Switched on Pop - Soundalikes: Lil Nas X and Ariana Grande

Episode Date: January 16, 2024

We live in an age of musical nostalgia where artists wear influences on their sleaves. Case in point, two established artists who are drawing from established pop music history: Lil Nas X's "J. Christ" sounds like a Kendrick Lamar "Humble" type beat, and Ariana Grande's "Yes, And?" unabashedly interpolates Madonna's "Vogue." So are these songs mere copies or do they actually say something new with their reference material? Songs Discussed Lil Nas X - J CHRIST Lil Nas X - Old Town Road Lil Nas X - Panini Lil Nas X - MONTERO (Call Me By Your Name) Kendrick Lamar - HUMBLE. Noreaga - Superthug N.E.R.D - Lapdance Busta Rhymes - Pass The Courvoisier Part II (feat. P. Diddy & Pharrell) - Remix Kendrick Lamar - Alright Cardi B - Money Iggy Azalea - Sally Walker Cardi B - Up Anne-Marie - PSYCHO Megan Thee Stallion - Savage Megan Thee Stallion - Megan's Piano Ariana Grande - yes, and? Madonna - Vogue Marshall Jefferson - Move Your Body Derrick May - Strings of Life Farley "Jackmaster" Funk, Jesse Saunders - Love Can't Turn Around Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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That's why over thousands of businesses have made. made the switch. So why not you? Try Odu for free at Odu.com. That's ODOO.com. Welcome to Switched on Pop. I'm songwriter Charlie Harding. And I'm musicologist Nate Sloan. The start of the year is a time where artists have the opportunity to frame the musical narrative. We're coming out of the holiday season. It's been weeks since there's been a major new release. Getting out the gate early can give an artist a real competitive advantage. So today, we have two established artists, who are trying to seize the moment with attention-seeking new work that both builds off of their celebrity narrative as well as pop music history. I'm talking about Lil Nas X and Ariana Grande, who both dropped new singles this past week.

We're going to divide this episode in two. Nate, you're going to tackle Ariana in the second half of the show. But right now, I want to kick it off with Lil Nas X, the internet's busiest music troll. he's back at it again with a sensationalist new song called J. Christ. Cool, a lot of thoughts already, just hearing that short clip, Charlie. I mean, I feel like melodically, lyrically, it's kind of what we've been hearing from Little Nas X recently. It's kind of in your face, defiant, rhythmically intense.

And sonically, I guess, it's got this very kind of sparse texture. It's like low piano, super percussive. Yeah. We're hearing this oscillation between the root and the minor second, a la Montero, call me by your name. It feels very much in the continuation of the sound of Little Nazex that we become familiar with. Let's unpack each of those. I'd love to.

I very much agree that this feels like a continuation of work that we know. And I think we can look at it both in the context of Little Nazex's work, the sound of his work, the lyrics, and the overall message. You said it reminds you of Montero, and I call Lil Nas X the busiest internet troll, because he basically broke the entire internet and streaming services with Old Town Road in 2018, where he ignited a debate about blackness and country music, helped propel TikTok into the mainstream, demonstrated that pop songs could be about two minutes long and that's fine,

and proved that trolling is an effective musical art form. His follow-up hit to Old Town Road, Was a song named after a sandwich, Panini? Hey, Panini, don't you be a mini. Thought you wanted me to go? Why are you trying to kill me teeny? Was the sandwich a metaphor, though, Charlie? It might be a metaphor, but it's a song called Panini.

There can't be a lot of other songs named after sandwiches. Cheeseburger in Paradise. Do you consider a burger sandwich, Charlie? I don't know. The burger is its own entity. I'm sorry. Fair, fair. Yeah.

Okay, well, let's table this because I am interested in this question. But please continue. And then you pointed, of course, Montero. Lil Nas X comes out, and in 2021, he puts out the song, Montero, call me by your name. Montero is, of course, his given name. And it features a video of him giving a lap dance to the devil. And it's rejoinder to the church that he grew up in.

It ignites huge conservative backlash, both for the imagery, as well as his creation of a, Satanic shoe, which has blood in the heel of the shoe, and it just causes all kinds of hullabaloo. It's such a big hit that it spawns many soundalikes, Sam Smith and Kim Petrus with Unholy. Doja Cat uses the same sort of devil imagery and the sinister minor second sound that we've talked about. We've covered all this extensively on the podcast in the past, and now Lil Nasax, I think, feels comfortable. maybe following the formula that he has established that other people have followed. And I'm quite amused by the rollout of the campaign for this song.

He launches on TikTok saying that he's entering into his Christian era. This country-esque little demo of a song has people wondering, oh my goodness, is he launching into like a Christian worship era? What is going on? But there is no doubt that he's really just messing with all of the, us he follows up with a TikTok video that is a mock Charlie Puth style let me show you how I made that beat so first I like went ahead and and then I uploaded the part into logic and right here I started playing with the pitch a little bit I try I try going high

and I was like what if you went like mad low right and then that brought me to this That's pretty funny. I feel like he's kind of making fun of us, honestly. Definitely making fun of us as well. I mean, not us specifically, but our genre of music explainerism or whatever. And you know what? Fair, fair. Totally fair.

He continues this trolling rollout campaign of J. Christ. We then get a video of him being put up on a cross, and he says that he's going to enter his gospel music era. And finally, he dedicates this. new song to quote the man who had the greatest comeback of all time quote J Christ. Yes, the resurrection. He's really working this metaphor pretty hard.

Okay, that was exhausting. What about the track? You know, with someone like Lil Nasax, I think the background is necessary because it's all so meta textual. It isn't just about the music, but we're going to artificially make it

so. Fair, fair, yeah. Let's Listen more closely to the beat. How did you describe this beat earlier? What did you say about it? I said it was a low register, percussive piano piece. Yeah. Does it remind you of anything? It reminds me of a number of things,

but principally it reminds me of Kendrick Lamar's humble. Yeah, I heard this and I felt like this is Lil Nas X's humble type. beat. Here's Humble from 2017. So I feel like there are two characteristics that he's borrowing from the humble beat. One is the scale and two is the piano sound. We look at first the sound of the scale. You said it's this minor second little figure. Can you play that for us? It's dissonant. It is part of a musical history that we discuss. in our episode on Montero

tied to the history of Arab and Jewish musical traditions that often in Hollywood film scores are used to evoke otherness and terror and fear and it has a history in the world of metal music

as being the thing which is like hard and intense. It makes me think of Master of Puppets by Metallica. What is happening? Are you just looking for an excuse to play Metallica? I don't know. I don't. I don't. I don't. I don't. I don't. I I don't understand why I'm listening to this right now. I'm trying to establish that there's a musical history of using this scale as indicating intensity in the world of hip-hop. It is the feeling of the music is hard.

Okay. I most associate it with the early productions of the Neptunes. You can hear it on so many productions of Farrell Williams and Chad Hugo. I'll give you a couple of them, like Nureegas' super thug. Word. It's on nerds lapding. dance. Time Buster rhymes past the Kovassier.

And Ferala used that same sound on his production with Kendrake-Kamar on the song All Right. And it's a sound which becomes a huge part of trap production so that when we hear the producer Mike Will made it, use that little minor a second dissonant figure on Humble. It fits right in for Kendrick, and it's the same sound that Lil Nas X uses on Montero. So this is a sound that we know from Lil Nas X. It's a sound that we have come to expect from Montero. It's a sound which indicates this music is going hard, but it's not only that little minor second thing that Bill Naus X is using here in his humble type beat. It's also the sound of the piano.

Yeah. When I hear Jake Rice, I think humble. Hey, I remember syrup sound with just and crime allowances for- I feel like I've heard this piano thing. You said it reminded you some other things. And as I was digging deeper, I'm like, oh yeah, you know what? Maybe this is actually part of a larger continuum of humble type beats. There's so many songs that use this little piano vibe with a minor second thing that I love.

Cardi B's money. But nothing in this world that I like more than checks. Money. All I really want to see is, though. I don't really need a day, I need a day. Iggy Azalea uses it on Sally Walker on Little Sally Walker on shake it proper on bend it over make it wobble on got a lot of bonds Same key even totally Cardi B uses it again on up

And recently Anne-Marie used it on the song Psycho Just to prove that these are all in the same musical continuum I mash them up for you put them all in the same key and time them all. You would. I remember Serb sandwich and drumming. I was born a flag.

Little Sally Walker walking down the street. Slow clap. Well played Chuck. That's fun. That's fun. Point made. Humble type beat.

You know, I also think of a lot of Megan the Stallion productions use this sound as well. Savage. I'm a savage. Classy, Fuji, ratchet. Sassy, mood. Definitely.

I mean, she even has a song called Megan's Piano, which she plays the piano on that herself. This wish bitch, energy, y'all a little, ain't nothing about she. So, yeah, so this is its own little musical universe of this low single note piano line playing a minor second melody in a very percussive and tense way. Fascinating. Well, it makes me think about why use this thing. Yeah. Not just to have a sound, which is already popular. One thing I noticed is that all the examples that we gave up until a LL and I was X that were,

using the sound are women using the humble type beat. I think especially in the case like Cardi B, I think using the sound of what is like hard hip hop that might skew male machismo is a way of a woman in hip hop claiming space. I think Lil Nas X using it is showing space for a queer black man in hip hop, but also a way, I think he's always trolling us. I think he's kind of taking this meaning and extrapolating from it, such that it might no longer. have the same hard-hitting power after Lil Nas-X uses it. I think we can maybe unpack that further by going into some of his lyrics, if you don't mind. I will allow it.

Okay, first of all, Lil Nas-X is multi-talented. He's both a rapper and a singer. Wow, two whole things. Two whole things. I don't know if two things is multi. I think you need three to get the multi. But fair, but fair. He's, okay, he's talented.

He's got a lot more than that. In the case, we're just sticking to the musical elements here. And he produced on this song too. Cool, cool. You know, he transformed that fart into a beat. Come on. Yeah, incredible. Please.

He has a line that totally won me over. Here's the first verse. Okay. Of J. Christ. That's the first verse. That shit wasn't quiet. Yeah. Now I'm on a quiet year.

I'm going to take it higher. Okay. That's like last year was a quiet year. Now I'm going to take it higher. So comparing myself not just to. the holiest figure of all. He's comparing himself to the holiest person, perhaps in pop music, Bragg Harry, who is, of course, known for singing.

Very high, hi, Charlie, very high. High notes, yes, exactly. Oh, okay. What was that? There was a bird in here. That was a terrible sound. And is he going to fulfill our expectation of the high note, Nate? Yeah, yes, maybe.

This song is like a setup to a, to a joke. He's going to take it higher than Mariah. Is he going to hit the high note? And when he says, he's going to hit the high note. Which is something I noticed about this track. He's got a very deep register in terms of his vocal. Testatura. Yeah, he's a baritone. Tessetura refers to the kind of ambitist of your vocal range. And ambitist refers to the range. It's just, I don't know, I'm just, that was pretentious. Sometimes I have to flex a little bit, you know, my bono fetus. And if we listen to his earlier songs, Old Town Road, Montaro, it's always been very low register.

I caught it bad just a day. You hear me with a call to your place. He is pushing it up a little bit. Yeah. That high note, I feel like he's getting a little bit of digital assistance hitting it. Yeah, probably. I mean, it's definitely in his head voice. It's a little falsetto moment with some auto tune assistance, yeah.

I'm curious to see him perform this live and hear how he executes that part. I don't think people are going to see Lil Nas X for a Mariah Carey-style vocal performance. They're going for the spectacle. And that's what this is all about. Yeah. This song for me is fundamentally like a meta-commentary about all the commentary that has been generated around him. You know, is he going to do something that nobody else knows?

Is he going to deliver something viral? There has been this expectation that he is this busy internet troll and he's going to find ways to stir up the pot and cause more controversy. He's obviously chosen to call the song J. Christ to go right for the jugular of religious conservatives who don't want to see the Lord's name. used in vain. It's a formula that we've seen before, not just by him, obviously by other folks like Kanye, yay. The comparison is one that has been made many times in the world of hip hop. And here he is, I think, kind of making a joke of it. Fundamentally, this song feels like

a little bit of a rehash. It feels familiar. It is musical territory we've seen him do before. And when I went to check out the immediate reaction when the song was released earlier today, folks on the pop head subreddit said things like, feels like he's lost his direction. This song is superficially controversial without actually saying anything subversive. And, you know, I think this song is a lighthearted, silly, fun thing. I don't think it's saying a whole lot.

The question is, is it something that's going to be bumping out of our cars for the next many months? And is it going to set the musical agenda to come? Or maybe it's a false flag. At the end of the song, he announces that this is his year zero, like the birth of Christ, obviously, but perhaps suggesting that we're going to get a different sound coming from the next releases of Lil Nas X. That, I think, is the question that I'm left with when I listen to J. Christ. Charles, Little Naz X is not the only artist starting 2024 with a sort of tabula rasa approach. And tabula rasa means, oh, please, you know, don't pretend.

And you know that one. Everyone knows that. Blank slate. I don't appreciate your super silliousness, okay? My what? I am very super silly. Oh my God. Aggravating.

Not the only artist who is courting controversy. Yes. With sensationalist imagery and references to their personal life, but also at the same time engaging with musical history. Let's take a short break and talk about Ariana Grande's new release. Yes, and. Support for this show comes from Odu. Running a business is hard enough,

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That's ODOO.com. Okay, Charles, it was 2020 when we last heard an album from Ariana Grande. That was Positions. Love that album. Now, at the start of 24, we've got a new release, which seems to be the first single from an upcoming album. It is called all lowercase, yes, comma, and question mark. Before we listen to a note,

yes and, what does that mean to you? It means that Ariana Grande is entering her improv era of her UCB class, groundlings. Give me a word, we're going to make a scene. Yes,

and we know she's a theater kid, and you're referencing the fact that yes and is one of the core lessons of improvisation, right? When someone comes up with an idea, you don't say, no, that's not what's happening. you say yes and let me add to it this way, right?

It's the biggest problem in my family right now because my toddler absolutely refuses to yes and while we're playing. It's just like, no, data, that's not what we're playing right now. No. And I'm just like, dude, I'm going to send you to the upright citizens brigade. You need some training. We've got to make this more fun. That's so funny.

That kind of reminds me of when Michael Scott does improv in the office, he just like shoots down everyone else's ideas. Yeah, yes, exactly. But yes and also, I think, can mean it's a way of acknowledging your critics, but also kind of shooing them off. It's kind of like brushing off your shoulder. It's like, yes, and what do you want? Right. And that is actually exactly how she opens the music video to this new song, Yes, and is a bunch of music critics walk out onto a stage and are going to evaluate her newest work.

And so more shade thrown at us, Charlie. Some of the few remaining working music critics. These artists are obsessed with us, basically. That's what I'm hearing. They're obsessed with us. It's about us. As Matt Rogers would say, they're gagging for our shit. I don't think so at all.

So you're right. Let's go to the chorus of yes and, and we'll hear that use that you were just talking about. Like that sort of, like, you can't touch me. Whatever you have to say, I'll just say yes and. Yes, and say that shit with your chest. Be your own best friend. Keep moving like, what's next? And that line perhaps is a reference to thank you next.

I don't know, maybe. Oh, yeah, yeah. It also feels like she's about to tell us to just Vogue. I was going to make that transition, but sure. Okay, you just stole my thunder there. Yes, Vogue, the 1990 hit by Madonna. This is hard not to hear. Yeah.

From the very beginning of the Ariana Grande track, there's such a keen similarity between these two songs. Let's hear just like the opening textures of yes and. And now let's drop the needle on both. This isn't just Ariana and her co-songwriters, Max Martin and Ilya referencing house music in general. I think this is a very specific reference to Madonna. Yeah.

These grooves are very similar. And significantly, the harmonies, the chord changes that both songs are using are almost identical. Yeah. Both songs have this oscillation between an eased. E flat minor chord and a A flat seven chord. So they're using the same harmonic language to sort of set the scene here. And I think there's a few reasons why Ariana and her team might be referencing this song.

I mean, one, it's like a bop. It slaps, it bangs. It kicks butt. It's so much fun to listen to. And we're kind of due for a vogue interpolation, you know? Yeah. And Beyonce's Renaissance has helped bring house music back into the mainstream popcon. So it makes sense to follow up that sound with another hit from another artist.

But then specifically this song, I think, resonates with this lyrical message of yes and that we've been discussing. Yes and is all about like throwing it back in your haters' faces. And Vogue is all about like celebrating yourself and being unabashedly you and just sort of like letting your freak flag fly. Okay. Sure. Yeah. I can see the connection. Also, Madonna, Ariana Grande, these are two artists. who are always sort of wrestling with their public image, right? That's also what this song is about, as you said. And similar to Little Nas X as well, right? Ariana is commenting on the public perception of her,

I don't want to get too into the weeds with her personal life because frankly, I don't know a lot of the details. But I think she's divorced. She's seeing someone new that's given her a lot of scrutiny in the press and the tablets and on social media. And so this song is sort of saying, like, get out of my business, right? The relationship was a bit of a trist, so she even acknowledges this directly in the bridge in a very fun throwaway line. And what does she say there, Charlie?

She says the word Richard. Wait, does she really? Or you just trying not to say dick? I don't even know who you are. Last episode, you're dropping F-bombs. Now you can't even say D-I-C-K. You're all over the place. Now Madonna's Vogue also.

recorded controversy. Yeah. Especially in the music video, which MTV almost refused to air because of how revealing some of the costumes that they used in the video were. And this is just a hallmark of Madonna in general, right? Sure. It's pushing sort of the boundaries of public social moors to the limit. So I think it's kind of a cool reference point.

And there's even one more aspect of Vogue that, yes, Anne draws on that I think is even more subtle. And it happens at this point of transition. between the verse and the chorus. So check out what happens in Vogue when we move from the verse to the chorus and pay attention, Charles, to the harmonies, the chords that we were talking about earlier.

We get a modulation. We have a new chord system, which is really striking, and it's such a cool pattern, Charlie. Check this out. There's a bit of mode mixture. We moved to this kind of minor world from the major world that we were in before. And that change, I think,

marks the chorus as this exciting point of departure, right? It's like an apotheosis or something. And let's go over to Ariana Grande's song, Yes, and, and look at that same moment transition from pre-chorus to chorus. Very similar move here, not to the same place, not to like this minor place, but there is a modulation from this E-flat A-flat oscillation to an A-flat-B-flat oscillation, which sounds like this. So again, the harmony sort of takes us to this.

new place, this place of distance from anyone who's got their name in your mouth, who's putting you down, right? It's like a literal change to this place of being untouchable, this new harmonic realm. And in doing so, it's also copying the Vogue playbook. I think this is a really cool, subtle reference that also supports the message of the song. What do you feel, though, about the idea of this song being kind of a facsimile of a facsimile. Madonna's Vogue was in its time a celebration of the queer of color house music, which was making waves in underground dance community. She helps bring that music to the mainstream with intentional nods, both verbal as well as musical within the original. When you listen to the Madonna, you can hear the house

piano of a song like Marshall Jefferson's Move Your Body, even a clear lyrical reference. The sound of the strings in Vogue, which you actually don't hear really in the Ariana Grande interpretation, those strings sound a whole lot like the strings which were made famous in Derek May's Strings of Life, an essential early house track. And even the intensity of the beat of Vogue is reminiscent of an early house track like Love Can't Turn Around. So I know I'm asking kind of a leading question, but I feel like in the copy of the copy, some of this essential music history is watered down a little bit. First of all, that last track was astonishing.

So I'm glad we're maybe airing some of these latent influences that have been sort of sandpapered out of this history that you're talking about. Maybe Ariana should bring those music critics in to help season the track with some of these, There we go. That's what music needs. More critics. Enough people aren't talking about this. I know, for real. The example of Beyonce's Renaissance that you brought up earlier also, I think, sort of looms here because I feel like part of what was exciting about that project was the way that Beyonce did engage directly with the originators and the lineage of house music. Yeah, it was a dissertation level kind of work, citing her references and sort of

is beyond what is necessary in commercial popular music. I mean, I don't know. I'm of two minds. On one hand, yes, I always want artists to delve into that history and incorporate it. And yet, I don't know, I feel like Madonna's vogue, that's already been adjudicated to a degree. Absolutely. Sure. And it now stands on its own as an artifact, which does have this baggage built into it, perhaps.

The whiteness of it all. But nevertheless represents its own sort of, I guess, constellation now in a larger lineage of vogueing. and African-American queer of color subculture. So I think has also been sort of reincorporated into that culture, you know. So I appreciate your question, and I don't have a neat answer, but I'm glad you're asking it.

I don't think there is one. I mean, another way of thinking about it is that one of the wonderful things about dance music is its potential for inclusivity, that the dance floor welcomes everybody. And this style of music certainly welcomes new interpretations and new ways of hearing it. I won't lie.

Musically, it's a jam. I put it on. I really enjoy it. I love house music. I love hearing that sound back on the charts, even in the hands of Max Martin. I can't believe he's giving it to us.

I never knew he would make that turn. There is one question that remains with this song, Charlie. What's that? What is Ariana singing at the very beginning of this track? Her voice is downpitched and processed. And I can't quite make out what she's saying. Is it imported from some other part of the song? The track is it something unique?

I need you to work your production magic like you did with Taylor Swift and reverse engineer this voice so we can try and hear the original. Can I put you on the spot or should we do this later and then we'll throw it in as a tag at the end of the episode. We'll see if this works. I can definitely give it a go. I'm excited by this because I remember one of our earlier episodes was about her song Into You, a production also with Max Martin, which also has.

a vocal layer which slowly reveals itself. So you pointed out that there might be a thank you next reference here. I think there might be an into you reference. And let's see if we can decode it. I do not have any idea whether or not it will be successful. Certainly listeners will be able to tell us what it is if we don't get it. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to drop yes and into Ableton. I'm going to time stretch it.

And let's listen to that little section with the vocal you're talking about. Wow. It's like being in Dexter's laboratory right now. I love it. Okay. There is the section where I feel like we have it most isolated. This little thing right here. All right. This is going to be tough because there's missing frequencies. They might be filtered out. Can't bring them back.

Interesting. But one thing I can definitely do is I could try to use a formant shifter, which it will artificially sort of move the placement of a vowel from the back of your throat more up into the nasal cavity. That's kind of the effect of it. We talked a bit about it on our Def Punk series. So let me drop in a formant shifter, a little altar boy. Can I just like make a guess as to what she's saying before we potentially reveal? Okay. What do you got? I feel like it's momatry. cheese asked me nothing, Mama Cheese ask me now. Good guess. Thank you. Great guess. Okay.

I'm just going with my gut here. So I've dropped an effect called Little Alter Boy, which is kind of funny, given that we just talked much about the Lord earlier. Here we go. We're going to shift the form of this and see what sounds like. Still hard to hear. It sounds a little bit more like her voice. Is there some like, let's pitch it up?

Reverse effect in here as well or something? Oh, I think we might be stumped. I think you're right. There's some reversing. let me try one other method, which is we could just try speeding the whole thing up and sometimes that solves it for us. We'll pitch it up and speed it up.

It's worth a shot. Let's see what happens. Too much. Can we reverse it, Charles? Can we flip it and reverse it? Let's do it. Can we put our thing down, flip it and reverse it? Well, you've just brought the devil into this.

That was not very illuminating. All right, all right. We'll pause our efforts. Our vocal archaeology proves unsuccessful. I don't think it's from another part of the song. though. I could be wrong, but I feel like it's its own thing and I really want to decode it, but maybe it is. The formant shifting does make me think that it's Ariana's voice that's been

manipulated, but I think it has been manipulated beyond recognition. Interesting. All right, the mystery remains. Let us know what you're here. Mystery remains. I'm excited to move into the year with both of these recordings. Is it going to be a humble year? Is it going to be a year of house music? Are they going to set the agenda or is someone new going to pop up on the scene and move popular music in a whole different direction. I don't say new direction because I don't like to

curse on the show. And that's all I have to say. Wow, just that dad joke just sank like a stone, Charles. I whiffed it. It's funny because we haven't even like said this explicitly, but like vibe snatching galore here. Like, that is the new sound of pop is everything old, everything

from the recent past and the distant past and the semi-distant past, that is the newness of this moment. Until we get over our obsession when nostalgia and the idea of nostalgia itself becomes no longer popular, we are going to keep on mining the past. And that's what we've got right now. This episode of Switched on Pop was produced by Nate Sloan, me, Charlie Harding, and Brianna Cruz. We're engineered this week by Bill Lance, edited by Art Chung, illustrations by Arras Gottlieb, community management by every bar. Our executive producer is Nashat Kurwa, remember with a Vox Media Podcast Network and a production of Vulture, which is,

a part of New York Magazine. If you want to subscribe to New York Magazine, try how they encourage, go to New Yorkmag.com slash pod. Find us on social media at Switchdown Pop and tell us what you're hearing in these new tracks from Lil Nas X and Ariana Grande. And if you, for some reason,

want to hear more from us, you would be well advised to go to our website, Switchdown Pop.com, sign up for the newsletter. Also in the show notes. Which, you know, there's a lot of hoopla out there. flooding your inbox, but I genuinely really enjoy reading these newsletters, Charlie. Well, it's because you write them.

It really is all about. Just about the critics. Oh, God. Oh, my God. Yes, and. That's what I say to you. It's really fun. I love writing it and reading it. You add, our team all ads.

It's a great way to learn new music. I'm constantly playing music that I learned from this newsletter and our team. And enough set. Go sign up. It's fun. Tune in next week. We've got another really great release that came out. today that we didn't get to talk about.

Kaliuchi has a new album. It's really wonderful and we're going to talk about it next Tuesday. Tune in then and until next Tuesday. Thanks for listening. Until Tuesday, Amy Man, great band. Attention Spotify. Has arrived the new Good Girl Jasmine Absolute of Caroline Herrera. A fragrance intense with a karathe gourmet and addictive. Imagine a jasmine emvolvent, tofi caramelized and tonka toasted.

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