Switched on Pop - The Smooth Sound of NPR Morning News

Episode Date: May 21, 2019

What do Bach and smooth jazz have in common? Both score the unmistakable theme song for NPR's flagship show Morning Edition, listened to by millions across the country every day since 1979. This is undeniably pop music, a daily soundtrack to the lives of many. So why does it sound the way it does? And why, after forty years, why does NPR want to change it? Featuring: BJ Leiderman - Morning Edition  Chuck Mangione - Feels So Good Herbie Hancock - Chameleon George Benson - Breezin' Kenny G - Songbird  Don Voegeli/Wycliffe Gordon - All Things Considered Take 6 - All Things Considered Phish - All Things Reconsidered Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

If you're tired of endless scrolling to figure out where to eat, same. I'm Stephanie Wu, editor-in-chief of Eater. We've just launched the new-ish and way better Eater app. It has all the restaurants we love, gives you personalized picks wherever you are, and serves up smarter search results just for you. You can find my list of the best places for martinis and fries in New York City. And save your favorite spots, share lists, follow editors, and book right in the app. the Eater app at Eaterapp.com. It's free for iOS users. Welcome to Switch on Pop. I'm musicologist,

Nate Sloan. And I'm songwriter Charlie Harding. Charlie, today we are here to talk about one of the most popular songs in the Western world. And it's not Taylor Swift. No. And it's not Lil Nas X. And it's not the Jonas Brothers. Okay. Let's just spin it. All right, what are we listening to here, Charlie? This is the Morning Edition theme song by NPR. Ding, ding, ding. And while this song is not at the top of the charts, this is absolutely part of the world of popular music. I mean, this is as popular as music gets.

This is heard by millions and millions of people every single day. Morning Edition being the most popular program on the entire radio dial. I had no idea. Oh, wow. So this is like, this is big. This is big. If you're like us, You've heard this is so familiar to you.

Yes. Whitney says when she hears this, she smells toast. It's like this synesthesia kind of interaction. You hear the morning edition theme song? Coffee and toast. Yeah. I mean, this is like built into our DNA for a lot of us who have been listening to this song since it was first composed in 1979 to accompany the Daily NPR Morning Edition News

broadcast. But for the first time since then, Yeah. There's a new morning edition theme song that's been released. I've heard it. I like it. Okay. So, but we're going to get there.

But first, I want to talk about, like, why a ubiquitous, incredibly familiar piece of music, it works on us so effectively. Right. So what I want to do is I want to break down this theme song in the first half. Yeah. And then the second half, we're going to dissect the new theme song. Yeah. And then I want to hear your take. Compare and contrast.

Yeah. But let's just start, like, why? Like, again, this is, for a lot of us, this is just like, you know, as familiar as Twinkle Twinkle Little Star or something. So what is it about this song that's so effective? And that screams like NPR, public radio, news. Smooth jazz guitar. Okay, we're going to get there. But first, before the smooth jazz guitar, I want to talk about the harmonic motion in this song. First of all, like, when you think NPR, like, what do you think of? What comes to mind? Drive Time News.

Okay. Wunky. Yeah. Balanced. Yeah. Balanced. Okay. That's very generous.

Newsworthy. Yeah. Good. Okay. Let's go with that so far. We've got news. You said wonky. Let's stick with those two things.

All right? So it's like what? Current and sort of area diet or something. Yeah. Okay. So I think there's a way that the music to this song composed by B.J. Lederman way back. in 1979, gives us that feeling of like erudition, intelligence, seriousness, even.

And that has to do with something called the Circle of Fits. Yes, I remember the Circle of Fits from college harmony classes. In order to talk about this, we're just going to zoom in on part of the theme. We're just going to zoom in on that, like, distinctive guitar part. Let's play that. Okay. Jazzy. No, stop.

You're dropping. the jazz bomb too soon. We're here, we're here in classical harmony land. Yeah, yeah, we're talking about the circle of fist. So get, so erase from your mind the associations of that sound of that smooth, sexy, you know, vaguely familiar of, uh, hold music, electric guitar. I want to focus on the underlying harmony. In order to abstract it a little bit, I'll just play it on the piano for a second. Now, I'm going to argue that the reason that we get this sense of like, okay, this is serious, this This is intelligent. This is going to tell me important things about my world is because it's using this ancient musical property called the circle of fifths.

Let's take that line and abstract it even further just into a series of harmonies. You feel that, right? And I'm not going to get too deep into the theory here. We're just going to say that when you hear this, I think you hear musical logic. Well, yeah, this is like when I studied classical music with you in school. one of the very first things you learn about is the fundamental sort of structure of harmony and the way in which chords want to move into each other.

Exactly. And this is the sort of like underlying all of classical harmony is this meta-superstructure. Yeah. So fifths are a distance between two notes. So we move from our first note G and the chord based around that note to our second note and our second chord C.

A fifth below, G, exactly. So that is like a really important relationship in classical music, moving from a note that's a fifth below. And what we do after that is we take that new note, C. You go to F. We move a fifth below that to F. And you know what happens after that, Charlie? You go fifth below that to B flat, to B flat.

Fifth below that. To be flat. And that's where in the morning edition theme, the progression stops. But we could keep going, right? Yeah. We could go onwards to A flat. Where we go, now I feel like I'm actually quizzing you. Oh, no, I'm not done.

You're back in your Music 55 final. Shouts out to Professor Arlene Cole. We love you. Sorry, A flat goes down to D flat. And then a fifth below D flat is G flat. And then a fifth below that is C flat, but we'll rename it as B major because that's a little nicer. And then a fifth below that is E major. Fifth below that, A, D.

And now, where are we, Charlie? After D major? Right back to where you were. Right back to G. It's a very complicated way of spelling and music. You basically go through seven different letters and you just do so in obnoxious permutations until you eventually get back to where you started. Yeah, I don't know why you have to say, call it obnoxious.

That seems completely unnecessary. Confusing when you first learn it and then you learn to spell in funny ways. But the point being that there's this sort of wild underlying mathematics where if you start one place, you keep going down five, eventually you end up back where you started. Totally. This is one of the like fundamental properties of Western tonal harmony. Right. Is that this circle of this undergirds so much. And whether we're aware of that or not, whether we have, you know, taken Music 55, that is like present somewhere in our collective consciousness.

Certainly. Well, if we've heard classical music after Morning Edition and listened to Bach or Mozart, especially earlier classical music and Baroque music, you're going to hear these things. Yeah. And it's like, it's embedded in this stuff. And so you just associate it to classical music, right? There's like countless examples. But I'm just going to pull out one of my favorites. Here's a nice circle of fifth progression from Box Brandenburg Concerto, number five, first movement in D major.

Let's have a listen. It's a jam. So every time it switches between the flute and the violin, you can hear it's moving from one fifth chord to another fifth chord. I remember learning that going through the cycles of fifth was a way of drawing out a composition so it could go longer and longer and longer. It's absolutely. It's a way of like moving from one harmonic place to another.

It can also serve as kind of like a bridge or a harmonic highway, if you will. So yeah, it has this feeling of movement and which kind of makes sense if we're, I don't know, I think about how that applies in the morning edition theme song. I'm sort of waking up and slowly rising. And so this thing is kind of like moving me along. Yeah, okay, I love that. So it's giving you this energy and momentum. And it's also reaching back.

I mean, literally, when you hear Circle Fist, especially in this Bach context, a generation later, you know, Beethoven and Mozart would look back to that sound. Yeah. And they would call it the Stile Antico, like the old style. Like old school.

Like that's an old, like literally, even in, you know, the late 18th century, that was being called old school. Yeah. So now it's a little. it's like firmly got that association. Like, this is old. This is venerated.

This is serious. So it's like, you know, I think it's a good thing for a news program to say like, hey, we're going to be, we're going to be like reliable. We've been around since the 1500s, essentially. And you can trust us. We know what we're doing. Sure. Okay.

Now at the same time, let's move to the complete opposite end of the equation. Yeah. Because there's things that at least in 1979 would sound very modern. Right. And that gets us back to smooth jazz. Okay, so we're going from erudition to contemporary newsworthy. Yes. But newsworthy in 1979.

1979. Okay, but I do have an ulterior motive here because I want to understand the influence of smooth jazz here. And maybe in doing so, give some credit to smooth jazz, exonerate, expiate, bring smooth jazz back into the light. You've been putting off this discussion for a long time because I keep hearing like inclinations of smooth jazz coming back, especially into some like LA hip hop stuff. Oh, 100%. And you've been like, hold on. Yeah.

No, no, it's time. And you know, and the derision in your voice when you first said those two words, smooth and jazz, was palpable. Right. NPR, public radio, news. Smooth jazz guitar. Smooth jazz guitar. Smooth jazz guitar.

I think it is sort of a cultural trope. It's like smooth jazz, bad. Yeah. So we're going to, you're going to start. You're going to be our guinea pig for hopefully a culture-wide movement of reclaiming smooth jazz. I hope you don't skewer me and barbecue me. Okay. So when you think, you know, this theme, let's play it one more time.

I think one musical antecedent we can hear for this is a song that had come out the year before. Or actually, it was released in 1977, but in 1978, it hit the charts and became super popular. And that was, Feels So Good by Chuck Mangione. Maybe the only top 40 hit ever to feature the flugel horn. Ooh. Okay. There's like a Latin thing going on. There's some really spunky bass happening and a really like legato soft tone to the horn.

You can say it. It's smooth. It's smooth as butter. It's great. Yeah. No, I think these are definitely occupying like very similar sound worlds. And it makes sense. This was a big hit, you know. But it's not just...

Instrumental hit? Instrumental hit. Wow. Yeah. So it's, but it's interesting because it's not just, I want to talk not just about the sort of sonic similarities and the sonic world of smooth jazz, but also like kind of what it meant and what it signified and where it came from. And where it came from, so we're kind of at the end of the 70s.

Let's go back to the beginning of the decade. Because smooth jazz arises from another jazz style called Fusion. Right. Which, you know, starting with Miles Davis in the late 60s. was really about bringing the sounds of rock and funk and R&B into the world of jazz. And I think, like, you know, there's many beautiful examples of this, but a crystalline one would be Herbie Hancock's headhunters. Let's take the first track off of that chameleon.

Got that funk synth bass. This drumming. Harvey Mason, Sr. Oh, and it is like, words fail. It's just pure funk. You can't sequence that. You get the guitar line. Okay, so I don't know about you, but to me, there's not much smooth about this.

No, because the... This is, what's the opposite? This is rough. Yeah, this is rough funk, yeah. Yeah. This is rough jazz. And, you know, this was like a hit onto itself as well. This was actually played on the popular television program Soul Train.

Like, this was like, this was a legit hit in its own right. But it's different. It's like, this is like a dance, get down, like sweat flying off your face kind of jazz fusion. So how does this transform over time? I have no idea. Okay, over the course of the 70s, a new market starts to emerge. You know, for a long time, jazz had been the dominant music for African American audiences. That starts to change in the 70s.

Fusion, you know, starts to take some of that audience. That audience starts to move to other genres that are popping up. and especially the adult audience that the adult African-American audience that listen to jazz is looking for something that they can grab onto. Maybe something that isn't quite so intense and funky and youthful. Maybe, but that has some of those elements, some of the jazz elements, some of the rock elements, some of the funk elements. And the answer to that lies in what would become known as smooth jazz. And we can hear a very like early iteration of that in a George Benson song from 1976, so like right in the middle of the decade.

Love George Benson. Called Breezen. Still funky, but I feel like I could lounge at home after hard days work. Yeah, it's got that rhythm. It's got that drive, but it's also like a little chiller. It's a little... It's like, this is grown-ups music. Yeah.

This is like, you know, yeah, put a little George Benson on, pour yourself a glass of chardonnay, light of fire. You know, this is like, this is music for grownups. I love George Benson, and I love smooth jazz, but, you know, we haven't really gone into the beating heart of smooth jazz. Yeah, we haven't gotten to the 80s when this genre really takes off and transforms from this more sort of niche adult African-American audience to something that's very mainstream. And that's where it becomes a little more controversial. And we start to get this negativity surrounding it. And I think if there's one figure that encapsulates all of that, who would it be, Charlie? Kenny G. Oh, yeah. Wow, there's an

essential difference. There's many differences. Sure. But one of the things that I'm hearing when you get to the 80s is the introduction of all of these digital sounds. Digital keyboards which are bright and shiny as well as digital reverbs which are these sort of impossible

spaces that you can hear on the drum hits that big and part of my association with smooth jazz is the actual production space that the thing is made in what it sounds like more so than even necessarily the notes.

And although those digital textures sound bright, they are actually having a resurgence right now in popular music, the artificiality of the actual way the music is made, I think imposed upon my ear an idea of what's like real and not real,

where when we're listening to the Benson, you have some of those big, wide, spacious sounds but made by an orchestra and in an actual reverberant space. rather than with a digital effect. Yeah, no, and I think you're hitting the nail on the head of what people react so intensely to in the music of Kenny G. Is this sense of artificiality not only in the sound of the recording as you're describing, but also in his personality. He's not a real jazz musician.

He's like, he's a sellout. He's a, he's a phony. And I think this view is encapsulated by a jazz musician like Pat Mathini, who described Kenny G. He has lame ass jive, pseudo-bloosy, out of tune, noodling, wimped out, fucked up playing. Ooh. Yeah. He inspires a lot of animosity. Not holding back.

And you can read into this language. Okay, so now it's time to like get on my soapbox and say like, hey, leave Kenny G. alone, to paraphrase Chris Crocker. Like, and it's interesting to hear Mathini here, it's like a lot of this language, too, is very masculine, very macho. You know, like, he's not serious. He's like, this is wimpy. This is not like, you know, supercharged, macho jazz. I mean, I don't mean to get ahead of you.

Okay. But I always feel like when I have some sort of subjective relationship to why something is aesthetically bad, it's actually something else, not the object itself, right? It's like some other kind of cultural identity marker that is unsaid. And so in this case, you're pointing to masculinity. Authenticity, certainly, as well. I mean, all these things are brewed together and come out, like, as Kenny G., you know, jazz monster. Right. So we have to get back to the morning edition theme, but I do.

I would feel remiss if we didn't take this digression to say, hey, everyone, let's get like, check yourself. Kenny G. unmistakable, remarkable saxophone tone. Like, you hear that. And in an instant, you know who it is. Right. That's not something that just comes naturally. That's hard work. That's dedication to your craft.

Would you call him the Jimmy Hendrix of the soprano saxophone? I don't. Okay, morning edition. So let's bring it back now. Okay, so what do we have here? We have first the Stile Antico, this circle of fist, this ancient harmonic progression that says, hey, we are smart and trustworthy. And B, we have something that in 1979 was not only contemporary and cool, but literally like the paragon of adult African-Hurban. American sophistication, which says a lot about, A, like, the kind of audience they were reaching to,

which is maybe a more diverse audience than we might expect, and B, like, how our understanding of those sounds have changed in the intervening years. Interesting. Right, because underlying this is, like, the age-old criticism that NPR doesn't reach its intended public community, that it's too white, it's too old, it's a certain demographic, it serves an urban population. And I'm totally blown away because when you first played the classical thing, I was like, yeah, everyone knows NPR is too erudite. I didn't know the history of the jazz sound. I went right to Kenny G. So, you know, keeping that in mind, let's take a quick break and come back and listen to this new theme song and think about what kind of audiences that might be engaging with. Cool.

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instead of the top down. That's this week on America Actually. Every Saturday in your audio and video feeds. Okay, so as we mentioned, Morning Edition has a brand new theme song. And if you thought something as anodyne as a public radio show slightly altering its theme music

could not be controversial, you would be completely wrong because this has, generated so much attention. And to quote the NPR ummbudsman, she describes the, in a very characteristic NPR fashion, she says, the vast majority of the reaction has been negative. So let's spin this new controversial morning edition theme song. Okay, a little funky.

Yeah. Are you hearing the original theme in here at all? Yeah. And I think it becomes a little more explicit right here. A lot of different sounds. in here. A lot. Rising melody.

Reverb tale. Huh. Immediate reactions here. I really like the opening. Okay. It's really long. There's a few sounds that I almost didn't want in there. It definitely is the old theme song kind of just reimagined.

Yes. Yeah. That's what it comes to mind. Except it doesn't have that circle of fist progression from the original, which kind of bums me out a little bit. Yeah, but you know, like as I said, like if we're trying to escape the overly wonky side of NPR, maybe dropping the classical reference works. Okay. So this is what I'm hearing, and I think I agree that they're clearly trying to

capture the diversity of like American public radio listeners, I think. And in doing so, like have all these different sounds. It's kind of like as you go through, you hear one thing and then another and then another. It's kind of like a tour, like the Epcot Center of musical styles. Yeah. And I did read a few things about this when it came out, which was that like the thing was actually made by a committee. Yes. It has to be. There's no way like any just one artist gets to compose this. And it was made by a, uh, a music agency that composes things for HBO and other places like that. So why do you think it's generated so many negative reactions? And we'll link to a great piece by, uh, Adam Regusia in the end where he goes through basically everything he hates about this piece. But we don't need to do that.

Other people are doing that. It's a good analysis though. Oh yeah, absolutely. Big fan. of Adam's work. But like, why, like, why is this generating so much negative feedback, do you think? A, definitely change. Like, just everyone, it's the thing, like, if they hadn't even announced it and had just, like, played it in, people probably be on their drive and, like, forget and tune out and eventually just get used to it. Yeah. But, like, we've been, we've been primed to have an opinion. So that's, I think that's the first thing that's going to happen. Interesting. And, you know, we also have a decades-old relationship. It's not just change. This is something which is the smell of toast.

Yeah. Right? So like what are we going to, like what are you going to smell now? So we have these deep, deep, deep personal associations of the thing. Okay. So Charlie,

at this point, let's spin the new theme one more time and see if we can't pick out what they might be trying to reference through some of these musical decisions. I mean, I'm hearing a mixture of acoustic instruments and then sample bass instruments. So the most predominant change here is a four to the floor kick drum. Boom, boom,

boom. And then there's like some sweeping like whoosh kind of sounds here and there. which are sort of like EDM-ish. Yeah. At the end, there's a weird clap sample, which I think is actually far too high in the mix. It's actually my only thing I really don't like about this theme song is just the mix of that clap is really hard.

Okay, this is cool. So maybe it's not that they're actually saying like, oh, we're going to reference these specific genres or these specific, you know, world musical styles. But more, we're going to incorporate these general sounds from the 21st century into this theme. Yeah. Rizers, Four on the Floor, bass drum.

I mean, that could be in the back of a house track, for sure. And then these claps, which you would find in, I don't know, anything from like a big Sean track to, you know, the new Jonas Brothers song. Yeah. Okay. So it's more about the arrangement choices. There was no point where they were like, oh, here's a, here's a trap song. Right. Like, there's not one point where I was like, I knew the song they were deriving from or like the particular style.

It was just the instruments. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So do you think that serves the purpose? Does that meet the requirements of sounding more contemporary to you? Yeah. I think it's perfectly effective.

You know, part of me just wants to not even judge this song until another three decades have elapsed. Totally right. I can see how it sort of like sat with us and becomes like part of our new, a new cultural touchdown. And that, you know, might be a cool way to pivot to another discussion I want to have. Regardless of how you feel about this new theme. Yeah.

You know, there's another NPR theme that has everything you want. And that's all things considered. It's my favorite theme. Wait, is that a different rhythm than the one before? We'll talk, let's, we'll dig into the details of it in a second. Yeah. But what I want to first start with, yeah. I mean, we're on the same page though, Chuck.

Like, I love the song. And I'm just going to lay all my cards on the table. Yeah. I even prefer this to the morning edition in the first place. Serve different purposes, though. Yes. I actually think like acoustically and what it's doing is actually trying, one is waking you up and one is sort of like taking you home.

Oh, interesting. Oh, yeah. Because all things considered comes on in the afternoon? Yeah. Oh. It's drive time show. Yeah. Yeah.

So it's just like getting you through traffic at home. It's like it's evening music. Oh, fascinating. Yeah. Okay. So what's wild about this one, though, is unlike morning edition. Yeah. This theme song, what we're listening to is already the end result of a number of changes to

to the theme. So let's go back to the first all things considered theme by Don Vogeli in. in 1976. Ooh, ouch. That's a harsh side. This is switched on Bach. Yeah, totally.

Crops to Wendy Carlos. But Charlie, the best part is coming up in the next variation here. Yeah. Rising arpeggiated. Wow. Okay. So almost entirely synthesized and sequenced, but also very classical. I referenced Switched on Bach, who inspired an R&R.

which was very popular at the time using the synthesizer on old music. Okay. Fast forward to 1983. We'll hear the development of this all things considered theme. Much more in the classical tradition. And here we start to get the, that rhythm, which makes it sound. It's like a Morse code. Is that what you're going for?

Yeah. Like a telegram. Yeah. It's like a telegram. Wire service. Whenever you see like a movie that has something news where they're like, that's used, that kind of telegram sound is used in all kinds. of allies of forces from the beaches of Normandy.

Our boys are coming in foul. Oh, but those crowds are given us to run for their money. Yeah, exactly. So totally, yeah. And you hear that in the other one, too. Yeah, yeah, but we're going to get there. Okay, sorry. Slow your roll.

We're going to get there. But yeah, this is definitely more classical, more developed. You know, interestingly, still hearing this circle of fifths motion. That actually is something that connects us from all things considered to morning edition. You wake up and you go to bed both with the circle of fifths. Now fast forward to 1995 and we get the current iteration of the All Things Considered theme song, recomposed by the great jazz trombonist Wycliff Gordon. This is the section that's really new.

Yeah. And it's not smooth jazz. Is this pop? What is this? Yes, I love. Yeah. Okay, and let's just hang out here in this kind of vamp tail fade-out section of the 1995, Wycliffe Gordon, All Things Considered theme.

Okay. I think what's happening here, why this is so compelling, and like you, I'm the same way. I'm like, whoa, I could listen to this all day. I think what's happening here is we've got two rhythms going on at once, polyrhythm. Yes. We have one rhythm that's in three. One, two, three, one, two, three, one, two, three, one, two, three, one, two, three. And we've got another rhythm kind of drawn from the original. bum bum bum that's in four one two three four two two three four yeah and now what wycliffe gordon is doing is like he's putting them on top of each other at the same time so once we're hearing one two three one two three one two three one two three one two three one two three four how was that party trick over for you i've one two three one two three four how's that party trick over for you worked on that a long time and I'm so glad to finally be able to share it on the show. And that's like super exciting to listen to because your mind is literally being torn in two

directions. Oh my gosh. Yeah. Even division. Odd division. Three, four. I can't make up my mind and I can't stop listening. Yeah.

So this is a very, I mean, let's just like, I kind of want to step back now and say like, regardless of whether you love or hate the new morning edition theme song, like trust that all things considered will always be there for you. The other thing I love about this theme is that it's been recomposed in so many beautiful ways. This is my favorite thing about it too. Yeah. Every single time you hear it on the show, they play it in different contexts depending upon the sort of emotion of the story. Well, it's also gone, this one especially has gone beyond the world of NPR into the world of popular music at large. Like, check this out. This is this incredible arrangement of this tune by easily my all-time favorite Acapella Group.

Take six. Yeah. Yes. Oh my God. The heart is racing. So that is just like a masterclass in vocal harmony. Oh my gosh. I mean, I would just listen.

I would listen to that on repeat. It's so good. The timbers are so beautiful. Each person's voice, the way that they take on the instruments. It's amazing. Okay, Charlie. And now I want to end our conversation. with another pop version, another sort of recomposition of the all things considered theme.

And this one's by one of your all-time favorite bands. Is it a Bergmaster cylinder? Nope. That's a great guess, though. Shouts to BMC. Go reach deep. Reach deep. I know you've been talking about nine inch nails a lot on the podcast and your youthful love of that band, but go even deeper.

It's fish. It's fish. Oh. You've exposed. That's funny. I like that cowbell. He's a great job. I mean, this is the ficious fish that was ever fish.

I love what they've done here. But I'm being a little tongue in cheek. But also, let's get to the end of the song because something really interesting happens that brings this whole episode full circle. They turn this song into a fugue. We were talking about Morning Edition and how it's using these old Baroque Bach properties of music.

Now Fish takes all things considered and just makes that manifest. You can't just drop an F-bomb and not explain what you're talking about. I feel justified in why I loved fish growing up. They're the best. That's amazing. You dropped the F-bomb,

and I don't know if everybody's going to be familiar. I'm not going to define Fugue in the last two minutes of an episode. We'll cover that in a future. It's just it's a Baroque technique. Yeah. We get a reference to what we were hearing in Back and Morning Edition, like this circle of fists, this Stile Antico, this old-school Baroque approach.

I mean, you hear this, and it sounds like, like Bach. Fuck does rock. Okay, at this point, we've spent more time than anyone probably should dissecting various NPR themes. But my takeaway is that, like, regardless of whether we do or don't like this new theme, these themes will continue to, like, ramify through our worlds in ways that we can never expect.

And we'll occupy roles in our life that we can't expect. So, like, I'm curious to sit with this for a while and listen to it. it day in, day out, and see how my appreciation of it changes over time. Yeah, I'm getting that the cultural historical associations to these sounds are constantly changing based off of the references that we come with. And I didn't know anything about, as we talked about in the first half, about smooth jazz and how it had multiple racial vectors that I think actually became associated to NPR. And I didn't even realize the sort of importance of music made for adults. And it was a...

It's something I actually would like to explore further in the show at another time because there's a whole world of music that is geared towards young people and another world that is geared towards adults. And different audiences and different genres have tried to sort of seize an adult listening audience. Another thing often much maligned. And I think there's probably something worth unpacking more there. There's some sort of ageism going on. What's there? I think there's a lot of ripe discussion to be had. Cool.

I look forward to it. Switch on Pop is produced by Moines, Nate Sloan. And me, Charlie Harding, our engineering, mixing and mastering is done by Brandon McFarland. Our community manager is Sarah Terry. Nashat, Karwa, and Allison Rocky are our executive producers. We are a production of Vox Media. You can find more episodes of our show Anywhere Podcasts exist, and you can always reach out to us. Contact at switchedonpop.com.

Twitter at Switch on Pop. Anywhere else, Switch on Pop, we're out there. We'll be back again another week, and we promise you more Pop hits. Until then, thanks for listening.