Switched on Pop - Song of Summer: LIVE!

Episode Date: July 30, 2015

In the first-ever LIVE edition of Switched on Pop, Charlie and Nate enter an epic debate over what track should be crowned 2015’s definitive Song of Summer. Charlie’s candidate is the retro anthem “Shut Up and Dance” by Walk the Moon, while Nate argues for Jason Derulo’s hot and heavy “Want to Want Me.” Meanwhile, the studio audience on Block Island has their own ideas about what makes a true Song of Summer, raising the stakes even higher. Who will emerge victorious? Only one song can beat the heat and rule the dog days of August. You don’t want to miss this epic Summer Jam Showdown.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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of the world, welcome to the Switched on Pop 2015 Song of

Summer Jam Showdown. On the left we have Dr. Nate Sloan and on the right we have Sir Charlie Harding. For the first time ever we are taping live in front of a studio audience, please make some noise. Today's goal determine the song of the summer in a battle royale. It's a classic summer pop extravaganza and this is... So each of us have chosen our favorite song of the summer and we're going to attempt to persuade each of you in a three-round competition with, which is the best. We'll each play and introduce our song followed by two alternating rounds defending our choice. Then, you, the audience, will have an opportunity to ask us questions or to submit your own comment. We'll follow that up by closing arguments, and then the audience will vote on the song of the summer,

and the winner between us gets to lead everyone in a sing-along of the chosen song. Earlier today, we had a coin toss to determine who would go first, and I was lucky enough to get to lead in the Song of Summer Showdown. So I want to start and say that without a doubt, the best song of this summer is Walk the Moons, Shut Up and Dance. The song is a crossover of an 80s style anthem that has been on the chart for 35 weeks, and it's currently at number seven, peaked at number four. It won the Teen Choice Award for the Best Party Song of the Summer, which I think is, yeah, right, exactly. Strong contender. So while my competitor might try to bore you with S&S. Tauric musicological jargon.

I'm going to argue that the art of the song of summer can be boiled down to a precise science. So let's start off by listening to Walk the Moons, Shut Up and Dance. Nate, your turn. When I think summer, I think love and I think heat. And Jason Derulo's Want to Want Me has got both in spades. This song rocketed to the top five when it. it dropped last month and it's been all over the radio dial ever since. Don't be fooled by my competitors 80s throwback and power cord kryptonite. The song of the summer with a bullet is DeRullo's

slinky, sultry, slow burning anthem. Listen to this verse and chorus and tell me your pulse doesn't start to quicken. In my opening argument, I said that we could boil down the song of the summer to a precise science. And scientists have done just this. So we're going to talk about the science of familiarity. Scientists at USC in the Journal of Consumer Psychology determined that the popularity of a song is determined by two factors. One is that it has to have simple, easy words, and what they mean by that is a very limited vocabulary. And the second thing that determines a pop song success is the repetition of the chorus. How many times do you hear the chorus? So shut up and dance.

The main lyric starts off. We were bound to get together. She took my arm. I don't know how it happened. We took the floor and she said, shut up and dance with me. This is a very limited vocabulary and they drill it into our heads

over and over and over again. You're going to hear shut up and dance with me 12 times throughout the entire song such that you can't stop playing the song. even when you turn it off, it is going to be stuck in your head. I want to play for you just a clip of the amount of times that you're going to hear shut up and dance with me throughout this song. Whether you like it or not, that is going to be going to be familiar.

You're not going to be able to get rid of it. Well, well played, Harding. I know you want to paint me as a peddler of esoteric music theory, but when it comes to summer jams, I'm going to go with my heart. And the magic of want to want me starts at the very beginning with the badass proclamination. of just who this song is by, Derulo. Derulo.

I so wish that someone would sexily whisper my name right before any time I start speaking. And I actually just made, in case anyone does want to do that, I have the file for you. Wow. It's all gimmicks. Gimmicks. No science. It's not quite as effective as Dorolo, but that breathy whisper sets the tone for the rest of the verse, which is super tight, pressurized, breathless. This is a perfect summer song

because it's literally about how hot it is outside. Quote, it's too hard to sleep, got the sheets on the floor, nothing on me. I can't take it no more. It's 100 degrees. And each of these lines is followed by an unbearably tense exhalation. Ah. We are immediately put into the dog days of summer, the restless nights when sweat is on your brow and love is on your mind, the insistent beat drives the point home, the sparse initial section leaving room for little else besides one obsessive thought. The lyrics are in present tense, which is an odd choice for they're also being directed at another person, and it makes me wonder if this song is describing something that is actually happening or something that might be dreamt. Or it's

possibly not actually a real-time interaction, but a particularly hot session. of phone sex. Regardless of your interpretation, what is undeniable is that this verse is hot as hell. Is that it? That's it. All right, that's what do you mean?

Is that it? That's it. So when we were talking about shut up and dance, we looked at first the science of familiarity. The more you hear the song, the more you have to love it. And the song is intentionally putting the chorus over and over and over

and over in your ear. Well, there's another science to be a number one song of summer, and that is the science of similarity. Neuroscientists at McGill University have run brain imaging studies that show what we like and they know why. So when we listen to something new, we go looking for recognizable patterns of things that can help us predict where the music is going to go.

If the music is too different and we can't anticipate what's going to happen next, we don't like it. you don't get a dopamine hit. But if the song is recognizable, if there are similar beats and melodies, things that you've heard before, but in slightly new contexts, our brains are flooded with dopamine.

The pleasure center of our brain is just super excited. So we're going to see how Walk the Moon has intentionally chosen a bunch of old 80s hits that you already know and made a meta-composition of that song. Because right now is the summer of the 1980s. We have Taylor Swift, who has her hit album, 1989, and Walk the Moon is going just a few years before that to build

this meta song. We're going to walk through the intro, the verse, the pre-chorus, and the chorus. We'll play just a couple of small clips, and we're going to see that this song isn't actually a new pop song. It's about five different pop songs that we've all heard in the past. So starting from the intro, we're going to hear first, walk the moon, second, U-2's, where the streets have no name. And I want you to be listening to the guitar. There's going to be this arpeggiated over and over again. clearly making a reference to U2, whose hit was number 13 on the charts in 1987. Walk the Moon.

You two. If you didn't catch it, because it's quick. One more time. Moving next to the verse. What we have here is a real shift to this sort of jangly guitar and wild rhythms. And we're going to hear a comparison to the romantics talking in your sleep, which was number three in 1984. First, we're going to hear shut up and dance. And then second, we're going to hear the romantics talking in your sleep.

big jangly guitars, sort of syncopated rhythms, and now the romantics. And I'm not sure if you caught that, but at the end of shut up and dance, he was saying, we're victims of the night, and at the end of the romantics, he says, close your eyes and go to sleep. So we're kind of in the same territory here in the verse. We're now going to move to the pre-chorus, and we're going to hear Corey Hart's sunglasses at night, which was number seven in 1984, and what you want to be listening here is the melody. We also have common words here again. I want you to listen for them.

And now Corey Hart. We heard, I turned to her and said. In Shut Up and Dance, we heard, we took the floor and she said. So clear pulling from 80s mega hit. Again, this was number 7 in 1984. And finally, we're going to go to the chorus, which is obviously the hook of the song, the thing that we hear over and over again 12 times throughout the piece. First, you can hear shut up and dance.

And second, you're going to hear the only number one hit by Genesis. Their song, Invisible Heart, which was number one in the summer of 1986. Yeah, you want to hear more of it. Now you're going to hear the same rhythm, melody, and sense. As you can see, shut up and dance is not one song, right? It's actually a bunch of different 80s mega hits that they have intentionally put together so that you would be, you would not just be familiar with the song because you've heard shut up and dance over and over again, but it was drawing from things that were already

similar to you. You know what was going to happen. And I'm seeing in all of your faces that the pleasure center of your brain was lit up with dopamine. You heard those 80s hits and you're like, oh, my God. gosh, this is the song of the summer. Nate. So,

okay, okay. So basically you're saying that this song is incredibly derivative and unoriginal. So that's a really, thanks for helping my argument. Picasso said that the best artist steal, right? Yes, he did. Okay. So you clearly think this show is radio lab and not switched on pop because I'm hearing a lot of scientists and universities and blah, blah, blah, but I'm not going to pander to some

pseudoscience. I'm going to get really to the crux of the matter here, which is in his chorus in Want to Want to Want Me, Jason DeRillo takes us from the tight, breathless verse to a much more expansive place. The unbearable sexual tension of the verse loosens in the chorus into a more lushly orchestrated and harmonically rich landscape. It's a more romantic moment, effusive and anthemic, easy to sing along with. It's just big and stupid enough to be a careless summer jam without being quite so dumb that it slides into the insipid. And just when you thought it couldn't get any more carefree, Derulo follows the chorus with an abelient, wordless, vocal arabesque. Big words. All right, big words.

that's a moment as if the the heightened state of the chorus couldn't get any more expressive this when when derulo has nothing more to say with words he simply turns to to this wordless vocal and it just lifts you right up out of your chair this is summer love at its finest that's all I got to say now we have we've made our cases and now we open open it up to you all, the denizens of Black Island, to ask questions or comments, challenge us, propose a different song of the summer that we've neglected. Maria, you have a podcast now and you need to start acting like it. What's the first step as a podcaster?

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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. America Actually, every Saturday in your audio and video feeds. So the Darulo track dropped last month. It's a summer, it's a summer jam, whether or not it's the best summer jam is the question on the table.

Walk on the Moon's track is months and months and months old, you know, nine months old. So it dropped like last fall. How can that be the song of the summer? Sure. I mean, we saw last episode with Feddywap, which he came out with a song almost a year and a half ago, which is now just getting up on the charts. Sometimes it takes long time to build, get up to the top of the charts, and be familiar in everybody's here. So I think that with Walk the Moon, what you have going on here is this whole trend of 80s music, which is coming back, has been sort of slowly fading in, and now they're capturing the moment.

I just want to say that was a really good question. What we haven't heard about much here from either view is like the artists themselves. So I'm warning if you guys could both add a little more color and speak about the artist's stories. It's a great question. I have to say that I don't know a lot. lot about Mr. Dorolo. I do know from my wife Whitney that he, his name was actually originally D-E-S-R-U-L-A-U-S-E-A-U-X. And his record, I think he's Haitian American, his record label changed it to, so people

could actually say it, I guess. And I know that he's come a long way from his breakout hit, which was Wiggle. If anyone's familiar with that song. I think it's a slide whistle, which is kind of creative. Yeah, and so this is, I think, represents a real evolution in his musical style. I think he's got a great voice. I think he's got an excellent team of producers who are tweaking every single note that he sings or plays on this song. I'll admit that Nate is good with words, but we don't, we don't typically.

Charlie is very handsome. Thank you. So we don't typically entertain the lives and love affairs of pop stars as many other critics might do. We like to think of the music as standing on its own. If we're going to go there, I will say that I recently was in Logan Airport in Boston and ran into Walk the Moon in the baggage claim area. And the one important thing that you need to know about them is that their lead singer has an amazing mullet. they're deeply invested in their identity.

They go all the way. Any other audience responses? I would say that if it was the wiggle, wiggle, wiggle track by Derulo, that is a funky enough song that would have tipped me over the edge. While I like this current Derulo track, it doesn't have enough of that full-out funk factor for me to sway me over the edge. Fair enough. This is a two-part question.

I'm just wondering if you guys live in a world in which Rihanna doesn't exist and then the follow-up question is I'm sorry and what is it like? Sounds like a gauntlet has been thrown. Do you have a contender song of summer? Bitch better have my money.

Yeah. I was recently at a bachelorette party in Mexico and this came on. And everybody started dancing. And if there is a barometer for a song's success more accurate than does it compel

people to shut up and dance? I have yet to find one. So by that metric, I would say bitch better have my money is worth considering, if not completely trouncing both of your arguments immediately with. Wow.

Just quickly, do you have a response? I don't disagree. I think it's a dark chorus. I think it's literally a dark song and not what you would think of as your typical summer anthem, but I couldn't agree more with your argument. I'm not going to punch any holes in that. I think it's a great track. I think we can throw it in the hat.

All right. It's in. Well, I found Charlie's argument incredibly strong and was not fooled by Nate's wordsmanship. I have to say, I feel like shut up and dance is a song that betrays itself. because it tells you to do something and then undermines it. It's not a song one can dance to, and ultimately that's the song of the summer. As a terrible dancer, I can dance to shut up and dance

far more convincingly than the Derulo track. I guess my question is that we began the argument without understanding exactly what we're arguing over. What is, what defines, what makes a song of summer. And the answer, you know when you hear it, is not going to work here. I think we do need to be held to task for not defining our terms. Do you want to start? Well, I think you are the musicologist here, so I'm going to pass to you.

So I don't know if I have a strong musical logical argument for what makes a song of summer, but I do have a maybe more emotional or personal argument. I think it's a song that when, and let me, I'll speak for myself. when I'm walking down the streets of New York and it's bumping in my headphones, I feel like I'm three feet above the sidewalk and that I want to just go up to random people on the street I'm walking by and put my headphones in their ear and say, listen to this. And when you get back to your house, you want to just immediately put it on your stereo and crank up the volume and you just can listen to it over and over and over again on repeat,

no matter what you're doing, whether you're washing dishes or driving to work or at a party with all your friends, that song is the soundtrack to your summer season. Yeah, I think that it's a song which captures mass media attention and defines a moment, so that every time you hear that song from a previous summer, it takes you back to wherever you were. It's a sign that sweats. It's a song that sweats. I think the most important thing here is that it's going to be a sing-along anthem, which is incredibly familiar and very similar.

That's why I feel like this is partially just about idiosyncratic preference because those of us who live in New York we're thinking of like a funky beat that's blaring out of a car window. But for someone else, they might be thinking of something that's more like what Walk the Moon has to offer. And it's hard to say something as the song of the summer because so much of this is about what resonates with you as an individual listener, right? That's absolutely right. But let's do it anyway.

Here we go. Jason Derulo's one. to want to want me is a classic summer jam, literally hot and heavy, fun to listen to, and fun to sing, as tightly constructed as its final moments. A terse tag on the chorus's penultimate phrase, get up, get up. This song will get you through those nights when it's too hard to sleep. You've got nothing on you, and you can't take it anymore, and it's 100 degrees. Thank you. Makes you sweat. The science is clear. We love pop songs because they make themselves instantly familiar by repeating their choruses over and over again, and because they're similar to the things that we've heard that we already love. But most importantly, shut up and dance is also fun. This is a four-to-the-floor dance song that wants to get you up and dancing, singing along.

It's got those power pop guitars. It is the song of summer, absolutely. I just want to point out with such excellent contenders, everyone is a winner. Like an admission of defeat. All right, so how should we do this? I think there's only one legitimate way to gauge the song of the summer, and that is by volume. So if you feel as though

Walk the Moon shut up and dance, is the song of summer, please raise your voice. And if you feel like Jason Derulo's want to want me, is the song of the summer makes some noise. We have a way. Yes, we do. Thank you for listening to Switched on Pop. You can find more episodes on our website,

www.switchedonpop.com. You can also listen on your favorite podcasting app like SoundCloud, iTunes, or Stitcher, where we love if you leave us a rating, it makes a huge difference. I'm Charlie Harding. I'm Nate Sloan. Thank you to our live audience,

and thank you for listening. Thank you.