The Watch - Our Updated TV Programming Blocks, Plus: An Interview With Britt Daniel of Spoon | The Watch

Episode Date: June 21, 2019

Streaming sites like Netflix and HBO have begun to cherry-pick what ratings they release (1:16). We build our perfect night of TV, which includes shows like ‘Bless This Mess,’ ‘Los Espookys,’ and ‘Gourmet Makes’ videos (13:33). Plus, an interview with Spoon’s Britt Daniel about the band’s new greatest hits album (38:17). Host: Chris Ryan Guests: Alison Herman and Britt Daniel Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Today's episode of The Watch is brought to you by Succession on HBO. Critics hail the first season of Succession as the best show on television, irresistible entertainment, and a must-watch show for your Emmy consideration in Outstanding Drama Series and all other categories. Visit HBO.com slash FYC for more on Succession. Today's episode of The Watch is brought to you by Just Crack an Egg. Do you want to talk about great production value? How about a legit, hot, fluffy breakfast scramble that's packed with all your favorite ingredients?

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I need supports to have to clear the room. Stand up and walk now. Hello, and welcome to The Watch. My name is Chris Ryan. I am an editor at The Ringer.com and joining me in the studio. It's the new Nielsen Queen. Alison Herman, what's up? Thank you.

I thought my introduction was going to be. She just spent 40 minutes making twigs from scratch, but I appreciate it. That is a teaser for something we're going to be talking about. later later. So stock show today. Allison and I are going to talk about the murky world of ratings that we have now because Allison wrote a piece for the ringer about Euphoria's quote unquote ratings or at least the forward facing stance that HBO is taking on what their ratings are for euphoria. We talked about Euphoria a little bit on Monday with my computers. And then Allison and I are also going to do, it's been a while. So we thought we would do our what's your prime time

schedule for all the shows that are been released. Allison and I are choosing for March 1st to right now. So anything that's been released, network, prestige cable, streaming, YouTube, whatever, we're going to put together our perfect night from 8 p.m. to, what do we say, 12? However many hours, you can stand it. Right. So basically to create the old school version of you come home and you start watching TV at 8 and then you finish with some late night at like 113012, Alice and I are putting together

a TV schedule for you to follow that you could check out with an eye towards like making it was as much variety as possible. And then after Allison, I had a really fun interview with Britt Daniel from one of my favorite band, Spoon. Spoon has a greatest hits album out, I think yesterday. It's out this week on streaming services and in record stores. So you can't go wrong with the greatest hits of Spoon. They're very good songs.

So that's later in the pod. But Allison, let's first talk a little bit about these Euphoria ratings. What was the prompt for you to write this piece? Because Euphoria came out. You wrote about like the actual content of the show. But then did you see something? that made you say, like, I want to dig into a little bit about the ratings for the show. Yeah, they put, they basically, they put out a statement in which they announced both the

hard Nielsen ratings and, like, some additional context. And also just going in, I was very interested in how Euphoria was going to perform because, as I wrote about in my initial review, it's this really interesting gamble where HBO, which has basically defined itself by being for grownups, mature, et cetera, is now branching out into the world of the teen drama. And even when I was watching Euphoria, I was talking. about this was Sean Fennacy. My main question was just kind of like, who's this for? Sure. Like actual teens don't really watch TV as we understand it. They watch Netflix and YouTube. Nor do I think they're really that interested in like this sensationalistic portrait of what teen

life is. Do you think that they would rather see something like Riverdale or would they just rather watch like something that doesn't even have to do with like an hour long drive? I think they would rather watch Riverdale and or they would rather watch an influencer. So it's about 50-50 like access. I just don't think they're trained to watch. premium cable, but also I do think euphoria's kind of pretensions to documenting the realities of teen life is more like, we're going to translate this for an older audience, but also I think older audiences are less like into the idea of being like titillated by lots of like children having sex on screen. So I don't know. Just going in, I was like, I wonder if this is going to

perform for them is like very performative pearl clutching in the media actually going to translate into ratings. Or was the pearl clutching in the media the media the exactly that that was targeted for. Exactly. You also wrote really interestingly when you first reviewed Euphoria where you were talking about this being one of the

first shows that are very much part of the new AT&T HBO merger and having it be like, we need more content from you guys. We need more hours of the day. It sort of straddles the line like chronology-wise. Like the pilot of Euphoria had already been produced by the time Richard

Stakey gave the now infamous like Jimmy More Content Town Hall speech. But it was ordered a series immediately after and it definitely fits within that project of like we need to be more broad ranging and appeal and more audiences segues directly into let's make a show for teens. And so going in, I was already primed to pay attention to like what kind of numbers this would do. And they released both the standard Nielsen ratings, which were basically it had a little more than half million and it's like initial initial broadcast. And then in the 24 hour period afterward, it went up to about a million.

I'm sure they will provide additional figures for, you know, Life Plus 3 and Life Plus 7. but they also, to kind of juice that up and bolster their argument that this was catching on, said this was like our best streaming premiere since Westworld, which who knows what that means. Right. Yeah. Like, who knows how well Westworld did, obviously, since Westworld does not cover a tremendously large amount of time. We don't know the exact breakdown of that. We don't know what percentage of the overall viewing that made up. And so it mostly caught my eye in the sense of it's a very small part of this.

overall press release, but it sounds exactly like what Netflix has been doing, where they do these things where they say, like, this many accounts watch this new Adam Sandler movie, but like they don't say what watching means. Or like, the new Ava DuVernay series is the most watched TV series every day since it's been on Netflix. We don't know by how much compared to what, etc. Like, we don't know what kind of metric or statistic they're using to arrive at that statement. Exactly.

And so it's this totally like internal, self-generated, unverifiable statistics. that is designed to create headlines and prompt conversations like the one we are having. But it struck me as kind of the beginning of other outlets taking notice of Netflix's strategy being relatively successful and understanding that they can use it to their own ends. And then also we're just set to only have more and more streaming services. So I'm sure Apple will probably be saying stuff like this in the future. I'm sure Warner Media, HBO's parent company, when they have their own independent thing that has a series. own, you know, the Alden, Aaron Reich, Brave New World thing. Like, I'm sure we're going to be getting comparable statements that are similarly not really

rooted in a common metric like the Nielsen system. Or just even number of people who have watched this show within a certain time period. It's all malleable depending on how they want to compare it to either their own accomplishments or the perceived accomplishments of other streaming companies, right? Yeah. I mean, there's this really interesting thing going on in sports writing right now where it's not that you can manipulate numbers to make a point, although you can. But a lot of times you'll see someone say, well, okay, so James Hardin had this many points

tonight. And that is only the third time in history that anyone on a Wednesday has ever scored 34 points with less than 10 foul shots or something like that, which ultimately just suggests that there is something sort of historically important about what he's doing at any given moment. And it is historically important, but at the same time, it feels like you could apply certain filters to almost everything and be like, oh, that also had a historical, like, that also

is historically relevant in some way that anything that anyone is doing. You're also like inventing the metric, basically for the sake of being like this person did the best at it. The reason why I really think that this is an interesting conversation is because of how much of a deviation it is from what HBO's traditional sort of stances on the popularity of their shows.

Because for a long time, and I don't think that this is necessarily changing anytime soon, but for a long time, they were the home of artists. They were like their big thing was the relationships they had with creators and show runners and to some extent stars. And that's why you saw them with like their long term kind of relationship with like somebody like David Simon who makes the wire, which is a huge cultural touchstone, but then also is allowed to go make Tramay or show me a hero, which doesn't necessarily find the same audience or have the same kind of resonance within popular culture.

They kind of just stuck with these guys. And the reason that they did it is because they were based on a subscription model, and their subscription model was also based on the people who are subscribing to HBO are the kind of people that you want to reach in some way. Even if you're not advertising to them, it had like a lot of cachet to it, right? But now if they're like, okay, we have to get into the same ring as Netflix and Amazon or in Hulu or whoever else, I wonder whether or not they're going to start having to play the game and play the game of we can get this many eyeballs on our content. Now, I don't really know what the different. for them ultimately, since it's all a subscription model anyway.

But it is kind of a fascinating conversation that they're starting. Yeah, and it's also an interesting full circle moment in that because they are not advertisers supported, I believe I'm doing this on the top of my head, so this may not be fully accurate. But my memory of how HBO's historical relationship to ratings has gone was that initially they didn't really disclose them because they didn't need to. They weren't trying to sell ads and being like, this is exactly like the age group and number of people who will be looking at the show at any given time.

Right. And they basically started releasing them to, like, brag about the Sopranos. And then they were a little bit locked in place, and now they've just been releasing ratings with the caveat that, you know, it doesn't have quite the same relationship to a show's revenue or profitability or perceived value to our network as it does on broadcast. But they still release ratings. Although now they do the thing where, like, a couple weeks after the fact for something like Game of Thrones or Big Little Lies, they'll be like, okay, the overnight ratings

for Big Little Lies, say $2 million. But, like, actually, when you tally in everything, it's like eight or nine million watch every episode. To say nothing of the fact that those shows still get pirated quite a bit, especially the upper echelon of like the HBO shows still get pirated quite a bit. I mean, there were people out there who were saying, ultimately like 40 or 50 or 60 million people were watching Game of Thrones episodes by the end there when you accumulate all the like streams that were probably going on.

Oh, for sure. But it's just, it's funny to watch them step back into the idea of being a little more murky and subjective with like how its shows are doing. And with euphoria, it's like very much in HBO's interest to be. like this big experiment we're doing is working out. And not only that, it's trending on Twitter, it's got like a certain conversation going about it, and that's what's important to them.

Yes. I wonder whether or not, because to me, the only thing it really matters, ultimately is cancellation or renewal, you know, for any of these shows, because at this point,

they're not based on hitting a metric so that they can sell a certain level of advertising against it. So it's really about what do you guys want in your content stable? What do you guys want to basically pre-presentable? What do you guys want to basically be presenting to the world? But I do wonder whether or not, and I talked about this with David Sims a couple weeks ago,

this idea of moving out of the Wild West era. This is his idea about the Wild West era of streaming it into a more siloed, like there's a bunch of stuff over here in Warner and there's a bunch of stuff over here in Disney, and there's a bunch of stuff over here on Hulu, and you have to kind of like walk through all of it to get to it. I wonder whether or not we'll come up with some other kind of metric. Because if you're looking at something as like the way Netflix kind of puts out their number, and they're like, well, 30 million people

watch this Aniston Sandler movie. Did they watch it? Did they start it? Was it on their homepage and started kind of automatically? Yeah, and I think a big distinction between Netflix and Nielsen, which now purports to measure Netflix, is Nielsen, first of all, does not measure mobile viewing, which Netflix would argue was a huge proportion of its viewing.

But also, the Nielsen number of how many people watch something is a very specific metric. It is you average out the total viewers per view. minute of the whole thing. So the whole idea is like the Nielsen number accounts for the kind of people who will start it and wander away and we'll kind of average that out. And the Netflix number is presumably geared to just maximize. So like if you fell asleep on the couch and it auto played after your 13th episode of

the office. Yes. I was just going to say in the interest of full transparency currently, we have a little bit of a mockingbird situation at my house where there's like some really. really love-struck bird is living in a tree right outside of our bedroom and cries like all night and morning for, you know, like, basically like calling out to its like meat. This is literally a curb your enthusiasm. This is happening.

So to combat that, we have the AC on usually anyway, but my wife also will just like fall asleep to happy endings episodes on Hulu. But I think happy ending, like she may have sent them platinum by this point. Like, there's certain episodes I think she's had on like 11 times a night. So if Hulu is seeing some huge spike in happy endings views coming out of Los Angeles. It's all you. It's all because of the mockingbird. Why don't we get into our primetime grids?

So people can read Allison's Euphoria ratings piece on The Ringer. We wanted to do our primetime grids in case you don't remember. We did this a little while ago. I had a bunch of different people on including Allison. You basically break the night up into your own programming schedule. So you're imagining that you are the network and you're picking stuff to go from 8 p.m. until about 12 a.m. Now, traditionally, like, I like to try and program it a little bit closer, like, Thursday nights on NBC from the 80s and 90s, because that's what I kind of grew up understanding as a TV night.

So you have, like, comedies from 8 to 9, maybe slightly more adult stuff at 9. I'd usually have a prestige drama at 10 and then late night at 11. But we have a lot of fun with this. I brought my own organizing principle to the mix. Do you want to share your... Absolutely. I decided to funnel mine in order of, like, best... collective viewing experience to, if I saw this with one other human being in the room,

I would spontaneously combust. Like, I need to be just, like, alone. So just like, the idea is like you started a big social gathering, and then you're slowly shedding companions. So you're having a party. And then at the end, it's just you and Nicholas Winning Refant at the end of the night. Okay, first of all, spoiler. Second of all, that is not my final selection, but would fit very well into my final slot.

8 p.m. What's on Allison TV? So my anchor block last time started with RuPaul's Drag Race, and I think there is a common theme in my selections, which is sports for people who don't watch sports. And so I went with Big Little Lies because, you know, I spent the last weekend, I was up in San Francisco. Hey, I was some friends. I went to a Big Little Lies viewing party on Sunday. Did you? Yes, which for me is like a total luxury.

I very rarely get the privilege of actually getting to consume TV communally. Okay. But it was basically just a crowd of like women and gay men. yelling at the screen when like Meryl Street put a necklace on her chin or whatever. And it was just, you know, it was, it gave me, I'm sure, some of the joy that like our colleagues who are currently watching the Women's World Cup in the office are experiencing right now. And, you know, it really is, I have my critical take on Big Little Lies, which is like, do I think this season is really justified from a storytelling perspective so far? Not really. And then I have my like,

I am but a human being, who am I to question? Laura Dern, like, imploding on my screen. Driving a Tesla. Seven times a week. Yes. Screaming, will somebody give a woman a moment? Yeah. And, you know, doing the finger out of her Tesla.

And that side of Big Little Lies, I think, is best appreciated in a group. So, 8 to 9, you and the crew, you and the homies, watching Big Little Lies, screaming at the TV as Merrill does little gestures. Yes. We're eating some artisital guacamole, gathering around the hearth. What's the – maybe give us the recipe for that. I mean, I was in San Francisco and we had takeout from Nopolito, which is like the bougiest takeout I've ever had in my life. It was truly amazing.

My 8 to 9 is pretty basic. It's Bless This Mess, which was an ABC show, yeah. It is on Hulu now, so you can watch all six episodes. It's Dax Shepherd and Lake Bell. I think I've talked about it before. Elizabeth Merriweather did this show. She did New Girl, and she did it in conjunction with Lake Bell. And the season has been progressing nicely.

Yes. Yeah, it's really enjoyable. So it was just like a mid-season replacement season, so the first season is just six episodes. You can watch the pilot if you want. I think it gets better in the second, third, and fourth episode. There's some really good stuff with chickens in this season. David Kekner is very funny on it.

It's a very enjoyable sitcom if you still have, if you still have a soft spot for sitcoms. My second one at 830 is what we do in the shadows. I think you and I have talked about how much we love this show. Just excellent. That's on FX that premiered a few months ago. but is one of the most delightful things I've seen in a very long time and has one of the best episodes of the year, I think.

The celebrity vampire episode is pretty amazing. Yeah, also great pairing of classic that works sitcom, basic cable, high-brow version of a really well-done sitcom. So Allison goes Big Little Lies, I go bless this mess, what we do in the shadows at 9 o'clock, what's on? I cheated a little bit, and so I came up with a few options for what I feel like is the same genre of show, which is not quite as raucous and loud as Big Little Lies.

but similarly, like, a feel-good summer drama that, you know, is substantive but not necessarily the most challenging thing in the world. I did Clause, Jane the Virgin, both those I think I've talked about on the show before, and Pose, which just returned for its second season, which I think is somewhat noteworthy in that, like, the classic Ryan Murphy, you know, move is to just start really, really, really big and then fall off a cliff in the second season season, but just keep getting renewed because you get ratings. Sure. American Horror Story. And Pose is actually, like, very, very consistent in season two. Is that ambulance show still on? 911?

Yeah. Presumably. Do they still, are they running out of horrific ways for people to need to call 911? We'll have to ask Miles Surrey. I'm sure. I'm sure he can give you, like, the precise update as to what Angela Bass was up to. But Pose is set in, like, the ballroom vulgar. In the ballroom culture.

And so season two starts in the early 90s and the twin kind of events are the AIDS crisis is now in full swing. and it talks about that in really admirable with really admirable candor, I think. And then also Madonna's Vogue, the song is on the radio. And so it's, you know, it's dealing with the themes of like this community is suffering at the same time that it's being used for cultural cachet. And mainstream is about to hit this underground subculture. Yes.

But it's, you know, it's got the same feel-good themes of family. It's like, at one extreme, it can be really saccharine and didactic. At the other extreme, it can be just, like, really feel good. And it's got a great cast. I think all of these shows are really remarkable for their consistency. Like, Jane is wrapping up next month, and it is truly mind-boggling that it has managed to go at, like, full telenovela plotting for, like, going on 100 episodes. And Claus is in its third season, and Carucci is currently walking around in a bedazzled

iPads because she has an eye inherited from a Reiki healer. Just, listen. That's all I can give you for a pitch. So that's from 9 to 10. Yes, 9 to 10 is like your feel-good summer drama. Okay. For 9 to 10, it's not exactly feel good, but I have Fleabag, which obviously we've talked about extensively on this show. And every time we do talk about it, you're like, I was really happy that you guys talked again about Fleabag.

Fleabag is a show of the year pretty much without much competition yet. And I don't expect there to be any competition. If there's something as good as Fleabag, I will be like... If there's something as good as Fleabag, this will have been like a truly exceptional TV here. Yeah. And then, so Fleabag bag is usually lasts about 22 minutes. And I would not call this other thing a pallet cleanser, but it's an interesting thing to pair with it. And it's called State of the Union.

And it stars Rosamund Pike and Chris O'Dowd. It's on Sundance. And it's from the mind of Nick Hornby. And basically it's like these small mini portraits of a couple played by Chris O'Dowd and Rosman Pike. And the episodes are about 10 minutes long. So they can be very funny. They can be very heartbreaking. They're basically about this couple in flux.

And I think it's like, it's very much a, it's like a couple of these things that I have on my list. are like you're playing peak TV bingo where it's like two actors, weird format, streaming channel, you didn't know existed. But this is actually like quite interesting. And it's like got the same kind of like very close to the bone perceptive look at human relationships that Fleabag does. So saving union is an interesting thing to pair with that. And then my 930 would be Barry in case you haven't caught up on it yet.

That would be, it's a good, it's never a bad time to catch up in the second season of Barry. Yeah. I mean, I think if you're going tech, the shows that have been running from March until now, Fleabag and Barry are probably the top two. So speaking of Peak TV bingo and also, interestingly, I think pairs of euphoria, my follow-up would be a new show called Losa Spookies,

which is fantastic. It is a Spanish-language comedy on not like HBO Latin America, HBO proper, that the idea was developed by Fred Armisen, who was also in the cast, and it sounds like most of the actual writing was done by this duo Julio Torres, who's written for SNL,

for a few seasons now in Anafabrega. All three of them are in the cast, plus a couple other actors. And the concept is this very goofy, lightly surrealist, like a group. They call themselves a horror group, and they basically just do, like, exorcisms and stunts

and faux alien abductions for hire in some unnamed Latin American country. Apparently, like, the original pitch was Mexico City, and then they were, like, everyone the cast is a different accent. So I'm just going to, like, wing it here. And, you know, similarly with Euphoria, teen drama is a very new territory for HBO to dabble in, and so is like Spanish language comedy. And I really, they have a flourish I really enjoy, which is, it's a little bit bilingual, like some characters are in Los Angeles.

So some of the dialogue is in English, but they subtitle that dialogue in Spanish, the same way that they subtitled the Spanish dialogue in English. And it's a really great blend of like there are some jokes that are culturally specific, but a lot of it is just very silly, humor that you can totally understand just, like, reading your screen. And, I mean, I've been a huge fan of Julio Torres's for a really long time. And his character on this show just, like, is Julio Torres plus budget? He plays an heir to a chocolate fortune who, like, uses a jewel to spy on his, like, gorgeous boyfriend who he also hates. And just, it's very hard to explain. How long are the episodes? It's like a half hour. Okay. So I think they're about 25. It's like the fleabag. They don't do like the full 30, but it's not like a sitcom tight 22.

Sure. But it's just, you know, a delightfully strange, totally specific. Like, it's good that I can't really explain it because it means it kind of has to be seen to be understood. But like, it's so great that this is a thing that HBO is trying. And the whole season is just like six episodes. Oh, awesome. Yeah. What's your 10 p.m. hitter? So my follow-up is Good Omen's, which we have had multiple very good pieces about on the site by Claire McNair and Brian Phillips, but it is an adaptation of the Terry Pratchett Neil Gaiman novel. It made me, like, immediately want to revisit all the Discworld novels that were accumulated from my childhood. It is so wild how much television is on. I know. When we can do this and we could just, like,

list five shows that neither of us are watching. It's pretty wild. I mean, there's a reason why I cheated and I did three and one earlier. It's just, but it is one of those things that's like, oh, this is, you know, I have won the peak TV lottery and that this is, like, so specifically made for me and, like, bookish children like me. And, you know, it's this like characteristic, cheeky, but also very sincere. The apocalypse is about to happen. And an angel and a devil who've been on Earth together for millennial, decided to, millennia decide to team up because they, like, love their life on Earth and they don't want, you know,

the final war between heaven and hell to happen. And it's just they got an insane cast. Like John Hamm just plays the archangel Gabriel. And I truly think, like, the lesson from Mad Men to take. away. It took us a few years to figure it out, but it's not Cassus guy's a leading man. It's Cassus guy's a sociopath because obviously Don Draper is both those things. But my favorite John Hamrolls since Mad Men have been like the preacher on Kimmy Schmidt and the guy and baby driver and this and just like adding a little bit of sociopathic spice to whatever he's in.

That's good. Yeah, it's just, you know, it's very much you probably know ahead of time if you'll enjoy it. but like David Tennant and Michael Sheen being goofy. Yeah, I mean, if you have like a relationship to the books, I think it's probably like you've been waiting for this for a long time. But I still haven't gotten a chance to check it out. So I'm really excited to do so eventually. But weighty existential theme.

So again, we're like edging towards depression. That's right. I have from my 10 PM 1. I've only watched the pilot, but I really, really like this. It was perpetual grace LTD. I just watched the pilot today. And partially I watched it. I made sure I watch it.

For one thing, it's really stupid. but like I just saw a bunch of billboards and I was like I guess I should check that out it's on advertising works it's from a guy named Stephen Conrad who made a show for two seasons on Amazon called Patriot and I cannot think of another show where more people were like

you didn't see Patriot and like basically By people do you mean Sam Donsky? No but just like a lot of folks like the people who watched Patriot tended to not only love it but think it was like a huge achievement and I am delinquent and catching up on Patreon.

I've watched like two episodes that it hasn't quite clicked with me. But this guy now, Stephen Conner, has a show on epics, and it's Jimmy Simpson basically plays a drifter who gets pulled into a con

being pulled by a guy named played by Damon Harriman, who you might remember from Justified and will be playing Charles Manson in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. Oh, that guy! Okay, I was trying to see where I recognized him from.

And he basically hires Jimmy Simpson, to Khan his parents and his parents are preachers in the New Mexico desert, I think. And they're played by Ben Kingsley and Jackie Weaver. And the first episode is weird and funny and atmospheric and very violent.

And it has a lot of like Blood Simple Cohen Brothers vibes. Yeah, it would remind me a lot of Coen Brothers. It reminded me a lot of not just because of their occupation, but preacher. That same, like very stylized. There's never more than like two people in the frame at the same time.

very spare, very black comic. It also just surprised me, like, just how much plot is chew through. Even though it has kind of a laconic feeling, but, like, a lot is technically happening. Just this con is basically, like, set up enacted and complicated and then some in the 50-plus minutes of the plot. And it's got a very specific rhythm and vibe to it. So, you know, there's, there are whole scenes that seem to be played in time. for like a bit or a joke. Like there are com, like there are purely comic scenes in it.

But I think I'm really interested to see where it goes. And it has a really distinctive visual vibe that really I can only compare to, to the Cohen brothers. So it's an interesting watch. I wanted to pick something other than what we usually talk about here. So, okay, we've gotten super out there with good omens and perpetual grace. How do we come down for the night? Well, you said other than what we usually talk about, but I'm going out on flea-

bag because I don't want to like I'm watching flea bag and then I'm like curling into the fetal position for the night. But I actually don't think I've actually had the chance to talk about flea bag with you since it came out. And yeah, I've been telling the staff of the ringer that this is the show of the year for a while now. I am so glad that you seem to agree with me. It's not even just me. It's like got 100% approval rating, I think. I think so. I mean, I saw like one, like, maybe take down from The Guardian that was like while it was still running.

But it really does have total critical approval. And I don't think, I think there's some shows that people seize on because they're like, oh my God, there's like something that, you know, stands out a little bit in the peak TV landscape. And then it falls victim to that awful hype cycle if it gets hyped and then people feel the need to take it down and be like it's actually not the second coming. And sleepback season two, it's really it. Like, I think this would have been just as justifiably embraced, you know, five years ago, 10 years ago. Hopefully, even if it came out in like two more years. And it's just like, I cannot believe how compact it is. I think it's just, you can tell about how meaningful it is to a lot of people by almost how complicated it is to articulate how you feel about it sometimes.

Well, and it just deals with these incredibly vast themes. Like it's essentially about how to be a functioning person in the world. And yet the figures of Fleabag and the priest are incredibly specific. And the idea of them having this attraction to one another only works if you feel like you understand them. And, you know, despite the fact that they literally don't even have names, you just feel that you know them so intimately. Oh, yeah. You seem so deeply connected to them. Yeah.

Yeah, and I was also one of those people who liked but didn't love the first season. My reaction was sort of like, this is very clever. But the first season, I thought, was dealing in a very established playground, which is like, you know, the single woman in the city who's kind of a mess and does some fucked up things and is like a more extreme version, but in the vein of someone like a Carrie Bradshaw or a Bridget Jones. And obviously the final reveal that comes, like really complicates that, but it's at the very end. And I was sort of like, all right, that was a good experience. I enjoyed killing Eve season one a little more. I was kind of ready to, like, move on and see what she did next. Yeah.

And this just, I wrote about this in my review, but it almost retroactively made me like this first season more because it feels like a more complete story of someone bringing themselves to total spiritual rock bottom and then like figuring out their way forward. And the ending just feels so perfect because she's breaking up with the device. that defines the show. And you're like, this is good for you. It's like the best kind of breakup, like the one she has of the priest where you're like, I understand that you are going to be better after this. I don't need to see everything. I get the general outlines of where this is going.

Yeah, there's no, we don't need a fleabag expanded universe. No. We don't need Claire and Claire. You know, we get, we. Claire and Claire's adventures in Finland. It's okay for something to be a complete sentence. And that's what this was. You're absolutely right.

Yeah. I mean, if they come back and do it, I obviously watch more of it. but, like, I haven't seen something that so gracefully resolved itself in a long time. It's also just so remarkable to me that, like, I liked Fleaback season one. I liked killing season one even more. I liked Fleaback Season 2 even more than that. It's just, like, of all the things that she has relatively complete authorship over, it's just an upward trajectory. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. It's great when that happens because then you can just, like, you're basically, Basically, like, I'm completely locked in on whatever this person wants to do. I can't wait to see what they do. Including Bond 25, I guess. Who says no? All right.

So the last one here, I really hope Allison and I don't now talk about this for 45 minutes. It's going to happen. You know, it's going to happen. If it works for Joe Rogan, it could work for us. When I'm at the end of the night, usually what happens is my wife and I watch like a sitcom to like kind of relax from the end of night. So we'll watch whatever, like happy endings. We'll watch, bless this mess, what have you.

recently though I have become obsessed with gourmet makes on the Bon Appetit YouTube channel As thrilled as I am That everyone has taken my advice on Fleabag I think like my summary accomplishment of my time at the ringers That I've gotten you into Bon Appetit

It's kind of weird though Because like I don't even really cook that much I mean There are lots of people who don't cook who watch cooking shows Sure But I don't even know what it First of all the thing you want this late at night regardless of what Allison says about watching a show about heartbreak and God,

is you want comfort. You want to be like blissfully drifting off into the night without having to like comprehend anything too dark or anything too demanding narrative-wise. But I am like as locked in on this show as I am on anything else. You know what I mean? Like when I, as I am on like an episode of tool to die young that's entirely in Spanish or something. It's like it's so mesmerizing to watch Claire make stuff. I don't know why that is, but I don't even care if she can, like, properly make a gourmet Kit Kat.

But the process by which she does it, and even, like, the recurring characters that come through the screen over the course of these episodes and the recurring challenges that she has, especially tempering chocolate, which she really pisses her off when she has to do that. And she's been trying to find different ways to do it throughout this season. It's just really relaxing for me, even though they last, like, 45 minutes and involve her being like, I can't do this. I'm going to quit and then eventually usually making something really good. I mean, first of all, it's literally procedural. And second of all, this is giving me a chance to air a take I've been sitting on for a second, which is just gourmet makes, like, is prestige television in the sense that it is succumbing to hardcore episode bloat. Like, one of my best friends texting me today.

So you feel like it's becoming like Game of Thrones season eight now? I mean, not even Game of Thrones season eight. I'm trying to think of like what it's literally too old to die young. It's like we're going to make a 13-hour movie about someone making Twix. But, like, my friend was texting me today. I was like, oh, my God, do you remember the Oreo episode? It's like 11 minutes long. It's 14 minutes long.

And like an Oreo is about as complicated as the Twix, if not more so, because as she says at the beginning of the Twix episode, she's made other candy bars before. There is no inherent reason that it should take this long except for the fact that they want, like, five extra minutes of all the Bon Appetit staff rolling in and giving their nostalgia takes about it. I'm here for it. I'm here for it. I will watch literally every second of it.

But you can watch them be like, okay, the people want this content. Like they made a series called Make Perfect about pizza, and they have a bonus episode that's literally just like five Bon Appetit Staffers sitting around table talking about pizza. Yeah. And like, I watched it. It's me. I also love that like the Bon Appetit staff are now huge celebrities among an incredibly narrow slice of the population. Yes.

Yes. It's pretty amazing. I would highly recommend gourmet makes, but really a lot of the Bon Appet's. Appetitee videos are pretty pleasant. I get very intimidated by Carla, but that's just my own insecurities. Well, I know we're both fans of Chris Morocco, and they have started a thing where he ate a known supertaster, like reverse engineers a recipe. The Beef Wellington one, the Gordon Ramsey Booth Wellington one is nuts that he could do that. I mean, it's wild. It's also like, you know, putting my critic hat on. It says a lot about, you know, competing models of masculinity.

Chris Morocco and Gordon Ramsey, quite the contrast, if you asked me. That's good. If you ever want to go back to school, it's a great. PhD thesis. Alison, thank you so much for coming by. We will put our primetime grids

up with the tweet for this episode if you guys want to see that. To recap, mine were, bless this mess, what we do in the

shadows, fleabag and state of the union, Barry, perpetual grace, LTD, and gourmet makes from the

Bonapete YouTube channel. What were yours again? Mine were, big little lies, posed with Claas and Jane

the Virgin 's alternates, loces, good omens, and flea bag. Okay. So really, like, it's been a really cool couple of months for TV. It's going to just get crazy.

August is ridiculous. Why is August, like, the dead time? I honestly think that it's like, if everybody is, like, more or less going on vacation during a certain month, not that, like, where you get to go away for a month, like, in Europe. But I think a lot of people where, like, I'm home a lot in August or on vacation, but, like, looking for something to watch, I wonder whether that has something to do with it. Or maybe they're just, like, we're just putting, I have no idea. I honestly have no idea.

But right now we have the second season of the terror, the terror, mine hunter, righteous gemstones, succession. Lodge 49. Lodge 49. Is there another? Mine Hunter? I said Mine Hunter. I think I'm missing one other thing, though. Well, the Kirsten Dunst on becoming a god in central Florida on showtime is coming.

A lot of people out on vacation being like, when's that Kiki Dunst coming? That's me. That's you. Okay. We're going to take a quick break to hear from our sponsors. And then we're going to get into my interview with Spoon's Brith Daniel about the band's new greatest its album. Thanks for coming by, Allison. Thank you. Today's episode of The Watch is brought to you by City on a Hill,

the action-packed new drama series from Showtime, the same network that brought you billions, homeland, and Ray Donovan. Set in a volatile early 90s-era Boston when police corruption ran rampant through a system plagued by racism, City on a Hill stars award-winning actors Kevin Bacon and Aldous Hodge. The new series follows an upstanding district attorney played by Hodge who teams up with a corrupt FBI agent played by Bacon, The two form an unlikely alliance to take down a local crime family and clean up the city. Executive produced by Ben Affleck, Matt Damon, and Tom Fontana to stream the first episode for free.

Go to show.com slash city. That's S-H-O-com slash city. City on a Hill air Sundays at 9 p.m. only on showtime. Okay, Britt Daniel. Thank you so much for coming by, man. I'm sorry Andy can't be here. I was just saying to you that... I am too.

Spoon is a band that is like kind of wrapped through me and Andy's whole friendship over the last. 20 years because you were one of the first bands that I remember we kind of like got really into together right when Telephono came out. And he was like, I think he went and saw you guys in Princeton or something like that and hung out with you. And then there's this really cool moment, not probably for you, but he had an advanced cassette or a cassette that I think you must have made him of Girls Can Tell. Right. And it was an earlier version of that record. It's and what wound up being the 2001 release, but I think we had it in like 98 or 99 with that track. 99 is when we made it. It's funny, I just found that a CD of that.

Did you really? Yeah, and just digitized it and yeah, it's a different version. Like there's some different versions of songs. Yeah, anything you want is different. Yeah, take a walk is different. It has the Lafitte songs on it. Oh, yeah. Yeah, so it's a different rendition of the record, but it's cool. And you guys were kind of in the wilderness at that point, And I had a copy of that, and I lived with a bunch of guys who were in a band in Boston, and that was all we listened to. It was just, we just listened to Girls Can Tell. And that was also, like, the best part about that arrow is when you just, like, had a tape that was in the deck, and that was just what you listened to for, like, the summer. Yeah.

Yeah. But that was, like, always, there was a huge thing when that record finally came out. Especially if you have an advanced version that nobody else has. So you guys had kind of come off of Elektra with series of sneaks, and you were, you were, like, in Chicago at the time, right? The summer that we toured on a series of sneaks, I was in Chicago, yeah. And I wrote anything you want there. But then I came back to Austin. We recorded that early version of Girls Can Tell.

Okay. And then I went to New York for that next summer and hoped that someone was going to put the record out. Yeah, and you were working just like a job, right? I was doing temp jobs, yeah. Is it weird to look back now almost 20 years later and be like, I have a greatest hits album coming out? It's pretty cool. It's pretty cool. The things did turn out all right in the end.

but at that moment, I didn't know what was going to happen. It was a hot summer in New York, and I had gone there just because I had this habit of getting out of Texas for the summer because it's so hot. They went up to New York because found out it was just as hot. But I got to hang out in New York, which I loved. But it smells better, of course. And like once a week, I remember on my lunch break from whatever Timb I was at, I would go to, invariably, I was near Times Square, and I would go to the Marriott at Times Square because they had this floor where they were. there was a whole row of phones, pay phones.

Oh, yeah. And it was quiet in there. No one was using these. Like, for some reason, no one went on this floor. And I knew it. And so I would go in there once a week, call my manager or lawyer or both and see what was up. Yeah.

Anybody biting? Anybody want to put this record out? And they, you know, nobody was interested. So then we had to go make another version of the record. We added some more songs and then someone finally. Merge eventually comes a lot. Yes, right? Right.

So in the process of doing this, are you a naturally reflective or nostalgic person? Like is going through your career in any way, aside from like in a greatest hits, an eye on greatest hits way, is that something that feels natural to you? Or are you somebody who's like, cool, we made those records, turn the page. Let's keep it moving. I mean, we have kept it moving. And I, when the idea of doing this greatest hits came up, came up a couple years ago. and then I started really working on it about a year ago and I did go and listen to every single song

on every album and EP we've put out. Okay. Just to sort of... See, you know. See, it did the work, yeah, right? Yeah, yeah. Because I had, you know, and I hadn't listened to those albums straight through.

I don't think any of them for years, you know, some of them for decades probably. So I would just jot down notes. I would do one album or so a night at the end of the day and kind of relax with it. Was it relaxing? Well, yeah. There were certain records

that stood out as being better than I remembered. Yeah. Girls can tell was one of them. Yeah? And I just jotted down notes, but then when I got to the end of that process, it was a two or three disc, you know, huge set. And I wanted to put rarities in there.

Neil Young's anthology. Yeah, it was big. Yeah. And then so do you, when you're listening to those records, are you only hearing stuff you wish you could do better, or is there really pleasant surprises, or is there like a, is there even a time machine effect where you're like,

oh, man, I remember where I was, what was happening in my life when I recorded this wrote it. Telephono is not my favorite spoon record, but even when I listen back to it, I remember getting a feeling of like, okay, yeah, all right, that's right. I was trying to do that, and that was sort of

I did get into that headspace a little bit again and remembering that sort of, it's not really definable with words, but that headspace that I was in when I was writing those songs and what I was going for, I was like, oh yeah, that was really into Will Sargent from Echo and the Bunnyman

trying to do that kind of guitar sound. right there. Yeah, that was a rip-off of a rhythm by PJ Harvey, that kind of thing. I mean, I didn't think I want to go back and do it again. I did notice some pleasant surprises, yeah. You guys don't do, I was just talking before you walked in, but you guys don't really do the, like, 20th anniversary touring a record thing. We haven't.

Are you averse to that kind of, like, album-centric celebrations? I've never needed to, you know. Because you guys can just play whatever you want. going to go out, right? You know, I would never say never, but it's never been, so far it hasn't been something that we've wanted to do. We were always working on a new record, and then we'd get that record out, and then we'd want to go tour that record.

We didn't take a lot of downtime. I was thinking about trying to go see Bill Play Keep It Like a Secret this year. Yeah, I went and saw Public Enemy do... Nation? Yeah, it was Nation, right. There's times you do want to go experience that whole album. That was one of them. There was a couple, I know that Bowie toured like the Berlin trilogy for a while and would do like Lodger one night or whatever.

I wish I could have gotten to see that. Yeah, I missed that. Yeah, there's some like YouTube videos of him. Like there's one where he's like on stage and I think it's in Berlin. And he's just like, it's like a really cool venue wherever it is. And he's like, so they've played a couple songs. He's like, we're going to do Lodger and then we're going to take a break. And then if you guys want, we'll come back out and keep playing.

And that was just like this guy, man. Can you imagine to be like, we'll do lodger and then we have all this other stuff to play? What a deal. You know, you were just mentioning going back and listening to Telephono and hearing PJ Harvey and hearing Echo and the Bunnyman stuff in there. And I always love this little anecdote you tell about Girls Can Tell where you kind of had a, I think you had a, I don't know if it was a tape or whatever of Get Happy, the Elvis Costello record. Yeah. And that was like a little bit of a gateway for you to start thinking about Motown and start thinking about Motown and start to start. thinking about how your band could sound.

Right, which became Girls Can Tell. Yeah. Right. I was wondering, as somebody who, I see you on Twitter, I know you make Spotify playlists and stuff like that, do you think that that kind of like weird discovery pattern still exists for people where they like come across one thing and it unlocks a bunch of things? Or is it? I hope it does.

Yeah. I think it must, right? I don't know. I don't know. I mean, it's one of the things I'm super fascinated by across, not even just in music, but just like when you're thinking about film or you're thinking about television, like how people contextualize, like, things in that way.

Because for me, I think we're around the same age, and it was the same thing. It was like, one guy would be like, you should listen to London calling, and then that opened up all these doors, and then you would listen to his gridue, and that would open up all these doors. Right.

That process of discovery was so important. I figure when someone finds a band or a song that they really like, then they still will get interested in what that band was. And then if they really like the band, then they'll go back and listen to the other album. Yeah. But I don't know. That's the way I would do it. Yeah. I just didn't know if you ever like bump into like younger artists out there that you're talking with. And they're like, yeah, I heard this on a playlist.

But it was part of like a 300 song playlist that was just like summer vibes. And like it, because it so much of what when we were growing up, like music was so tribal. It was tribal. And it was a, it was a, it was a, it was a, a. kind of a rare commodity, right? So to get an album with something you invested in, and then when you were going to get your money's worth, you know, and you listened to that record over and over. Like, I remember when I got my first cassettes,

I got The Unforgivable Fire by U-2 and Art and Noise record and some other one, oh, around the world in the today by Prince. Yeah. And believe me, I know those records inside and out because those were the three albums I had, and I did a lot of thinking about those bands. Yeah.

So it might be a different process these days, you know, when it's an unlimited buffet. What do you like as a listener now? Like, are you mostly like backwards looking kind of just like, I'm going to listen to The Cure today or for this couple weeks? Or are you like always looking for new stuff? I still go through phases for sure. You go through another Rolling Stones phase where you want to hear all the records again or all the 70s records again or something.

But I try to, you know, I do pay attention to what records come out every week. a list, you know. Mm-hmm. So I don't listen to a lot of playlists, but I do, you know, I'm on, I'm on email lists where I see what albums are coming out every week. And I make a list and I go and check them out. So when you guys were putting together. Every now and then there's something great.

Yeah. I mean, like I was, I think that you and I both, based on just reading what you've been saying on Twitter recently, like you and I are both absolutely blown away by the Sharon Van Vennant and Record. Yeah. Which I think is like, I think that's probably my favorite thing of the year. When you guys are making a great. to Sits record, like, what's the philosophy behind it?

Is it to coronate a set of songs? Is it to be... Or is it to, like, introduce people to the band? I think when we finally... You know, as I say, the first draft I had was a three-disc set, and it was massive, and it had rarities, and it had B-Sides and stuff. And we lived with that idea for a while,

and then we realized that what we really want to do is make a record that was what standing on a beach was for me. You know, I didn't know the cure. I'd heard a song or two. I went and got standing on a beach and became obsessed. Went back from there and bought every album. And, you know, we've got nine albums. So it's, I could imagine it being daunting for someone who doesn't know of the band.

Or maybe they know I turn my camera on or they know inside out. So, yeah, it was sort of, in the end, we decided to make a record for that kind of purpose, you know. And I still listen to Standing on a Beach. because even though I got those records, it's a good collection. It's a record, you know? That stuff works for so many different kinds of bands. I mean, you can listen to the Neil Young double disc

and really get a sense of who he is. I still listen to a decade, yeah. And you can listen to, well, I mean, this is like a much different version of it, but like the big Bruce Springsteen collection, the live one, is also like a real gateway drug for a lot of people, I think. but then this is a really interesting one because it's like a very specific snapshot of the band

so okay you had a double disc or triple disc version of it how do you go about winnowing it down well it was it just boiled down to there were five or six songs that I knew had to be on that right and then from there

it was sort of flow and what is the record need like for instance at the end I didn't feel like the straight up rock songs were represented enough. So I made sure that, you know, to put rent-I-pay on there. And that was the last one that we got on there. So, yeah, I was just thinking, thinking about what this compilation is and what it can,

and how it can best represent nine albums. I know. I mean, you guys are kind of funny because, like, to not blow smoke up your ass, a lot of bands at this point would kind of be in more cruise control. You know, I mean, like the last three records are so different than the first three records. and they're different than the middle three records. And even the last three records are wildly different from each other. It are still reactions to what?

Three records back was what, transference? Yeah. And then, yeah, and then Hot Thoughts is after, no. Yes, Hot Thoughts is most recent. Yeah. So it's just fascinating to see. There's a lot of bands that probably would have been like, look, man, if we go out on tour once every other year or once a year,

that'll pay the bills and we just have to put 12 songs out. Well, I'm not happy. with that. Right. I feel like I got to keep pushing. Yeah. It's got to be great, you know. And that's why we, sometimes we take a long time for records, because we keep working on it until we feel really good about it. Do you feel like, I'm trying to like articulate this, but like do you feel like another big change in sound is coming? There's always like an inherent quality that is spoon, that is you that is in those records, but you mess around so much with different production sounds, even over the last couple of albums, working with different producers and getting different sounds. I saw a

picture of you guys at Muscle Shoals, right? Well, I was at Muscle Shoals with Nicole Atkins. Oh, cool. She was recording there. Okay. And I got to record on a couple songs. Oh, that's awesome. It was amazing.

Have you been there before? No. It's the room where Brown Sugar was recorded, you know, and serve somebody and all these Aretha Franklin singles. What's the vibe in there? It's chill. It's not a huge room. It's dark in there.

It actually was not a studio for a while, and then they've gone and revamped it. and set it up exactly the way it was. And it's, you know, I've seen pictures and it's a good feeling studio, you know. But you don't walk in, like, it's Cooperstown, like, oh, yeah, obviously this is where this record got made or these classic records got made. You know, I don't think that there's anything,

there's a vibe in there, you know, but there's not, it's a fairly dead room sound-wise. You know, you clap and you don't hear a lot of, you know, sound coming back. Sure. But, I mean, the reason why I was asking, muscle shawls is just out of curiosity whether or not there's a sound or sounds that you've been playing with that you think is like the next step for you guys. We've been saying we want to make a rock and roll record.

But the last record, we talked about it quite a bit because you could ask questions and we kept saying it's a rock and roll record, it just doesn't have a lot of guitars. It was a record that was very keyboard heavy and we were kind of going to town on what Alex could provide because he's such an amazing keyboard player. and I guess we also were sort of taking off from Inside Out, which was the record. The last song we recorded for the record before, we loved that one so much.

Let's make a record that's like that. And I feel like we're kind of reacting a little against that. But you always do. You always say, like, oh, this is we have to make a left turn here. Yeah. Yeah. I remember after Girls Can Tell, which was all about like oldies, you know, like Oldies Radio, Motown, get happy, that kind of vibe.

I remember thinking I want to do something that's, a lot more left a field. And so we made it up this record, Kill the Moonlight, which sort of like new wave demos, you know? Yeah. It was not, it was these scraps that you threw together, and it kind of worked somehow.

So are you prepared to hear from the peanut gallery about the greatest set selections? Like, what's your appetite for? Sure, if they want to talk to me about it. We can talk about anything. I mean, I was curious because, you know, Andy and I both are pretty huge

Spood fans. And you were not happy with the... No, I love it. I mean, like, there's no bad songs in this record. The new song is awesome. But it's like, I think I have one on Spotify.

Let me see how long this thing is. Mine's 29 songs. Uh-huh. I think Andy's is like 20. And I could probably trim some because I think I'd just like put all of Loveways on there for you know. But I was wondering whether or not you're going to get...

Not a usual favorite loveways. Oh, man. You kidding? Oh, changed my life is such a great song. Yeah. I was wondering whether you're prepared for like, hey, dude, how could you not put clock tracking? I've gotten a little of that already just from talking to the press, yeah.

What about like inside the band? No, I haven't. I think that they're all aware of, we all worked on it together. Yeah. You know, we're all cool with it. It's, you know, it's a different type of record. Sure. It is more marketing driven than a brand new album, obviously.

So we're all cool with what it is I like it I think it's a good collection that holds You know We worked on the flow We worked on getting some of our favorite songs in there And I think it holds its own That's the thing is it does kind of remind me of like

The Eagles Greatest Hits or something like that Where it is it's just like I think it's like 12, 13 songs right And it's just like this is there's no skips here It's undeniable right That's what I remember thinking when I worked out the first side What was going to be on the first side? It's just like, well, you can't go wrong here.

These are all good ones. Yeah, yeah. Because I think the reason why I was asking is because we do like, whenever we like rank shows on the site or rank like best songs of the 90s or whatever, we do. Like, we just do it partially because we expect so much engagement of people being like, how could you leave this out? How could you not include this? Right. How could you think this one's better than that one? Yeah.

And this is like an act of, of like, you know, curation in a lot of ways. but it's a band that has, what, like 80 really good songs, if not more, you know? So it's like, I'll be really curious to see what other folks out there. Yesterday I got, why isn't stay don't go on there? Okay. And I got, why isn't Lions in the Suit on there? I was a lion's in the suit.

I mean, I love that. That was probably my favorite song on Girls Can Tell as it came out, but it was never even a fan favorite, you know? Yeah. It was kind of lyrically, it was where I was at. Okay. A very vulnerable spot You probably, yeah

I mean like You can save it all For the basement tapes man Yeah, like when they're There'll be a different type of Yeah We gotta do a rarity's Type of record at some point

We gotta You guys got some good remixes We do Tons of great B-sides So yeah I mean We can get into that Right now I'm kind of focused I'm making new music

Good good Well I mean We'll be here to listen to it Britt Daniel Thank you so much For coming by the watchman Thank you It's my pleasure

And thank you for all the music Give my love to Andy. We'll do. Today's episode of The Watch was brought to you by City on a Hill, the new drama series from Showtime, starring Kevin Bacon and Aldous Hodge. City on A Hill airs Sundays at 9 p.m.

Only on Showtime. This episode of The Watch is brought to you by the movie Yesterday in theaters June 28th. Yesterday, from Danny Boyle and Universal Studios, imagines a world where only one person remembers the existence of the Beatles. The movie stars Lily James, Ed Shearin, Kate McKinnon,

and newcomer Hamesh Patel. Now when the trailer first dropped, everybody at the ringer, we have this, we have slack here. And so everybody's always chatting with each other. Everybody at the ringer had a lot of questions about what would happen to the world as we know it without the Beatles. Many of those questions we're still thinking about. And today in partnership with Universal, we wanted to discuss one in particular. And this one I think is very, it's very central to watch listeners' hearts, which is the impact it would have had on Britpop.

Brit pop for everybody who maybe is in the dark. Mid-90s, Hail Britannia. You had two major daily newspapers, not daily, but like, you know, music newspapers in England, NME and Melody Maker every week, Blur versus Oasis, swayed, pulp, all these amazing British rock bands

who were kind of really making London and England the capital of the music-making world. And they brought a kind of swagger, a modern swagger to a classical songwriting style. And it was asking a lot of people, you know, are you more into Oasis or Blur? Do you like this kind of more pub rock with the lads or more art school pop rock

with the kind of the smart kids? And the thing is, funny is when you think about it, neither would have been possible without the Beatles. Because the Beatles had these muscular rock songs. They had these really great, you know, like the John Lennon songs that were sort of rooted in early rock and roll and blues. And then you had these artful, beautiful Paul McCartney pop songs.

And from there sprang the next three, four, five decades of music. And it's kind of impossible to imagine a huge, huge, huge cultural moment like Brit Pop, like the supremacy of bands like Blur and Oasis without having the Beatles there in the first place. They are the, you know, no matter what poll you sat on, whether it was. Flora Oasis, swayed, any of those bands, they all emanated from the Beatles. And it's kind of amazing to think about what their absence would have meant

to so many other great bands. Now, to see if the movie addresses the existence of Britpop and all the other questions we have, watch the trailer today and catch yesterday in theaters on June 28th.