Switched on Pop - The State of the Pop Union

Episode Date: November 9, 2021

From time to time, it is our constitutional duty to provide an update to the people on the current state of pop. What are the sounds? Who’s making the hits? What are they singing about? We take the musical temperature by consulting the charts, the platforms, and the people. MORE Cat Zhang’s review of PinkPantheress’ “Passion” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I'm songwriter, Charlie Harding. And I'm musicologist Nate Sloan. And from time to time, it is our constitutional duty to provide an update to the people

on what is the current state of pop music. What are the sounds? What are they singing about? Who's even singing? Tonight, we'll be taking the musical temperature by consulting the charts, the platforms, and the people to figure out what is happening in popular music in 2021. Charlie, it sounds like it's time for the annual state of the pop union address. I love this idea, but I have to ask, how do we get a picture of the contemporary pop landscape when it's so fractured and splintered? Like, how does one take the temperature of the pop nation? It's not easy, and that's why we've assembled our best team of experts who've been feeding us daily briefings for the past year,

and I think the place that we have to begin is on the charts. So let's take a minute to think about where our musical nation has been on the charts. Since 2019, the artist The Weekend has been blinding us with his lights full of 80s nostalgia, and he's not gone anywhere. He's currently got six songs that are charting still today. And writing that same future nostalgia wave is Dua Lipa, who's had a three-year reign of chart hits. And with a song Cold Heart, her recent collaboration with Elton John,

she's still hanging on. Yeah, I was grooving to this song so hard in line at the first. pharmacy the other day. I was getting some looks, but I didn't care, Charlie, because this Doolipa, Elton John collab, you know, similarly to the weekend tracks you're listening to, it's got this kind of throwback vibe that is just so listenable, so catchy, reaching back to the 80s, to this sense of nostalgia. I mean, these artists have figured it out.

They've definitely swept the nation with that sound, but perhaps we can see if the winds have begun to change. We've seen some new faces on the charts and also some familiar ones as well. So let's run down our top picks. I want to start with WizKid. He's the Nigerian Afrobeats artist. Many U.S. audiences were first exposed to in 2016 on Drake's One Dance. With kids' song

Essence, featuring Justin Bieber and Thames, is currently a position number 11, and it's really shaking things up. You don't need no eyes about it. Say, not me they mess up in mind, and not me they make you free of the mind. Say your buddy talk to me nice. Say, now my love you didn't need for your life. Yeah, I love no be like. We're bringing the tempo down.

It's getting sensual. I dig pretty much everything about this track. Tell me more. There is kind of a sparseness to this, a spaciousness, that slow tempo you mentioned. This really stands out to me on the charts. I don't hear a lot of other songs like this. And it's breaking records. This is the first Nigerian song in history to chart on both Billboard's Hot 100 and the Global 200.

and what's more is that before Bieber put his vocal on the song, the track already had a pretty high profile fan. Essence was a Barack Obama favorite pick on his 2020 playlist, his state of the musical union, so to speak. That dude has annoyingly good taste in music. I know, I know. He's going to be DJing sets in a visa in six months, I bet. I think it might be a leading indicator of some interesting shaker.

up that we're going to be seeing on the charts. Hmm. As we go further up, we're going to see a lot of familiar names. Names like Drake at number six with Future and Young Thug and their song way too sexy. Always love to hear a right said Fred, I'm Too Sexy Interpolation. Yeah. And who would have thought this song would last so long. in our cultural memory.

I mean, this is not the first time a pop artist has interpolated, right, said Fred. Cast back to Taylor Swift in her reputation release and the single, Look What You Made Me Do. Look what you made me do. Look what you just made me do. Look what you just made me do. Look what you made me do. Look what you made me do.

This song is not going anywhere. I didn't expect in 2021 that connections to Taylor Swift and to the world of hip hop would be happening once again. But here we are. Everybody is too sexy. This interpolation keeps coming back around. And I probably thought that Drake's version was a bit of a novelty and would quickly disappear. But he knows how to make a hook. He knows how to make a meme of a song.

And there it is. number six, Drake's way too sexy and it leads us off into a bunch of familiar acts. Some faces we might not have seen in a minute but who have some of the biggest hits ever are coming back around

and leading the charts once again which leads us to our old friend Eddie Sharon. Eddie Share, share, sure. It's got a new song, Bad Habits. My bad habits lead to late. And that song is fine.

Totally fine. Yeah, it's okay. That is like gas station coffee. It keeps you going. Or it's the song that you hear at the pharmacy and you maybe nod your head unconsciously because you're not really hearing the song. You're just hearing a beat.

But you're not like jiggling your ass the way you do with cold heart. No, no. It's just not. You're not knocking bottles of ibuprofen off the shelves with your tookus when you're listening to Ed Shearing. More appropriate. This is the state of the union being watched by millions and millions and millions of people, including children who are still awake.

Thank you, Mr. Sloan. Here's the thing for me that I couldn't get out of my ear, is that it felt like this song leaned a little too close into maybe one of its influences. It reminded me so much of this TikTok hit, friendships. It's an instrumental dance song. Check it out. Hmm. Here's Ed Shearhan one more time.

I don't generally like to get into the conversation of boardroom making music because I don't really believe in it. But it does feel like someone wrote a brief that was like, this TikTok hit was big. Can we turn it into even bigger pop smash with awesome vocals of Ed Shearin and hooky enough melody? That's what I'm hearing. And I just, I don't know. Sometimes you make those connections, whether it's real or not. And I just, I can't escape the original, which I like a little bit more. Regardless of the origins of the song, the melody,

doesn't have any edge for me. It doesn't have any peaks or valleys. It just kind of hums along, which is great. I think it succeeds in what it's trying to do, which is to melt into the background. Well, if we're throwing shade, then maybe we can ascend one step further up the charts to a song that is really not doing it for me. It's Walker Hayes, Fancy Like, featuring Kesha. Got to Burman Street State with the Oreo shake and some whipped cream on the top two. Two straws, one check, girl, I got you. Boogie like Natty in the star phone. And here I must respectfully disagree with my colleague from across the aisle because I think this song rocks.

I love the message of finding something fancy in the kind of everyday, mundanities of life. And man, this hip-hop country hybrid is really doing it for me. I would definitely get down to this song, Chuck.

I have to interject and declare that I believe that Nashville made its bed when it decided to separate from the great Lil Nas X when he so valiantly blended hip-hop and country and was kicked off the country charts. And until he wins the highest honor in the country,

land, I'm just not down for the hip-hop country mashup. Though, I gotta give it to him because Lil Nas X's song Industry Baby is as of this recording one spot higher on the charts than Walker Hayes' track. And I can't argue with that, Charlie, but that's a reflection of the larger system of gatekeeping and racial policing that happens in the country's fear. I can't, we can't necessarily lay that at the feet of Walker Hayes and Kesha and Fancy-like. But I do, your point is well taken, sir. I do not yield, and yet I do believe we must move on.

We're going to jump up to number two, a new face on the charts. The Kid Leroy, bolstered by an old face on the charts. His song, Stay, featuring Justin Bieber. Beaver again. My God. He's the zealig of the charts. I mean, that chorus is catchy a F. Yeah, you've got a low melody note and then these jumping higher notes back and forth, back and forth.

I mean, you know, no shade to the kiddleroy, but I don't know if he's actually singing that. That sounds like someone's dragging those high pitches into the grid and pro tools every time. I mean, I'd love to see him live and see if he can actually do those. It's a processed vocal. I mean, that's kind of the vibe it's going for. You might not be surprised to learn, though, that the song is produced by some heavy hitters. We've got Kashmir or Cat, Charlie Puth, who is known for his.

perfect pitch and he was credited with the melody here sounds like a Charlie Puth kind of melody and that explains a lot Omar Fetty the guitar player who we talked a lot about in our episode on Montero Lnosex yeah and Blake Slacken we've got a powerhouse of producers behind this track and of course Justin Bieber taking some of the lines helped boosting the song to a bigger audience I like it and it's got that genre mashup We've got these like kind of angsty pop punk emo vocals, but they're on top of this kind of washy 80s retro vibe. That same 80s feel we might hear in the weekend. Right.

That's a cool collision there. So it makes us wonder, like maybe that weekend-y thing that we're hearing in the Chearin and the Kid Leroy, are we going to hear that in the number one spot? No, sir. Not at all. because we have a sudden arrival of an emissary from across the Atlantic, the sweet tones of Adele

and her song, Easy on Me, is currently at number one. Okay, Charles, when I first listened to this song, I have to say, I kind of just pushed it to the side. I was like, okay, here's Adele doing the same thing. She always does.

It's a slow, sparse, piano-driven, ballad with some heartbreaking lyrics like I've heard this before but listening to it with you now I am swept away by the emotion of this song by the talent of her performance I'm like kind of hanging on every syllable this is a return to form and maybe that's not a bad thing maybe it's not the worst thing to say this is what I'm good at and I'm going to keep on doing it until you stop listening It's such a testament on the power of a great song. You just sit down with a piano, an amazing voice. There are infinite recursions of ways to speak about heartbreak because every heartbreak is the most important heartbreak.

It is your heartbreak and when you can relate to it in a song. Yeah, she's got us in our feelings, check. Part of what makes this song so successful to me is this auditory illusion. At the song's climax, it feels like there ought to be in a. proper power ballad form. Uh-huh. Giant drum hits. Oh, yeah. Big drum fell.

Boom. Du-dum-dum-dum-b-dum-dum-bap-da. Yeah, right? Like, that is what you want. Because she's taking us there. And yet without it, there's this restraint. And it requires our imagination to bring in all of those rhythmic elements. And yet, they are queuing us very subtly.

Uh-huh. Underneath the base, there is a muted, filtered out kickdress. that is giving us just a bit of that restrained energy. It is that tension of completely letting everything out, but holding back just a little bit that makes me want to lean in even closer. Okay, that's pretty funky. It's also like maybe creates this feeling of delayed gratification as a listener. You're never quite getting that payoff,

which is like kind of reflecting the message of the song. You know, it's like, I'm not going to give you what you want, but be nice to me anyway. Also, perhaps it's number one, because if you're not getting the thing you want, you just keep needing more of it. You keep on hitting play. So that's the charts. They're giving us a particular view of what's happening in the world of pop music. Lots of big artists we haven't seen for a minute taken over. Lots of leaning into allusions to older songs, genres and genres.

styles. Indeed. Though there isn't any just one thing happening, I do feel that this old school, even if you will, elite institution may be misleading us as to the state of pop music. We need to talk directly to the people, which we'll do right after the break. Maria, you have a podcast now and you need to start acting like it. What's the first step as a podcaster? Well, you have to ask lots of questions. I'm Maria Sharpova and I'm hosting a new podcast called Pretty Tough. Every week, I'm sitting down with trailblazing women at the top of their game to discuss ambition, work ethic, and the ups and downs that come on the path to achieving greatness. I have a few pretty tough questions for you. Okay.

Ready? Ready. Do not sugarcoat something for me. No. No. No. We'll dive into their stories and get valuable insights from top executives, actors, entrepreneurs, and other individuals who have inspired me so much in my own journey. Pretty tough is your front row seat to the women who have demonstrated.

demonstrated the power in being unapologetic in their pursuits. I hope you'll join us. New episodes drop Wednesdays on YouTube or in your favorite podcast app. In the state of our pop union, I believe we are always striving for greater perfection and for greater equality of voices. For so many decades, popular music was ruled by a set of gatekeepers that we know are starting to fall apart. the top 40 radio stations, the album sales, the things that typically had driven charts,

even the new big streaming companies, they're being upset by a whole new set of institutions that are being driven by the people. And to elucidate the point, I want to play you a song that to laggards might seem like this doesn't have any place in popular music, but oh, does it belong? This is Monoskins Began. Whoa, okay, that was a curve. ball, what is this garage rock anthem doing amid the beavers and the drakes at the top of the hot 100? That doesn't compute.

There's a lot of things that seem off here. We need to break it down one by one. The first is that this song feels so familiar, but also kind of old. I mean, this was actually originally released in 2017, but it's actually much older than that. Began is a cover of Frankie Valley in the Four Seasons. song that was originally recorded in 1967. Wow, now that we're listening to it, I definitely recognized that song, but I did not put it together that it was a cover.

It's got so much like growl and angst to it and distortion. That's really cool. But again, like, what is it doing on the pop charts? I don't, it doesn't make sense. This is not a song that I think was really aiming for that place. Rather, this is a song, as I said, that has been chosen by the people again and again and again. It was first chosen on X Factor, Italia, because Monoskin are an Italian rock group. They finished second in the competition and more recently went on to Eurovision where they won the 2021 contest.

One of the great shames of our show. Great disappointment is that we failed to cover this important overseas event in this last year. Truly a stain on our reputation, but continue. But still the people have continued to choose. Monoskins Began over and over and over. To be specific, more than 10 million times on TikTok have people set that song to a video. Whoa. And it's part of this unique trend that happens on no other social platform, just TikTok, where songs that succeed on TikTok like Began are gate crashing billboard charts.

Now, the tough thing about TikTok is that it is so perfectly individualized and our algorithm them feeds us the exact thing we want. You know, crochet TikTok, cat grooming TikTok, acrobatic TikTok. It can be hard to know what's happening in the world of music there because it's so effusive and reaches so many hundreds of millions of people. So to better understand the musical geography of TikTok, we've recruited a musical diplomat, if you will. Hey, I'm Kat Singh and I'm the assistant editor at Pitchfork.

Kat. Yes, Kat, friend of the show. She covers the TikTok beat better than anybody. I asked her to break down for me, what are the big things that she's hearing on the platform this year? First, I'm saying an increase in the number of global hits that go onto my feed. Second, there's a sort of like young bedroom pop artist tapping into 90s UK club sounds like drum and bass and garage. And the third thing is the sort of like TikTok pop punk movement.

Okay, hold on. Yeah, three things. Let's break them down one by one, starting with global music. At the beginning of the year, there was this kind of moment where Japanese city pop was a big thing on TikTok. And then later on, there is quite a few hits that were Vina House, which is like a Vietnamese brand of club music. One song called The Bomb Remix by Hong Reid was a huge international trend. Relatively recently, you know, one of the top songs on TikTok was the song called Love Nawantiti by the Nigerian singer, CK. And so just the number of the U.K. You're feeling me all good time.

I suck. Just a fly. And so just the number of, like, hit songs that are coming from other countries, not the U.S. or the U.K. Or, like, even the Western world, has been pretty striking to me. Cool. Global music is reaching so many people. And as we saw, Wisket from Nigeria, also on Billboard's charts. There's a hunger to get outside, maybe some of these legacy U.S. acts.

These might be the leading indicators. This may be where we're heading soon. What about these other trends, the drum and bass? What's going on there? Let's go back to Kat. Probably the biggest breakout star this year from TikTok is a 20-year-old artist named Pink Pantherist. She's from the UK, and she basically got famous

posting these little song snippets directly to TikTok. And a lot of her early kind of song drafts were her singing over, like, classic garage or drum and bass songs. Whoa, Charlie, the kids are all right. That is such a cool track. I can't really reference it to anything I've heard before. It's new. It's fresh.

It's kind of experimental, but super catchy. Like, if this is what's happening on TikTok, I want in. I'm all about this. I feel like I'm hearing a connection between some of the lo-fi beats to study, sleep and do everything in the background, too. but mixed with break beats, you know, fast Amman break style drums that you expect from drum and bass that are typically in the like 165 to 185 BPM,

really fast stuff. But when you slow it down, ooh, what a vibe. Yeah. Okay, so we're hearing these global influences, this experimental drum and bass sound. And then I think there was like some positive. punk, Kat was mentioning too. What's that about? So the final thing we're seeing, I guess there's a sort of like TikTok pop punk moment.

So writing off the coattails of Olivia Rodrigo and good for you. And then also Willow released Transparent Soul. There are some other TikTok influencers who have been making things in the pop punk vein. The most notable one is the artist named Jaden. She got me roster so you know I got a rocket. Take me to the top and let me fall. He used to be in one of those big sort of influencer houses, you know, taking like shirtless videos or whatever. But I since made the transition to the mentee of like Machine Gun Kelly and like Travis Barker. And then Lil Huddy, who is also, you know, in that world of influencer mansion, celebrity has also released a couple of pop punk tracks. And so it does seem like a genre where like if you are trying to make the career pivot from like,

cute teenager heartthrob to musician. Pop punk is like one of the avenues that you're going down. I feel like we're getting a little bit of that pop punky kind of vibe you mentioned on the Kid LaRoy track we heard earlier on the charts. We've definitely been seeing a pop punk moment happening. And maybe it's no surprise that the big influencers from TikTok are trying to cross platforms with the thing that they are seeing is working. I don't blame them because Pop Punk.

is fun. It's full of energy. There's no denying it. That was fun. I always love hearing from Kat, one of the most astute music writers out there. But let's be real, she's also a member of the media elite, Charlie. And I think we need to speak to the people. You know, we need to go directly. We got to like shake some hands and kiss some babies and hear what real Americans are listening to. Well, you know, Mr. Sloan, I have done my homework. I have gone to the furthest mountain. I have walked into the deepest would to find the voices of real America, the people who help make our show. Truly, though, the people behind the show, their ears are brilliant. They offer so much insight into the world of popular music, and I think it's essential that we hear from them today.

Hey, Switchstone Pop. This is Brandon McFarlane, audio engineer, composer. I really like your show, especially what I do on it. I mix the show. and a song that I'm really digging right now that keep coming back to is off of a co-play's new album, Music of the Spheres, and the song title is just this heart emoji, and it's with co-play, this group called We Are King, and Jacob Collier, who we've had on the show before. And it's no drums, no instrumentation,

just their voices as like a choir, almost like Gregorian chant style with this like nice chamber reverb, or, church reverb I really like the sentiment of the lyrics I really love how natural it is Jacob Collier's baritone the three

amazingly talented women of We Are King and co-play. It's really going in. Okay guys I'll see you in a couple of days. Bye. I'm not sure how I feel about cold play making me so emotional. Yeah, they haven't done this to me since 2005, but it's working.

Much gratitude to Brandon for this one, because if he had just told me, hey, you should listen to this cold play song, like outside of the context of us having to record a podcast, I probably have been like, yeah, yeah, yeah, totally. And then I never would have. But man, I was moved. That's beautiful stuff. It's an interesting record. You know, it's produced by Max Martin. The final song is a 10-minute epic that's kind of in the same. style of like a great pink Floyd Proggy track. It's different. I dig it. All right. All right. That's a strong start to this wild card round. Nate, I have traveled to the great Rust Belt of America. And I've spoken with a real life Bichagander who is showing us the way in pop music.

Hey, my name is Julie Myers. I'm the editor for Switched on Pop. And I have been listening nonstop to a track called Lilac by the K-pop Megastar IU. It's off her 2021 album by the same name. It's a real disco-y thing. She's got these optimistic, breathy, sexy, sweet vocals, but there's this funky guitar and bass that's under the whole thing. If you're not really ready to give up summer yet, because Hot Girl summer never happened

and you're not ready for seasonal depression yet, I would say give Lilac a spin. I think it's probably breaking some major international treaty to have to pause that song. I want to keep letting it go. It's kind of even hard to speak about. It just grooves. It's got that 80s throwback thing, but it feels super contemporary. I would even locate it more specifically in that Japanese city pop aesthetic that we discussed

with the aforementioned Kat Zang a few months ago. Like there's that throwback element here that we've been hearing across the charts and TikTok. But then this has like something so current and unique to it as well and the vocal delivery

and the phrasing and the timbre. This is awesome. From Michigan to Seoul. And now back to the West Coast to Oregon. Hi. This is producing. Megan Lupin, and I have been loving the song Right On Time by Brandy Carlisle. The lyrics are so relatable if you've ever hurt someone or been hurt by someone.

Plus, it's just a beautiful song. I highly recommend stepping into Brandy's universe and putting on right on time. Brandy delivering us that epic drum moment from a power ballad that we were wanting from the Adele with yet again an excessive. exceptional vocal delivery. Woof, yeah. You can hear her actually kind of leaning back away from the microphone when she hits that climactic note on the word right. It's like she has to step away less she shatter the microphone with the sheer awe-inspiring power of her voice. It totally gives me chills.

That is such a great pick from Megan. So, pulling back, the state of the union. Is it healthy? Are we whole? Charlie, my sense is that we are deeply divided and yet strong. And I think if we can celebrate that division, that plurality of voices, maybe we can recognize what we all have in common rather than what separates us. With that, Nate, I believe our annual state of the pop union is adjourned. Switch on Pop is produced by Nate Sloan, me Charlie Harding.

We're engineered by Brandon McFarland, edited by Jolie Myers, social media by Abby Barr, illustrations by Ira Scott. Leave our executive producers are Nishak Kerwa and Hano Rosen, or member of the Vox Media Podcast Network, and a production of Vulture. You can find more episodes of our show anywhere you listen to podcasts and on our website, switchedonpop.com. Hit us up on the socials at Switched on Pop. We want to hear from you. What are you listening to that you think to? finds the state of pop music in 2021. We'll be back again next week on Tuesday with another episode.

And until then, thanks for listening. Thanks for listening.