Switched on Pop - Return Of The Guitar: Halsey, 5 Seconds of Summer, Joji

Episode Date: February 18, 2020

In 2019 guitar made a comeback in the top 10. According to analysis from Hit Songs Deconstructed, about a third of all songs featured the electric guitar, a nearly 10% jump from the year before. In 2020 this trend isn’t stopping. Recent releases by Halsey, 5 Seconds of Summer and Joji all prominently feature electric guitars tones. They reference 90s nu-metal, grunge and metal genres. More than a nostalgic nod, these songs draw from an era that was self-consciously “alternative” to convey disaffection, frustration and longing. SONGS DISCUSSED Khalid, Normani - Love Lies Juice WRLD - Lucid Dreams Halsey - Without Me Joji - Slow Dancing In The Dark Joji - Run Metallica - Enter Sandman Santo & Jonny - Sleep Walk Chuck Berry - Johnny B. Goode Buddy Holly - That’ll Be The Day LCD Soundsystem - Losing My Edge 5 Seconds Of Summer - No Shame Nirvana - Come As You Are Halsey - Experiment On Me Rage Against The Machine - Bulls On Parade Limp Bizkit - Break Stuff MORE Listen to our conversation about MIA’s “Paper Planes” and Drake’s “God’s Plan” with Sam Sanders on NPR’s It’s Been A Minute Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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It's free for iOS users. Welcome to Switched on Pop. I'm songwriter Charlie Harding. And I'm musicologist Nate Sloan. Nate. All right. We're going to do a quiz. I got three songs from the top ten of last year. I'm going to play them for you. You have to tell me what did they share in common. First on the list, Callied's Love Lies. Here's Juice World's Lucid Dreams.

Rest in power. Finally, Halsey's without me. Okay. Professor Sloan? Yeah. I'm going to say that with these three tracks, share in common, is melancholy guitar-based introductions. That's exactly correct.

Yes. You get an A-plus on the quiz. Very validating. It was just a quiz. The real test is yet to come. Oh, plot thickens. So I was hearing these songs a lot last year. And as a guitarist, I was noting, this is interesting.

This is a unique way of bringing the guitar into primarily synth-based pop production. Right. So I was reading this report just the other day called Hit Songs Deconstructed. Each year they put out this annual report that analyzes the top 100 in excruciating detail, all the way down to what instruments are used in every song. And one of the things they reported was that the guitar made almost a 10-point jump in the top 10, which I thought, oh, curious. That's interesting.

Yeah. And you might think, well, maybe it was country music. Like country music features a lot of guitar, so maybe there's been more country in the top 10. Old Town Road aside. There wasn't that much country music that broke into the top time, not any more than in years past. So it suggests that pop and hip hop producers and other folks are bringing more guitar into their music. And this trend seems to be continuing.

As I was listening to Friday releases from last week, there were three songs that really caught my ear. And so I want to figure out with you today. Yeah. Why the heck is the guitar back? And we're going to do it through some really fun songs by Joji, Five Seconds of Summer, and Halsey. Six-string revenge.

We're going to kick it off with an artist named George Kusanaki Miller, known as Joji. He's a Japanese artist from Osaka. He started as a YouTuber and a comedian before moving into a music career. I'm already fascinated. His biggest song, you might have heard, was Slow Dancing in the Dark. It went to number 69 on the charts. He has a new song. called Run.

Let's take a listen. Great. So this is a sad song. This is about the end of a relationship. This guy using the metaphor of running around the world, chasing, trying to find this person. who has left him. And it, I think, takes that sort of same guitar, melancholy, that arpeggiated intro.

Right. You know, playing each note at a time that we heard in those other songs, but then extends it throughout the entire song. And I like what he's doing here. There was a couple of musical things that really stood out. Did you notice what meter we're in right now?

We're in 6-8. Yeah, so the... I definitely clocked that. The waltzing... Kind of very cyclical. It feels appropriate to the... lyric. Heart felt for your magic.

He upsets this 6-8 feel by adding this syncopated rhythm every couple of phrases. And it is kind of pleasurable. Check this out. All right, impromptu guitar. Yeah. Impromptu guitar lesson from Chuck.

So he's doing this thing that's like... I dig it. Wait, don't put that guitar down yet. Okay, I'll keep... Hold on. Show us what an arpeggio is. Oh. The part Gio is. exactly what he's doing. So let's start with a chord. Okay.

Like a core is like... Right. All the notes being strummed simultaneously. Yeah. An arpeggio would be if you played them separately, like he's doing. Yeah. I dig it. Kind of House of the Rising Sun vibes or something.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. The arpeggio gives it sort of a narrative feel, I guess. Like, we're going to... We're moving somewhere. Yeah. Totally. I'm buying. All right.

Okay. All right. So we've got this neat little rhythm that interrupts that core arpeggio. And it actually becomes like a motif with a motif with the... the song. Badam, bum, yeah, check out the drums.

Drums and the voice. Da-da-da-da. Very good, very good. This sort of epic swelling quality made me feel like it's referencing something from the past. And so I dug through

the earliest moments of my learning guitar long ago, and, well, this track came up. You know this one? This is Metallica. Enter Sandman.

Of course. Yeah. And if you just listen back to the Joji, the guitar is really quite similar. You speak the truth. Yeah. Yeah. It's in the same key. It has the same sort of arpeggiated quality.

Even the timbre of the guitar is quite similar. Sort of echoy. Yeah, it's using a chorus effect. And the feeling of that, I mean, it has that elevated and airy and sort of legendary kind of feel that so many Metallica songs bring. And Metallica also being very rhythmically interesting. It feels like there's some of that happening in the Joji song. And it just got me thinking, well, why? Like, this is strange.

And it's kind of bizarre that we would be referencing, I don't know, like epic rock-based music. In fact, this is not the only reference. It gets even more on the nose. Check out what happens after the second chorus. And if only people could see the face that you're making right now. What face is that? I think the only way to describe it is stank face. Yeah.

With, like, a heavy nod. that's going on. Yeah, downturned lips, nose, askew. You got to act a little disgusted when you hear shredding that filthy. Yeah, this feels like a throwback to an era of soaring epic guitar solos. They're not doing it lightly either. This is a minute-long guitar solo that ends the song. And I guess maybe for the song, you know, here he's talking about this lover who's left him in the seriousness of trying to scour the whole world. to find this person that's left him. And I think there's something

a little bit self-serious about the guitar. In fact, that's sort of part of why it may have faded from popularity was that, I think a lot of criticism was that it became such a navel-gazey kind of instrument, literally watching your navel play these guitars. Perhaps. And I guess this song overall made me think about, like, why the guitar? And how did it develop that connotation?

And very briefly, I think it would be valuable to think about how over different areas the guitar has stood for really different symbols in popular music and popular culture. So if we go back to the beginning of the electric guitar, it actually comes from Hawaii. I did not know that. There were people who were sort of experimenting with electronics and guitars in the 20s or so, but in the 30s, the first production electric guitar was called the frying pan guitar. And it was a device that was used to fry eggs.

No, it was like lap steel. guitar. It was the style of playing a guitar where you put it on your lap and you play it with this funny metal bar and it's the sound of Hawaiian music. Yeah. And this sound became the most popular thing in America for a long time, the lap seal guitar and this sort of fetishization of Hawaiian culture, there's so many touchstones as to why the opening of the Panama Canal, certainly people post-World War II having spent time in the Pacific. But the guitar sort of stood in is like Hawaiian tropical fetishize paradise. Right.

And you can hear it in so much music, so much country music, so much rock and roll music. One of my favorite tracks is Sleepwalk by Santo and Johnny. I should just feel like you're sleepwalking on the beach with a Mai Tai in hand. That's, I think, what it's intending to do. Another loping 6-8 meter there. Very cool. That was sort of one symbol of the guitar. In the middle of the 20th century, artists like Sister Rosetta Tharp and Chuck Barrett,

popularized the sound of the electric guitar. Really the sort of pivotal moment that transformed it into what it's known as today is when Buddy Holly was seen playing a Stratocaster, this name of a guitar, Stratosphere, Stratocaster. It was supposed to look like a Jetson-era futuristic device, and it had the sound of rock and roll built into it, and it became the signifier for all youth music at a Anx, Right. Rebellion, distortion, yeah.

Here's buddy hollies. That'll be the day. And that launched just decades and decades of guitar-based music where youth, adolescents were inherently connected to mainstream popular music to the guitar.

They almost felt inseparable. That probably got out of hand in the 1980s when there's lots of hair metal and so on. And there's a lot of reasons why the guitar went through different fads and phases. One of my favorite summaries, though,

is from the band LCD sound system on their song, Losing My Edge. Do you know that one? No, I've never heard that. I love it. I mean, it just sort of points to the fact that all things in culture can go through a hype cycle of being faddish, go out of vogue, and come back into vogue,

and adapt different meanings. And the guitar is definitely is an instrument that has done just this in so many different eras it has stood for so many different things, which makes me wonder, what are we pointing to today? Great cue, Chuck. We'll find out right after a break. Ooh, suspenseful.

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Every Saturday in your audio and video feeds. Another track that caught my ear was Five Seconds of Summers, No Shame. So here it starts with a similar arpeggiated guitar line, heavy with effects, just like we've heard in so many other songs. Yeah, totally. Right?

It's like, okay, I get it. This is the thing. You want to write a pop song? This is what you could do. Yeah. But like Joji, Five Seconds of Summers takes this guitar-based intro, line and expands upon it.

When we get into the chorus of the song, we point to lots of other interesting references, and I think there's a reason why we need guitar-based music to be able to say what they want to say. I like this jack. Yeah. I actually really dug this lyric.

So it's a little bit buried because it's such a heavy rock sort of feel, but he says, I only light up when cameras are flashing, never enough and no satisfaction. Got no shame. It goes on to say things like,

changing my face and calling it fashion, got no shame. I love the way you're screaming my name. Yeah. Cool. Very naked kind of lyric here. And maybe a reference to the Rolling Stones. Oh, really?

What's that? Got no satisfaction. Oh, yeah. That's funny. Yeah, I didn't think about that. Perhaps. But here, I think what we're getting is an interesting commentary

on contemporary influencer culture. Yeah. Right? I'm buying. Okay. I'm only lighting up when cameras are flashing. And I think it's a criticism of people being authentic in the way that they're presenting themselves. So if that's what's going on in the song, then I was trying to answer the question of like, why guitar-based music?

Sure. And for me, I'm hearing like a 90s grunge aesthetic, which was really in many ways a response to the over-the-top unnecessary excess and self-oriented materialism of the 1980s, a music that was also called. alternative. Right. But alternative might have meant something, not a genre in of itself. So in a song about the perils of social media fame, the guitar links us back to the grunge of acts like Nirvana and Soundgarden and promises this alternative other path that you can take. Yeah, exactly. In fact, I think we can hear things akin to Nirvana's come as you are. Okay. There's that same

chorus and guitar. Yeah. Okay, so that's Nirvana. Hit me with the beginning of No Shame again. Very similar, yeah. So kind of interesting, similar sound. And if we just get a moment of Kurt Cobain. Yeah. I think somewhat similar social commentary

on who are you presenting yourself as? Come as you are. Or are you coming as I want you to be. They feel like in the same lyrical universe. Sort of take off your mask and reveal yourself.

Yeah. Yeah. So I get why they're making this grunge reference. When I was first thinking about like, why are we hearing

this guitar sound? Yeah. I also maybe cynically was like, well, we've dug on every other era. Like Amy Winehouse

gave us the 1960s. There's literally a band called the 1975. 80s synths are all over Khalid's records and Bruno Mars has revitalized new Jack's

swing from the 1990s. So, well, what's left? Grudge. We're going to mine every bit of 20th century musical detritus, right? But honestly, the more I dug into the five seconds of summer song, I think that it holds up both as contemporary social commentary, as well as an appropriate reference to music that was trying to share similar qualities. So, I don't know.

I think it's working for me. All right, I got one more song. I couldn't believe it when I heard it. Yeah. This is Halsey's new track. Experiment on me. It's from the Birds of Prey soundtrack. Okay.

This new film that came out, Harley Quinn, the Batman anti-hero. Anyways, check out experiment on... Wait, wait, wait, just before you start. I'm guessing it's a love song from the perspective of Frankenstein's monster. Yeah, sure, kind of. Close. Why not? Stab in the dark.

All right. Let's listen. I'm pretty like I want to try it. Wow. Head-banging Halsey, very cool. Yeah, I mean, just not what I had expected from, the sort of much more laid-back and east-side kind of feel that we'd heard from here last year.

So this is cool. I appreciate what you're doing here because you've brought us three examples of the guitar kind of surging back into the textures of pop, but each of them is very different. It's like the Joji guitar is this, like, soaring kind of classic rock sound. The Metallica reference is from 1991,

which is kind of surprising. Right. Well, okay, so he has a double reference. Yeah, yeah, yeah, sure. I would say the guitar solo is different from the opening Metallica reference. Metallica would have guitar solos as well, but certainly it's pointing to a longer tradition back into the 1960s and 70s. Yeah.

Okay, okay, okay. Thank you for the correction. And then we move to... Five seconds of summer. With this 90s grunge reference. Yeah. And then Halsey gives us more of a... More of it just like an angular driving kind of heavy metal sound, I guess?

Is it bad? Are we back to Metallica? We're not metal. Have we never left the 90s? You know, I think there's a couple of reference that I hear in here. One would be Rage Against the Machine. Cool. Especially if we played the outro of Halsey's track. We can hear similar kind of tones in Bulls-on Parade by Rage.

Or you could even go as far to listen to the new metal band, Limp Biscuit, and their track breaks stuff. And we should, because any opportunity to get limp biscuit into the discussion. So this is like post-grunge into new metal kind of territory, a music that was wildly popular for a handful of years in the late 90s

before fading in its self-seriousness. But also, I think, for its hyper-masculinity and a genre that, I think, for those reasons, perhaps needed some disruption. It's exactly why I like the Halsey song. Check out what she says in the bridge.

Okay. You burnt the witches. Now you're defenceless. Who needs a Y with this many X's? So we're talking about chromosomes here. And I think this is, I mean, you sort of said Frankenstein's monster. This would be like the bride of Frankenstein's monster, I guess. And she's basically, like, claiming a matriarchy, right?

She's, like, just using these sounds of the hyper-masculine new metal territory, but saying, hey, you burn all the witches, and we are going to rise up and we don't need this many exes. That's pretty sick. I like it. And I'm sure there's a deeper tradition of feminist reclamation of those sounds that we might not be aware of. Yeah, right, right.

But in terms of what was happening on the top 100 in that world, there were, it was not lot. Good for Halsey. All right. Yeah. So why the guitar? This like ever-changing symbol. I'll look back to the 90s. Is this just retro? I don't think so. I mean, for me, I really like the way in which you can take an older sound, something which in many ways is just so deeply reified, a symbol which recurs and recurs and occurs and occurs and played in the right way can really elevate the meaning of the song. And in these three cases, I think they do a really good job at that. They bring some sounds back that I haven't heard for a while, but recontextualized them with a lyric that they feel like they match perfectly with.

You've kind of opened my ears to this phenomenon that I think was experiencing but wasn't like naming or aware of. So I'm really pumped to keep listening for other appearances of the guitar. And like you're saying, kind of to think about, okay, what does each of these mean? Because it's not like the guitar doesn't signify one thing. This is like this instrument with a long history. So every time we hear it, it might mean something different. I'm going to keep my ears open.

Do you want more of like... I'm definitely more of the latter. Oh. Palm muted power cords all day. All right. We'll see what we're going to get. Switched on Pop is produced by me, Charlie Harding. I mean Nate Sloan.

Brandon McFarland is our editor and engineer. Megan Lubin and Bridget Armstrong are producer. our producers, Nishat Kerwa and Liz Nelson, executive producers, Abby Barr, social media manager, extraordinaire, and Iris Gottlieb is our fearless illustrator. We're a production of the Vox Media Podcast Network. I want to throw to one special thing today, a little recommendation. We were recently on Sam Sanders show. It's been a minute on NPR talking about our recent book.

We do a really fun analysis of MIA's paper planes and its interrelationship to immigration. And Nate tries to convince Sam that he, should like Drake see how that turns out of it's a fun it's a fun Sam is I'm gonna go out a limb and say he's the most music nerdy of all the NBR hosts so he's a great person we did that yeah in addition if you want to get in touch with us we love to hear recommendations on social media we are at switch down pop on Instagram and Twitter we'll be back again in another week with another episode and until then thanks for listening