Switched on Pop - The Most Popular Song In The World

Episode Date: October 6, 2016

The Nokia ringtone used to be heard more than a billion times per  day, making it one of the most popular songs in the world. We tend to  consider cellphone rings as somewhat antithetical to  music.... There is a whole subset of YouTube videos dedicated to the perverse thrill of  watching a delicately beautiful musical moment ruined by the harsh cry  of a default ringtone. In this episode, we zoom in on one of these  annoying melodies to see if there's not some hidden musical craft  present in the ubiquitous bleeps and bloops that envelop us. Later,  Charlie shares a piece made solely of this sonic detritus, and a data  scientist locates surprising musical patterns in a most unexpected  source. Featuring:The Nokia TuneThe Beatles - She's So HeavyOne Direction - Live While We're YoungFrancisco Tarrega - Gran ValsLinks:Charlie Harding - Bowl ArrowJonathan Berger's Article in Nautlius: How Music Hijacks our Perception of TimeFamous Cell Phone Rings Played on the Piano by Tony AnnGreg Hochmuth's work Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Starting point is 00:00:32 It's free for iOS users. Hello, Charlie. What's happening, Nate? Are you excited? What for? Because today we are going to listen to the most popular song in the world. This is uncharted territory. Nate, Nate, sorry.
Starting point is 00:00:49 Just got to be kidding me. One second. You got to be kidding me, dude. Hold on, sorry. Who was that? Hello? Yeah, yeah. Was that your gastroenterologist?
Starting point is 00:00:58 Yeah, I'm recording right now. You might if I just call you right back. Okay, thanks. Sorry, Nate. Okay, you know what? I have to say you got a lucky break, because in this rare instance, we are actually talking about a cell phone ring, right?
Starting point is 00:01:14 The most popular song in the world. No, really? Yes. Think of this as the world in a grain of sound, cribbing from William Blake a little bit. We're going to go deep into one cell phone ring so deep that you can't imagine. how hyper-analytical this is going to get.
Starting point is 00:01:31 But hopefully we're going to merge in the other end with a whole new appreciation of the sounds that occur all around us. You ready, Chuck? This is absurd. All right, so put your phone on mute and let's go. Phone. Phones on mute.
Starting point is 00:01:47 Let's go. Airplane that. Yes. Okay. Here we go. Welcome to Switch on Pop. I'm musicologist Nate Sloan. And I'm songwriter Charlie Harding.
Starting point is 00:02:07 Okay, Charlie. So today we, we... we're going to go off the deep end. Yeah. And there is no lifeguard on duty. But trust me, I think we're going to learn a lot. So what are we going to do? Okay, I think what we are going to do is actually explode the very notion of popular music.
Starting point is 00:02:22 Okay. Great. By taking something that on the outside appears kind of even almost antithetical to music itself. Yeah. Something that's like almost a scrap of sound, of noise, of irritant, something like perhaps a cell phone ring. Oh, yes. And put this under the Microsoft and see that, in fact, this is doing the same exact thing to us that a great pop song is doing. It's working, it's magic on us.
Starting point is 00:02:48 It's getting under our skin. Okay, so music is all around us happening all the time. And the cell phone is the most popular song in the world. Is that what you're saying? That is what I'm saying. In fact, I mean, I can back this up a little bit because by one estimate, the tone we're going to listen to was heard over 1.8 billion times a day. Okay, so almost as much as Lady Gaga song. Yeah, so just below Taylor Swift, Lady Gaga, Kanye, Beyonce, the cell phone ring.
Starting point is 00:03:17 Oh, you said 1.8 billion times a day. Yeah, 1.8 billion, man. I mean, if you think about it, this is, these are the sounds we hear more than anything else. Huh. More than any other song. We know these so intimately in a way. We're so familiar with them. Whether we like them, it might be a separate question.
Starting point is 00:03:31 To the degree that they are just an annoyance at worse and at best they fade into the background. Okay, so enough, enough abstract. Let's zoom in on one of these cell phone rings and pick it apart within an inch of its life and see what makes this thing tick. What do you think? I don't know if I have a choice, but... Yes, we will uncover whether you like it or not, the hidden musical craft in the ubiquitous bleeps and bloops that surround us. Let's listen to the iconic, I think that's fair to say, Nokia cell phone ring. Good choice of words.
Starting point is 00:04:09 It is iconic. Yes. Did you ever have one of these phones, by the way? That was my first phone. Me too. Oh, Charlie. You had that brick cell phone up until like 2012, 2013. Oh, yeah.
Starting point is 00:04:22 I was like kind of adamantly old school, and then I realized it was just, I was just in being obnoxious. I was just exactly. Not quite as obnoxious as that cell phone ring, though. But or is it? I mean, let's break this apart for a minute. Okay. First, I just want to pose it to you because, you know, this ring tone very well.
Starting point is 00:04:45 Yeah. Maybe we can pick apart some characteristics here. What is what kind of work? What kind of musical work is this tone doing that might make it an effective ringer, right? Something that grabs our attention that makes us want to pick up the phone. What do you hear going on here, just in this little, like, nanosecond of sound? It has this sort of musical gesture. It starts on a high note, descends a little bit.
Starting point is 00:05:14 and then it repeats itself but on a different note. And then it repeats the melodic phrase one more time beginning on yet a lower note. That's kind of, I guess, what's happening. So it's got this high range and a low range at the same time, constantly moving from high to low. As you point out, it's kind of the same pattern, but that you're hearing it in different places, slowly moving down. That is indeed what we call a sequence in music.
Starting point is 00:05:53 So why might that be compelling for us to hear? Like, why does that grab us? I stumped him. I have a theory, but I think you've been thinking on this a whole lot more for the last week. So why don't you tell me what's happening? I think what grabs us is this sense of directionality. Yeah. I think you were hinting at that, right?
Starting point is 00:06:17 Exactly. My idea. That there's the sense that even in this little phrase, there is this sort of inevitable teleological motion from beginning to end. Right. Right. Once that little phrase starts, you are just waiting for it to get to that final note. Mm.
Starting point is 00:06:38 And I might go so far as to say that every moment that we aren't reaching that final note is one of intense, of bated breath of hot anticipation. And if you don't get that final note, you will be very disturbed, right? Yeah, they'll prove it to me. Okay. So I will. I will. I'm going to make you really uncomfortable. Per usual.
Starting point is 00:06:58 Listen to this. Oh, no. It reminds me of the Beatles. She's so heavy when the song just cuts off mid-measure after seven minutes of build. You're like, what just happened? Yes, yes. It is equally kind of discomforting to not hear that. Because it takes advantage of a sort of harmonic language that we are hardwired to understand, right?
Starting point is 00:07:41 Yeah. Because we understand that final note is the home note, is the home. key, right? Is the center of this composition. The sun of this musical solar system. And we feel the motion towards that,
Starting point is 00:07:57 getting closer and closer every time that cell phone ring restarts. We hear the inexorable march back towards the center, back towards the home. And we are just, and I think it's kind of endlessly engaging to hear that
Starting point is 00:08:19 process. It's a process that classical composers exploit over the course of a whole symphony. Right. And it's a process that the Nokia people exploit over the course of this little tiny snippet of sound. I almost wish that somebody had used this motif, sort of like the fifth symphony as a motif through the entire piece and made an orchestral, some sort of symphonic piece around it. I bet it's been done. Well, I can direct you, in fact, to a young prodigy who do you find on YouTube named Tony On,
Starting point is 00:08:49 who has created this incredible piano sonata. Really? Kind of based around this, yeah, this little Nokia song. This is ridiculous. It's stunning. It's absolutely captivating stuff. I'm totally with you. And now I got to drop my bombshell.
Starting point is 00:09:24 Okay, what do you got? I think there is one other hugely important part of this little, this diabolical little tune. Yeah. And it has to do with meter. Yeah. But first I just want to pose you a question. Does this tune start on an upbeat or a downbeat? This is kind of a trick question, Charlie,
Starting point is 00:09:45 because I think that this is one of those rare, this is like, this piece is like kind of a white whale or something. This is kind of an outlier, this little Nokia ringedown. Yeah. Because I think it's almost impossible to say whether this starts on an upbeat or downbeat.
Starting point is 00:10:01 You're going to really have to explain this to me, because I actually have no clue what the heck you're talking about. And we really will, my friend. Okay. We are going to get metrical. Go ahead. Okay, so, but basically, let me just posit that there's two ways to hear this piece. One, you can hear it as starting with a downbeat, in which case it goes...
Starting point is 00:10:21 Uno, two, three, one, two, three, one, two, three, one. Yeah. And that sounds, I think, perfectly right. Mystery solved. However, if we do it another way where... not the first note, the very first notes become not the downbeat, not the strong beat, but a weak beat or an upbeat, then it sounds like this. One, two, one, two, one, one, two, one. Also correct. Also correct.
Starting point is 00:10:49 And that little thing, that little thing that you can kind of hear this piece in two ways is very weird. Rhythmic uncertainty. Huh. Yeah. Very unusual. It's like it's off-putting because you never know where you're going to land. Precisely. And I was introduced to this notion of the kind of what we might call the metrical ambiguity of the Nokia cell phone ring
Starting point is 00:11:15 by an article by one of my old professors at Stanford named Jonathan Berger published in Nautilus magazine. And he goes on at length about the cell phone ring and its curious property. This curious rhythmic property At one point comparing to, I think, very smartly, one of those images you look at And from one perspective, it looks like an old woman. Right? And from another perspective, it looks like a beautiful young woman.
Starting point is 00:11:44 I thought it was a duck. No, that's a duck or bunny. Perfect, yeah. Or the duck or the bunny. But, you know, it's like kind of, it can be either one. It just depends how you look at it slash hear it. Why does this matter?
Starting point is 00:11:57 Okay, this is why it matters. Now let's kind of rewind. Let's go... Let's talk about meter for a second. So you're saying that making a melody which can be in either meter is actually a very challenging, sophisticated compositional skill. Yes. It's like the same kind of MC Escher-like craft that allows an image to be two things at once allows a melody to do the same. Yeah, not to say that any other song which doesn't.
Starting point is 00:12:27 isn't good, but simply that it is a hard thing to craft and that most melodies wouldn't work effectively that way. Yeah, precisely. This is a very, I mean, again, this is just like an outlier. It's a weird thing. Not that popular musicians don't love using metrical ambiguity, including our friends in one direction. Yeah, we talked about this in what, like episode 15. Yeah, exactly. Like there's a great, there's a great song that actually one of our listeners, Machek pointed out, is completely ripped off from the clash. But nevertheless, it's just interesting the way it starts because it seems like we're getting the downbeat at the very beginning. 1.2.3.4.
Starting point is 00:13:05 1.2.3. 4. 1.2. 4. Right. On the very first note we hear. And then by the second iteration of that riff, they've switched it and they've revealed that no. In fact, the downbeat comes in right before the first note that we hear. So if I count it off from the beginning... One, two, three, four.
Starting point is 00:13:25 One, two, three, four. One, two, three, four. One, two, three, a, two, I'm waiting on you. A, two, I'm waiting on you. Come on and let me sneak you out. We hear that there is, in fact, a shift. That they're moving the downbeat over to, quote unquote, the right place.
Starting point is 00:13:45 And so, what does this have to do with cell phone rigs? Okay, so now we're back to our friends at Nokia. Yeah. So at this point, it might be. helpful to know that this piece was not actually devised by the engineers at Nokia. Yeah. But lifted from a piece for guitar written by a Spanish composer named Francisco Tariga. Really?
Starting point is 00:14:08 Back in 1902. No way. Yeah. Charlie, let's hit play on the Grand Valtz by Francisco Tariga. No way. Isn't that wild? That's insane. And listen, oh, Charlie, listen to it one more time for me.
Starting point is 00:14:43 Because what's the difference between this Francisco Tariga original and the Nokia version? Oh, he doesn't play the high note. He doesn't play that last note. Yeah. That note that we again said is the home, is the key, is the place that whole piece wants to go to. I know why. Why? Because the piece continues.
Starting point is 00:15:10 Yeah. He needs to keep leading us on. Like, we're going to get that later in the piece probably. Yeah. I mean, it's interesting. I feel like we, I almost put it in there myself, like a phantom tone. Right. But it's not there.
Starting point is 00:15:20 Yeah. I was added by the Nokia people. Yeah. Interesting. Okay. So this little snippet of the Tarega Granvals. Yeah. Which somehow they, I don't know if this was conscious or not, but realized had the striking
Starting point is 00:15:32 metrical property where you can hear the downbeat in two different places. You know, as I think Jonathan Berger suggests in, in the article he wrote about this in Nautilus magazine, that we are very on edge when we hear this piece, in fact, because whether we know it or not, like the people who selected that little excerpt, there's something transfixing about this because it's kind of outside the normal rules of the way music behaves, where it's clearly in one or the other, one meter or the other, one downbeat or another. You can hear this over and over again, and every time here it's.
Starting point is 00:16:12 slightly differently. You can see the duck or the, what was it? Or the bunny. So you can listen to this cell phone ring again and again and never quite be satisfied that you truly know it, that you truly understand it. Every time you hear it, you can put the downbeat in a different place and it'll always be right.
Starting point is 00:16:42 And maybe that is the character of this little Nokia ring that makes it the most popular song in the world. All that. Oh, man. That's hilarious. The world in a grain of sound, my friend. So the piece has this descending, repeating thing that is unsettling because we don't know where to place it, which is kind of like, shoot, I don't know where I put my phone. I got to get my phone.
Starting point is 00:17:11 And then you grab your phone and you answer your phone. Yeah, I think you're right. I think we want to answer the phone to get some clarity somehow, though, of course, we never will. Well, certainly not with cell phone conversations back in the... the 90s and the 90s. All right, so now we have taken our deep dive into the Nokia cell phone ring. I hope I've convinced you of the intense musicality of this little scrap of sound. And now let's push the hypothesis even a little further and question whether not every
Starting point is 00:17:39 scrap of sound out there in the universe has its own kind of musicality. Are you willing to go there with me, Charlie? Oh, absolutely. Stick around after the break. We're going to go into a world of bleeps. Blupes. Do I have to take the red or blue pill again? Oh, man. Okay.
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Starting point is 00:19:04 coms bar records. Welcome back to Switch on Pop. Charlie, when we left, we were talking about the whole universe is contained within a single Nokia cell phone ring. Yes. And this brings us now to a composer you mentioned named John Cage. I love John Cage. Yes.
Starting point is 00:19:24 And now, like, the hourglass is going to go back out because just as we might see the Nokia cell phone ring, something that's annoying, something that we overlook as a piece of music, John Cage actually took that even further and wanted to see every. every sound as music, right? All sounds are created equal. I'm with you. All right, yeah. This is very pithily summarized in a phrase he used called no such thing as silence. Oh, right? Yeah.
Starting point is 00:19:52 Every sound is music. There is no such thing as silence. A belief that he put to the test in his most famous composition, I think you know what it is, 433. Yeah, this is where the person sits down on the piano, opens up the piano lid, and then just sits there for four minutes and 33 seconds. Yes, I mean, Charlie, just sits there. I'm sorry. Experiences the grand improvisational, momentary beauty of all of the minute sounds happening in the Symphony Hall.
Starting point is 00:20:36 Wow, well said, yes. You just hit the nail on the head, my friend. That's more like it. Yeah, the idea, this piece exposes you to the idea. that we were just talking about, that every sound around you is a piece of music just waiting to be heard. Music is in the ear of the beholder. Now, this takes us into a whole universe of what we might call found sound. Yeah. And that's what I want to talk about for a second now, Charlie. I want to go into the world. I want to try and locate musicality in all the sounds around us. Maybe we'll go
Starting point is 00:21:10 crazy, but let's try. Okay. And I think you might be the person to do it, my friend, because I know you've dabbled in the dark art of a found sound. I actually, tell me a little bit about that. I love sounds around me because they have an innate musicality that is like kind of hidden, and when you can pull them out and put them together, you can make totally unique compositions that have sort of never been made before because that sound is this transient thing in its time and in its place. Yeah. Yeah. I have a. I have a habit of taking out my phone in recording interesting sounds when I hear them in nature and in conversation in other places and then using them as instruments. And I once wrote this very strange piece out of just objects that I had in my office.
Starting point is 00:21:57 So this I have I made a song about I guess about my office, but it's I'm really hoping there's some rubber bands involved. Oh, you know, I don't think I had any rubber bands. That's okay. for movement two, you can go back in and add some of those. So do you want to hear the song first or the sounds first? Let's hear the song first. Okay, so here's the song that I wrote.
Starting point is 00:22:19 It's called Bull Arrow. Like Bolero, which is a classical piece. But the reason why is this was produced using sounds of a bowl and an arrow. So yeah, this is definitely not a pop masterpiece. This is really just sort of an experiment and sound and sort of a more contemplative piece. But it's basically made up out of these sounds that I found, right? So, yeah, will you take us through some of those? The synthesizer sound that you hear at the beginning is actually a glass that I had,
Starting point is 00:23:18 and I made it turn it into like a glass harmonica by, you know, using, like, wetting my finger and running it around the rim. So I took that and I sampled it. I turned it into like a sort of synthesizer sound. And then I found there was this sort of like low bass sound. happening in that track. And that's just from hitting a bowl that was, I think it was like my, I think it was like I had a cereal bowl next to me.
Starting point is 00:23:49 And then there's this really weird sound, this, this thing. Yeah, what is that nonsense? So that's actually, I can do this funny thing where I can like pop my finger and it goes like, here, like this. And I just did that. And then I took, and then I, and then I just like send it through a bunch of weird effects and delays and they turn into that weird sound. And then I had like some scissors and a water bottle that I was shaking.
Starting point is 00:24:21 And I just took these sounds and manipulated them and then turning them into this song called Bolero. Yeah, this is exactly what I'm talking about. There's like we just have to learn to hear the sounds around us as beautiful, right? This is maybe a more a matter of perception than anything else. Even something as absolutely revolting as your finger popping has. has its own kind of beauty. I will say it, sure. I have a whole sort of,
Starting point is 00:24:49 I think about it in very musical terms, but the sort of abstract ones. Okay, yeah, tell me more. So kind of like when you were talking about the cell phone ring has this musicality, right? In that case, sort of more direct musicality. It's tonal music. It falls within a pretty scale.
Starting point is 00:25:04 Sure. When you're dealing with sound, it doesn't really necessarily do that for you, especially when you're hitting a cereal bowl. oftentimes it will have some sort of, I think of, I guess, three things. It's going to have some sort of sonic texture. It's going to be like dissonant or resonant, right? So like when I make a sound with the rim of a glass, it's sort of more resonant and musical to a degree.
Starting point is 00:25:31 But I can make sort of nasty sounds with, actually, I took just two pieces of paper and I rub them together. And then I sent them through a crazy distortion filter and out came this monstrous sound. So it can have like a sonic texture to it. And then I also, I think about often the temporal gesture, which direction is it going in. So like a scissor, it acts almost like a drum. You know, it's going, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh. So that's good.
Starting point is 00:26:01 So, like, these sounds, the sounds around us, even if they don't sound like tonal music, still have these musical properties to them. Oftentimes, they'll even have a melodic direction, right? A sound can go like, Beir-boo. Right. And that end of itself can then be turned into a musical instrument.
Starting point is 00:26:23 Yeah. Okay. That's so cool, man. And I really think you should do a part two of this piece with whatever you currently have in your office now. I would really like to hear that. And I think it's such a, and I think it's a beautiful illustration of what we've been talking about, that if you choose to hear the world around you as noise, as irritant, as invasive as just like creeping into the music you're trying to hear.
Starting point is 00:26:50 That's one way to move through life, but you can also kind of open your ears to those sounds, to channel John Cage and to hear the hidden musicality in every bleep, bloop, great, plank, bling, blong, everything around us. and not that you'll find it to be the most beautiful, inspiring composition ever, but there might be something there that you didn't notice before.
Starting point is 00:27:27 And so do voce. Maybe that's a good way to listen to pop music, too. Yeah, for sure. And oftentimes it doesn't have to be the thing which is beautiful, but it just has to have some sort of movement to it, right? Like trying to hear the bark of a dog and the tweet of a bird and hear them with sort of both open ears, even though one might be more pleasant or more unpleasant.
Starting point is 00:27:51 They're both sounds and can be used for their own compositional purposes and heard as a composition. Yes, I love that. Okay, and so thinking of kind of the hidden compositionality of the sounds around us, we can move to, sorry, Ira, Act 3 of our show here, because you have this amazing piece about someone who is interested in finding kind of the hidden music
Starting point is 00:28:27 in the sounds around us. Yeah. I'm Greg Hockmach, and I'm an artist and engineer in New York City. Oh my gosh. Computer scientist, photographer, designer, digital artist, brings together all these wild skills, and he made this amazing piece
Starting point is 00:28:42 called Breaking the News that I wanted to share with you. I worked basically with six years of NPR News. I ended up downloading all these five-minute newscast. You know, it's basically every hour on the hour for the last six years. So what Greg did is he took the entire database of publicly available NPR hourly reports and turned them into his own form of artistic composition. Ooh, I'm excited. Okay, so I have to start by saying I really don't understand how he did this.
Starting point is 00:29:14 Okay, fair enough. But he was able to take this sound, which is publicly available and all over the place, at least on the hour. And he made these really cool pieces that I think challenge our whole idea of what the news really is. Right? So one of them is he called truth and quantity. Here I kind of said what happens when you when you cut the news down to just the numbers. So it ends up being the waterfall of 110,000 refugees, 20 cents who spots 31 people, 18 times 53 points. I was just really interested in this idea of breaking down narratives that we form around numbers. It feels like when we hear something, if it doesn't include a number, it almost never happened.
Starting point is 00:29:59 If you think about there's so much that happens or so much of how we relate to the world, that's not based on numbers or can't be quantified easily. And yet the news seems to basically be anchored or centered around that concept. If you can't quantify it, we can't talk about it. We don't have a way of talking about it. 40 firefighters, four bystanders, 28 years, 23 matches, $20 million, four days, 13 points, 38. And it just keeps on going like forever and ever.
Starting point is 00:30:24 It's the infinite numbers of the news. Way into it. He has this other piece called Silent Sky. I took all these 60s of NPR News and just cut them down to the silences. All the little short moments when people aren't speaking. Maybe the announcers are just taking a short breath or there's a little background noise or nothing's happening on the air, but for about half a second, there actually is a moment of silence in the news. And that ends up being a lot of clips.
Starting point is 00:30:59 It actually ends up being about a million clips of silence that I pulled out from all the newscast. If you go on your iPhone or Android and you just go silent dash sky.com. Every time you visit, it gives you a different compilation, kind of a unique compilation of these different silences. It just plays for you when you come and you listen to them. It's never played again for anyone else. And it ends up being this very eerie yet human sound of breath and of silences and what's not being said. The dead air. It's the dead air.
Starting point is 00:31:31 That is so good. They're all really neat. But my absolute favorite is called Don't Play With Your News. The idea basically can best be described as Fridge Poetry meets NPR News, where all the news has been cut up into these short phrases of three to four words that you can freely rearrange just like Fridge Poetry. And when you've made a sentence and hit play, they actually end up sounding like real news from the radio simply because the NPR voices are so consistent and constant that there really aren't many hiccups or any hiccups when you put them back together in a random order, in your own order.
Starting point is 00:32:07 You end up making these sentences that sound real, but really were never on the air based on basically six years of NPR news clips. So here's just a featured clip of reorienting the news. Congress has signed a petition saying Trump's presence is not conducive to the good of the country. Really interesting, right? That's wonderful. John Cage would be loving this right now. Here's another one. Hillary Clinton says she does not think twice about any text messages you send,
Starting point is 00:32:36 even though it is widely considered crucial in terms of human rights in Mexico. So you can just make absolutely ridiculous things. And what's cool is you can search the entire thing. Wow, that's great. That's very like da-da, too. I love it. You can make up your own news reports. And so I actually asked direct about this and what it means for our sense of true.
Starting point is 00:32:56 truth in news. Yeah, I think the most dangerous element in society is not the machine, it's the human, who has a certain agenda or wants to achieve something. And manipulating the media is one of the most effective slash most dangerous ways of doing that. You see how it's being used in the selection cycle, the ways in which the media is being used, played, manipulated to achieve effect, to achieve a certain sway and people's perception is very powerful. And not very many people have that power.
Starting point is 00:33:30 And once you understand that you can actually rearrange it or it can be arranged anyway, then this idea of truth really falls apart very quickly. How does he even do this? How does this work? It's absolutely mad. I asked him about how he went about this project. And it's like only something that someone with this unique set of skills could possibly ever imagine. Yeah, for me, ultimately, I think there are really different.
Starting point is 00:34:01 two pieces. One is what I do behind the scenes. You know, my starting material really was just these MP3s. I didn't have anything else. I didn't have any transcripts. I had no clue what they're really talking about. I definitely didn't listen to all of them. Things that are skilled radio editor might do manually, I have to kind of do at scale for all these different kind of segments because there was no way I was going to process 300,000 files times five or 106 manually. I had to basically everything I did with these projects I have to do in some sort of ugly. rhythmic automated way. The second part is everything that's on stage,
Starting point is 00:34:36 everything that the viewer sees and hears. And in this particular case, all these things were on the web. So it's the same technologies used to build websites and to present them to you and hopefully make them work on the phone. And in many ways, those technologies were never really made for art. They also never really made for the other tools we use, like email or such.
Starting point is 00:34:58 But you end up basically hacking them and you say, here's the thing I have in mind. And I don't want it to look like a machine. I don't want it to look like it was designed with a webpage tool. I wanted to look like this custom thing that still very human or resonates with the material, that it sort of invokes the material. I love that you brought this because it just like, again, reveals how much, I don't know, how much musicality there is in the sounds around us.
Starting point is 00:35:32 And maybe you can only start to notice them when you just choose to focus with a laser-like, lens on a single sound that you take for granted. Yeah. And really see like you were saying, you know, what sits the timbre here? What's the texture? What's the direction of this? Every sound wants to have some sort of artistic output, even if it's silence or random numbers. So, Charlie, I think we have experienced the world in a grain of sound.
Starting point is 00:35:58 Yes, definitely. Let's conduct our way out of here. And we'll be back in two weeks with some more hyper-hand. analytic nonsense for you. About popular music, not just popular sound. This episode of Switch on Pop was produced by me, Nate Sloan. And edited by me, Charlie Harding. We'll provide links to the song that I wrote and the Nautilus article by Jonathan Berger
Starting point is 00:36:24 on our website, switched on pop.com in the episode notes. I want to thank Greg Hockmouth for his Break the News project. It's really amazing. You should go check it out at grex.n. That's g-r-rex.n-n-y-c. It's a really cool website. And I also want to recommend a podcast to you all. It's called That One Song hosted by Missy Modell.
Starting point is 00:36:47 It's a music podcast that's all about a song that changed your life. And I was on the most recent episode talking about my deep love for Taylor Swift's blank space and how it changed my life. It's a really fun episode. I think you'll like it. Go check out that one song. Also, before our last episode, we asked for listener support in spreading the gospel of pop music analysis. and you did in big ways, and that means a lot to us. We feel like the conversation around music is getting deeper and more nuanced,
Starting point is 00:37:15 maybe in some small way. We're part of that, we hope. Please keep telling your friends about our show. The more listeners we have, the more we're going to be able to make better and better episodes and continue to explore the infinitely wide, weird world of pop music together. Switch on Pop is a proud member of the Panopplea network. You can find more of our shows on our website, switchdownpop.com, or wherever you get your podcast.
Starting point is 00:37:39 Of course, if you're on iTunes, it'd be really great if you left us a short review. It means a lot. And if you want to continue the conversation about ringtones, you can always reach out to us on Twitter at Switched on Pop or on Facebook at Facebook.com slash Switched On Pop. I think that's everything. And so we'll be back in two weeks with another episode,
Starting point is 00:37:57 and until then, thanks for listening.

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