Switched on Pop - Zayn, Taylor Swift & The Grammys

Episode Date: February 9, 2017

"I Don't Wanna Live Forever," the new track from Zayn and Taylor Swift, finds two members of the pop pantheon joining forces with producer Jack Antonoff to craft an inexorable hit song. But this duet���between a former One Direction heartthrob aiming to avert the sophomore slump and a megastar returning to the limelight—is far from triumphant. Instead, "Forever" delves into themes of loss and separation—emotions in turn embedded in the very structure and melody of this most unusual duet. Also, Charlie and Nate discuss what upcoming Grammy nominations have them most excited, From Chance the Rapper to Radiohead, Bowie to Solange, there's much to celebrate from 2016. Musically speaking, that is.  Featuring: • Zayn & Taylor Swift - I Don't Wanna Live Forever • Giovanni Gabrieli - Symphoniae Sacrae II • Solange - Cranes in the Sky • Chance the Rapper - All We Got • David Bowie - Lazarus • Radiohead - Burn the Witch • Tycho - Glider Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Download the eater app at eaterapp.com. It's free for iOS users. Welcome to Switchdown Pop. I'm songwriter Charlie Harding. And I'm musicologist Nate Sloan. So Nate, two of our biggest episodes were about One Direction and Taylor Swift. They got a lot of listeners really excited, and this bizarre thing has happened. Zane from One Direction and Taylor Swift have collaborated on a duet for the soundtrack for the film 50 Shades of Gray. Wow, worlds colliding.

So what I want to do in the top half of the episode is break down this song, see what's happening, see if it really is the big hit that it is made out to be, doing really well in the billboard charts right now. And then second half of the episode, we've got the Grammys coming up, and I thought it would be really fun to dive into some of the unlikely things. that we're really excited to hear that might not be getting a lot of coverage. So we'll do that in the second half. All right. Well, we're not going to live forever, Charlie. Let's get going.

Okay. So there's this new song called I Don't Want to Live Forever. It's off the 50 Shades darker soundtrack. It's a sexy slow burner. A follow-up to the weekends earned it. I actually don't know anything about these books or movies. Do you? Oh, like the 50 Shades franchise, you mean?

Yeah, yeah. No. Me neither. Should we? Should we go have a date night? I don't know. We should just go see La La Land again, is what you're saying. Yes, exactly.

In any case. Yeah. So this is the major soundtrack song of the moment. It's recorded by Zane, who is a former member of the band One Direction and reality TV star from X Factor. He had a very successful first solo album called Mind of Mind last year. And of course, this is Taylor Swift's first real band. big song since her 2014 album 1989 that created a huge splash.

Very exciting. Or is it? I don't know. We should listen to it. Okay, let's drop the needle and see what's happening in I Don't Want to Live Forever. I have a theory about this song, but I want to know what you think. Yes, what I think about this song. Okay. I feel a little bit like I'm giving a book report in middle school, but here goes. I think this song is about wanting to commit yourself to someone else, the moment of realization in which you're like, there's no point in me being alive if I'm not with you. Yeah. That's how I would sum it up, basically.

That's, which is an important milestone in a relationship, right? I'll give you a B minus. Wow. I think of this song might be taking place after a breakup. So the relationship is actually on the outs. Oh, interesting. I know this because I think it's a reference to the relationship in the movie. I did read about Wikipedia, the plot, all this and that.

And I think they broke up at the end of the last movie. So this is the I still yearn for you kind of song. So you're saying I could have gotten an A if I had done a little bit more background research. It's all right. Sometimes you're listening is very tertiary to begin with. Wow. But I would suggest that this song is about separation. feeling lost and suspense.

Separation, feeling lost, suspense. Those are some dramatic ingredients for a good pop song. How do these play out exactly? Well, this is what I'm hearing in the song. I think to begin with, it's a song most obviously about separation. The title is, I don't want to live forever, which is a kind of like teenage hyperbolic way of saying, if I can't be with you, it's not worth living.

Right. It doesn't feel hyperbolic at all. I still, that feels very relevant to any, any stage of life. But I know what you mean. So we know the song is about separation because although it is a duet, the singers are separate. They're singing basically the same narrative of, I want to be with you. And they say, I just want to keep calling your name until you come back home. They're both sort of singing out into the night far across the city.

They can't reach each other. They're feeling the same way. And we know this because not only do they sing, the same sentiment in their verses, but during the verse, they sing alone. Yeah. The first verse, you get Zane singing, and then the second verse. It's true. You have to wait a long time to get Taylor Swift in this song. You do, and when she sings, she's sort of echoing the sentiment of what Zane said in his first verse.

Yeah. When they do finally start to sing together, though, they never really sing on top of each other. No. They are still distant. You can hear it in the bridge of the song. Wow, they never really sing together. That's right. It's always trading off, like, what we would call antiphany.

What does that mean? That means anti-phony, sound against, against sound. It goes back to the old Catholic choirs in the Middle Ages. They would sing an antiphony, one choir, then another choir, singing back and forth to each other. Kind of something similar here for a very different end. Wow, this Zane and Taylor Swifter, they don't even overlap for a second as soon as he stops singing, she picks up. But they never overlap.

That's right. Although there are moments where they are doubling each other, usually one of them so in the background that you can't even tell. I think this is the best moment where it's so clear that they're separate. And not only are they separated by they are not singing at the same time, but the lyrics that Zane is singing are actually a echo of what he was singing earlier. They're the same lines from the pre-chorus. And so it's kind of like they are separated by time. He's rehashing this old material as she's singing new material. And I think it strengthens this sort of metaphor of them being separate in other parts of the world, singing the same thing at the same time, displaced both by geography and in this case time.

Wow. So they're spatially separated, temporally separated. That's kind of a dark reading of this song. Very different from my initial reaction, but I see where you're coming from here. It's a strange duet. I mean, most duets you think are love songs, people singing together in harmony,

making something greater than. But here there is separation. And it has this like anthemic quality to it where everything is reverby and echoey. We get this sort of sound from the song's producer Jack Antonoff. I think you might know who he is. Oh, Jack Antonov. Yeah, formerly of the band Fun, of the band Bleachers.

Yeah, he did a song called Out of the Woods with Taylor Swift, which has more or less the exact same sonic landscape. Right. And is a wash in these ooh-oo-oo sounds just like I don't want to live forever. So it is. You know, if I can be cynical for a moment. Would it be fair to hazard that Zane and Taylor Swift may not have even been in the same room recording? this song. Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding.

I do believe that they were actually recorded it in separate spaces. Interesting. This came from a tweet by Jack Antonoff talking about the song, and he recorded Taylor at my house, Zane sent parts in from L.A. Like many modern pop songs, you can be anywhere, you can be on a tour bus, you can be in different cities and different studios, and you can just send files back and forth over Dropbox. Wow, you really have done your research, citing tweets from the song's producer. All right, well played Harding. Okay, so we have established that the song is about separation, lyrically, musically, where they come in, how they record it.

This is a relationship that is separated. Thing of the second, it's a song about feeling lost. I think that this feeling of lostness can be heard in the opening verse in pre-chorus, where we start with a sense of clarity, both musically and lyrically, and then go to a place of more uncertainty. So check this out. Please. The song opens up, Zane says, I've been sitting eyes wide open. And as he's singing this,

he's singing basically a really simple, single note melody in his lower registry of his voice. For me, this means that he is steady, certain, his eyes are open. And as the melody moves along, we go into the pre-chorus and he says, baby, I feel crazy. And his voice shoots up into his head voice, this place of feeling emotional and lost.

This lostness is most wonderfully captured at the end of the pre-chorus. He says, What is happening to me? Taylor Swift later says the exact same thing. Both of them, at this moment, harmonize over each other

all of this reverb comes in and it's like what is happening to me they're freaking out so we get these two poles uh in the song the kind of steady feet on the ground eyes wide open and the and the the high register super reverby

up in the clouds lost i don't know i'm crazy okay yeah it's literally reflecting what's happening to me i'm feeling crazy how can i be feeling this way about somebody who I've broken up with, why do I still feel so strongly about them? What is happening to me?

I'm going to lose it and then it launches into the chorus. That's good. I see that idea kind of reflected in one of the most interesting parts of this song to me, which is the drums at the start of this song. At that same moment when Zane is singing at the outset, we have such an interesting drum pattern at once very regular and predictable

and at the same time kind of sloth. and offbeat and it's kind of like a shl-l-fl-flop-flop-poh-poh-p kind of feel. You know what I mean? It's like it's like kind of accurate and messy at the same time, perhaps representing the two poles of these characters' interiority. Like that feeling of when you're so emotional that everything's falling apart and you can't hold it all together. That's what's going on here.

I hear you. And in order to ground themselves again, at the end of every chorus, they say, come back home. And when they do that, all of that, bigness falls back down into the small centered verse. Cool, cool, yeah. Almost like a mantra you say to yourself to keep yourself steady. Yeah, right.

Cool. Ten deep breaths, come back home. Okay, so we have a song about separation, feeling lost, and the third thing that I said is that I think this song is about suspense. You're creating a lot of suspense by not telling me how the song is about suspense. So, well, the central tension, of course, it's a silly song about will they get together. That's what we're trying to find out, right? They're singing distant from each other.

Are their voices going to join? Will the relationship continue or will we exist in the own? Yeah, that is suspenseful. I'm dying to know. This suspense isn't just narrative. It is musical. And this is why I love the song. It takes its message and it infuses it into the music and they support each other.

We have a melody that also embraces the idea. of suspense. I think I know what you're going with this. What do you think is going on? I think this melody is an example of musical suspension, which in turn becomes dramatic suspension. Da-da-da. Exactly.

So I was saying earlier that the grounded moment in the beginning of the verse, where it's in the lower register, it's a single-note melody, more or less. As why don't put me, honey's far, was up. It's actually maybe not as grounded as we think it is because the note that they're singing does not belong to the chords.

Ah, okay. So in his first chord, F, he's playing a D over an F. That is actually a suspension. Right, okay. So what we have here is a proper chord in the harmony, an F major chord, and an improper note in the melody, a note that does not belong.

But then when we look closely at that note, we see that it doesn't belong in a very specific way. It doesn't belong in the way that it's literally been suspended by the composer above the right note, just waiting to drop down into its proper place. Well, yeah, so you would expect that it's going to resolve down. Yeah. And instead of resolving down to C, which would have been in the F chord, Instead, what happens is the chord moves to C, but the melody stays on D, creating another suspension. Whoa.

And so we have these literal suspenseful moments in the melody, which then eventually walk down and hit that A. That place where we finally get the context of a, we're in this minor place. Yeah. So there is ambiguity. Whoa, that's cool. You know what that's called, Charlie? What do you call that? A chain of suspensions.

Really? Yeah. Well, given the topic of 50 Shades of Gray, maybe a chain of suspension is an appropriate musical metaphor. Oh, I like it. I like it a lot. Oh, wow. I like it a lot.

Okay, so we have a song about separation where two people are feeling lost in great suspension. And so what happens? They come together finally when the melody reaches its unsuspended proper place. Unfortunately, no. When we listen to the end of the song, the end of the song is actually a repeat of the opening of the song, both singers singing separately, again, the same message, but separately. Man, that's a bummer. I don't like, this song isn't, I don't like it anymore. I thought it, I don't, I know, I thought that was a happy song, but it's not.

You want every Taylor-R-Sysw song to be Love Story? Pretty much, yeah. A reimagining of the Romeo and Joliet story where everything works out in the end. Yeah, that's what I expect from her at this point. Well, that's Zane and Taylor Swift's. I don't want to live forever. I'm sorry to disappoint you. But maybe I can excite you with the second half of the show.

We're going to come back and we're going to talk about some of the hottest things that we're going to hear at the Grammys this weekend. No, no. I'm not disappointed at all. You brought great depth to a very silly song. So you have my full respect, Charles. Thank you. All right.

I'll catch you on the second half. See you there. Convierre your passion in a business with Shopify and bathe records of ventas with the form of pay with a better conversion of the world. Has heard it? The best conversion of the world. The incredible system of pay for Shopify facilitates in your site web, in the radio social and in whatever

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orgs. Immigration may be Donald Trump's signature issue. President Trump is now targeting

predominantly Democratic cities for ice raids and deportations. Dozens of protesters clashing with immigration

and customs enforcement agents in Minneapolis Tuesday. We will begin the process of returning

millions and millions of criminal aliens back to the places from which they came. But what

we want to do in this space. It's talk about America and politics beyond the current president. So what do most Americans think about deportation and border security, period? I think that Americans are definitely against the kind of violent displays that we've seen in the street from ICE. When it comes to the question of deportation, the answer is more complicated. My sense is that people want border at the border.

They don't like the idea of having no idea who's coming into the United States at any given time. The view on immigration from the bottom up instead of the top down. That's this week on America Actually. Every Saturday in your audio and video feeds. Welcome back to Switched on Pop. Coming up in just a few days, we have the Grammys. They will be celebrating all of the biggest songs of last year. And I think that, Nate, we did a very comprehensive job at covering some of the biggest things from 2016 already.

Yes, yes. I'd like to think so. We've talked about Adele. Beyonce, Justin Bieber, Drake, talked about chain smokers, 21 pilots, many of the people that are expected to... Snap, crackle, pop.

Many of these folks are expected to win a lot of the biggest awards. But I thought it would be fun to go into some of the artists that may not be getting quite as much attention, but are Grammy nominees that we are really excited about. So I've asked you to prepare a few nominees that you would like to see win,

and I also have a few. And it will give us a chance to talk about some music that might otherwise not make it on the show, which everybody should be listening to right now. Yes, let's do it. So I was hoping you could kick it off. You've got a couple things that you've chosen. Yes, I am a gog over this year's nominee for best R&B performance.

This is Solange Knowles Cranes in the Sky from her album A Seat at the Table. Charlie, you're familiar with this one, I think. This has been on repeat a lot in my life. And this album, A Seat at the Table, has been much talked about in part because it's the same year that her sister Vianca came out with her own seminal record. Yeah. But let's just focus on this song. I think it's right to be nominated for Best R&B performance.

She really digs a lot out of this piece. And kind of from the beginning, it feels sort of in time and out of time at once. Hmm. There's a lot of repetitious. in the music and a lot of repetition in the lyrics. And you, at least I, begin to kind of lose a sense of beginning, ending, and middle. These gorgeous tones just come in various instruments of like all different

provenances from pianos to gongs. And you don't really have a clear sense of like verse, chorus, bridge. Yeah. It kind of just moves in this more organic. way from the beginning to end and that's really hard to pull off as a performer to keep a listener engaged through that and she does it masterfully oh man cranes in the sky that's yeah that's that's that's I'm very excited I try to drink it away I tried to put one in the air I tried to dance it away I tried to change it with my hair So I think you're totally spot on and how you see this song as not fitting in with sort of normal song structures.

I love all the different sounds in it, these bizarre strings. I really love it. And there's an extraordinary story about the making of this song on one of the more recent episodes of Song Exploder. Another really great podcast where Rishi interviews Solange. And she tells a story of basically, I think. think it's something along the lines of this track. They lost the master stems to, and they just had to keep repeating it. And she had to create a unique sustained performance with her vocal, even though there was just a short sample that she was working from. You're kidding.

Anyways, really worth listening to. Yeah, it's awesome. That's bonkers. All right, I have to go listen to that. I love song Exploder. All right, what you got, Charlie? What do you got? What's exciting you this Grammys? I am incredibly excited about four best new artist, best rap, album and seven total nominations, Chance the Rapper and his mixtape coloring book. Yes. This is the album that I've listened to the most in the last year. Yeah. It's hard for me to even talk about because it contains so many multitudes.

But one of the things that I love about it so much is the production, that the way that they make the music is like nothing I've ever heard before in my life. A lot of the production is done by this group called the Social Experiment and also includes collaborations with the Chicago Children's Choir. And basically you have these extraordinary gospel songs. You can hear an example like on their song, How Great. And then they'll take this gospel sound and twist it and resample it and rework it, where the chorus, the thing that they've recorded, which was probably already a complete song,

then it's like remixed into a whole other song. And so this whole thing is just awash in choruses, horns, voices, strings. My absolute favorite moment is from music is all we've got the opening track off of the album. I get my word from the sermon. I do not talk to the serpent. That's a holistic discernment. Wow. Yeah.

So many these goofies can hurt me. I just might make me some early. I was baptized like we early. I might get sight on the swirling. Which I can tell you it was ready. Kind of the sacred and the profane and equal measure on this album. It is gorgeous, man. It's one of the things that I am dancing to while I'm driving,

and that's not very safe to do while you're driving on the highways in L.A. I can't argue with you, Chuck. I agree. It's a beautifully beguiling record. All right. Hit me up. What else you got? All right.

Charlie, let's head to Best Alternative Album, whatever that means. Regardless, for me... It doesn't fit into established genre category. Winner is David Bowie Black Star In addition to being just a gorgeous, kind of rather unsettling, I would say, at the same time record, that in some ways felt tailor-made for weirdo jazz lovers like me because it uses all these downtown New York jazz artists

that no one's ever heard of, but I've seen playing at clubs like New Blue in the Stone for the last 15 years and creates these very jittery improvised sonic textures. At the same time, though, it becomes this incredible kind of last will in testament

of one of the great artists of the last half century, including one of the most kind of extraordinary life and art coalesce moments in which on the track last David Bowie literally sings about kind of looking down from heaven and releasing this album mere days before his death. So I think this is just too extraordinary not to be awarded with something.

And sure, why not best alternative album? Look up here. I'm in heaven. I've got scars that can't be seen. I've got drama. Can't be stolen. So I love those sounds. And there's actually another nominee in this category for Best Alternative Music Album.

But I'm actually hoping we'll win for another category is Best Rock Song for Radioheads Burn the Witch. Have you heard this one? I have heard this one, yeah. Okay. So if the Zane and Taylor Swift song was about suspense, this song is about panic. And just how Zane and Taylor Swift summoned the sense of suspense in their song, you can hear. the panic in this song. So the song is Burn the Witch. It's a metaphor. It's a story. It has political allusions. It's a very simple lyric. But the main chorus basically says,

burn the witch, burn the witch. And underneath it is this insane orchestra of strings that feel like they're losing control on having a panic attack. They're squeaking. They're popping. They're squealing. And they're just like humming along. And whenever I hear this song, it basically induces a panic attack. And I think it's really successful that it's able to do that. I've never heard anything like it. Yeah, you nailed that one, man. It's be very careful when you listen to Burn the Witch.

They literally say it's a low-flying panic attack. Okay, you've accused me of being greedy while I'm going to continue to be greedy because there's one more piece of music that I was so engrossed in this year. and I was really surprised to see on the Grammy nominees. All right. For Best Dance and Electronic Album is Tyco's Epic. Have you heard this one? No, this one is actually new to me.

So I did hear it debuted at a all-night sunrise dance party set. And when I first heard it, I was just totally in awe. So it's, again, kind of like just a mix of stuff. so many things that I am familiar with, but have never heard put together in the same context. So you're going to hear old analog synthesizers, the drive of punk rock, and at the same time, it feels like you're listening to gentle lounge music that you want to take a nap to. That is a heady brew. All right, I'm going to have to go check out that whole album now.

The song is Glider. It's the opening track on the album. and it feels like you're in two tempos at once. You have slow melodies. You have fast drum and bass. And it just pulls me in all sorts of great directions. That's what I want to see out of the Grammys. Well said, man.

All right. I've got some listening to do myself now. So let's go reconvene in two weeks. All right. On that note, Switched on Pop is produced by me, Charlie Harding. And edited by me, Nate Sloan and the great Bill Lance. Our design is done by Luke Harris.

Switched-on-pop is part of the Panoplay Network. You can find more episodes at our website, switchdonpop.com. You can also speak to us. We'd love talking to you about your ideas for the show on Twitter at Switched-on-Pop or on Facebook. Facebook.com slash Switched-on-Pop. In two weeks, we're going to come back

with a special episode about another award show. The Oscars are coming up, and we're going to be talking about some of our favorite film music from last year. We would love to hear about some of yours. Do send us some tweets at Twitch.com. about what you're listening to. Yeah.

What he said. All right. Until then. Until then. Thanks for listening.