How We Heard It

There are noteworthy changes in every decade of modern music, but the seismic shifts and chaos of the 1990s were unparalleled.

Whether it was the music of your youth, your kids' youth, your parents' youth or even your grandparents' youth, most everyone has noticed (either at the time or now, in retrospect) that the '90s were just different.

It was the decade that saw Generation X hand over the music reins to millennials. MTV went from a driving force in music to more of a footnote, and music videos lost importance in the gap years between emphasis on cable channels and the advent of YouTube and streaming in the 2000s.

Stylistically, hip-hop was a juggernaut, swinging from gangsta rap to a mainstream phenomenon that permeated into R&B, pop and even rock. Also, fueled by the momentum of Madonna in the 1980s, pop in the 1990s became dominated by women artists - with Whitney Houston, Mariah Carey and Celine Dion taking turns at the top of the charts, and wholesome teen singers like Debbie Gibson and Tiffany, who ushered the genre into the '90s, had been replaced by decidedly less wholesome singers like Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera by decade's end.

Latin artists also became permanent fixtures in the mainstream, and thanks to Garth Brooks, country reinvented itself into yet another huge crossover genre, with "hat acts" ruling the roost in the mainstream.

And in rock music, huge shifts came in waves. The "hair metal" bands that controlled rock in the late 1980s were all but wiped out by grunge in the early 1990s, flipping the genre's script from mindless, flashy formula pop-with-guitars to something far more introspective, anxious and angry. But grunge was at the forefront for only a few year, and soon enough all manner of "modern rock," "alt-rock" and "college rock" bands - from Weezer to Radiohead to Beck - brought freshness and ingenuity to the sonic landscape.

Meanwhile, the 1990s saw the rise of traveling mega-festivals such as Lollapalooza to the Vans Warped Tour. And the Lilith Fair emphasized the unprecedented prominence of women in rock, who came in hard with gritty sounds and raw self-assuredness beyond the jangly pop-rock of 1980s bands like The Go-Go's and The Bangles.

This week on "How We Heard It," your hosts - who were young men in the 1990s and at Ground Zero in the music business - shine a light on what was going on in the tumultuous 1990s and how everything seemed to forever change, across the board, in music.

The more music you collect - digitally, physically or in a combination - the more you have to keep up with.

And let's face it: Most of us aren't as organized as we'd like to be. So if you just keep accumulating music and the years keep rolling by, you can easily lose track of your collection and get disconnected from your memories.

This week on "How We Heard It," your hosts take another dive into their collections and turn up near-forgotten acts ... and even completely forgotten acts (who even were those people?).

This episode brings up everyone from Jethro Tull to Britney Spears, Mott the Hoople to Beck, Blondie to Radiohead and The Roches to Daft Punk. 

Meanwhile, the music your hosts found this week prompts impromptu conversations about how collectibles often just end up gathering dust, collaborations between stars can go terribly wrong, and tribute artists can sound better than the original artists.

And what's up with all the "greatest hits" collections from one-hit wonders?

If you haven't looked over your collection in a while, maybe it's time to take a nostalgia trip.

For many of us, our mothers are among the most important, most loving, and perhaps most complicated, people in our lives. And not coincidentally, mothers have been consistently referenced throughout history in most every art form - including music.

So with Mother's Day looming, the hosts of "How We Heard It" have chosen to highlight mothers in music. Songs about mothers range from the nostalgic and sweet to the melodramatic and heartfelt. Others are humorous or weird, and still others throw focus on bad moms - because they're out there too.

But your hosts don't stop there. They also bring personal stories about mothers to the table, and they talk about how having children can redirect an artist's career, from their vision to their output.

Also, the episode explores how some of the most popular women singers in modern music reacted when their own daughters became performers, and the hosts also hazard a guess at what kind of mothers some popular young singers would make if they become moms - including the most popular singer so far this century, who has indicated her intentions to do just that.

What's your mother of all songs about motherhood?

A great song title is like a snappy headline: It grabs you and pulls you in with just a few words.

With so much riding on that kind of first impression, you'd think more artists would strive to come up with the best song titles possible. Yet in truth, many artists settle for ordinary and unimaginative titles all the time.

That's their loss.

This week the hosts of "How We Heard It" reveal some of their favorite attention-grabbing song titles. Some made them laugh, some made them cringe, and some just made them want to hear the song to find out what is going on. It turns out some are meaningless, some have double meaning and some are just bizarre.

Titles that made the list vary from "The Devil Wears Panties" to "Delicious Demon," from "Angst in My Pants" to "Hot Pants Explosion" and from "Everything Reminds Me of My Dog" to "I Wanna Be Your Dog." 

Some of these songs were popular with the mainstream, including "The Sound of Silence," "Hotline Bling" and "Smells Like Teen Spirit"; others, like "Teenage Lobotomy," "Kiss Me Where It Smells Funny" and "The Homecoming Queen's Got a Gun," cultivated a cult following. And others, like "Ashtray Heart," "Take the Skinheads Bowling" and "Tell That Girl to Shut Up," were strictly underground. Meanwhile, the artists include everyone from The Beatles and Bob Dylan to Muse and Fall Out Boy to Olivia Rodrigo and The Weeknd.

With all the bland song titles out there, it's time to celebrate those that stand out.

We have a complicated relationship with rain.

We need it to grow our crops, to keep our bodies of water at the right level and to hydrate our own bodies. But just as it gives us life, it can take it away with devastating floods and catastrophic drought.

Yet rain is associated with far more than our physical needs. It touches off almost every kind of emotional reaction, varying from one person to the next.

A gentle rain may bring feelings of cleansing refreshment, relaxation or a gloomy malaise. By contrast, hard rains and storms can trigger uneasiness and fear or excitement and sensuality. When rain seems never-ending, or by contrast when it seems like it will never come, it can make us feel helpless.

On this week's "How We Heard It," your hosts look at how songwriters have used rain to convey themes. Artists throughout the ages have manipulated rain to make us laugh, to make us cry, to make us celebrate and to make us reflect.

You might be surprised at how many rain-themed songs there are washing through our consciousness.

Even the best of us have bad days - including your favorite musicians.

That explains how top-shelf artists can produce a clunker of a song. We try to forget these songs, explain them away as somebody else's fault, justify them as an important learning moment, and maybe even claim that they aren't so bad when we know they are simply terrible.

In this week's episode of "How We Heard It," the hosts drill down to the worst of the worst by the best of the best - including terrible songs by the likes of The Beatles, Bob Dylan, Elvis Presley, The Kinks, Leonard Cohen, Bruce Springsteen, Prince, Madonna, R.E.M. and many more.

No one is spared as these sonic disasters are dissected. And a special shoutout is given to all the promising collaborations that were abject failures (including tantalizing pairings credited to the likes of David Bowie/Mick Jagger and Paul McCartney/Stevie Wonder).

But don't worry. It's all done with love.

Every popular movie has a dedicated group of haters, whether it's the Oscar winner that few people saw, the critical favorite that left everyone depressed or the box-office smash with the formulaic plot and predictable ending.

Although the hosts of "How We Heard It" consider themselves big movie fans, they have their limits. So in this week's episode they reveal what movies disappointed them, made them angry or actually prompted them to walk out of the theater or turn off the TV.

Some of these movies were celebrated with awards by Hollywood insiders when much better films should have won. Some of them were critically acclaimed far beyond merit. And some of them were terrible "popcorn" movies without an ounce of originality.

Then there are those inconceivably popular actors who seem to ruin everything they appear in, and absurd special effects that would draw the scorn of a 3-year-old.

But your friendly hosts often disagree with each other this week, and one man's cinematic feast is something another would have swept into the compost heap.

Hear them make their points and bicker with each other, and ask yourself where do you stand: Are these movies awesome or awful?

What would we do without music?

It's a question the hosts of "How We Heard It" hated to even contemplate.

Would this mean we wouldn't have songbirds? Would we not hear the wind in the trees or the waves in the ocean? What about the rhythm of a heartbeat? Would humans not hum or whistle?

Even if those elements were in play, imagine no concerts, no music at games or bars, no music to accompany driving or workouts, no music at weddings, church services or funerals.

Then the hosts decided to modify the question: What if music existed, but it weren't commercially available to us? If we didn't have agency over our music, we couldn't create playlists, share music with friends or use it for romance.

A lack of music, or even a lack of control over the music we hear, would limit out ability to bond with others and likely decrease our empathy. It would also make music less effective as a means of comfort or relief from depression, thus leading to feelings of isolation.

And what about those whose careers are intertwined with music? Your hosts - which include two music journalists and a musician/producer - consider what they might be doing without music.

Let's just say you wouldn't want them as your psychiatrist.

Last week the hosts of "How We Heard It" explored the many reasons people stop listening to new music as they get older.

The bottom line: New music speaks to us less and less as we age, our friends stop listening to new music so we don't have anyone to share the experience, we have less time to absorb new music, and our aging brains find new music difficult to process. (Myth: New music was better in our youth than it is today.)

This week your hosts look at another major (though not quite as pervasive) phenomenon: Why don't young people enjoy the classic acts and hits from before their time?

Some of their reasons are similar to those of the older listeners not listening to new music: For example, young people tend to listen to what their friends enjoy (which tends to be new music), and they often feel disconnected from artists in the past and put off by the themes and lifestyles of those artists.

And there are more reasons - from the production values of the past to the vast library of popular music that exists today, accumulated over some 70 years. Where do you even start?

Ever the problem-solvers, the podcast hosts offer suggestions on how music lovers of all ages can find and sample undiscovered music and enhance their lives.

If you refuse to budge from one era of music, you're only denying yourself joy.

Many of us fall in love with music around puberty and it plays an important part in our lives as we transition into adulthood, get through school and break out on our own.

Music helps us shape our identity and bonds us with our friends. It's there when we're lonely or feeling isolated. It's there when we experience infatuations and find love. It consoles us when we lose love or suffer other kinds of heartbreak. The artists we most admire feel like an unofficial part of our families.

But somewhere along the way - maybe in our late 20s or early 30s - many of us lose interest in new music and simply replay the music of our youth. We tell ourselves new music isn't as good as the music we grew up with, but we're only fooling ourselves.

We tell ourselves new music doesn't relate to us anymore, but many of those artists who made music when we were young are still making music, often more mature music, and we aren't listening to their new material.

Could it be we're too busy with life to keep up with music? We aren't interested anymore because our friends aren't interested anymore?

Maybe and maybe.

It could also be that your brain simply finds it harder to process new music and you're just physically more comfortable with the rewards of the nostalgic power of familiar music than you are with the challenge of getting to know something new.

This week on "How We Heard It," your hosts explore the myths and realities of the changing role music has in our lives and practical ways you can continue to experience the joy of new music, which is good for your mental and physical health.

You could even fall in love with music all over again.