Listen closer to pop music — hear how it moves us. Hosted by musicologist Nate Sloan & songwriter Charlie Harding. From Vulture and the Vox Media Podcast Network.
526 episodes transcribedThe conversation around the new music this summer has been a dour one. Some of the biggest songs in the country right now are downtempo stomp-clap ant...
Why do bad lyrics happen to good people? From "suckin' on a chili dog" to "making love to his tonic and gin," even the biggest hits from our favorite...
Every music critic seems to agree: 2025 has no true song of summer. Last August, Teddy Swims’s “Lose Control” dominated the charts. This year…Teddy Sw...
Justin Bieber is back with his seventh studio album: the aptly-titled SWAG. The lo-fi, reverb-laden record is a remarkably candid look inside the worl...
What if the entire sound of modern podcasting can be traced back to a single Grateful Dead song uploaded in 2001? We uncover the musical lineage that...
The robots have arrived, and they're making protest songs about boots on the ground. When an AI band called The Velvet Sundown fooled over a million S...
In which we explore the unlikely rise, and surprising backlash against, one Benson Boone. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/a...
Why does the economy look great on paper but feel terrible in your wallet? There might be a more revealing economic indicator hiding in your Spotify q...
As we've been examining over the course of Country Week, country music has found a larger audience, in part by widening its sonic palette. For the fi...
More often than not, country music is seen as an "American" genre – meaning that the music is seen as strictly from the United States. In some ways, t...
There's often an unspoken (and deeply misogynistic) rule on country music radio: never play two female artists back to back. In this episode of Switch...
One of the biggest country hits of the year has been "All The Way," by Texas rapper BigXthaPlug and country rocker Bailey Zimmerman, which peaked at #...
Country music stands at a crossroads between tradition and evolution, and no artist embodies this tension better than Morgan Wallen. His song "I'm the...
Looking for relationship advice? Skip the self-help books and turn to Sabrina Carpenter's latest single "Manchild" instead. This deep dive into the ar...
What if the Chairman of the Board's biggest contribution to music wasn't his voice, but the blueprint he created for modern pop stardom? Frank Sinatra...
The UK outfit Sleep Token has done what we once thought impossible: Found commercial success playing heavy metal music in 2025 AD. Their fourth studi...
Five years ago, Charli XCX released the track "party 4 u," a melancholic ode to throwing a function for that one specific person. Now, in 2025, the so...
The 808 is arguably the most iconic drum machine ever made. Even if you’ve never heard of it, you’ve definitely heard it. It’s in dozens of hit songs...
What happens when worship anthems climb the charts alongside soul revivals and nostalgia-driven comebacks? The May 2025 Billboard charts reveal a fasc...
We rarely cover movies here at Switched On Pop. But after seeing Ryan Coogler's new vampire musical Sinners, we knew we had to make an exception. Th...
