hearing? Man, yeah. I mean, from the start, I hear something sort of distant and far away and like maybe even a little

cheesy. Oh, okay. Kind of this like, like kind of cheap tropical synthesized sound heard from a, from a distance, perhaps. Yeah, exactly. One of the producers on this song is Diplo, and he's known for borrowing heavily from Calypso and dance hall style beats. Indeed.

Right. So that's the first obvious thing that we're hearing. We're also very quickly hearing a cover, right? Yeah. I feel like this is actually a song we've talked about on this podcast. podcast before. We did. We spoke about Maps by the Yeah Yeah, Yeah, yeah, yeah's on our Max Martin episode because he borrowed that track to create a Kelly Clarkson song. Since you've been gone. Since you've been gone. Yeah. Exactly. Whoa, man, this this yeah, yeah's song is like the gift that

keeps on giving for pop producers. It does. If we go back and listen to Maps, it's also a breakup song. Oh, yeah, so it is. But Maps takes the breakup song in a really different direction. It sets up the expectation of some sort of giant moment of emotional release. Right. There's this big break in the middle of the song where guitars wail and this heightened moment of energy. Yes. Okay, so I ask you, what is this song?

And we hear a dance hall style thing. We hear a major rock song. But something feels really wrong to me if those are the two major references. Right. The drums and guitars and the wall of sound never actually. unleashes it all remains very tight and tense. Yeah, basically like the beat never drops. No.

Yeah, there's like this one four bar section. I always keep the top tier, five star, sexy loving in the car like make that wood like make that wood, highly like a boule of bark. We're getting this build up and we think, oh, it's the whole thing's going to drop right here. And it never does. No, it is such a fake out. So just as Beyonce is building up the expectation that she is lyrically going to let loose,

she says that she'd rather be crazy and the whole thing's going to blow up, musically we're getting the same thing. I think that Diplo and the IAS cover is setting up the expectation that this is going to be a really big explosive song. Instead, just as Beyonce is about to go crazy when she says, Oh, like being walked all over lately, walked all over lately, I'd rather be crazy. Hold up. They don't love you like I love you. Hold up. She's sort of saying, oh, wait, wait, back up.

Back up. They don't love you like I. Slow down. Let's reconsider. Oh, yeah. And then the music itself kind of tightens up. It all pulls back. Exactly.

Oh, wow. Okay. I'm with you. And I think musically, we are getting this influence from two of her other collaborators on the piece. And which of the 300 collaborators would those be? There's a lot. So I think we're getting a little bit from Father John Misty, who is a folks. songwriter and I especially think we're hearing a lot of influence from Ezra Koenig, who is the

main songwriter from Vampire Weekend. Yeah. And at this point, it's probably worth pausing for a moment to just say, again, Father John Misty and Vampire Weekend are on this Beyonce record. What? Multitudes, I'm telling you. Yeah. So Ezra Kainig back in 2011 actually came up with the idea for this song. It actually came out in a tweet. He was a... Like, what if we, you know, reconfigured the maps, yeah, yeah, yeah, song? Instead of saying, wait, they don't love you like I love you. Hold up. They don't love you like I love you.

Exactly. And he had worked on a demo for the piece, and it probably should have ended up on the 2013 album, Modern Vampires of the City, which was extraordinary, because it has a lot in common with that album, especially the opening track, obvious bicycle. I want to take a listen to that really quickly. Yeah, spin that. Watch the red sunnights. The LED still flickers in your eyes. Oh, you ought to spare face the razor because no one's going to spend time for you.

So obvious bicycle is basically a track about the morning after a giant rave. And this song has that sort of same musical restraint that we're hearing in Beyonce. It has almost this quality of like you've stood in front of the speakers at a rave for way to, long and the next morning all you can hear is like there's good. There are all these elements of sort of hints

of dance music. You can hear this like buzziness in the background but it's almost like a memory of the night before. And Beyonce we're hearing a lot of the same sort of thing. There are all of these allusions to dance

music. We hear this crazy siren. We hear sort of these drum build-ups. Right. We even hear these like calling voices in the background of the track. But it never comes into the foreground. It almost feels like

it's interior. It's inside of her head. Whoa. It's the rave inside. The internal rave. The rave or the rage inside. So we have all of these collaborators bringing these different points of view into this keys which wants to let loose and yet is always holding back.

And I want to look at specifically musically what's going on here to reinforce that same feeling. What you called earlier, I love this phrase, composed frustration. Exactly. I think it begins with just the very first thing that we hear, these plucking pizocado strings. Yeah, there's two ways to play a strained instrument, right?

At least two, I should say. One is to bow the strings. That's probably the majority. That is called Arco. But the other is to actually pluck the strings with your fingers. And that is called pizocato, which in addition to being a really fun word to say, is, like you said, a very distinct musical texture. That's much more controlled and quiet and tense than the... the alternative.

Yeah, they have a sense of actually being restrained. Rather than being let loose and singing wildly with a bow, they have a more muted quality to them. Yeah, indeed. I think it's mirrored most clearly in Beyonce's vocal. I think it's in the second verse. Imagine for a moment that you never made a name or yourself a master wealth.

They had you labeled as a king. Never made it out the caves to like that moving in them streets. Never had the baddest woman in the game of being your shade. When you listen to it, it's really clear that she's close-miked, she's speaking super quietly. It almost sounds like she's just woken up from a nap. You can hear all of the rasp in her voice. Oh, yeah.

I love this part. You can hear like every grain and every fiber of her vocal cords, totally. So we have this inquisitive line in the background. We have this interior vocal. And I want to go into how are they interacting? So if we look at the chords that the pizicado strings are playing, They sort of go up this line, and then they descend right back down the exact same progression. And so we're going up and then we're going back down.

We're going back up and then down. Just as in the song we're raising the expectations, hey, you're cheating on me, what's up, hold up, what's going on? And then sort of going back down to the progression. Ah, yeah. In classical, we would call that antecedent and consequent. You've always got so many good things for us. You're welcome. If that's what's going on with instrumentally, if you look at Beyonce's melody, I think we're getting the same quality.

When she starts to sing the chorus, it starts on this high note, right? Yeah. She starts way up high, descends down a little bit. Sort of building up this expectation. And then right in the middle of her phrase, she makes this crazy leap in her vocal. We know that as the tritone. Ah, the infamous tritone. The devil in me.

Yeah, Diabolus in Musica. That's it. I don't remember my music theory as well as you do. Well, I get paid too, so don't worry. It's not a lot. So what does this all mean? Why is this important? So what I'm hearing is that like that tension of the angst of marital strife that she's experiencing starts in this high melody. You experience her internal frustration with this bizarre interval where right in the middle of her melody. She gives us the most dissonant musical interval. You can hear that craze that she speaks about. And then rather than bursting up into a higher octave, let's loose and walks all the way back down the scale.

Ooh, yeah. Yeah, I totally hear that in that melody. It's like a crooked path. It's like trying to find itself as it slowly descends to the tonic. Just as the chords kind of sound like they're trying to find themselves. Yeah, yeah, okay, I'm with you. Going up and down, the cedent thing. What was the cedent thing? The antecedent and consequent. That's the one. Also the lamest rap duo ever.

So the song, like, I totally agree. The song constantly seems to be building up tension, and then rather than exercising it with some cathartic release, kind of says, nope, hold up, jup, bring it back in, everything's going to be okay. And this is a really interesting exercise, and it does leave you as a listener, I wonder, feeling a little like, okay, but I need that release. And I mean, are they making a mistake not ever giving it on this song? Absolutely not, because as I was saying in the beginning, this album is a work of multitudes.

There are so many themes, and there is so much happening musically. And rather than giving us a resolution in this track, Beyonce keeps us waiting for the next track. Oh, so you're seeing the whole album is almost what in the romantic era they would call a song cycle, where each song is its own musical universe, but then the way they relate to the other songs actually tells a bigger story. Absolutely. Here she's leaving us hanging and keeping us on the line

so that we listen to the next piece. don't hurt yourself. The major Jack White produced riff rock anthem with Led Zeppelin samples where she totally lets loose. Whoa, Charlie, I need that. I need that release. Give me a little taste. That's all you get. Oh! It's so great. It's so good. If you want to listen to the whole thing, you're going to have to listen more deeply to this entire work because, as I was saying, this album has so much on it. There's so much to experience. So I just implore everybody to go listen. to lemonade all the way through multiple times.

But don't go check it out just yet because when we come back after a short break, we will be celebrating the music of Prince and examining the way he fused R&B, funk, and rock to create one of the century's most unique artistic statements. 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 Tense. Every week, I'm sitting down with trailblazing women at the top of their game to discuss

ambition, work ethic, and the ups and downs that come on the path to achieving greatness. I have a few pretty tough questions for you. Okay. Ready? Ready. Do not sugarcoat something for me. No, no, no. We'll dive into their stories and get valuable insights from top executives, actors, entrepreneurs,

and other individuals who have inspired me so much in my own journey. Pretty tough is your front row seat to the women who, have demonstrated the power in being unapologetic in their pursuits. I hope you'll join us. New episodes drop Wednesdays on YouTube or in your favorite podcast app. Immigration may be Donald Trump's signature issue. President Trump is now targeting predominantly Democratic cities for ice raids and deportations. Dozens of protesters clashing with immigration and customs enforcement agents in Minneapolis Tuesday. We will begin the process of returning millions and millions of criminal aliens back to the places from which they came.

But what we want to do in this space is talk about America and politics beyond the current president. So what do most Americans think about deportation and border security, period? I think that Americans are definitely against the kind of violent displays that we've seen in the street from ICE. When it comes to the question of deportation, the answer is more complicated.

My sense is that people want order at the border. They don't like the idea of having no idea who's coming into the United States at any given time. The view on immigration from the bottom up instead of the top down. That's this week on America Actually. Every Saturday in your audio and video feeds. In order to dig deeper into the musical world of Prince, I have connected with Matthew Vaulness, a scholar and writer,

whose piece on Prince that recently appeared in the musicology blog is one of the best things I've read about the late musician recently. Matthew is on the line. Thank you so much for joining us. Oh, it's my pleasure. Thanks for having me. So I appreciate you joining us on this voyage. And as a fellow musicology PhD holder,

I think we have a special connection to Prince. Right. Yeah, he did, you wrote a song just for that, you know, stressed our discipline, which is always nice to come across in popular music. Exactly, though. I do wish my PhD was in advanced body movement. Well, don't we all? I assume that, you know, only Prince is the one who can have one of those. That's right. So, Matthew, in your piece, you talk about growing up in Fargo, North Dakota, and listening to the Prince song,

how come you don't call me anymore? And I was wondering if you could just talk about your reaction to hearing that song for the first time. Sure. Yeah. You know, I actually came to Prince's music sort of embarrassingly late, giving the fact that I, you know, grew up across the river from his home state. Right. I was listening to this album by this jazz saxophone, it's Joshua Redmond. I believe it was Timeless Tales for Changing Times.

And the last track on that record is a cover of how come you don't call me anymore. And I loved it. You know, I love Brad Meldow solo, loved Joshua Redmond solo on it. I got to track this. I got to track the original down and see what's going on. You know, and found out it was a Prince tune, you know, popped it in, had heard those first two chord, those first two piano chords, you know, that D-flat going down to that E-flat half diminished with the A in the bass.

And, you know, like I read in the blog, like I was fucked, that was sort of an unbelievable musical moment for me. What do you think it was about those two chords that sparked something in the young, Matthew Volness growing up in Fargo, North Dakota. Well, I think, you know, just sort of his, so the musicianship that he displays, you know, he's not just playing block chords on the piano. It's this, you know, really sort of pianistic sort of transition between these two chords. And in addition, you know, when you get that, for me, really, it was that A natural on the bass,

you know, it's not a chord that you find in a D-flat major, or it's not a note that you find in a D-flat major chord. So the sort of mode mixture, you know, the sort of introducing unexpected notes really sort of piqued my interest and caught my ear. And so I, you know, heard that, heard that chord and just needed to need it to hear more of Prince and his work after that. Well, I love that you came to Prince via jazz. Right. Because as we'll talk about later, there is Prince, maybe more than most pop artists seems to have a lot of sort of crossover appeal with the jazz world. And maybe it also comes back to one of the most compelling points for me in your piece where you talk about that in the aftermath of Prince's death, many commentators have been saying that he is known for breaking

down musical barriers. And in your piece, you're kind of like, yeah, maybe, but you could also say that what he was doing was actually kind of exposing the fact that sonic experimentation has a long history in black music and doesn't always... fit so neatly into generic boundaries. Yeah, that's absolutely correct that, you know, Prince's is just steeped in black music history. He was this incredible musician, this incredible improviser, incorporating all these different sounds and combining them with with funk grooves. He was really engaging with, you know, sort of new sound technologies that were around him at the time and that were being developed and really just sort of honing it

into into this idea of, as you say, experimentation and improvisation. sonic architecture. Beautiful. Okay. So improvisation, experimentation. I don't know if we could find all these things in a single song, but a good place to start could be what might be Prince's most popular song when Doves Cry off the 1984 album Purple Rain, and which I just checked is actually currently number 20 on the pop

charts at the moment. Beautiful. And I think if we listen to this, we will see some of those attributes that you just described, starting maybe from the very beginning of this song, which starts with this just ripping guitar solo. I mean, what can you say about that moment? I mean, it's, you know, sort of a perfect example of Prince's guitar chops. What I find really interesting about that moment in particular is, you know, so like he's clearly

this amazing guitar player. Right. And then the guitar sort of disappears for a while. And the song becomes this really sparse, almost austere funk track. You know, it's basically just prints and his vocals, his multi-track vocals, this two-measure drum groove with some synthesizer parts dropped in here and there. So it really sort of sets you up for this, you know, sort of explosive rock piece. And then you get this like really bare bones funk tune.

And I think it's a really nice moment. Yeah, that's true. Explosive guitar that immediately vanishes. And for a long time in this song, we're just left with, as you say, Prince's vocals and this drum loop. Right. At this moment, as you said, it's very sparse. And then something you point out in the article that is actually, to be honest, not a feature of the song that I ever recognized until you mentioned it, is I feel like we're kind of waiting for a certain instrument to arrive. Right.

A certain guest to come to this musical party. Yeah. I mean, throughout the tune, there's no bass line. I mean, here you have this funk tune that, like, it doesn't have the instrument that came to symbolize the genre in the 1970s. You know, we have to keep in mind that, you know, we're not so far removed from the 70s in 1984. And, you know, we've got this line of Family Stone track.

Thank you for letting me be myself again, which introduced this, or if not introduced, but popularized, this whole new way of playing bass. And it became, like, the focal point of that tune. So we've got that introducing the 1970s. Right. We take a trip seven years later and Bernie Warr L and P-Funk, you know, take the mini-mug and they put it in outer space and they give us, you know, he gives us this synthesized baseline that, you know, just comes to sort of encapsulate that tune. And then seven, you know, another seven years later, we all of a sudden have this cool funk tune that has no bass. Right.

So all of a sudden, one of the defining attributes of this musical style is just gone. Yeah. I kept waiting for it. I was like, no, no, there's got to be bass. Maybe if I get three minutes in, no bass, four minutes and no, and then I'm, oh, the song is over. There was no bass in that track. It's unprecedented. I actually just made me realize, too, that Larry Graham, the bass player for Sly and the Family Stone,

responsible for that famous bass riff that you just mentioned, I think was actually very good friends with Prince. They were. That's true. If I'm not mistaken, actually converted Prince to be a Jehovah's Witness after years of conversation. Yes, that is good. Correct. In 2001, he made the conversion. In 2001. Okay, so you can corroborate that. Yes. Okay. Yes. So, okay, so no base in this track. And so historically, uh, in, in it's in this

1984 moment, you point out, that's very bizarre. And then what do you, but why do you think Prince chose that for this track specifically? Uh, you know, it's always sort of difficult to speculate what, uh, what Prince was thinking. He was, you know, so far ahead of, uh, of all of us. But, you know, so the, there's this great dissertation that came out of UC. LA in 2008. It was written. It's written by this musicologist, Griffin Woodworth, who does a really great analysis of this tune. And so he points out that there was a baseline, you know, that Prince had a baseline for it originally and then stripped it away. And so he's making the claim that it's, that sort of the removal of the baseline really, sort of highlights the two-measure drum

group and really allows the listener to sort of focus on the multiple layers that are going on in that, in that drum section. Ah, okay. So this drum groove kind of takes the place of the baseline, perhaps. It does become, it does kind of become very melodic after you listen to it for a long time. Right. I mean, for a while, it's the, you know, the most prominent feature in the track. Listening to it, I wonder, I'm tempted to argue that Prince finds ways to

substitute for that low that low end range that is missing one of those places I feel like is in the vocal itself which is very very low yeah yeah I mean you know he's got those splits his voice into octaves during during parts of the track and you're absolutely right he's got that low growling part of his vocal line I would

absolutely agree with that that it's sort of filling in in in those moments but I guess what I'd like to sort of counter that with is that you know baselines have become very melodic and very sort of prominent and those moments with the with the vocal line while you're absolutely right

they're there they're there they don't ever sort of supersede you know this this drum group that's going on I accept your I accept your counterpoint okay so something you just said that I also want to highlight in this song is this what I think you described as the multi-octive

vocal range of print we should mention that this is one of the many songs on which Prince plays every instrument. Right. And every vocal, I think. Is that right? Yeah, that's correct. So then when we're listening to the chorus of this song and we hear harmonies stretching from the very low to the very high, those are all prints. Yes, that's correct.

That's all prints. So that means that, I mean, I was at the piano earlier. I think he sings from an A, two octaves below Middle C to an A. a two octaves above middle C? Does that, could that be possible? Um, I, it's certainly possible.

Um, you know, I will, I will trust your, your transcription, uh, skills, but yeah,

I mean, his vocal range is sort of ridiculous. A four octave vocal range. I mean, that is staggering. I can't. I mean, we think of,

I think of him as a very, as having a very distinctive falsetto. Yes. Um, on, you know, maybe like famous songs like Kiss and so forth. But on Dobs,

cry, we hear the full spectrum of his voice. It's like, it's kind of astonishing. Yeah, and, you know, he uses his voice to really sort of fill out those textures that are, that are missing from, you know, the instrumentation that you would expect in, in, you know, like a very punk oriented tune, like the basses we've talked about and, you know, like a horn section. He doesn't have a horn section. You know, he's got the synthesizer lines sort of filling those in. But yeah, really using that multi-tracked voice to fill out the textures at sort of key structural moments in the piece. Good. So I think we're getting back to this idea of experimentation. He's working within many of the boundaries of funk style, but in other ways,

pushing against them and maybe opening whole new doors within this style. Yeah, absolutely. This brings me to another kind of endlessly entertaining clip that you have unearthed from the internet. This is not Prince's famous Super Bowl performance. This is the press conference. This is the press conference before the Super Bowl. It's a great moment. You know, everyone talks about how great the Super Bowl performance is and no doubt it was phenomenal performance. But, you know, for for my money, like, I just think that press conference is fantastic.

I totally agree. So, yeah, okay, so this is maybe where they're announcing that Prince is going to play and he plays a few songs. And he does this thing that you point out that I just watched on repeat about 20 times. Can you describe how this performance starts? Sure. So, you know, Prince and the band walk out. and he steps up to the microphone. I'm not sure if I'm going to get the quote exactly right.

He says something along the lines of contrary to rumor. You know, I'd like to take some questions now. And he looks around and there's, you know, there's some reticence. And then some reporter stands up and starts to pose the questions saying, Prince, how do you feel about it? And then he just comes in with the first chord on Johnny Be Good, with that, you know, that little smirk that he has after the band comes in. Thank you, John, for those kind of words.

we hope we don't wreck your ears too much. Contrary to rumor, I'd like to take a few questions right now. It is, I mean, it is, it is completely jaw-dropping to me. And then, yeah, the playfulness and the kind of, I don't know, it's a great moment. But then you're right, he plays a song you might not expect Prince to play, Johnny Be Good by Chuck Berry. Right, yeah. you know, Prince was, didn't cover any tunes until, oh, it might be like the emancipation record in like 96 or 97. Like he was, you know, had written so much original material. And so when you get a chance to hear Prince play, you know, when you get a chance to hear him cover a tune, it's, it's quite the event, I think.

I agree. And I think this tune in particular resonated with the other things you were talking about in your article because it's a song that. is in many ways regarded as the, like, one of the real benchmarks of rock and roll music. And maybe, I feel like almost princes maybe reminding the audience that rock and roll is, in fact, black music is a testament to the diversity of black musical practice that you talk about. Yeah, I think that's absolutely right. You know, and he was, he did that again in his most, you know, the last sort of studio record that he released the hit and run. phase two, there's a, there's a track called Black Muse where he talks about, you know, all of the sort of musical practices in the musical genres that, you know, form the core of black music history. He talks about jazz, talks about rhythm and blues, talks about rock and

roll and soul. So I think you're absolutely right that he's, you know, placing, you know, rock and roll firmly within the trajectory of black music history. Right. And then I wonder, this might be too much, but I wonder if even if, if we, if we, except that maybe he is even reinforcing it later in that performance when he starts to do these Jimmy Hendricks style kind of wah-wah riffs and he's saying yeah Hendrix was rock too you know right yeah I think that's I think that's thought on there's there's one other beautiful clip that that you discuss in your in your piece that maybe brings this all home um which is of the the great jazz bassist Marcus Miller performing live, this long composition in the middle of an extended bass solo.

Completely unexpectedly, he starts to play when Doves Cry. Yeah, I mean, that's quite the moment. So it's from a live clip from, I believe, the 2011 Norsee Jazz Festival. And I was fortunate enough to actually be at that performance. And so, you know, just to sort of, it took a while. for me to really wrap my head around that. You know, here's this jazz bassist, this, like, incredibly accomplished jazz bassist, you know, soloing beautifully on this, on this tune, Jean-Pierre, and then all of a sudden he quotes perhaps the most famous and popular tune that

doesn't have a bass song in his bass bass solo. It's like mind-blowing that all these things are happening at the same time. And this very mechanical, like highly synthesized song works surprisingly well as a jazz tune, I find. I completely agree with that assessment. You know, the the audience members, if you can hear it in the clip, you know, go nuts when they, when they recognize what he's playing. So Matthew from Fargo, North Dakota in the 80s to Rotterdam in the 2000s, Prince seems to have been a real core part of your musical identity, even in ways that you might not expect. And I really appreciate you talking about that legacy with us today. Oh, it's my pleasure. Thanks for having me on. Thanks for the invitation.

This episode of Switchdown Pop was produced by me, Charlie Harding. And moi, Nate Sloan. And our logo was designed by Luke Harris. We were joined today by Matthew Vannis, a scholar and writer based out of Durham, North Carolina. We'll link to some more of his work on our website. And if you like our show and are really interested in the history of music, we suggest you check out behind the liner notes. We were recently featured on their episode about the singing male castrati. pulling from one of our episodes on One Direction.

And so you definitely ought to go check it out at behind the liner notes.com or wherever you find your podcasts. Speaking of which, you can find more episodes of our show on our website, www. www.switched onpop. You can also speak to us on Twitter at Switched on Pop, and if you're a longtime listener and you haven't reviewed the show on iTunes yet, we'd really appreciate it if you left us a note there

so we know what you like and what you want more of. Yeah. Or if you're sure on time, just hit five stars. and leave a smiley face. We'd really appreciate it. We'll be back again in two weeks with another episode. Until then, thanks for listening. This episode of Switched on Pop is brought to you by Wix.com.

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