Switched on Pop - The Populist Pop of Twenty One Pilots

Episode Date: April 6, 2016

Out of nowhere, Twenty One Pilots has rocketed to the top of the charts with their surprise hit "Stressed Out." Charlie and Nate pull this millennial anthem apart to discover a deep political resonance, the kind that rarely hits the Hot 100. Tracing this sound back in time reveals further connections, to Compton, Motown, and the alternate universe of Parliament/Funkadelic. And, a trip further down the chart suggests that political pop still has no party affiliation. Featuring: •Twenty One Pilots—Stressed Out •NWA—Alwayz Into Somethin' •Dr. Dre ft. Snoop Dogg—Nuthin' but a G Thang •Parliament/Funkadelic—Aquaboogie •Stevie Wonder—Livin' for the City •G-Eazy x Bebe Rexha—My Myself and I •Iggy Azalea—Team  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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app at eater app.com. It's free for iOS users. Charlie, it's good to be back. Wait, wait, who's that? Do you remember my voice? I know the voice. I just, I can't, I can't place, I can't place the face. No, no name with it either. It's not Jeff Goldblum. Oh, good. I have a real version to him. Charlie, it's me, Nate, your erstwhile podcast partner. Yes, Nate, of course. It's been a while. Don't you remember all those times we listen to Adele and Carly Ray Jepson together and waxed philosophical about their deeper meanings.

It's been so long. I miss it. Well, I'm back, baby. Let's do it. I'm musicologist Nate Sloan. And I'm songwriter Charlie Harding. Since my absence, there's been an extraordinary amount of stellar pop music. Agreed.

Of which our humble show is only able to. tackle a fraction. Yes. But there was one song that's been dominating the charts recently that is just so kind of out of left field that it seemed like one we had to talk about. This is a song by a band I'm sure everyone is familiar with, 21 pilots. Nope, nope, no idea. You haven't heard of 21 pilots.

No, I'm just playing you. I definitely have heard of 21 pilots. But I don't know if everybody has. I had never heard of them until I was perusing the Billboard Hot 100 charts as I want to do. And notice that they were number two? I have to say, well, on the outside, their hit song, stressed out may not seem like much. I think if you delve into the layers of meaning within this song, it actually becomes a surprisingly potent political state. Okay, how's that?

Well, if you turn on CNN, it seems pretty clear that we're in a very interesting political moment right now. The middle class of this country for the last 40 years has been disappearing. It is true that the top 1% are doing great. And hardworking men and women are finding it just harder to make ends meet. To make the middle class mean something again. and lift the crushing burden of student death. The American dream is dead. We're dying.

We're dying. We need money. So today, on Switched on Pop, feels good to say that again. Yes, sir. Let's discover the secret meanings of stressed out. I wish I found some better sounds no one's ever heard. I wish I had a better voice to sing some better words. I wish I found some chords in an order that is new.

I wish I didn't have to rhyme every time I sang. I was told when I get older, all my fears would drink, but now I'm insecure and I care what people think. Good old days when the mama sang us to... What was your first reaction to this song, Charlie? My first reaction was kind of like a drawback to early 2000s, like bad rap, rock, indie. whiny emo sound.

I agree. My first impressions of this song were not particularly memorable. It seemed kind of simple, kind of nostalgic, both in the sound, as you mentioned, and in the lyrics themselves. But then listening to this song on repeat and watching this endless political news cycle, I think there's a strong case to me made that this song is really reflecting a very urgent political moment that we're having. Okay, and how would you describe that? Well, I mean, think about the rhetoric of some of the major candidates. They are appealing to people who feel disenfranchised, who feel a post-industrial economic malaise. They're burdened with student debt and they're unable to find sufficient or meaningful employment.

And I think there's a real sense of dissatisfaction and anger. and anger and fear among the populace. Would you say this is right? I think that, yeah, you could be a CNN news commentator, except for better than most. I think you might be on to something because it reminds me of this NPR piece I read by Jacob Goldstein about how the music industry

is reflecting the same inequality that we are seeing in America and that the top 1% of music earners have more than doubled from 26% of ticket revenues to now to 56% of $56,000,000, to now to 56% of ticket revenues. There's more inequality in the actual pop industry. So, all right, I'm hearing you. Oh, wow. So you're saying it's good, the pop industry is developing its own 1% and 99%.

And perhaps that 21 pilots, these sort of underdogs on the charts, are kind of like these underdog candidates trying to play to that moment of inequality. Ooh, okay. I'm liking what you're putting down here, Charlie. So I think it's time. Let's get into this song. Let's see what's happening and whether our theory has any merit here. So first just tell me a little bit about stressed out and who these 21 pilots are.

Ah, yes. 21 pilots consist of two young men from Ohio. Middle of the country, Russ Bell. Yes, indeed. Their name references an Arthur Miller play called All My Sons. and they have been slowly working their way up to the charts. I mean, this song actually dropped about a year ago and is now just in the last few months

just making its way into the top 10. Maybe this is just going way too far, but also like these underdog candidates whose polling has gone from less than 5% to now 40% likelihood of winning their primaries. Charlie, you should know it's never too far for me. I love it. Yeah, this is slow burn pop success here.

All right. right, underdogs, making a mega hit. So this song, stressed out, starts in a very nostalgic mood, right? It's constantly looking back to childhood, when things were better, when things were simpler, when the world was full of hope and optimism. Wish we could turn back time to the good old days. When the mama sang us to sleep. And now we're stressed out.

I feel like if I weren't so much on your wavelength, I would just say that this is just another complaining millennial. Yeah, which I think is a legitimate interpretation. It was certainly mine at first until I went down this rabbit hole. Okay. What's down that rabbit hole? Well, I mean, I think the line that really triggered it for me, and it doesn't really stand out. It's kind of buried in a flow of words. But towards the end of the song, he says it would remind us. of when nothing really mattered.

Out of student loans and tree house homes, we all would take the ladder. Like, I'm not even sure if I noticed that at first, that this song references student loans, that a number two song on the U.S. pop charts mentioned student loans. I mean, I think that's probably unheard of. It's so literal.

You could definitely bust this out at a campaign rally. and people would get very fired up. Yeah, so, okay, so what you're saying is that he's not just a complaining millennial. He's actually speaking out about how he feels like he's just a cog and a money-making machine, one that he doesn't want to have to go out and make money in. Yes, and Charlie, you hit the nail on the head. The second half of this song suddenly becomes all about money. I think you can argue that,

When you get to the end of this song, a point that he's making is that money has basically destroyed his childhood. The need for money, the pursuit for money, the inability to get money. This is the last line of the song, Wake up, you need to make money. Yeah, it's kind of brutal. So I think what's really cool about this tune is that he's not just representing his dissatisfaction. lyrically, he's also doing it through the construction of his rhyming and his core progressions. I couldn't agree more. How about I take the rhymes?

You take the chords? Go ahead. Give me the rhymes. All right, because when you said rhymes, I just like, I lit up because the beginning of the song, I really dig it. I wish I found some better sounds no one's ever heard. I wish I had a better voice and sang some better words. I wish I found some better sounds no one's ever heard. I wish I had a better voice that sang some better words.

And right there we have, I think, the first clue that this is a song of kind of angsty protest. Right. Where even in this slant rhyme between heard and words, that he sort of deliberately makes slightly off-kilter, We feel maybe the narrator bucking up against the rigid, constricting ideology of capitalist society. Well, sorry, I got a little carried away there. That's quite all right. It's right. You are in the academy, so that's how it goes.

But if we continue... I wish I found some chords in an order that is new. I wish I didn't have to rhyme every time I sang. I wish I found some chords in an order. that is new, I wish I didn't have to rhyme every time I sang. He doesn't rhyme. I know, it's a clever, it's like kind of clever, kind of slightly juvenile. But again, I love it because it seems to represent this like unwillingness to fit into the

prescribed order, maybe of a pop song itself, which we can see perhaps as a microcosm of the commodification that capitalism subjects. everything too. So you're saying that by rejecting a traditional rhyme scheme that you would expect in a top billboard hit, he is asserting his personal identity. He's saying that he doesn't want to be just another cog in the machine. Yes. And I mean, that's in a very cheeky way. But yeah, yeah, I'll stand by that. Well, I will support it. Good man. I think he doubles down in the actual cordal construction of this song. And I went really deep and kind of geeky here. So you're going to have to bear with me. Oh, geekier

the better. So in that first verse where he says, I wish I found some chords in an order that is new. It's kind of like he's saying, I'm dissatisfied with your typical pop song chord structure, right? And while there are things about this song, which sound totally

catchy, feels hooky, like I feel like I've kind of heard it before. Right. I had to investigate. And it turns out that the chord progression in this song is actually pretty untraditional. In fact, he is finding chords in an order that is new. Whoa.

Right? So here's what I did. I consulted a database of popular music called Hook Theory, where you can go in and insert the chord progression, and you can figure out what other songs use that same chord progression. They have a database of almost like 10,000 other popular songs. And the chord progression here, it sounds good enough, nothing too strange. But when I put this chord progression into the Hook Theory database, nothing else comes up. Interesting.

Isn't that neat how he's basically taking something, making it sound like it fits in, but is actually kind of transgressive and different? Yeah. Yeah, I love that. It belies his statement at the beginning of the song and subtly asserts his own independence. All right. In the beginning of this song, he talks about his childhood. Right. And I think so often when we think about childhood in the American context now, I think about Disney and Nickelodeon, toys, consumer goods marketed to children, but instead in this song, he talks about making handmade candles and choosing not to sell them.

I'd make a candle out of it if I ever found it. Try to sell it. Never sell out of it. I probably only sell one. And building craft tree houses. Whoa, yeah. He's an artisan. He's an artisan who doesn't want to sell his labor.

He doesn't want to have to go out and make money. Wow, yeah, he just wants to create things out of love and for the sake of doing it. And instead, they instantly become commodified. 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.

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 Wednesday. on YouTube or in your favorite podcast app.

Immigration may be Donald Trump's signature issue. President Trump is now targeting predominantly Democratic cities for ice raids and deportations. Dozens of protesters clashing with immigration and customs enforcement agents in Minneapolis Tuesday. We will begin the process of returning millions and millions of criminal aliens back to the places from which they came.

But what we want to do in this space is talk about America and politics beyond the current president. So what do most Americans think about deportation and border security, period? I think that Americans are definitely against the kind of violent displays that we've seen in the street from ICE. When it comes to the question of deportation, the answer is more complicated. My sense is that people want border at the border. They don't like the idea of having no idea who's coming into the United States at any given time. The view on immigration from the bottom up instead of the top down.

That's this week on America. America actually, every Saturday in your audio and video feeds. Before we completely go past the sort of more revolutionary ideas in this song, I do want to throw out another idea. Is it too pay for ten, give each other different names, we would build a rocket chip and then we'd fly it far away. Used to dream of outer space, but now they're laughing at their face saying, wake up, you need to make money. Is it too much to say that this is also possibly a reference to the Apollo program in a better period where we invested in crazy big ideas like going to outer space? Whoa, we used to dream of outer space. We used to try and put a man on the moon. You know, I'm glad you highlighted that line too because when the song goes,

wake up you need to make money, something surprising happens, right? We get this giant chorus of voices all yelling. Wake up, you need to make money. It becomes a larger anthem. Yeah, that seems to be embodying all of the forces working against us, right? This collective voice shouting, no, you need to make money. But then maybe the narrator himself is like in the chorus trying to represent the other side of that. And it's interesting that his language turns to the first person plural there.

He says, wish we could turn back time. And that's a shift, we. He moves from the eye of the first verse to we in the chorus. Oh. And there is the sense of people coming together. I mean, the song almost has like a multiple personality disassociate. disassociative identity thing going on. Right.

I feel like there's so many characters in this song. There's this guy, blurry face. There's this guy, blurry face, the rapper. Yeah. There's this weird, uh, pitch down, spooky voice at the end. Right. There's all these different voices vying to be heard. And in a way, I feel like there is something, you know,

galvanizing in that. Yeah. If you're listening carefully to the lyrics, it does feel like, yeah, this generation, because their fans,

I mean, as far as I can tell, are mainly young people in their teens and 20s, and they are pissed, and they are maybe a little lost. That's totally fair. And maybe they don't feel like

they don't have a sense of a future. The future that they're promised in their childhood is now not materializing. I think that that is a totally accurate representation of a current sentiment, a feeling of economic dissatisfaction and political disenfranchisement. But, you know how I said at the beginning?

This kind of feels like it could just be an obnoxious suburban kid complaining. There is also that possibility. Well, I think there is more going on to this song, but I think it's drawing from a deeper history of music. Ooh, well, you know I love music history. All right. And when we come back, we're going to go into the history

of class struggle and popular music and how 21 pilots may be appropriating the sound from the roots of the 90s and even from the 60s and 70s. I eagerly await it. This episode of Switched on Pop is brought to you by Wix.com which helps you make a beautiful website. And Nate and I thought we could take it for a spin

to make a site for our duo, mandolin, banjo band that has a bunch of previously unreleased songs. Yeah, let's get our music out into the world. Okay, so we should make a website, but I think before we make a website, we probably need a band name, right? That's true. How about we ask your wife, Whitney, what we should call our band? Yeah, she's full of good ideas.

All right, I'm going to ask Whitney. All right, go for it. Hey, Whitney. Yeah. We need a band name. Do you have any ideas? I don't know. The brief encounters.

We are officially the brief encounters. All right, let's roll it. Let's see. Go to wix.com. So create a new site. Okay. Pick the website. template you love.

Okay, music. Okay. Let's see. Oh, these are cool. Oh, these are really cool. Artists, jazz musician. All right, what's our, what's our, our style? How about just the band? The band. Yeah, that's the one. Okay. All right. Edit it. Do we have, we need a, we need a band photo. Okay, so upload our photo. Okay. Then, okay, so we can

just change the band name. We can hit publish. It looks pretty incredible if I do say so myself. Considering we made it in about four and a half minutes. You can check out our band's basement tapes on Wix at switchedonpop.wix.com slash the brief encounters. And you can create your own site at wicks.com. That's Wix.com for free today. So, Charlie, you're hearing this 21st century, potentially protest anthem, Yeah. Harkening back to some earlier traditions of political pop music.

Well, yeah, I think if we go back into what this song is really about. Yes. Economic disillusionment in post-industrial collapse. Mm-hmm. Or at least that's how we're reading it. These themes have a deep history in black music, in hip-hop, in funk, and R&B. Indeed. And I think the way that this song uses rapping, and in one sound in particular,

the synthesizer is directly connecting to that history of music. Ah, okay, okay, I'm with you, keep going. Okay, take a listen to this thing. Do you hear that weird high-pitched synthesizer? Yeah, I do. It makes me think of the X-Files theme music or something. Well, I actually think that they're pulling it from another source. I think that they're taking it directly from G-Funk. Oh, right?

This style of hip-hop from the early 90s that used big bass sounds, slow-gris, slow grooves in this particular sound of the melodic. Yeah, okay, that's, that's, that's probably more accurate. And, and so this sound was pioneered by Dr. Dre. You can hear it in songs like NWA's always into something. Early in the morning, hop into the B&Z, I got 44 ways to get pain, sitting in my lap as I roll up the Compton blocks. This group up rear and I heard shots. And then it's all over his hit album, The Chronic, on songs like,

nothing but a G-thing. Oh, yeah. Okay, now I'm totally hearing the connection. Intentionally or not, that sound is coming from this history of music. So Dr. Dre and NWA are rapping about themes of post-industrial terror. Oh, yeah. They're talking about inequality. And this is happening in music 25 years ago.

Right. And what's amazing is that the historical roots don't end here. Let's keep going back. This is coming from a long tradition. In fact, and one interpretation of G-Funk is that it's a play on words of, the band P-Funk, George Cleans, Parliament Funkadelic. Yes. Did the roof off the motherfucker.

The chronic is coded in samples of Parliament Funkadelic. Right. And in Parliament Funkadelic, we hear that same sort of synth sound created by the Moog synthesizer. For example, Dr. Dre samples the song Aquabuggy, on which Bernie Warroll is all over that synth sound. Psycho-disco, alpha, beta, bio, aqua-du, loop. I think at this point, it's important to remind folks that you had a band called Function with a K.

I don't know if it's entirely necessary, but I guess it can't hurt. I want to continue with my musical history because this sound of the synth tied to themes of class struggle are, I think, best represented in Stevie Wonder's Living for the City. One of my favorite, yes. And here you are getting the... that funk sound created by the synthesizer, that Moog synthesizer,

and he's talking about the same themes of economic disillusionment and class struggle that we hear in NWA and eventually in 21 pilots. Yeah, and I mean, I know that song so well, and I've never quite thought about it this way before, but that is such a striking synthesizer sound that he uses. Right. Thinking now about the use of that, I wonder if it's because it's sort of reimbly.

enforces the kind of alienation and marginalization that the song is talking about with this very strange and sort of foreign sound and not really a natural sound. Something, I mean, something certainly beautiful to listen to, but slightly unnerving. Maybe that captures the sense of not belonging to, you know, the American dream that these artists were feeling. I bought it. And when we first dove in to 21 pilots stressed out, we both agree. read that it was a unique sounding song on the charts, but I really do think that this sound of the synthesizer, these themes of alienation, are entirely appropriated from earlier music, from hip-hop to funk to R&B. Yeah, that's interesting.

You listen to this song by two young white middle-class performers that I could only describe upon first hearing it as emo, hip-hop, indie. reggae rock or something. And I didn't really think about the potential valances of that, but I'm pretty convinced by your argument. And, you know, it's interesting as the economic trouble that our nation is in starts to work its way, sort of up, further up the income bracket, starting to squeeze the middle class too, perhaps artists from that group are starting to start to.

use the tools of communities that have been experiencing that squeeze for a long time in order to express themselves. I think that's what we're hearing. Well, at least our incredibly stretched out interpretation. To quote Bootsie Collins, the bass player of P-Funk, stretched out like a rubber band. Bring it back for me. Okay. I think maybe we can further corroborate our thesis by

moving across the aisle. Okay. Traveling a little further down the pop charts, let's see if we can't identify some more right-wing manifestations of the same kind of enwee that we were detecting in the 21 pilots dressed out. Right. So I would expect to hear maybe more themes of radical individuality, personal responsibility, and sort of entrepreneurial efforts to overcome economic stress. I totally agree. That rhetoric sounds so familiar to me, making it on your own, pulling yourself up by your bootstraps.

No social safety net. I have mine and you of yours. So what are you hearing on the charts of which reflects this sound? Well, you know, we don't have to go very far to find me, myself, and I by G.Easy. It's just me. G. Easy. G. Okay.

Is that easy spelled with a Z? Oh my gosh, really? Three, two, one. What's your answer? Yes. Yes, you're absolutely, of course it is. Wow, that is just like straight appropriation of NWA, like EZE plus G funk equals G EZ. Well, he's not the only white rapper we're going to encounter because if we go just a little further down, we come across someone probably familiar to us who we haven't thought about in a while, Iggy Azale.

and her song, Team. So just as 21 pilots appropriated the language of hip-hop to express their political dissatisfaction, perhaps we can find G. Easy and Iggy Azalia using hip-hop to do the same, but in a much less sort of collective way and in a much more radically individual way. It's just me, myself, and I. Solo ride until I die, because I got me for. for life. And then we move over to team and you listen to you hear the title of this song. You think, oh, this is a song about teamwork and doing it together. Right. But no, baby I got me,

baby I got me. Yeah, that's all I need. Yeah, that's all I need. Baby I got me. Only friend I need playing on my team. Wow. And if you can picture hearing stressed out at a Democratic rally, I mean, this could be the perfect soundtrack to a Republican rally. I mean, this, is this is small government all the way. I think it's kind of ridiculous, but it's also really fascinating how these larger themes happening in society are being reflected in our pop music. I mean, pop music is a reflection of national sentiment, right? It's supposed to resonate with the most amount of people.

So it's not that surprising. It would be pulling out some of these themes. What I love about pop music is that on the surface, it's one thing. and in its inner machinery, it can be something completely different. Definitely. Well, that, what you just said, is exactly why we keep doing what we do. Thank you for listening to Switch on Pop. This episode was produced really in a collectivist effort.

We reached out on Twitter. Lots of people gave us suggestions of songs that deal with issues of class struggle and political disillusionment. We'll post a Spotify playlist on our website. We also got help by our great contributors, Pergo, Susan, and Mike. And it was just really great to all work together to make this thing happen. Wow. My opponent could not have it more wrong. This episode was produced by me, myself, and I.

I did it all by myself. No one helped me and no one's ever got it. Well, if you keep giving that hardliner, you're going to be all on your own one day. We'll see. While Nate is on his soapbox, if you've got some spare time, you can always go find past episodes of Switchedon Pop on our website, Switchdown Pop.com. You can also find us on Twitter at Switched On Pop. We love to talk with you. And we'll be back in two weeks with another episode. Until then, thanks for listening. Peace out. Euforia of Calvin Klein, the new collection Elixir. Three new elixires perfum intense. Solar. Magnetic. Bowl. Pulsan the banner. Add the quiz. And discover your fragrance Euphoria.

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