Switched on Pop - The Healing Power of Pop with Esperanza Spalding

Episode Date: October 26, 2021

It. Has. Been. A. Year. We’ve felt it; you’ve felt it. Sometimes, it’s comforting to consider how universal that overwhelming sense of blah is. Other days, woof, it can be tough to see the light. That’s the subject of today’s episode, brought to you by our producer Megan Lubin. When Megan hit an especially low point earlier this year, she noticed something in the music she was listening to: Über-popular artists making explicit references to the state of their mental health and the things they do to cope with it. It made her want to know more about the impact of those lyrics, so she dug around and found an academic who studies that very thing: Alex Kresovich, a Ph.D. candidate at the University of North Carolina’s Hussman School of Journalism and Media who has authored a bunch of studies on mental health and popular music. In today’s episode, we walk through one of those studies with him and learn how influential lyrical content can be — even when you’re not paying super-close attention. Alex’s research, and research like it, opens up the possibility that pop artists are an underestimated asset when it comes to mental-health messaging. “People like to point at pop music as a source of problems, not a source of solutions,” he says. Alex sees his job as guiding the scientific community toward new data that could change how we understand the value of pop-music lyrics — “laying the railroad ties,” as he puts it. In the second half of today’s episode, we talk to an artist who has taken the concept of music as medicine to a whole new level. Over the course of her career, Esperanza Spalding has reimagined the music-making process — transforming it from one designed to meet her label’s commercial needs to one designed to meet the mental-health needs of her immediate community. With her new album Songwrights Apothecary Lab, Spalding offers up a collection of songs for “releasing the heaviness of a seemingly endless blue state,” for “steadying the vast-spinning ‘potential hurt’ analysis triggered by the bliss of new romance,” and for “slowing down and remembering to make space/time for your elders.” Spalding made clear that this way of “musicking” is nothing new: It’s like the oldest thing ever….we’re playing with the origin of music. The origin of music being: a response to others in your community, in your surroundings. And the response is intuitive! When you hum for a baby or when you’re sitting with somebody who is grieving and you, you feel compelled to hum, or when you’re excited and go, “Wow!” That’s music! Spalding’s view of music these days opened our eyes wide to the true healing power of individual songs and just how accessible music is when we need it. Songs Discussed girl in red - Serotonin Billie Eilish - Getting Older Julia Michaels ft. Selena Gomez - Anxiety J. Cole ft. kiLL edward - FRIENDS Lil Nas X - VOID Kehlani - 24/7 Kendrick Lamar - u Juice WRLD - Lucid Dreams Panic! At the Disco - King of the Clouds Shawn Mendes - In My Blood Ariana Grande - breathin Logic, Alessia Cara, Khalid - 1-800-273-8255 Billie Eilish ft. Khalid - lovely Lil Uzi Vert - XO Tour Llif3 Esperanza Spalding - Formwela 3 Esperanza Spalding - Formwela 6 Esperanza Spalding - Formwela 10 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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talks about mental health, and as a warning, we play some songs that have explicit references to suicide. Okay, let's dive in. Welcome to Switch Don Pop. I'm musicologist Nate Sloan. And I'm songwriter Charlie Harding.

And I'm podcast producer Megan Lubin. Back again. Yeah, you are. Guys, I want to kick off today's episode with a personal admission that, to be honest, I never imagined that I would make in such a public way. What's up? I have been struggling. I've been feeling anxious.

depressed. I think stuff that a lot of people are having hard time with right now. Sorry to hear that. Thanks. And it's a hard thing to talk about, right? Because generally speaking, I'm okay. Like, I have work and a partner and a roof over my head. And so when I say struggling, I mean, there's stuff going on in my brain these days that feels very hard to manage. And sometimes I don't manage it so well. I mean, it's obviously been a really, really hard time for a lot of people. Global pandemic, political unrest, climate, anxiety. It is rough out there, Megan. And I can only imagine what you're going through.

And, you know, you're not alone. You know, Megan, as much as a lot of people are going through this, I just want to say, I'm really sorry. You're feeling down. And I just want to check in. Like, do you want to talk podcasts and music some other time? No, actually, this is a really nice escape for me. Truth be told, one of the things that's been the most helpful, the most distracting in this time is,

music, which means I've been listening to a lot of music lately. I've been noticing something. At first, I thought I was projecting just because of what I'm experiencing right now, but I think there's really something here. I want to run about you guys. What's that? I'm hearing pop artists making explicit references to their mental health in their music, not making allusions to it or hiding it behind metaphor, as brilliant songwriters so often do. I'm hearing them actually say, I'm not okay. And in a lot of cases, making explicit references to the things that they do or take to cope. And I think a really good example of this is the artist Girl in Red and her song Serotonin.

I'm running low on serotonin. Chemical imbalance got me twisting things stabilized with medicine. There's no depth to these feelings. So Girl in Red is the stage name of Marie Olvin. She's a 22-year-old producer and singer-songwriter from Norway. And in interviews, she's talked about this song Serotonin coming out of a really unstable time in her life when she was struggling to separate the stories in her head from her external reality. What struck you about the song when you first heard it?

A couple things. I mean, one, it's a really good song. Like, I enjoy listening to it. Truth. But I think the thing that got me talking about it. with friends and talking about it with you, Charlie, is I heard in that song a comfort with the clinical language surrounding mental health. So words like serotonin.

Yeah. I'm running low on serotonin. Chemical imbalance in my brain, taking medicine, medication to help fix all these feelings. Yeah. And later in the song, she makes references to intrusive thoughts. I get intrusive thoughts Like cutting my hands off Like jumping in front of a bus

Like how do I make the stop? Like these are not words that I use When I'm talking casually About my own mental health But they are words that I might use In a meeting with a psychiatrist or a therapist Right And while this is a very good example

Of what I'm talking about I think girl in red is far from the only one Writing like this Another great example is the new Billy Eilish album and the first song, Getting Older. Billy is an artist who's very well known for emotional honesty and her music. But even still, she seems to treat this album like it's a step further than she's taken before. Here's the last line of getting older.

some trauma did things I didn't want I was too afraid to tell you but now I think it's time wow not only is the lyrical content addressing mental health head on it's like the way she is singing is communicating this feeling of being like overwhelmed or something it's really powerful to listen to it's like the tone of her voice conveys that as well I heard that too and actually if you listen closely, one thing you'll notice is that the breaths that are normally cut out in a pop song like this are left in. And in some cases, it almost sounds like they're copied and pasted and inserted after every phrase. It makes her sound really tired, like exhausted. Yeah, exasperated. Exasperated, exactly. And again, it's not just Billy. It's not just

girl in red. I know I'm throwing a bunch of examples at you, but really, like, it's so many pop acts that are either topping the charts or have in recent years. Like, I don't think this is a totally brand new phenomenon. I think this is something we've been building towards. Here's Julia Michaels and Selena Gomez with anxiety. It's true. Jay Cole on his track, Friends. Lil Nas on his new album Montero makes a really similar reference.

Kalani on her 2016 release 24-7. Kendrick Lamar on his seminal album to Pimp a Butterfly I know your secrets knicker Moose swings is frequent nigger I know depression is resting on your heart for two reasons And of course, Juice World Perhaps the rapper most known for openness

around his struggles with depression and addiction Probably due to the success of his hit, lucid dreams I take prescriptions to make me feel okay. I know it's all in my head. Bottom line, modern pop is rife with references to not being okay, to overpowering anxiety, to depression, to medications. It's really striking to hear all these tracks back to back. It almost makes me step back and think about how different this is from the typical perception

of pop music as something that's kind of bright and cheery and escapist and meant to make you forget about all your problems. These are pop songs that don't try and pretend that your problems aren't there. In fact, they're going to lean into them and they're going to use this very specific language. It makes me think, you know, well, both, wow, we must be going through a really tough time. A lot of people must be experiencing these difficult emotions. But maybe it's also a good thing that artists are talking about it explicitly at the same time. I can't say conclusively that we're in the middle of some massive taboo shift, but noticing these lyrics did lead me to dig a bit.

And the data seems to bear this out. There's a study out of the University of North Carolina on this subject, and it notes that, quote, the lyrics of the most popular songs have become increasingly referential to feelings of depression, suicidal ideation, and metaphors indicating a mental health condition. The reality is, and like I looked into this in preparation for this episode, is that anecdotally things are really hard for people right now,

but again, also, like, the data bears this out. Reported rates of depression and anxiety are higher in Gen Z than in any prior generation. And there's the good piece of this that's happening as well, which is that more people these days are seeking out mental health resources like therapy than ever before. All of these references made me want to know more about the actual impact of these artists being as open as they are. Like, are there long-term effects of hearing these songs on the billboard, on the radio, on Spotify, again and again? Subconscious or conscious?

Like, are rap fans who listen to Kendrick Lamar more likely to get themselves to therapy? That sort of thing. So how do we know if audiences are actually responding to these lyrics and making changes and taking action on their own mental? health in their life. Yeah, well, to answer that question, what impact do these lyrics have on listeners? I talked to someone who is studying that very thing, and I learned what it really means, scientifically speaking, when we hear our own struggles reflected back to us in the music that we love. I'm so excited. I cannot express how excited I am. Of all the press and stuff I've gotten to do, this is by far the most exciting thing. That's sweet. So that is Alex Krasovich. Alex is a PhD

candidate studying health communication at UNC Chapel Hill. He's also the author of that study I mentioned up above. Alex studies the effect of popular song lyrics on people's attitudes and behavior. So basically, he's the perfect person to try and answer this question of how people react to mentions of mental health and pop song lyrics. Yep. And before Alex studied music, he made music. Alex was a producer for a while in Los Angeles. He worked with artists like Cilo Green and Panic at the Disco. And one of his songs for Panic at the Disco actually went platinum. So I have the angels and outfields inside of the mind. I'm ascending these ladders.

I'm coming singing by this whole world. Whoa. Damn, Alex Kay. That's King of the Clouds, which was released in 2018. I guess I'm curious. You know, Nate and I feel really different roles in this show. he gets to be Mr. Academic. I get to be like producery songwritery dude.

Like, how does someone go from one role to the other? How do you go from writing songs to academia? Yeah. Well, it's complicated. One thing to know is that Alex himself has long struggled with his mental health. He was diagnosed with generalized anxiety disorder when he was just seven years old. What happened was music was my escape from my anxiety. And I would go to the basement at my parents' house where they had this old big speaker

system and I would listen to music for two to three hours a day just by myself. I would dance around. I would pretend I was a sports star. I'd pretend as a rock star. I would like live out all these scenarios in my life and it was a way to really escape my day-to-day anxiety and just live in my imagination. Alex, of course, grew up and turned those basement fantasy sessions into a whole career. But I think when you get a job doing what you love, it can go one of two ways. And I think for Alex, it stopped being an escape, and it started to feel like a series of obligations and deadlines. And the way he tells it, after a while, he just hit a breaking point in LA. It wasn't even that dramatic. He'd just been working hard for a long time. And a big,

hyped-up single he was working on for a major artist got canned after months of production and painstaking, fine-tuning. It's the worst. The worst. I was just having a really hard time. I remember being on the phone with my parents. and them telling me that they were like concerned about me and concerned about my mental health. Like I had been backsliding. You know, after that happened for the next couple months, I think I was just spinning.

And I remember being out running one morning like a month later and just kind of hearing this voice in my head being like, hey, Alex, it's okay to let go. And it's like, it's okay. And that day, I was like, all right, I'm going to get out of here as soon as I can. So given another month and a half and that was it. I can sense that it's sort of bittersweet to have ascended to a point in a career which is basically an impossible one to have and then to have to leave it all behind. But I think it's really brave to see this thing is actually the most counterproductive to my mental well-being. I've got to get out of here. I think it's a really strong thing to have to do.

Totally. You put that really nicely, Charlie. And I mean, it's so relevant right now, too. I mean, I can think of a lot of people in my life who have careers that on paper are their perfect fit, but are totally burning out or really struggling. And I was so appreciative of Alex for sharing all of that. Like, I love the word you used, brave. I think it's super brave. So with his production career behind him, Alex decides to pick up where he left off in school and go for a PhD in health communication, something that he studied before.

And I should note here, because it's important context for how Alex ended up analyzing pop lyrics as a career. In the years leading up to him going back to school, there had been a whole bunch of people studying the impact of celebrity health disclosures on the public. First of all, let me say good after late afternoon. There's a hallmark study that came out in 1995, evaluating the impact specifically of Magic Johnson's HIV diagnosis on people's attitudes towards those with HIV. Are you scared right now? No. It's another challenge, another chapter in my life that it's like your back is against the wall. And I think that you just have to come out swinging, and I'm swinging.

And the study authors, these two researchers, William J. Brown and Michael D. Basil, found that the results of the study hinged on participants' personal investment in Johnson. So basically, their willingness to go get tested for HIV, their attitudes towards those with HIV, correlated to how much they liked Magic Johnson. So this is where Alex sees an opening. There are tons of people studying the impact of celebrity health disclosures in television and in sports, but almost no one looking into song lyrics as a vector. So he pivots and pretty immediately starts scoping out the study.

Alex wants to know how listening to music with mental health-related content might lead to better attitudes around mental health. And what he calls behavioral intentions, basically you're in. intent to do something. So you're intent to seek treatment, for example. He believes that listening to lyrics will change attitudes, but he wants to study how and to what extent. Can I just ask why pop lyrics? Why not just do a direct comparison with Magic Johnson and look at how musicians public comments impact fans? Okay. So Alex also has reason to believe that lyrics are a particularly powerful medium when it comes to processing our emotions. There's a famous,

a sociomusicalologist named Simon Frith, who wrote that. To sing words is to elevate them in some way, to make them special, to give them a new form of intensity. But what it really says is music is different because it helps us find meaning. And because of this, because we connect with song lyrics empathetically, like we feel the artist experience as if it were our own, Alex thinks that song lyrics

can change attitudes regardless of whether someone has a connection to the artist, which would be kind of a big deal in his field. So Alex gathers up a participant pool of about 250 undergraduate students and sets them up with a survey. And the survey starts with sound, short clips of contemporary pop songs, which happen to center around themes of mental health. So the songs I picked were in my blood by Sean Mendez. Which is about anxiety difficulties. Breathing by our. Ariana Grande, which is about a technique for dealing with anxiety.

1-800-273-8255, the very popular logic song, which is about depression and suicidal thinking. I don't want to be alive. Lovely by Billy Eilish and Khalid, which is very on the nose about depression and anxiety. And then Lil Uzi Verz, Exotour Life Which is about depression and suicidal thinking After the clips play, participants get hit with a series of statement questions Like, do you identify with the values of the song? Do you feel like this song describes you?

Do you feel like this song describes your life? I call it perceived personal connection. Do you really feel connected to this song? Then Alex runs them through a similar set of questions about your connection to the artist. You know, if you saw a social media post from this person, are you likely to read it? Do you feel like you know this artist well? Then I ask questions about like mental health empathy. Do you feel for people who struggle with their mental health?

Or do you feel like you understand what they're going through? And then questions about stigma. Do you feel like most people who struggle with their mental health are to blame for their problems? What Alex is looking for here is associations, like strong correlations between people who feel one way about the music and one way about those struggling with mental health. For example, do the people who identify the most with these songs about mental health also have the highest levels of empathy towards people struggling with their mental health? And the short answer is yes. What Alex found was that people who feel really connected to the content of a song tend to feel more empathy for. those who are struggling. And that empathy is linked to a whole host of other stuff like reduced

mental health stigma, greater support for public mental health resources, and a greater willingness to offer support to others struggling with their mental health. And here's a key finding. People should more empathy whether they cared about the artist or not. They didn't need to connect with the person singing the song to connect with the song itself. People need to stop trashing on pop music. Seriously. God. Hearing these insights from Alex's study makes me think about how whenever there's a pop song with controversial lyrics, there's always this huge backlash because I guess presumably people think it's like bad for people to listen to music with controversial subjects. This suggests the opposite. In fact, this is a form of healing to be exposed to these themes in a song.

Yeah, and I talked to Alex about that exact thing, and he owns that the study wasn't looking for the next. implications. It was very much trying to see if it could suss out these positive associations and it was able to. But it does feel like we're always having that conversation, Nate, and not this conversation, which is why this study is so exciting. It's the beginning of scientific proof or sort of like indicators. Alex referred to it as like someone waving up a little flag and saying like, there's something here that you should look at. There's one more finding in Alex study that piqued my interest. Initially, Alex thought that people who who connect with songs about mental health

might be more willing to seek treatment for themselves. But... There was no relationship. So just having more empathy didn't make someone be like, yeah, well, you know, if I was depressed, I'd seek support for my help. But what those participants did say is that they use music to cope with their stress.

So it almost seems like a lot of these young people are using music to self-medicate. You know, when they're feeling anxious or depressed, they're turning to music. which relatable. What a thought-provoking concept, music as a form of medication? And Alex is by no means suggesting that that's what people should do, like in place of treatment or seeing a doctor. What his survey is showing is that that's what people are reporting doing.

This is like what's happening right now. Wow. Okay. So I think Alex's study is a really useful tool for understanding how music can influence listeners. increasing our empathy towards people struggling with their mental health and reducing stigma. But what if we took that music as medicine concept a little further? What if musicians behaved more like actual healers, doling out the exact right sounds for low moments? Songs formulated to help people feel better. There is someone out there, a big-name artist, who's thought a great deal about making music that specifically developed to heal us. someone intent on magnifying music's therapeutic powers.

That's 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.

Ready? Ready? Do not sugarcoat something for me. 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. Before the break, I mentioned an artist who thinks a lot about the healing power of music. Hey, nice to meet you. I'm Esperanza Spalding.

I think once we figured out that we were going to be making this episode, we knew we had to talk to Esperanza Spalding. She recently put out an album called Songwrites Apothecary Lab. The project emerged out of a series of actual labs, multi-day affairs where Spalding would gather fellow musicians, researchers, therapists, and other non-musicians. Every song on the album is conceived of, as an antidote to a specific emotional pain.

In fact, she calls the tracks Formulahs, formulas that we sing. Formula. Like, here's Formulah 3, a formula for, quote, releasing the heaviness of a seemingly endless blue state. I don't like to use the word medicine in our context because it is too heavy and it promises too much. it eludes to too much their formulas, the little musical formulas to prompt or initiate or invite a particular effect in the body

or in the experience and the perception of the listeners. First of all, let's talk about that song for a second because that was celestial, like those stacked vocals, those melodies that sparse accompaniment. But I also want to know more. Like I get why she doesn't want to call them medicine, but it also seems like that's how she's thinking about this on some level. Esperanza used the word apothecary and the title. Yeah, I don't know.

Maybe medicine just had some too harsh connotations or something. But yeah, each track is a thoroughly researched, methodically composed piece of music with a single healing objective. And the whole project rests on this one question. The question you might ask yourself when you're standing in front of an aisle of cold medicine, what do I need to feel better than I do right now? For instance, Corey King, wonderful songwriter, producer, trombonist. Corey arrives on the first day of the lab.

And we discussed, like, what do we need? What do you need the song for? Corey, Corey said, what do you need a song for? So that was our prompts. One thing I really appreciated in our interview, was how Spalding went out of her way to say that this is not a new way of music making. In fact, it's as old as arranged music itself. This way of musicking in response to experience of our fellow community members or of ourselves

in response to a perceived need or a recognized need or a felt need, that's so old. None of this is new or innovative. We're playing with the origin of music, I think, I think. The origin of music being a response to others in your community, in your surroundings. And the response is intuitive. When you hum for a baby or when you're sitting with somebody who's grieving and you feel compelled to hum. Or when you're excited and you go, woo, that's music. What I find so inspiring about that approach to making music is that it takes

the themes that we've been talking about so far, the way that music can have this kind of therapeutic role in our lives, and it's applying them to the actual creation and composition of that music. So not just like the after effect of listening, but actually like how can we bring in these ideas of creating a healing and holistic environment when we're actually making music? Like that is, I don't know, that just blows me away. Totally. And Spalding admits that making music this way didn't feel like an option for her for a long time, because the industry is just not set up to support it. Most artists make a series of compromises when they sign with a label, where they're handing over some amount of power over what music of theirs

ultimately gets released and what it sounds like. Spalding remembers one very common example of this from early on in her career. I can remember with the album Espadanza, my label rep at the time having a grid of the songs, the types of, like the speeds and tempos and vibes of the songs that he understood in conversation with the label should be on the album. There were other songs that I wanted to put on the album and he was like, no, they don't fit in the grid. That's such a minor example, but I really was deferring power to him and thinking that he knew better. Meanwhile, if you think about it, I'm like, I don't know that he's a demographic that I was even trying to speak to. I'm deferring my sense of knowing what a balanced representation of my work is

to this person, to this other person, whose metric of value is really different from mine. Spalding knows that this is most pop artists experience. Her hope for songwrites apothecary lab is that it encourages artists to be really clear-eyed about the psychological toll of compromising their talent for a label or a brand, not to avoid it altogether because that's not really possible. but just to check in with themselves and ask, What do I think this compromise is going to do for me? And to approach conversations like the one she had with her label rep back in the day, imagining a world in which you don't need the rep or their money to feel confident in what you have to offer.

Imagine you already had all the money you need. You already had health insurance. You already had rent. And imagine the person talking to you knew that you were already good. And then imagine how the conversation would be different. different. Then you can track the difference between how that conversation will go and how it's actually going. Then you can make some choices. Actually, this part is not okay. I mean, this strikes me as universally applicable. Yeah, right after this conversation with Esperanza Spalding, I messaged a friend of

mine who's in the middle of a tough work negotiation. And I was like, imagine if you didn't need this person to tell you that you're good in order to feel good. It's a powerful energy. And a real survival mechanism, I think, when you're making art in less than ideal creative environments like the popular music industry. Yeah. You know, one of the most tragic things in the world of popular music is the way that the career destroys artists' lives in a whole myriad of tragic ways. And I really appreciate the project of trying to reembrace the gifts that we have, such that the artist can be whole and healed. The process can be healing.

It can be healing back to the listener. And that can be a cycle in community and conversation with each other. It feels really primordial. Yes. And actually, that reminds me of the other hope Spalding said she has for this project. She wants to remind listeners that we all have access to the healing power of music that she explored on songwrites apothecary lab. You know, we all do have a capacity. to bring music into our body, into the room.

You can hit play. You can put a record on. If you don't have the faculty of hearing through your ear, you can rhythm. You can experience vibration through. Like right now I'm hitting this chair. I'm filling it through my ribcage. Like we all have access to this incredibly nourishing a resource

called quote unquote music. And I hope that as we think about, you know, what formula, what I put on if I was feeling down and I needed a da-da-da-da-da-da fill in the blank, it might activate this reminder that like, oh, actually, I have access to so many formulas. It may be reignite our relationship with sound as a healing agent day to day in our own lives. And to reignite the relationship with our own intuitive sense of what sound we need at any given time, because you know, we do be knowing.

do we give ourselves permission to know is the question. Deep. You know, I'm really glad that Esperanza Spalding is serving as a model of a way of music making that can be really healthy. I'm also excited to have heard from Alex, someone who saw that like this thing isn't working for me, it's okay to step out. You know, in a moment when so many artists are bearing their heart and their deepest psychological challenges on microphone, what a beautiful and important thing. It's even more powerful for me to see people who are showing the way through. And I'm totally moved by it.

Same. Dido. Megan, I'm curious, has this investigation changed anything for you personally? Like, do you feel like you got the information you were hoping for? Yeah, I do. I think above all else, the search has me listening to music really differently. I'm more aware of how what I'm listening to is normalizing certain themes for me, even when I'm not conscious of it. And I think a lot more about the artist's experience of making the music now.

It's all made me a much more empathetic listener. And it makes the music I've listened to since researching all of this a more immersive, kind of whole body and mind experience. Dare we say healing? Yeah, and healing too. Switchdown Pop is produced by Charlie Harding, Megan Lubin, and me, Nate Sloan. We're edited by Jolie Myers, engineered by Brandon McFarlane, illustrations by Iris Gottlieb, and social media by Abby Barr. Our executive producers are Nashat Kurwa and Hannah Rosen. We're a member of the Vox Media Podcast Network and a production of Vulture.

Special thanks to Alex Kresovic and Esperanza Spalding for sharing their knowledge and their passion with us. And additional thanks to two people we weren't able to include in this episode, but who taught us so much about how music is used for therapy in clinical settings. Gabby Banzon and Alison Rogers. They host their own podcasts for music therapists about pop music and therapy. It's called Clinical Populations. Go check it out. You can find more episodes of Switched On Pop anywhere you get podcasts and always on our website at

switchedonpop.com. We'll be back next week and until then, thank you. for listening.