Switched on Pop - Why we need bad music

Episode Date: October 14, 2026

For the 500th(!) episode of Switched on Pop, Charlie and Nate try to answer the question that has stumped critics and philosophers since the dawn of sound: does bad music exist? Their quest to answer something so nebulous leads them through the annals of taste, and in the process, they recruit several other critics and journalists to give their two cents on the topic. Can things actually be bad, and if so, how do we define them? CREDITS  Reanna Cruz: Producer  Iris Gottlieb: Illustrator  Charlie Harding: Host, Executive Producer  Dion Lee: Art Director  Brandon McFarland: Audio Engineer  Nick Ripps: Video Editor  Nate Sloan: Host  Lissa Soep: Editor  Zach Tenorio & Jocie Adams: Theme Composers  Switched On Pop is a co-production of Vox Media Podcast Network, Vulture, and Rock Ridge Productions. Links: ⁠⁠Newsletter⁠⁠  Songs discussed: Kristin Chenoweth, “Taylor the Latte Boy” Komar and Melamid & Dave Soldier, “The Most Unwanted Song" Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, "Violin Concerto in D major, Op. 35: III. Finale. Allegro vivacissimo" Johann Strauss II, The Blue Danube" Johann Sebastian Bach, "The Well-Tempered Clavier No. 2: Prelude and Fugue in C minor" Pete Rock & CL Smooth, "They Reminisce Over You (T.R.O.Y.)" Lil Yachty, "1 Night" Sam Laxton, Lonskii, “Adagio For Strings” Daft Punk, Pharrell Williams, Nile Rodgers, “Get Lucky” Florence Foster Jenkins, "Queen of the Night’s Aria" BB King, Eric Clapton, “Riding With the King” Paul McCartney, "Temporary Secretary" The Beatles, "Here Comes the Sun" Paul McCartney, "Wonderful Christmastime" Lou Reed, "Who Am I? (Tripitena’s Song)" Insane Clown Posse, "Miracles" Primus, "DMV" Iggy Azalea ft. Charli xcx, "Fancy" The Killers, "Human" Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

How much have you spent on your pet's medical care this year? Maybe more than your own? 25 years ago, it was very rare to hear of a pet having an MRI. Now it's kind of standard if a pet presents with an issue. Big corporations and private equity have seen all of this and have rushed into the sector. While your vet bill is so high, that's this week on Explain It to Me. Listen to new episodes, Sundays, wherever you go. at your podcasts.

Okay, Charlie, I was scrolling through Instagram Reels the other day, and I found this creator who has a whole series that she calls testing the quote, I love all music person. We know these people. They're like, oh, I love every type of music. This person is like, really? Do you love this song? Bring me job.

Bring me joy. Oh, take me. Okay, that song is Taylor the Lottay Boy by Kristen Chenoweth. And that creator is Nigerian bombshell. And, you know, this stopped me in my tracks, Charlie, because not only had I never heard that song before, and it is quite a listen, but I feel like this raised a question

that you and I have perennially debated over the course of 500 episodes of the show. Can you really love all music or is some music just bad? Welcome to Switchdown Pop. I'm songwriter Charlie Harding. And I'm musicologist Nate Sloan. So that's the question. Is there such a thing as bad music and how do we know it when we hear it?

I feel like this is something that I have an internal battle with. Yeah. Here's what I mean. On one hand, I feel like one of the powerful lessons from making this show is that all music is created equal and everyone loves a certain song for a reason and learning that reason is a way to access our collective humanity

in a powerful way. Sounds nice. And yet, and yet deep inside me, deep in my gut, you know, in my small intestine, in my pancreas, I cannot deny that I hear certain songs

and think to myself, Yeah, that's bad. So, Charlie, how do we reconcile this? How can we finally come to a conclusion once and for all? Is there no bad music? I feel like there's a lot of ways that we can test this question, but perhaps we can begin with a piece of music. This is called The Most Unwanted Song by Comar and Melamid and Dave Soldier. Oh, yeah, accordion.

But what is this? What are we listening to? This is the most unwanted song. It was constructed based off of information from a poll by the Dia Art Foundation, who, after speaking to 500 people, found that listeners most hated the following sounds, bagpipes, a children's choir, an opera singer rapping, cowboy music. And basically, this contains all of these sounds and more of the things that people most dislike. What was your reaction? I have an intense allergy to children's choirs. So that was a tough listen. At the same time, I think the novelty of it kind of made me enjoy it and like ignited a certain curiosity in me as like what is happening here.

I need to hear more. Okay. So a bit of a mixed reaction to the most unwanted songs. Yeah. I feel like there are a lot of ways that we could approach the issue of bad music. Here's what I propose, though. Okay. I want to look at today a bit of.

about how you and I listen. This is really about reflecting on the 500th episode of our show. Yes. But in thinking about our relationship to so-called bad music, there's a whole history of other people who have attempted this question.

And there are a lot of modern critics who have something to say. And so throughout our episode, I'm going to play you clips from critics, friends of the show, musicians who have their say about bad music. I wanted to talk about this. with you, though, because I feel like it's a real issue for the two of us.

Okay, Charlie, are you talking about the book incident right now? The book incident. Yes, when we were literally sitting across from each other at a desk writing our 2019 book from Oxford University Press, switched on pop, how popular music works, and why it matters. Yeah. And we were getting into one of our rare arguments over whether bad music was actually a thing or not. I feel like you at the time were really obstinate. And just being like, no, no such thing is bad music.

And I was like, come on, man. I had more of that, like, gut reaction. Like, of course there's bad music. There's things that really irk me. And yet, you, sir, on multiple episodes of our show in the series, Learning to Love, have maybe ventured into the world of vitriol. Yes. We have looked at acts like the killers, oasis, cold play, where things got maybe a little bit negative.

And the listener reaction was very strong. we received email saying, whoa, whoa, whoa, why are you going hard on these folks? You rarely go negative. That's not what we like. So much of the project of our show has been taking music that historically has been marginalized for some reason and raising it up. But on the other hand, we can't deny those feelings we have. When we listen to a song, we just go, oh, that's, that's tough. And I do have that feeling when I listen to the killers. And I'm sorry everyone that hasn't changed. Oh, interesting. So you did not learn to love. Maybe we will change how we listen by the end today. You are not alone in that feeling. One of our first critics that I pulled was our producer,

Rihanna Cruz, and I want to include their voice in this conversation. So on the topic of if there's bad music or not, I used to believe that there was no such thing as bad music. That music, even if it wasn't for me, was for somebody. And ultimately, because of that, had something to love within it, even if I didn't see it. However, you know, over the past few years of being a professional critic, I have unfortunately changed my opinion. And I do have to say that I believe there is bad music, that bad music exists in the world, and it is very prevalent. There is so much music that is made every day. There is no way that all of it is good. And I think bad music comes from a place of mediocrity and a palpable lack of inspiration.

I see it a lot from mainstream pop artists where it just feels kind of phoned in. There's really no light behind the song or what we're hearing. You know, I think AI music is inherently bad music because it doesn't have a human inspiration on the other side of the line. and I think as we careen towards a slop-filled culture, more and more bad music will come across our plates. And we got to choose whether or not to eat it. You got to eat that slop, Nate?

I mean, I'm not surprised to hear this take coming from the producer of an episode we titled Drake's Slop era. And Rianna also seems to be zeroing on a certain type of badness here, which is music that isn't made for the right reasons, perhaps. Yeah. I really admire Rihanna for communicating that they can change their mind. I think that's a big part of being a critic. And being a listener at all is just listening and developing and changing your mind about things over time. I think though we can probably all agree on one thing that we can just sort of like carve out as like, yes, there is bad music when music is used for harm. Right. There is music that has been used for fascist propaganda. There has been music that has been used as. instruments of torture. Yes. There is music that is used for, you know, white power and white nationalism.

Yeah. And yet, at the same time, the sounds underneath those things might not necessarily be harmful. It's always the context. I mean, take, for example, in the world of, like, punk music that has been used by white nationalists, you could hear guitars in a harmful punk song. And yet you could go to another group like Black Flag, who are really. rooted in anti-authoritarianism and individuality, where they're using the same sounds.

The harm isn't from the sound. I think it's often from the context, how it's used, how it's deployed, and what the artisan tends to do with it. So, yes, there is music, which is absolutely used for harm. But I don't think that that is largely what we are thinking about when we're talking about bad music. No, I think we're more interested in the aesthetics of bad than the sort of socio-political impact of bad music.

Yeah. And to be fair, there is a long history of people wrestling with this issue of aesthetics of what is good and bad. I'm sure we could go back to prehistory, but you can look to the Enlightenment error. Philosophers like Hume

and Kant are debating what is beautiful, what is actually, is there anything that is not subjective about the aesthetics of art and music? And they basically, end up in this place of like, yeah, yeah, subjective. Maybe you can use some expertise and some effective judgment to make a determination. But part of my favorite part of the history of looking at

this question of is music good or bad, are all of the people who have fumbled along the way? Who? Like who? Do you know Edward Hanslick? I did not expect this conversation to lead to the founder of the idea of absolute music, Edward Hanslick. Tell me about absolute music. Well, this was a moment in the 19th century when there was this big debate over whether instrumental music or vocal music was better, which is a funny thing. I mean, it tells you about what people's priorities were in the romantic era. This was like a big, you know, a hot button issue. And this guy, Edward Hanslick, was firmly on the side that instrumental music was superior to vocal music and that people should be listening to symphonies and not operas because instrumental music challenged you as a listener

to engage with the purely intellectual appreciation of shifting sounds. It required you as an interpreter to do more work to create meaning out of just these abstract sounds. And yet he was not supportive of all symphonic music. He was quite the critic. When he was, He heard Chikovsky's violin concerto in D. This is, uh, because he's writing back in 1881. This is what he has to say about the finale, the Allegro. He says that music can exist, which stinks to the ear. Damn, I didn't know his hands like was such a savage.

But I mean, I mean, listen to this. It's trash, obviously. It's, oh, a guy, ugh. It's just like making me ill to listen to, really. How dare Tchaikovsky. This review was captured in a book called The Lexicon of Musical Invective from 1953. Written by Nicholas Slininsky. In the book, Slomenski says that Hanslik's review called this portion of the violin concerto like a drunken Russian village festival.

Yeah, so a little bit of xenophobia mixed in there as well. I think what we have here is Hanslik falling for a trope of bad criticism, which is just revealing your own cultural bias. Yes. But there's all kinds of when taste goes wrong, if you will. In Rolling Stone back in 1969, John Mendelsohn panned the first Led Zeppelin album. Oh, wow. He said that it offers little that its twin, the Jeff Beck group, didn't say as well or better three months ago. He says that Jimmy Page is a very limited producer and a writer of a week.

unimaginative songs, and in their willingness to waste their considerable talent on unworthy material, the Zeppelin has produced an album, which is sadly reminiscent of truth. Truth. What does that mean? Truth here is capitalized. This is the album by the Jeff Beck group. So this is another thing we can fall into calling music bad, which is to say, well, somebody already did it better.

Yeah. Led Zeppelin and Jeff Beck, no, obviously both acclaimed, but I believe that Led Zeppelin one is often, uh, top of the ranks of one of the more important albums. So that review is a really stunning example of how collective taste might change over time. Yeah. And you know, at a certain point in the history of rock and roll, there are critics who say that, you know, rock music has not only deteriorated, but that it is rotting people's minds. The critic Alan Bloom in 1987 in the closing of the American mind says that rock music has one appeal only, a barbaric appeal. to sexual desire.

But love, not Eros, but sexual desire, undeveloped and untortured, it reaches kids with all the public authority of the entertainment industry. Oh, I love just a little dose of classic moral panic about rock and roll. That's a great vintage, yeah. And yet, of course, writing in 1987, this is sort of the era of hair metal, which is about to completely transform into grunge and alternative that will take over the rock charts for the next decade. And since the 2000s,

rock music has had very little impact commercially. Yes, it's been supplanted by other genres like hip-hop and now country. So there's no shortage of critics who have gotten it wrong throughout history, and we haven't even gotten to talk about Theodore or Dornow. That's going to have to be for another episode. Instead, I want to hand the mic to one of my favorite critics.

Hi, this is Chris Malanfi, host of the Hit Parade podcast, and friend of Switched-on Pop, Happy 500th Guys. Does bad music exist? Of course it does, as long as Bon Jovi music exists. But seriously, one of my favorite quotes about pop music and bad songs comes from the book The Worst Rock and Roll Records of All Time, in which the two authors, Jimmy Guterman and Owen O'Donnell, write,

quote, Rock and Roll is unlike most other pop culture forms, in that there is no consensus as to who the lowliest practitioners are, unquote. So, for example, I happen to think Four Non-Blon's What's Up is very probably the worst pop hit of the 1990s. However, in the 21st century, that song has emerged as a top karaoke favorite, especially among millennial and zoomer women. Or I can tell you I hate Jimmy Buffett's Margaritaville, and indeed most of his irv.

But Buffett was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame a couple of years ago. Conversely, I've seen polls of worst songs that list Hanson's 1997 number one hit, Mbop, as one of the worst songs of all time. But I consider that song a minor pop masterpiece. And by the way, most pop-tomist critics agree. So, no consensus in pop music, just like those two critics said. And they wrote that in 1991, before the internet was a thing, before we could broadcast our opinions easily to the world. So really, it has always been thus, as long as I've been following pop music and the charts.

As a woman with a loud voice once saying, that's what's going on. So Chris is brilliant. And yet I feel like his message disproved his own hypothesis. Oh. Right? He says there is absolutely bad music. Yeah. And no one can agree on what it is.

Thus, is there actually bad music? You know, I think that this raises the question of what does it mean when we say something is bad music? Like, who is doing the policing here? And there is a great amount of writing dedicated to this question of what does it mean when we call something bad? There is the classic Pierre Bordeaux's distinction, a social critique of the judgment of taste, which I learn about via Carl Wilson, the great music critic at Slate in his book, Let's Talk About Love. And basically, Bordeaux says that when we classify music, what we're really doing is classifying the person doing the classifying. So here's what Bordeaux really means. in 1960 he puts together this survey of over 1,200 French people,

and he asked them to name their favorite pieces of music sorted by their class in education. And what he found is that 65% of working class respondents with no diploma picked the piece, the blue Danube. The Blue Danube Waltz by Johann Strauss. Classic banger. Oh, yeah. I feel like I saw this in a lot of Looney Tunes growing up.

I just have to say, I love it. the image of like a hardworking minor coming back from his shift and just like putting Strauss on the turntable. But I'm sure that is what people were listening to back then. Yeah. In comparison though, only 11% of graduates of top schools chose the Blue Danube. They instead preferred music like Box well-tempered clavier. This is music that reflects your. bourgeois sensibility and acumen. Exactly. I mean, it's kind of funny to debate these things now because the role of classical

music has so deeply changed and both these are very popular pieces. But when this study was done, it basically was showing that those who maybe had more education, maybe piano lessons that taught the value of these preludes and the fugues that Bach wrote showed that your preferences basically could sort you into your background. And for a long time, time this held up, this idea that highbrow taste snobbery, basically, could determine, you know, what was good and bad. And you would be right because, you know, by your class and by your upbringing, you could tell what was good and bad. And yet, this all gets disrupted in the era of globalization, neoliberalism. There is a study called Changing Highbrow Taste from 1996 by

Richard Peterson and Roger Kern, who look at this question of how the new, elite status symbol is no longer to be a snob of what is good and bad, but instead to be an omnivore of culture. Ooh, interesting. So they put together a study that compared the U.S. Arts Survey from 1982 to 1992, looking at people whose favorite music was classical or opera. And what they found is that in 10 years, those high-brow classical and opera heads started to enjoy more frequently, so-called low-brow music genres like country, bluegrass, gospel, and

blues, the point being that elite status moved, it flipped from being something about snobbishness to now you have to like everything. Wow. And yet, in that very same year, 1996, Bethany Bryson puts out this paper, anything but heavy metal that examines not what people like, but instead a survey of what people dislike. And amongst the most musically tolerant people, there were four genres in particular that we're still disliked. Rap, heavy metal, country, and gospel, sort of saying that those who dislike music,

there's still some kind of classism built into it because she calls these the genres with the least educated audiences. So broad taste can be a status marker, but there's still what she calls multicultural capital. You have to know the right stuff. And if you do, it reinforces your class-based

exclusions. that's fascinating because I do sense that things have changed a bit since we were kids where you really sort of allied yourself with one style of music, one genre, made that your identity to a pretty strong degree, made that the way you dress, the people you hung out with, the things you did. And I don't see that as much, for better or worse. I don't see, you know, punks and goths and people whose whole identity is wrapped around their musical taste.

And maybe that's because of this omnivorous tendency we have now. I feel like today in the idea of like, do you know what is good and bad? It's become much more complicated. You have to listen to everything. But there's also the sort of sense that you have to listen to the right everything. There's a difference between

Kendrakely Kumar, who's won a Pulitzer versus Lil Yadi, who has not. Yeah, interesting. I mean, at this juncture in our journey, to the center of bad music, I feel like we've reached the same destination in another way, which is, well, that any perceived badness is really just masking some kind of bias. Earlier we were talking maybe about a more kind of, you know, cultural, national bias. Now I feel like we're talking about more of a class-based bias.

Right. But we haven't cracked the code of like, is there objectively bad music? that isn't just a stand-in for like, you know, some other feeling you have about another group of people, honestly. I think it's worth naming that for both of us, we are coming from all kinds of biases. You know, we are of a particular cultural class. We are two professors. We are trained musicians. We have certain listening habits.

Being musicians, like, we hear things through that lens where so often, you know, I think you and I find harmony, form, production, lyric, exciting. and we work inside the culture industry. And so that is informing, I think, how you and I think about what is good and bad. And I think it's important for us to name that. I would second that. And I would say that's applicable probably to every listener. And part of your story as a listener is like learning about what those biases are and recognizing how they shape your listening and allowing yourself to listen beyond that when you can.

but we're still dancing around this, Charlie. Is there bad music? I have one critic who absolutely think so. Okay, let's hear it. Hi, Switched-on Pop. My name is Laura Snapes, and I'm the deputy music editor at The Guardian. Does bad music exist?

Yes, bad music exists, and I personally find it a great critical pleasure to try and identify it. I wouldn't count amateurish, out of tune, out-time music by kids, or people just having fun in their garage as bad music in any way. For me, bad music is lazy, it's nakedly trend chasing, it's music that's contemptuous of its audience even, it claims to say one thing, but it actually says nothing at all, or maybe it doesn't even realize that across a whole album,

kind of an unpleasant picture of an artist's values and worldview builds up through what they're saying. Truly bad music or music that it's worth saying is bad, usually has some kind of investment behind it, whether that's from a label or a publicist who's got notably cool clients, where money is being spent to convince listeners that actually this is good. I feel like the latest Taylor Swift deluxe release just answers this question for you, really. There was universally bad reviews for lazy songs that all sound like tryhard versions of much better older songs that she's made, and which everybody knows are just a ploy for chart success and Grammy recognition. I never want to listen to those four songs again, but I can't lie to you.

I had an amazing time writing about them, and witnessing thousands of pop fans put their foot down to say, no, this is bad music and we deserve better. I love hearing from Laura Snape's. one of my favorite writers and critics. And this is a great example of where I think we disagree. Our last episode on Taylor Swift, we might have been one of the few groups that felt, there's some real merit to these songs. And I love that she had such a strong and opposite opinion.

I feel like that helps inform my own understanding of music as reading people who feel differently than me. One thing I do totally agree with is the pleasure I get from reading a critic just to rip apart an album. I feel like Laura should be the editor of the next edition of the Lexicon of Musical Invective for the 21st Century. I hear some overlap with Rihanna's take earlier. You know, bad music, it's not about a specific sound.

It's not about someone not being technically proficient. You know, as Laura mentioned, it's about people making music for the wrong reasons, for dishonest reasons. for even corrupt reasons. Yeah. That's what defines something as bad. So on one hand, there is an argument to be made that music can be bad because of the artist's intent or how it's marketed, the larger story around it. And yet, I think that there is maybe another reason that music can be called bad that has maybe more to do with listener and audience taking agency over their music. Okay.

Earlier we had talked about, you know, Lil Yachty. Yeah. There was a great dispute between sort of the older hip-hop heads, hating mumble rap. You might know the artist Pete Rock and C.L. Smooth. Their track, they reminisce over you, Troy, from 1992, for example. I reminisce for a spell or shall I say think back. 22 years ago to keep it on track. The birth of a child on the 8th of October.

A toast. But my granddaddy came sober. So compare that old Little Black Boy grows 18 years younger than my mama. So compare that old school hip hop flow to Lil Yadi's 2016 track

One Night. I know you want this for life taking pictures with all my eyes but I can't have no wife. I just want you for the night. I know you.

One show cases rhythmic complexity and lyrical dexterity and has a complex multi-layered sampled beat. The other has this sparse instrumentation and a melody and a lyric that feels like a children's nursery rhyme, honestly. These tracks are so different from one another. They feel of totally different types. And L'Liyadi is fine with that. Back in 2016, he said that, you know, he couldn't name classic songs by classic rappers like Biggie or Tupac.

He called 90s rappers old and washed up. In response, Pete Rock mocks him online, calling him a whack rapper. I mean, no one loves anything more than a rap feud. And yet, I think this debate isn't about what hip hop is good and what is bad. I think it has a lot more to do with how old are you. Yeah. Right. Lil Yati has gone on to be a generationally important rapper who's made very important recordings.

And I think that, you know, if you're of Gen X, millennial, you might enjoy old school hip hop. And if you're, you know, young millennial, Gen Z, bumble rap speaks to you. is it so bad that music might divide us by age? Isn't what rock and roll jazz before that? Isn't it what they did as well? Absolutely. And I'm disappointed because we are back in our same little hole again. We are back in a world where bad music is just covering up some other bias.

We've had cultural national bias. We've had class bias. Now we have some kind of age bias, some generational bias. But it's not about the music itself, is it, Charlie? As you say, it's really about some other underlying issue that you're concerned about. I think part of this conversation about bias behind it is this feeling that music ought to be universal. Like if we sort of got rid of all of the cultural elements of it, it's just music anyway. And one of my favorite critics who likes to contend with this issue is Caliphocena,

who in his book, major labels, talks about how music is, not about creating a place for everybody to kumbaya. Music is often about exclusion. And by the way, I think he's not necessarily meaning that in a negative way. There's no better example than the world of dance music. He talks about, you know, in the world of dance, there is literally a gatekeeper. There is someone who decides, do you get into the party or not based off of, do you belong at that party? And there are sounds that when you hear them will tell you, did you get into that really exclusive place. That's no joke.

Adagio for Strings by Sam Wachtitin and Lonsky. I got it from the Berkine Techno-2020 playlist. Berkine, of course, is the most exclusive club in Berlin. And in the world of dance music, people call music good or bad as a way of determining what crew are you part of? How do you party? How do you like to have a good time? And I don't know.

I don't have that much of an issue with that conceptually. That's an interesting idea of music being productively exclusive, sort of drawing a circle in the sand and saying, this is for me and this is for you. And those boundaries can be really productive, right? Dance floors are sometimes about creating a safe space for a marginalized group where they can express themselves without fear of censure or harm. So if music means,

needs to exclude to do that in some ways, who are we to say that that's a negative thing? And one of the ways that it is exclusive is just by saying, this is good, this is bad, this is for me, this is not for me. Okay, that's a cool perspective. You know, as always, the answer is found on the dance floor. Let's go to another perspective, though, from another one of our critics who dropped us a video note. What's up, dudes? Congratulations on 500 episodes.

My name is Rob Harvilla. I'm from 60 songs that explain the 90s, colon the 2000s. I am too nice in Midwestern and sophisticated to hate any songs, but I am interested in why other people hate songs. I hear a lot of people hate We Built This City by Jefferson Starship. You see that show up on a bunch of worst songs of all time or worst songs of the 80s list. And I think people hate that song in part because they feel like it's a betrayal, like it's inauthentic. It's a bunch of 60s rockers bragging about how rock and roll and anti-corporate. they are, but it sounds like a cheeseball 80s

synth pop jam, right? It's like 80s stockbroker music. So I think that bad music is music that feels like it's lying to you or thinks you're stupid or is just inauthentic in a galling and unforgivable way. People also hate Cleveland by Taylor Swift, but I'm from Cleveland, so I think it's fine. Wow, it always comes back to Taylor Swift. Thanks, Rob. That was awesome. I'm a big fan of your work. and yeah, more continuity here.

From Rihanna to Laura to Rob, this idea that music that is inauthentic, music that isn't being truthful for music that has bad intentions, honestly. Like, that's really what marks something is bad. I also appreciate that Rob was like, you know, I'm Midwestern. I don't love calling something bad,

but I'm curious about when other. people call something bad. And I feel like you and I have been kind of avoiding the question of what is truly bad for us. And I feel like that's where we need to go next. Okay, I'm in. What if we told you there was one thing you could eat to reduce your risk of death by about a quarter? Interested? And what if we added that this magical substance can dramatically lower your cholesterol, improve your mood, and keep your weight stable? No, it's not protein. It's actually fiber, the least sexy, most overlooked nutrient of all. But what is fiber? How could one nutrient do all those amazing things? And how can you get enough? Is a powder you stir into

some water going to do it for you? All that plus the strange tale of the gorilla poop obsessed father of cornflakes in the latest episode of Gastropod. Find Gastropod and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Everyone's talking about the prospect of a democratic wave in the midterm elections. But here's something that matters just as much, the battle to control state legislatures. That's the most important thing we should be focusing on right now. The GOP has a trifecta in 23 states, which means they control the governor's seat, plus the statehouse and the state senate. For Democrats, it's 16 states.

Meaning that the opportunity to pass the policies that the majority of our state supports, things like increasing minimum wage, legalizing marijuana, codifying. abortion. If Democrats flip just a handful of state legislatures, the majority of Americans will now live in the state under full Democratic control, which could have big policy implications. That's all on the table with the Democratic trifect up. This week on America, actually, we're in Wisconsin, and we talk to Francesca Hong. We have an opportunity through Wisconsin to actually start improving the brand for Democrats. Catch us every Saturday on YouTube or wherever you get your podcast. I'm Phoebe Judge, host of the podcast Criminal.

Usually I'm telling stories about other people. But this fall, I'm headed out on the road with a brand new show. Stories about me and the people I love. It's called Don't Worry. I hope you'll come out and see it. We'll be in cities like Boston, Chicago, Philadelphia, New York, and lots more. Get your tickets at this iscriminal.com slash live. The first reason I know something is bad is when there's some sort of mismatch of craft.

Basically, like, the music is working against its own goal. And this is something I see most frequently in student music submissions. I remember last year a student brought me this song where there was this synth line that was so out of place. And I realized, oh, you're trying to do that, like, Paul Jackson Jr., guitar lick off of thriller, or, like, Daff Punk, and I could hear that this is what this guy's doing, but getting it wrong. So I actually recreated Daph Punk's Get Lucky with the wrong sound in it. Oh no, this sounds horrible. Here we have this synthesizer that sort of takes over Get Lucky,

and it has all of these long echoes on it that muddy up the track. Yeah. Even when you get rid of them, it's so clearly, the wrong instrument. What this song really needs are guitars. Yeah. Ah, oh.

Oh, what a feeling of relief I experience when those guitars come in. Just using the wrong sound can be an indicator that you don't quite understand your craft. And for me, that's bad music. Okay, so that is a

compelling category of bad music to me. What else do you? got, Charles. Something that always irks me is a mismatch or misunderstanding of how to perform a specific genre. Right. Like, in folk music, it's completely okay to have pretty rough vocals as long as the storytelling is good a la, you know, Bob Dylan, Neil Young. Opera, there's no room for bad vocal technique. We got to talk about Florence Foster Jenkins. What? Florence Foster Jenkins was an American socialite who had a deep love of opera and a complete inability to sing that did not stop

her from self-funding her own tours and even recordings. And gradually over time, she developed a cult following. I feel like her performance of Mozart's Queen of the Night aria is exactly what you're talking about, Charles. One of the most notoriously difficult arias in opera history. Here's the big note. Will she hit it? Oh, that's painful. Amazing. Amazing.

Ouch, that hurts. Not just bad. It literally, oh, my ears are struggling. She can't quite get it. And yet it is, it's bad. And yet it's also kind of wonderful in its way. Didn't she sell out Carnegie Hall? Yeah.

And there was a whole movie about her starring Meryl Streep. So she had her moment for sure. Which kind of makes us question. Like, even though it's bad in Bucks the genre convention, did it fail? Like, there's, there's, there's, I guess there's room for camp, even in bad music. We can enjoy it because it's bad. Totally. There's a record, though, that for me, I've really struggled with for about 20 years.

That, again, is sort of playing the genre convention, but is, is trying to buck tradition, transcend genre in a way that completely fails for me. It's a crossover between two. of the biggest blues musicians of all time, B.B. King and Eric Clapton, their 2000 album Writing with the King. On the cover of the album,

are these two bluesmen in a Cadillac, and yet, the record sounds like corporate elevator music to me. Glossy drums, modern bass sounds. This is too clean of a recording. It doesn't have

what I thought would be that like back porch kind of music of these, you know, two great blues musicians. And it's a little antiseptic. It's antiseptic. Yeah. Okay. This record was a hit for many people. And yet, I'm just like,

I don't want a blues record to have the best production. I wanted to sound like two people got together and had an experience together. Hmm. A little more live, if you will. Okay, so we can maybe call something bad when it's not meeting the expectations set by a genre. Or by the artists themselves. Ooh, here we go.

Yeah. How about our good friend Paul McCartney? Ooh, yeah. I hate to bring Sir Paul into this, but I guess we can't avoid it. What are we talking about? We're talking about some synthetic wings nonsense from the 80s? actually it is a Paul McCartney track, not a Wings track that I want to bring to the table. This is 1980s temporary secretary.

I want to give so much credit here. You know, the Beatles were some of the first band to bring the synthesizer into pop music. They were putting the early Moog modular onto Abbey Road. We hear it on here comes the sun. And yet this sort of. craftworky style kind of discordant synthesizer. It was not loved when it came out. This was not what people wanted from Paul.

It was widely panned. Right. It's funny though how history. Yeah. Like arguably a cult classic today. In 2014, NME ranked it the 167th greatest song of all time. Mild. 35 years after its release in 2015, Paul McCartney finally played it live.

Yeah. So bad music can come back around. It can become good. Yeah. Now I'm also thinking of like wonderful Christmas time, which is maybe the most disliked Christmas song, I would say, just anecdotally. Simply Christmas time. Simply hell Christmas time. And yet also is like weirdly beloved at the same time.

So yeah, it's fascinating how the worst something gets sometimes it. comes around to being, you know, the most loved as well. Okay, so I brought you Paul. I brought you B.B. King, Eric Clapton, you know, artists that were important to me who haven't always met my expectations. Do you have any? I mean, I derived no pleasure from saying this, but Lou Reed. Oh. His 2003 track, Who Am I? If reminisces make you frown, one thinks of what one hope to be. And then face it. This is reality. What's your problem?

One thing is the kind of mismatch you were talking about. This is Lou Reed, you know, the Velvet Underground. And yet I'm hearing all these like glossy synths and like reverberant guitars. And it just all sounds too clean and bright, honestly. And then this guy has written some of the most hard hitting lyrics in rock music history. And it pains me to hear him say, I have to think and stop me now

if reminisces make you frown It's like It's it's B league stuff It's it's it's It's JV I mean the next line One thinks of what one hoped to be Isn't that like

When you're in middle school And you're trying to write In a very self-important way Yeah Like who uses one One would like to do this And we didn't hear this but later in the chorus he sings,

Who made the trees? Who made the sky? Who made the storms? Who made heartbreak? I'm like, Lou, you got to do better than that. This sounds like that insane clown posse song about, you know, how do magnets work? It's like...

Water, fire, air, and dirt. Fucking magnets. How do they work? And I don't want to talk to a scientist. Y'all motherfuckers flying and getting me pissed. I don't know. This one, this is a rough one for me, because I do love Lou Reed.

We have to allow our... heroes to make not their best music. It happens. It happens. We can't all be hits. Speaking of not all hits, I always say there is obviously a category that has been briefly mentioned here that just universally is not interesting to me right now. And that is AI music. Yes. Corporate slop. All that joke. We were always going to arrive here. Yeah. Yeah. Well, we can listen to that Taiga album. Oh gosh. The first Alvado to receive a zero point zero from Pitchfork. Maybe not the first actually. I don't know.

Don't quote me on that, but certainly an outlier. You know, frankly, I actually just don't want to listen to it. I'm not interested in AI music right now. Don't even give them the streams. Right now I have a pretty clear line of just no AI music. And I also just love critics who have strong taste, strong lines in the sand, like our vulture colleague Craig Jenkins, one of the great music writers. Pulitzer Prize winning music writer.

I think the question of whether or not music could categorically be like structurally and qualitatively bad is an always yes for a critic that's an easy one we're sure of ourselves we know we have heard some of the worst stuff on the planet um i also think it can be ontologically bad um like the you know AI generated album that has no authorial intent beyond getting next to something that's streaming really well and skimmy off of that under someone else's name. Thanks, Craig. Ontologically bad.

I need a tattoo that says that. Ontologically, meaning like, bad in a proto sense of like, where does this even exist? Where is it coming from? Should this be in the world as an object? These are the questions that AI music raises, absolutely. We started our conversation, Nate, about a disagreement, whether or not you and I have the same feelings about good and bad music. Yeah. I want to put that to the test.

I feel like we've established a few things we know to be bad in our core. And yet, there's music that I like that I think you will not. I've selected a song for you that I hope pushes your buttons. And it's not the song buttons by the Pussy Cat Dolls. My loins are girded. So that is the... DMV by Primus and the bass player and lead singer of Primus Les Claypool says, I've been to Helen back and I call it DMV.

Anybody who's been there knows exactly what I mean. The DMV does not get a good rep. You know, people have to wait in long lines. It's hard to get to. And this is a song that is musically unpleasant about one of the more unpleasant experiences in everyday boring life. How do you feel about DMV? Dr. Sloan. I mean, I love it. I can't like it. I love it. I love the weird angular slap bass. I love the terse drums. I love the distorted dissident guitar. And I love the lyrics. I mean, I do, I do disagree. I'm a fan of the DMV, you know, personally. What? Yeah, I think, I think it gets a bad rap. I've only had good experiences. I'm going to be, I'm not even kidding. Do you know the chant that Primus fans yell at Primus?

remind me. Primus sucks. Oh, yeah. Primus. This is a band that makes music about those edgy everyday experiences of life. The places that are uncomfortable and I think the sounds

that they create are dissonant and uncomfortable. Sometimes music. Even when you say it sucks can feel good. Even the things that are made to make you feel uncomfortable can make you feel something. So, all right. Seems like I have not I've not presented you bad music. Is it my turn?

It's your turn. Okay, here we go. Fancy by Iggy Azalea and let the whole world feel it. And I'm still in the murder business I can hold you down like I'm giving lessons in physics right, right. You should want a bad bitch like this. Drop it alone and pick it up just like this. Fancy by Iggy Azalea and Charlie XX. You know, Iggy Azalea is not an artist that I'm wanted to.

enjoy. And yet you do? Well, I feel like, you know, she's, she really comes about in the era where there is a wider awareness of cultural appropriation and her use of AVE and the way that she, you know, just sever savagely, uh, is happy to embrace black culture while not always sort of naming, uh, her sort of like study appreciation, you know, passing down a tradition. This becomes a big problem for critics in, in the, in the, in the, in the, thousands and this comes out. And yet Charlie XEX is on this song. And I know it's super important in blowing her up, but her hook sucks on this song. I'm so fancy. You already know, I'm in the fast lane from L.A. to Tokyo. I hate the melody. I hate at the very end when she says,

remember my name about to blow, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, I'm like, oh, that is nothing about that feels fancy or fun to me. I don't know. It's got that minimalist beat. It's got the swagger and confidence of someone who, you know, she knew it. She was about to blow up. I mean, it all comes back to this question that all our critics have brought up, you know. Bad music is inauthentic. This song starts with the most inauthentic line in rap history.

First things first, I'm the realist. No, you're not. You are the least real, actually, perhaps. You are the most inauthentic rapper. And I have no issue with anyone who loves this song. It does have a good beat. A knockoff mustard beat, by the way, another ding against this track. Oh, yeah.

I don't like this song. I thought you were going to try to convince me of one. I think this is kind of funny. You presented me with a song you really don't like. And I'm a little bit more ambivalent. Someone who's not ambivalent, though, is one of our great friends from the Sam Sanders show, Mr. Sam Sanders. Hello, Switch on Pop. Congratulations on 500 episodes.

You know, I love y'all so much. so proud and happy for this momentous achievement for y'all. To the question, does bad music exist? It must exist. If there's no bad music, there's no good music. If there's no bad music, would all just be music. We need stuff that's bad to let us know when stuff is good. That said, it's subjective for everybody. I grew up around a bunch of musicians and studied music myself, So I listen for craft. For me, good music means you can sing or play or write better than most people, and I can hear that excellence of craft in your work. A lot of folks want to hear people who sing just like them or perform music in a way that feels similar to them.

I don't know. Call me crazy. If I'm buying your music or streaming it, it should sound better than what me and my friends could do. So that's my barometer. My second barometer is physical. The only real way that I think we can start to assess whether music is good or bad for us is to acknowledge how it makes us feel in our bodies. Does this music make me want to move? Does it make me have an emotional reaction?

Does it make me want to play it again? Does it make me hunch up my shoulders? Does it make my body relax? Good music feels a certain way when it hits you, as does bad. And I think that is different for all. all kinds of people. For some people, death metal gives them the release that they need. For other people, it's like a car alarm or nails on a chalkboard. But the only true measure of whether or not music is good or bad is to gauge the response that your body has to the music. I know it sounds really woo-woo,

but hear me out. Next time you listen to a song, just think about how your body feels hearing it. Also, of course there's bad music. A lot of it. In fact, most music released is bad, but you sift through the bad to find the good, ideally with some help from great music podcasts like Switched on Pop. So if bad music absolutely exists, I think it raises the question, Nate, going forward, how might you and I and our listeners maybe approach listening to assess that goodness or badness? this is just sort of our switchdown pop proposal. Here is what I'm thinking.

The first is I hope what we do every week is demonstrate approaching music from a place of curiosity first, not judgment first. Second, think about what is it doing using whether it's our training as musicians or professors or just as listeners. Just trying to understand what is that song trying to do. Then asking, how am I responding to it? Like, what's it making, what's it doing for me? And is it for me? Where am I in this music? Do I belong in this music?

Who is it made for? Finally, I think we can ask, what am I going to do with it? Am I going to meditate on it? Am I going to be interested in it? Am I going to admire it? Am I going to celebrate it? Am I going to make it something part of my core identity? Or am I going to deject it all out and say, no, this is not for me?

I like that. But I need to return to a question that we posed at the very beginning of this. I feel like we've reached a point. now, and Sam, I think, put this very succinctly, maybe we can agree there is bad music, but there's still that element of subjectivity. Are we going to put to bed the notion that objectively bad music exists? Is that, are we going to just close the book on that once and for all? Is there really a most unwanted song? A song that we universally agree is bad? Can I bring in a heavyweight voice to maybe back that up? Long.

time engineer for Prince, producer, professor of music, Susan Rogers. Whoa, okay. I remember many years ago my young punk Hollywood roommate said to me, all music is valid if somebody likes it. I think that's a beautiful bit of folk wisdom, and I think it's perfectly true. We can analyze music and say that it's objectively more sophisticated or that it's more original, but I can't believe that we can say it's more good. I think good and bad are subjective impressions. And truly, if somebody likes it, well, it's good to them. So I guess that makes it good.

Damn, that was so beautiful and succinct. I actually have to say that Susan's comment reminds me of one of my favorite quotes from A Midsummer Night's Dream. May I, Charlie, may I quote the bard to you? Please. Can I get some like Renaissance? accompaniment for this one, Brandon. This is Theseus, after he sees the terrible play put on by Bottom and his, you know, cronies. Instead of criticizing it, he says this, the kinder we to give them thanks for nothing. Our sport shall be to take what they mistake and what poor duty cannot do, noble respect takes it in might, not merit.

All I heard was poor duty. You and Charlie, you're so juvenile. Okay, let me, okay, let me break this down for you. What he's saying is basically, if someone genuinely tries to make something good and really puts the work and thought into it, our job is to do kind of what Susan says. Why did you try to say this? Who does this resonate with?

We take it in might not merit. So, Charlie, I think we've arrived in a moment where I'm ready to put this new philosophy to the test. Okay. I am going to listen to the worst song ever and see if I can't hear it with New Year's. You know what we're talking about, right? It's human by the killers. Give me that chorus. Give me that chorus, the one that always makes me break out in hives.

I can't do it. Listen, man, he's confronted. the issue of where we belong in the universe and issues of faith and can't do it no can't do it charlie i'm not that enlightened maybe in another 500 episodes we'll get there uh i i don't think this case is closed i think that song that song to me we're right back where we were at the start of this episode i i just it's bad there's something about it i have learned nothing i have a phd in music we've made 500 episodes help me here what what's the solution i love you even if you even if you

you don't love that song. I love the people that like that song, even if I don't like it. Like, it's for someone and it's not for me. And that is fine with me. I hear what it's doing. I'm forgetting the last part of your, you know, bad listening breakdown, which is you ultimately decide, is this for me or is it not? Yeah. Okay, great. Okay. It's not for me. You're okay. Okay. But what I can't do, this is the learning, is say, no one else can like this. Yeah. Okay. That'd be ridiculous. Okay. That's a nice takeaway.

Well, I'll try again in 500 episodes, okay? Switched on Pop is produced by Rana Cruz, edited by Alyssa Soap, engineer by Brian McFarlane, video by Nick Rips, illustrations by Iris got leap. Our theme music is by Jassy Adams and Zach Tenario of Arc Iris. I just saw them live in concert. It was really good. Yeah. And we're a production of the Vox Media Podcast Network and a Vulture, which is part of New York Magazine. You can subscribe at NYMag.com slash pod. and you can catch us on Netflix if you want to see our faces. Thanks to all the amazing critics and musicians who sent us voice notes,

what an embarrassment of riches. In celebrating 500 episodes, if you happen to be watching us right now, you would notice that I have this little Switch on Pop t-shirt on and, you know, get those Switched-on-pop mugs. And so if you want to celebrate with us, you can do so by going to Switchdownpop.com slash merch, and you can get your own. We'll be back with episode 501 next week.

And until then. Thanks for listening. Thanks for listening.