Nevermind the Music

Oh, no, another episode of Mark’s music? Sadly, yes! In this episode, Nichole listens to the eight new NTM mini-themes, and pitches which corporate sponsors each music bumper would best lead into. Is this a tongue-in-cheek bit or is Mark still trying to pay off these fancy microphones? Believe it or not, this conversation goes quite a bit off the rails!

Thanks to these folks for lending us their musical talents to create this ad music!

Elysia Brenner - voice

Chris Fafalios - voice

Max Ignas - trumpet

Billy Jewell - trumpet

John Lorehound - voice

Dennis Shafer - saxophones

Josh Ziemann - drums and percussion

Music heard in this episode: Mark Popeney - Nevermind the Music Theme, Incubus - “Stellar”, Incubus - “Echo”, Nelly - “Hot in Herre”, Beyoncé - “Green Light”, Bad Bunny - “Mía (feat. Drake)”

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Nevermind the Music is part of The Lorehounds Network. Join the Nevermind the Music Discord channel by visiting https://discord.gg/xdN4XCdtxU or thelorehounds.com

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What’s the sweet spot between challenge and comfort? This week we tackle Journey’s 1980 anthem “Any Way You Want It.” After knocking Mark down a notch because of his taste in early-oughts literary fiction, Nichole relates this song to the so-called arousal and flow theories of motivation. Mark explains the simple rhythmic trick that helps make this song have such a driving beat: pushing the downbeat. Come for the arena rock, stay for the Atari talk!

Other music heard in this episode: Thin Lizzy - “The Boys Are Back in Town”, Journey - “Who’s Crying Now”, Journey - “Ask the Lonely”, Journey - “Stone in Love”, Journey - “Don’t Stop Believin’”, Kendrick Lamar - “These Walls (feat. Bilal, Anna Wise, and Thundercat)”, Maroon 5 - “Sunday Morning”, Data Age - “Journey Escape Gameplay Music”

Send us your thoughts at [email protected]

Nevermind the Music is part of The Lorehounds Network. Join the Nevermind the Music Discord channel by visiting https://discord.gg/xdN4XCdtxU or thelorehounds.com

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How long can the pop stars survive? In this episode, we debut our first ever NTM draft game! Welcoming back two all-star guests, Bree Thomas (“Mariah Carey Girl” from episode 60) and Chris Fafalios (from Punchline, One Hit Thunder, and episode 76), we each battle to build a team of former child music stars trapped on a deserted island! Who’s the responsible one? Who’s going to keep the morale high? Who might eat the rest of the team? Listen to find out, and then head to the Discord channel and vote for who had the best draft!

Send us your thoughts at [email protected]

Nevermind the Music is part of The Lorehounds Network. Join the Nevermind the Music Discord channel by visiting https://discord.gg/xdN4XCdtxU or thelorehounds.com 

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Here in season 3, we’re starting a new feature! Once per month, we’ll be turning back the clock and showcasing an episode from our back catalog! This month, we callback to one of our favorites from Season 1!

Wait, was “Undone” really the most popular early Weezer song? In this epic episode we unravel Weezer’s 1994 hit (in some universes, at least), “Undone - The Sweater Song.” After discussing the hosts’ history with the band, Mark follows a thread of connection between some of the iconic elements of the song and older - much older - kinds of music. And Nichole finally gets Mark to understand what this song seems to really be about: depression.

To hear more of Nichole’s story, check out the episode “Burnt Toast” from the Scissors N Scrubs podcast from March 2023.

Other music heard in this episode: Weezer - “Say it Ain’t So”, The Rentals - “Friends of P”, Wheesor - “Undone - The Sweater Song”, Weezer - “Africa”, Weezer - “Perfect Situation” - Richard Berry and the Pharaohs - “Louie Louie”, René Touzet - “El Loco Cha Cha Cha”, Metallica - “Welcome Home (Sanitarium)”, Robert Johnson - “I Believe I’ll Dust By Broom”, Mead ‘Lux’ Lewis - “Honky Tonk Train Blues”, The Jimi Hendrix Experience - “Purple Haze”, The Beatles - “Taxman”, Garbage - “Supervixen”, Jet - “Are You Gonna Be My Girl”

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Nevermind the Music is part of The Lorehounds Network. Join the Nevermind the Music Discord channel by visiting https://discord.gg/xdN4XCdtxU or thelorehounds.com

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Are the voices in your head auto-tuned? We start season 3 off with bang with Brtiney Spears’ 2007 electro-pop hit “Piece of Me.” Mark takes us through how the melodic outlines of this track’s robotic backing vocals help shape the song’s pacing. Nichole comes in hot with some fancy terms, looking at Britney’s challenges through the diathesis stress model. She also shares some unresolved anger over the 1991 coming-of-age drama “My Girl.”

Other music heard in this episode: Britney Spears - “Gimme More”, Britney Spears - “Toxic”, Britney Spears - “Alien”, Britney Spears - “I’m a Slave 4 U” 

Send us your thoughts at [email protected]

Nevermind the Music is part of The Lorehounds Network. Join the Nevermind the Music Discord channel by visiting https://discord.gg/xdN4XCdtxU or thelorehounds.com

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What words do we overuse? What happens if Taylor Swift were to write lyrics to our theme music? The circle of what exactly? In this final Sidetrack of Season 2, we celebrate the end of an era by quizzing each other! Who’s coming out on top? We wrap by asking each other some earnest questions about our expertise, some of which might lead to some future episode topics. Season 3 starts next week!

Music heard in this episode: Antonio Vivaldi - Concerto No. 1 in E major, Op. 8, RV 269, ‘Spring’ (La primavera), I. Allegro (Baroque Festival Orchestra)

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Nevermind the Music is part of The Lorehounds Network. Join the Nevermind the Music Discord channel by visiting thelorehounds.com

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If I would, could you? This week, our hosts do another over-the-top deep dive to close Season 2, this time focusing on the dreary 1992 grunge epic “Would?” by Alice in Chains. Nichole takes us through the stages of the transtheoretical model of change, looking through the lens of recovery from addiction (sadly relevant to both the song’s namesake Andrew Wood and Alice in Chains lead vocalist Layne Staley). Mark offers another tongue-in-cheek term paper, this time deconstructing this song’s odd chord progression with the tools of so-called Neo-Riemannian music theory.

A (maybe) helpful tonnetz diagram: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tonnetz

Other music heard in this episode: Alice in Chains - “Sea of Sorrow”, Alice in Chains - “Angry Chair”, Alice in Chains - “I Stay Away”, Alice in Chains - “Agains”, Alice in Chains - “Down in a Hole”, Alice in Chains - “Hollow”, Alice in Chains - “Heaven Beside You”, Jerry Cantrell - “Leave Me Alone”, Primitive Radio Gods - “Standing By a Broken Phone Booth With Money in My Hand”, Mother Love Bone - “Chloe Dancer/Crown of Thorns”, Candlebox - “Far Behind”, Donald Crockett - “Whistling in the Dark (performed by Xtet)”, Danny Elfman - “Spider Man Main Title”, Alice in Chains - “Whale & Wasp”, Nirvana - “In Bloom”, Alice in Chains - “Man in a Box”, Pearl Jam - “Black”, Alice in Chains - “Bleed the Freak”, Alice in Chains - “Got Me Wrong”, Soundgarden - “Black Hole Sun”

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Nevermind the Music is part of The Lorehounds Network. Join the Nevermind the Music Discord channel by visiting thelorehounds.com

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106 - Sidetrack - Season 2 Mailbag 4

Are Alanis Morissette and Lauryn Hill two sides of the same coin? This week, we have one more chance to open the mailbag for Season 2! This batch of inquires hits on such controversial topics as Nichole’s accent, whether we should talk about musicals, mono-cultural tragedies, the new record by The Strokes, and whether the Beatles stole from Batman. We’re always sticking to the hard-hitting journalism here at NTM…

Music heard in this episode: Jeremy Jordan - “She Used to be Mine”, Sara Bareilles - “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road”, Awaken A Cappella - “Gravity”, The Beatles - “Till There Was You”, Linkin Park - “The Little Things Give You Away”, My Bloody Valentine - “When You Sleep”, Coldplay - “Yes”, Club Nouveau - “Lean on Me”, Lauryn Hill - “Everything is Everything”, “Weird Al” Yankovic - “Such a Groovy Guy”, The Beatles - “Taxman”, Jimi Hendrix - “Foxy Lady”, Neal Hefti - “Batman Theme”, The Strokes - “Going Shopping”, fun. - “Some Nights”, The Strokes - “Hard to Explain”, Rage Against the Machine - “Bulls on Parade”, Rage Against the Machine - “Killing in the Name”, Daft Punk - “Instant Crush (feat. Julian Casablancas)”

Send us your thoughts at [email protected]

Nevermind the Music is part of The Lorehounds Network. Join the Nevermind the Music Discord channel by visiting thelorehounds.com

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Were you one of those people who loved group projects back in school? If so, you must be the social loafer! This week we synergize with The Eagles’ 1976 country-rock gem “New Kid in Town.” Nichole talks about creative collaboration in a conversation that ranges widely, from interpersonal conflict to podcast co-host dynamics and classroom assignments. Mark homes in on the brilliant pattern of key changes in this song that shows this band was more than just fist fights and back-stabbing.

For visual learners, the key scheme to this song goes like this (the capital letters are major keys and the lower-case letters are minor or dorian keys):

E - c# - E - c# - E - G - e - E

Other music heard in this episode: Linda Ronstadt - “Rock Me On the Water”, Linda Ronstadt - “In My Reply”, The Eagles - “Ol’ 55”, The Eagles - “Nightingale”, The Eagles - “Is It True?”, The Eagles - “Train Leaves Here This Morning”, The Eagles - “In the City”, The Eagles - “Love Will Keep Us Alive”, The Eagles - “Visions”, The Eagles - “Victim of Love”, Don Felder - “Victim of Love”, The Eagles - “Try and Love Again”, The Eagles - “One of these Nights”, Wolfang Amadeus Mozart - “Piano Sonata No. 16 in C major, K. 545, I (Ingrid Haebler, piano)”, Joe Walsh - “Life’s Been Good”, The Eagles - “The Last Resort”, Poco - “Bad Weather”, Bobby Darin - “Beyond the Sea”, Taylor Swift - “The Life of a Showgirl (feat. Sabrina Carpenter”

Send us your thoughts at [email protected]

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Wait, does it need to be either rock or opera to be a rock opera? As Season 2’s final guest, we welcome podcast luminary John Lorehound for a fun conversation about concept albums. Mark’s ready to go with a custom categorization scheme, Nichole comes armed with the required Hozier and Taylor Swift mentions, and John’s ultimately just here to give an angry rant about one of his favorite albums. Tune in for a conversation that gets to some surprisingly deep places.

Music heard in this episode: Ian Gillan and Murray Head - “The Last Supper” (from Jesus Christ Superstar), Rage Against the Machine - “Down Rodeo”, Taylor Swift - “The Tortured Poets Department”, Paul Simon - “Diamonds on the Soles of Her Shoes”, Pink Floyd - “Eclipse”, Beyoncé - “Texas Hold ‘Em”, Jessica Darrow - “Surface Pressure” (from Encanto), The Beatles - “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band”, Frank Sinatra - “In the Wee Small Hours of the Morning”, Frank Ocean - “Lost”, Taylor Swift - “August”, The Beach Boys - “Do You Like Worms (Roll Plymouth Rock)”, Queens of the Stone Age - “You Think I Ain’t Worth a Dollar, But I Feel Like a Millionaire”, Lauryn Hill - “Doo Wop (That Thing)”, Hozier - “I, Carrion (Icarian)”, The Flaming Lips - “Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots, Pt. 1”, Mark Popeney - “After the Bomb, Love” (USC Thornton Symphony), Coheed and Cambria - “Blood Red Summer”, My Chemical Romance - “Sing”, NOFX - “The Decline”, De La Soul - “A Roller Skating Jam Named ‘Saturdays’ (feat. Q-Tip & Vinia Mojica)”, Liz Phair - “Never Said”, Radical Face - “Ghost Towns”, Green Day - “Homecoming”, Janelle Monáe - “Tightrope (feat. Big Boi)”, Melanie Martinez - “Soap”, Dana Howell - “Analogamelan”, Muse - “I Belong to You (+Mon Coeur S’Ouvre a Ta Voix)”

Send us your thoughts at [email protected]

Nevermind the Music is part of The Lorehounds Network. Join the Nevermind the Music Discord channel by visiting thelorehounds.com

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