Switched on Pop - Still Freaky After All These Years: Gaga, Tyler, The Cure

Episode Date: November 12, 2024

A musical "freak," to us here at Switched On Pop, is an artist who is unique, non-conforming, and always manages to surprise. We're living in some freaky times right now, so there's no better way to honor that than to listen to pop's freakiest artists. The past few weeks have seen new releases from Lady Gaga, Tyler, the Creator, and The Cure – the latter releasing their first new album in sixteen years. This episode of Switched On Pop, we unpack these songs and get to the bottom of their freakiness. Songs discussed: Lady Gaga – Disease Tyler, The Creator – Noid The Cure – Alone More Subscribe to Jesse Cannon Music Marketing Trends newsletter Follow Jesse Cannon Musformation YouTube channel Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

If you're tired of endless scrolling to figure out where to eat, same. I'm Stephanie Wu, editor-in-chief of Eater. We've just launched the new-ish 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. 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. And I'm producer, Rianna Cruz. I think it's fair to say that we're living in some freaky times right now. And so I think there's no better moment than to listen to some of the most legendary freaks in music. Lady Gaga, Tyler the Creator, and The Cure have all dropped some new music. And I don't. mean freaks pejoratively, by the way. A freak to me is someone who's unique, non-conforming, someone who's not afraid to be vulnerable and redefine some norms. And today I have with me my expert panel of freaky music lovers. Nay Sloan, will you kick us off listening to Lady Gaga? Charles Rihanna, we got to let our freak flags fly and spin the chorus of Lady Gaga's latest single disease. Quite freaky. I know. I feel like we just did our Halloween episode and it's a shame we

weren't able to put this in the mix because this song, true to its title, is all about disease. We hear Gaga sing in that chorus. Eyes roll back in ecstasy. I can smell your sickness. I can cure your disease. This is some freaky metaphors. I mean, that's classic Gaga. You know, since the early days of of her career, she has talked about nasty, nasty things on songs. Disease already being discussed in her catalog on bad romance. But this is next level. And I'm glad you mentioned bad romance, Rihanna, because I feel like this is something of a return to Gaga classic here.

You know, what have we heard from Gaga recently? We've had this duet with Bruno Mars, die with a smile that we discussed on the pod earlier, this kind of like 70s, retro power duet. We've had her tie-in album to the Joker sequel Foley Aude, which was kind of like old school cabaret-style torch songs. And going further back to her last big album, Chromatica, this was like kind of house music for the end of the world, right?

It was like a utopian party anthem. So it's been a while since we've heard, the bad romance style Gaga, and it's kind of refreshing to hear this freaky darkness back on the billboard charts. Now, I have to admit to something here. When Lady Gaga first came on the scene, I just didn't read her music as strange as the public image that she was presenting. I mean, songs like Just Dance, Pokerface Love Game. Let's have some fun. This beat is sick. I want to take a ride on your disco stick. Let's have some fun. You know, sort of Neptune-style beat, very tongue-and-cheek club lyrics.

And she's, like, walking out into a red carpet wearing a meat dress. My timeline might not be totally proper right here. But I was like, this doesn't seem that transgressive. It wasn't probably until I heard bad romance. Or I was like, what is this music? Like, Ramah, Ramamah, oh la la,

what on earth is she saying there? What is happening? The operatic beginning. The garbled rah-rah, oh-l-l-la. What is happening? This to me is like horror pop. The transgression of the lyrics is matched

by the weirdness of the music. That is the true freak formula. Yeah. And I feel like this new song, disease achieves it as well. Maybe through different means. Because to me, what makes this song so freakish is the way it blurs harmonic identity to create a metaphor between disease and the cure. Oh, my God. I didn't even think about.

The band we're going to be talking about later. I thought you're making a joke because Gaga also has a song called The Cure. Oh, that's right. Yeah. So where do we want to play? So let's hear the very top. Freaky. This song co-written and co-produced by Andrew Watt, Circuit. and Michael Polanski. The first two in that group are well-established pop hitmakers. The third is more of a personal connection, Gaga's fiancee slash possibly husband. And they have given us some weird harmonic information at the start of the song. First, we have this very Gaga-esque melody, ultra-dramatic.

And it has this nice Phrygian flare to it. it. I feel like in this later stage of her career, every Gaga song has to have some wordless vocal melody where she does a syllable like, she has cornered the market on the ah in pop music right now. But not only is a dramatic melody, it's a major key melody. It's a B major melody. What happens right after that, this funky kind of low-down synth dance line, this complicates the harmonic information because we immediately go from B major to a key that is not part of B major, D. So that's a little freaky. D major, C major, B major.

A natural D being the flat third of B major. So major, minor dissonance going on. And before we've even heard a single lyric of this song, we've gotten this dissonant tension between the major and the minor third, and we've got this choked, gaga utterance. Ah! That sounds like, exaggerated cry. And then the verse drops.

Sick. This song is sick. Literally. I hate that I'm about to say this, but I have to. Okay. I am bound by the musicologist version of the Hippocratic Oath compels me to point out that this melody that we hear at the beginning of verse one is very similar to another recent pop song by a legacy act, Katie Perry's Woman's World. No.

Stop it. Oh my God, Nate. You're so right now. Yo. That's great. Nobody has listened to that song in weeks. So very similar to, I mean, not exactly, but very reminiscent. Just a weird coincidence.

I just had to point that out. Okay. Now that that's out of the way, we have established the theme of this song. There's this disease. This person is running out of medicine. And then we get to the pre-chorus. And it feels like it's getting progressively more. more classic Gaga.

More of these, ahs, ah. I mean, seriously, this is becoming like the Gaga signature sound. Yeah. And the freakiness is just kind of ratcheting up, you know, poison on the inside. Screaming for me, baby. It's getting darker and darker. So musicologist Nate Sloan, when we get to the chorus and she says, I could play the doctor, what is she trying to communicate?

Well, Charles, what is the disease? I believe that the disease that the song refers to is a metaphor. The disease, it's love, Charles, that is the disease in this song. It is love, it is attraction, it is sex, it is lust, it is desire. And I feel like I can say this with some confidence because Gaga pulls the veil back on this song's hidden meaning in the very last chorus. I love when artists do this. Typically, a pop song will have the same exact lyrics for each successive chorus, but in the final chorus of this song, Gaga switches it up.

Instead of saying, I could play the doctor, I can cure your disease. She sings, bring me your desire. I can cure your disease. Classic Gagga, my goodness. It's almost like the vocal dexterity and playfulness of bad romance. I find disease to be very strong. similar to the work that she did on 2013's art pop, where we have these maximalist synthesizers

and these weird vocal quirks. And I find art pop to be her most freaky album. So I think that's why when listening to this song, I automatically place it next to songs like swine. Yeah, Rihanna Cruz just casually trying to make art pop happen, the most critically derided of all of her albums. It's my favorite. But secretly adored by her fans, I know.

I know you want me Oh, just a pig inside a human body Squillah, squillaz, squealas Just a pig inside a swine Yeah. Okay, so this is the thing she does. She takes something like sexual desire And mixes it with something totally taboo

Like swine or disease And it is that contrast, which is so compelling. And I think that contrast extends to the charts writ large. You know, in a moment where we're coming off a summer of like espresso and good luck babe and these kind of lilting relatively feel-good songs, I would say. Shibuzi, a bar song. It's fun to have something that's a little dark and a little freaky. Well, speaking of freaks on the charts, we have one of the head freaks of hip-hop with a new album, Tive of the Creator. Tyler the Creator

and his record Chromacopia. It's his eighth studio album he wrote, produced, and arranged it all by himself. We talked about it on our hip-hop episode.

But today, I want to focus on the album's lead single, Noid. Instantly love it. I mean, I feel like it's easy to figure out what this song is about.

You know, you got the name Noid right from the get-go. You have this chorus. singing the word paranoid over and over and over again, steadily rising. The song obviously wears its themes on its sleeve. I feel like this paranoid feeling is created through this heavy electric guitar riff that, da-da. Every time it hits, it comes in at a different place in the bar. You can't anticipate it. It's constantly moving around like some kind of paranoia chasing you.

I love that guitar riff. It's so. to use the F-bomb again, freaky. And it actually is a sample coming from a Zambian rock song. Nizakabanga Ngozi from Zamrock band Ngozi family. Whoa. The first thing I thought of when I heard Noid was not Zambian rock. I thought Black Sabbath.

I thought something like paranoid. Like the king of freaks, Ozzy Osbourne himself. That's what I was hearing in the Tyler the Creator track. No, totally. And I mean, staying on that tip, I thought the samples sounded really similar to Black Sabbath's Warpigs. Oh, yeah. That's it. Right there.

Oh, yeah. Of course. Warpigs. Sludgy. do metal. Tyler is such a singular artist in this current pop moment. He has these songs that are kind of out there, kind of dark. He does it all himself. He doesn't always stick in one genre in a clear way. And yet he seems to be always rewarded for his almost outsider approach to pop. Like this song is number 10 on the charts right now. And he has another song at number 7 right now.

It's really a testament to how blazing your own trail can still lead to commercial and critical success. Yeah, he's always paved his own path. Even the album itself, Chromacopia, is like a concept album of sorts. You know, he has these characters that are always his focus. You know, we had Igor, we had Tyler Baldelair on Call Me If You Get Lost. But on this record, we follow the protagonist St. Chroma, who is a conduit of Tyler in many ways. On this track, he struggles with the pressures of being famous and constantly feeling paranoid. And he jumps around with multiple genres on this song itself.

The intro, we get this psychedelic Zamrock vibe. But later on the song, Tyler wraps. And the way he wraps is extremely stream of consciousness. I can't even buy a home in private. Home invasions got my brother's dime. Notice every car that's dropping by. I think my neighbors won't we did. I got a cannon.

So we have these themes of paranoia, and this track is very anxiety-inducing. Just in this verse here, we have a flow that never stops. It kind of just keeps going over this rising shepherd tone synthesizer and this percussion rhythm that is just panting, you know? It's like deep in the back of the mix, but we hear it gives that physical. feeling like Tyler is actively running as he's rapping. I can't even buy a home in private. Home invasion's got my brother's dime.

He literally tells us he's running. Oh my gosh. Panting. It's a very stressful verse. Yeah, and the opening lines of that verse don't even rhyme really either. He rhymes private with dying. with driving by. Before he really settles into the groove,

it's very frantic, which plays well because the song also juxtaposes this feeling of running with these moments of melodic harmony. So you're saying that these background vocals and these extra vocal melodies

that are sort of swirling around our head, this is the paranoia, the different voices that have got him running? Exactly. And, you know, we have these chords at the end, you know, these jazzy melodies, kind of underscoring these lyrics, left shoulder, right shoulder, left shoulder look, kind of giving a nice rhythm to these paranoid feelings. And it's kind of comforting, framing it this way, over all of these voices that very melodically are singing things like, who's looking in my window? Oh, this is freaky. Quite freaky. He's always leaned into the freaky sounds in his work. This song reminds me a lot of the opener of Cherry Bomb, Death Camp. So we're here in a similar sonic palette all the way back in 2015.

We have this guitar that's heavy in your face, very scuzzy, you know, garage rocky. We have these screams. There's this layering. He's always played with these themes in his work of paranoia, people following him and things like that. But Noid specifically, I really like, because it juxtaposes. the heaviness of paranoia with a sort of melodic lightness. Which he does in Death Camp as well, right? Nate, will you do it for us?

Wow. Quite beautiful when you play it that way. Yeah, have I told you about my forthcoming album of piano ballad versions of Tyler the Creator's song? It's called... I got nothing. Tyler the composer. Ooh, that's good. You know who else has created dark, powerful meditations?

on the cost of fame. Lady Gaga. Oh, yeah. Yeah. You know what else has created dark meditations on the perils of fame? If I had to take a guess, I'd say Robert Smith of the cure. Of the cure. You introduced us with some disease.

I have got the cure right after the break. 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 Tough. 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. And the final freak in our trilogy, Charles? It's the goth father himself. Ooh. Robert Smith, known for his wiry hair, smudged eyeliner, and red lipstick, his chesty haunting voice and chorus guitars. The cure, you know, Started in 1976. Yeah. Wow.

Really foundational to the sounds of post-punk and goth rock. The cure are known for atmospheric sounds and introspective lyrics often about joy,

love and heartbreak, nostalgia, but also isolation. And despair. And despair. And so in their fifth decade, 14 albums in, they've got a new song for us. But before I play it, I got to say, while researching this, I kind of realized, oh, all those hit songs that I know really well are The Cure. Why haven't I been listening deeply to The Cure my whole life?

I'm having a similar revelation, Charles. I feel like if you're a casual listener like us, you maybe don't take them as a. as seriously as other bands because they have this reputation as like the goth princes and they're moody and they're downcast and it's only music you listen to when you're in a terrible mood but these songs have a lot of emotional like complexity to them and there's highs and there's lows and as i'm listening to this it's like damn these songs are like whole universes unto themselves i know there's people screaming at us right now but i needed a 101 on the cure and so i brought in an expert music producer and music marketer Jesse Cannon, who has a special relationship with The Cure. So in my late teen years, I became a massive fan of The Cure through their record, disintegration,

like many teens who have mood problems, that I was lucky enough at 26 to get a call I just couldn't believe I would ever get, which was to fly to London and go work with them on their self-titled record. I asked Jesse to distill the sound of the cure down into just like one sentence. The cure have a record called Wild Moody Swigs.

It's a very aptly titled record because that is how you get a group that goes from Friday, I'm in love to what you hear on this record. And some ways I feel like this is just reinforcing Nate what you said. It's like, all right, mood swing music. But with Jesse's unique purview of having been in the studio with The Cure and having spent time with Robert Smith, he helped me appreciate the unique way in which they are able to summon some of the most challenging emotions. This is what Jesse told me about working with Robert Smith in the studio. Every day you're there, you're getting a masterclass.

It's someone who is pouring every bit of their emotion into music and figuring out how it sounds to feel one of the most extreme emotions he's had since you last heard from him. So since we've last heard from The Cure, 16 years, things have gotten darker. Jesse describes their newest album song, of a lost world by saying, You can't say they're moodiest and darkest because they do so many different shades of dark

from matte black to black sometimes, but also to grays, sometimes to faded black because you've been wearing the same black outfit for 40 years. The thing everybody keeps saying is, like, I cannot believe somebody could sing this passionately at this age. This is the retirement age in America. This is their lead single alone.

And Jesse, I feel like, helped me understand where it sits in this body of work. Obviously, we are in a state of deep despair, these haunting strings, ghostly pianos and synthesizers. It sounds like we're in a vacuum chamber of droning, distorted guitars. They open with this dark lyric. This is the end of every song that we see. sing. This is the opening of the record. This is the opening lead single.

Damn, it's grim. First song almost after two decades, and that's what you open with. It feels like we're pondering some big questions about mortality, our place in the world. He goes on to ask about what has happened to our hopes and our dreams that we thought would never change. And from Jesse's experience in the studio with Robert Smith, I think I really, I really, really am starting to understand this record, it is about harnessing some kind of deep, latent, hard to articulate emotion and make it present in music. I think aside from this great vocal

presentation, which sounds like he's 25. Yeah. This does not sound like someone near retirement age. It's uncanny how similar that vocal sounds to all the tracks from the 70s and 80s that you just played. It's amazing. But I feel like he accomplishes this feeling of, suspended animation, are we achieving our hopes and dreams, by creating a non-resolving chord progression that seemingly never ends. The whole thing just kind of hangs. The whole thing is just this never-ending chord progression going from G down to F, back to G. And you're like, are we going to go home to C? No, no, no, we're going to go back to F. Give us a little hint of an Almost resolution, but not a full resolution.

Oh, we're moving somewhere. Oh, it's dark. Oh, okay, now we're going to resolve home right now. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. No. It just keeps going back and forth and back and forth through these chords that, again, I feel like I'm sort of suspended in life just waiting to go home,

waiting to feel like I can arrive safely. And the music doesn't let us do that in the same way. that all the hopes and dreams for his life that he's singing about here feel like they're falling apart, that they aren't what he imagined. I feel like listening to this song is wet of my appetite to check out the rest of this album, which I've seen reviews calling it

this remarkable extension of the band's legacy after 16 years, like almost a sense of surprise, like how can this be this good? And yet, Charles, I'm concerned that we haven't delivered on our, promise of this trilogy of freaks. Is this song freaky? Oh my gosh, it's so freaky. It's like contemplating mortality and what the future is going to be. All our hopes and dreams are out the window. The rest of this album talks about war in the state of the world. It also does offer some hints of

love and promise here and there. But yeah, I think it's dealing with the freakiest emotions. It's dealing with death, despair, the fear of the unknown. That's freaky to me. That's freaky to me. me. It's not doing it through fancy modal mixture. It's not referencing horror soundtracks. It doesn't have to. It's just basic chords and some real deep lament.

That's freaky to me. Freaky stuff, Charlie. All right. You persuaded me. We came, we saw, we freaked. Maybe I guess what I'm trying to say is that being a freak is actually about harnessing our deepest

emotions and finding ways to express them in ways that nobody else feels comfortable doing so. I think we're getting that from Gaga. I think we're getting that from Tyler, and we're definitely getting some from The Cure. Switched on Pop is produced by Rihanna Cruz, edited by Art Chung, engineered by Brian McFarlane,

illustrations by Iris Gottlieb. We're a member of the Vox Media Podcast Network and a production of Vulture, which is part of New York Magazine. You can subscribe at nymag.com slash pod. I want to say a special thanks to Jesse Cannon, who gave me a personal education on The Cure. He's one of the leading voices in music marketing.

if you need to get your music out into the world. Check out Jesse's work. His newsletter is music marketing trends and his YouTube is Museformation. I'll post both in the show notes. Find us on social media at Switch on Pop and tell us what your favorite freaky songs of The Moment are. What do we miss?

What should we include? Where do you let your freak flag fly? We'll be back again next Tuesday. And until then, thanks for listening. Spotify, has arrived the new Good Girl Jasmine Absolute of Caroline Herrera, a fragrance intense with character gourmet and addictive. Imagine a jasmine-envolventy, taffy caramelized and tonka-tostata. A combination that seduce from the first instant and she'll beaweller.

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