Switched on Pop

The co-hosts of The Cut, Jazmin Aguilera and B.A. Parker, think deeply and incisively about fashion. For this special episode of Switched on Pop — the first in our three-part miniseries about summer festivals — we invited the hosts of The Cut, Jazmin Aguilera and B.A. Parker, as our honorary co-hosts to help us break down the connections between festival fashion, music, and culture. With the additional help of Dr. Lorynn Divita, Associate Professor of Apparel Merchandising at Baylor University, we dissect the commercialization of festival fashion, and how it could lead to some festival goers feeling alienated from the musical experience they love. And, of course, we all discuss the iconic looks -- and performances -- of two of the most quintessential music festivals: Woodstock and Coachella.

MORE

3 Days of Peace & Music & Fashion : A History of Festival Dress from Woodstock to Coachella

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Mark Ronson has a CV too long to list here. Suffice to say he’s a musician who’s worked with everyone from Amy Winehouse to Lady Gaga to Dua Lipa, has one of the highest selling singles of all time with Bruno Mars in “Uptown Funk,” and has been making just really good music since the turn of the millennium. He’s also the presenter of one of our all time favorite TED talks on the history of sampling, and he’s been continuing that journey of musical curiosity with the Apple TV show “Watch The Sound,” which explores the untold stories behind music creation and the lengths producers and creators are willing to go to find the perfect sound, and the FADER Uncovered Podcast, where he interviews artists ranging from David Byrne to HAIM. Today, Mark is the guest for another episode of Modern Classics, in which he brings Ginuwine’s classic 90s jam “Pony,” produced by Timbaland and Static Major, as an example of the ways that innovation and radical experimentation undergird even the biggest of pop smashes. 

Songs Discussed

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We’ve been wanting to speak with Jack Antonoff since we started Switched On Pop back in 2014. We've had countless hours of conversation sound tracked to his productions with artists like Taylor Swift, Lorde, Lana Del Ray starting in just our second episode. When we wrote a book about 21st century pop, we devoted a chapter to the song “We Are Young” by his band, Fun.

And so we're excited to finally sit down with him to hear about how he approaches his own work. He has a new album out with his band Bleachers called Take the Sadness out of Saturday Night. And for our series on Summer Hits, we wanted to start our conversation with Jack Antonoff about the song “Stop Making this Hurt.”

More Episodes ft. words or music by Jack Antonoff

Chained to the Green Light: Katy Perry + Lorde

The Oeuvre of Taylor Swift

folklore: taylor swift's quarantine dream

"evermore" of a good thing

Total Request Live! Taylor, Lana, Kim, and More (with Sam Sanders)

Song of Summer 2020: TikTok Jams, Protest Anthems, Breezy Bops & Bummer Bangers

Carly Rae Jepsen: Meeting The Muse

Songs Discussed

Bleachers - Chinatown (feat. Bruce Springsteen)

Bleachers - How Dare You Want More

Bleachers - Secret Life

Bleachers - Stop Making This Hurt

Bleachers - What'd I Do With All This Faith?

Bruce Springsteen - Jungleland

Dexys Midnight Runners - Come On Eileen

Fleetwood Mac - Bleed to Love Her (Live at Warner Brothers Studios in Burbank, CA 52397)

Fleetwood Mac - Bleed to Love Her

Lana Del Rey - Mariners Apartment Complex

Television - 1880 Or So

The Strokes - New York City Cops

Tom Tom Club - Genius of Love

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In this installment of Modern Classics we speak to the amazing four-time Grammy Nominee musician, singer and songwriter Yola about her new record, Stand For Myself, and how hearing Childish Gambino’s “Redbone” and all its references to 1970s funk encouraged Yola to unlock her own unprecedented mix of symphonic soul and classic pop.

As Yola tells it, it’s not just a sound from the past that she’s conjuring, it’s a sense of possibility. The way that progenitors like Funkadelic, Minnie Ripperton, and the O'Jays combined political protest with deep grooves, what Yola calls “the Mary Poppins philosophy of music” (the groove being the spoonful of sugar to help the socially-conscious medicine go down).

With this marriage of sound and statement, Yola makes retro sounds relevant again, as on the title track “Stand For Myself,” where she uses throwback slap bass, fuzz guitar, and orchestral strings to craft a distinctly modern messages about her identity as a Black woman, cultural allyship, and UK politics. Also, why she likes mixes that sound like they have a “big old booty.”

Songs Discussed

Yola - Stand For Myself, Diamond Studded Shoes, Starlight, Barely Alive, Be My Friend, If I Had to Do it All Again

Childish Gambino - Redbone, Riot

Bootsy Collins - I’d Rather Be With You

Funkadelic - Can You Get to That

The O’Jays - Back Stabbers

Queen Latifah - U.N.I.T.Y.

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L’Rain is the musical persona of singer and multi-instrumentalist Taja Cheek, whose new album, Fatigue, begins with a lyrical quandary: “What have you done to change?”

What follows is a journey of self-discovery, the songs interwoven with home recordings of practicing piano, clapping games, and everyday life. The first full length song, “Find It,” repeats the mantra “Make a way out of no way,” looking for a path out of darkness. An unexpected sample of a preacher at a friend’s funeral service — recorded with permission by L’Rain — interrupts the chant promising that “Good days outweigh my bad days.”

But L’Rain doesn’t provide quick solutions for making change. Rather, she takes us on a journey that evades easy understanding. By avoiding conventional structures, L’Rain asks the listener to lean in close to the music. The sounds are at times unsettling — on “Blame Me,” the guitar warbles in and out of tune — though the uncomfortable moments are blanketed over on songs such as “Take Two,” where warm synthesizers mix with angelic voices. The melodic hooks and captivating rhythms on “Suck Teeth” reveal L’Rain’s command over the experimental work — she is meticulous about building layers of sound on her many instruments.

Had L’Rain pursued a more traditional style of songwriting, or further fleshed out Fatigue’s catchiest moments, the record might be an easier listen — but not as rewarding. Instead, its undulating moods and nonlinearity mirror the unpredictability of human emotion and the up-and-down nature of personal change. To help decipher this album, Switched On Pop’s Charlie Harding spoke with L’Rain at JBL’s flagship store in Soho in front of a live audience. 

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One of the songs we anticipate playing on repeat this summer is “Twerkulator” by Miami rap duo City Girls. It’s a track with enough sonic energy to power a small town, but that’s not all we dig. The song’s music includes a chain of samples that stretch back through pop music history—from 1990s house, to 1980s electro, to 1970s German krautrock—and poses an implicit challenge to some of hip hop’s most problematic figures. Meanwhile, the lyrics celebrate a tradition of movement that’s as culturally important as its controversial

To break down the manifold cultural dimensions of twerking we welcome a very special guest: Kyra Gaunt, ethnomusicolgist and author of the forthcoming book “Twerking at the Intersection of Music, Sexual Violence, and Patriarchy on YouTube,” who explains why twerking is not what you think it is (and why the Oxford English Dictionary got it wrong).

Songs Discussed

City Girls - Twerkulator, Twerk (featuring Cardi B)

Cajmere - Percolator

Afrika Bambaataa and the Soulsonic Force - Planet Rock

Kraftwerk - Numbers, Trans-Europe Express

Juicy J featuring A$AP Rocky - Scholarship

More

Dr. Kyra Gaunt's TED Talk and her brilliant book, The Games Black Girls Play

Estelle Caswell's Video, "The Sound that Connects Stravinsky to Bruno Mars"

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Lorde's new song "Solar Power" set the internet ablaze when it dropped from out of nowhere in June. Some fans found the song to be a buoyant departure from Lorde's last release, Melodrama, while others thought the track felt half-baked. On top of that, listeners questioned the song's provenance — had Lorde cribbed too closely from 90s hitmakers like Primal Scream and George Michael?

To listen closely to "Solar Power" and unpack its polarizing sounds, we needed to speak to someone with an unerring ear and a razor-sharp mind: the author, poet, and host of Object of Sound, Hanif Abdurraqib. Hanif knows Lorde's catalog like the back of his hand, and he's got feelings about this latest release. But he also offers a word of caution: wait for the album before reserving judgment!

Hanif doesn't just take us deep into "Solar Power," though, he helps us get philosophical on some trenchant musical questions, including: What is a summer song, anyway? Where's the line between stealing and inspiration? And most importantly, does Lorde's track end six minutes too early??

Songs Discussed:

Lorde - Solar Power, Royals, Liability, Green Light, The Louvre

Nick Drake - Bryter Layter

Rolling Stones - Sympathy for the Devil

Roxy Music - In Every Dream Home a Heartache

Primal Scream - Loaded

George Michael - Freedom! '90, Faith

Bo Diddley - Bo Diddley

More

Check out Hanif Abdurraqib's podcast Object of Sound

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Olivia Rodrigo’s summer breakup anthem “good 4 u” is filled with the kind of ebullient angst that makes us want to spontaneously dance around our house and belt the lyrics out with abandon. Whether it’s the creeping baseline that pulls us in, or the cathartic release of the chorus, we can’t get enough of this track. And we’re not alone, it seems. The song debuted at #1 on the Billboard Hot 100, and like its predecessor “Driver’s License,” has fueled and been fueled by viral TikTok memes that helped solidify the song’s position among 2021’s summer jams. 

Those TikTok memes range in format, but tend to play off of one unavoidable observable of Rodrigo’s “good 4 u” - just how beautifully it syncs up with Paramore’s 2007 pop-punk “Misery Business.” The two songs share some of the most common building blocks in pop music, from their 4, 1, 5, 6, chord progression to the opening note of their choruses. Those links have led critics and fans alike to wonder aloud if “good 4 u” indicates the emo-slash-pop punk revival we discussed back in May is here to stay. 

In the second installment of our Summer Hits series, producer Megan Lubin goes searching for the musical roots of Rodrigo’s ebullient angst, and uncovers two histories - the first is the sound of emo as it branched off of punk music in the 1980s, and the second is of women raging on the microphone through time, from the blues to country, to Olivia’s chart-topping confessional. 

Lubin gets help from the rock critic Jessica Hopper, who reminds us of emo’s gendered origins: “It became prescriptive. The narrative was always girls were bad and they never had names” and takes us on a journey through Rodrigo’s rage-full forebears. We’re still thinking about her lines about women in pop and the boxes we try to put them in. “People just need to stop trying to draw it back to something that a man did before, and realize that teenage women have completely remade the landscape of top 40 pop in the last 15 years.”

More:

Jessica Hopper’s The First Collection Of Criticism By A Living Female Rock Critic

Helen Reddington “The Forgotten Revolution of Female Punk Musicians in the 1970s”

nikjaay’s “misery 4 u” mashup

Music

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Modern Classics is the new series where Charlie and Nate invite their favorite musicians, journalists, and friends of the show to wax lyrical about a song that's important in their life. In the first installment of Modern Classics, Nate and Charlie sit down with the host of NPR’s hit news and culture program It’s Been a Minute, Sam Sanders. Sam is one of the best people to talk music with, not only because he has his finger on the pulse of what’s happening in the entertainment world, but because as a former music major he’s got knowledge for days.

That knowledge makes Sam the perfect person to explain why Labrinth’s 2019 track “Sexy MF” might be one of the hidden gems of contemporary pop, a song that he hears as “fun and fantastical with all these wonderful tricks and bells and whistles.” Nate and Charlie had never heard “Sexy MF” before Sam brought it to them, and were immediately hooked by the song’s copious ear candy: sly references to Prince and James Brown, death-defying vocal harmonies, all scaffolded atop an indomitable piano groove.

Labrinth, aka Timothy Lee McKenzie, is a U.K. singer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, and producer who released his first single in 2010. Since then he’s gone on to compose the score for the hit TV show Euphoria, collaborated with Sia and Diplo as L.S.D., and worked with Beyoncé on the live-action Lion King soundtrack. Labrinth has racked up massive streaming numbers with tracks like “Jealous” and “Thunderclouds,” but “Sexy MF” is more of what one might call a “deep cut.” If you haven’t heard it yet, like Sam, you might find that it’s one you’ll play “perhaps a thousand times” after your first listen.

Songs discussed

Labrinth - Sexy MF, Still Don’t Know my Name, Mount Everest, Misbehaving

Prince - Sexy M.F.

James Brown - Get Up (I Feel Like Being a Sex Machine)

Lauryn Hill - Doo Wop (That Thing)

Paul Anka - Put Your Head on my Shoulder

Beach Boys - God Only Knows

Harry Nilsson - Gotta Get Up

Foreigner - Cold As Ice

Dr Dre and Snoop Dogg - Still D.R.E.

Grizzly Bear - Two Weeks

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Growing up is never easy. But pop songs about adolescence too often gloss over the complicated moments. The “teenage dream” archetype is just a pop culture fantasy. And no one really wants to be 17 forever. 

On her new album “Home Video,” Lucy Dacus talks about youthful growing pains. She remembers the uncomfortable moments. Dacus says that “a lot of childhood is crisis mode… you get pushed around by the world and the rules that are set for you.” Her songs examine unequal power relationships between parents and friends and lovers. 

On the lighter side, the album opens up with “Hot And Heavy,” which takes us back to the scene of an early romantic encounter on a basement sofa, red faced and awkward. But by the next song, “Christine,” the amorous feelings fade: “He can be nice, sometimes / Other nights, you admit he's not what you had in mind.” Bad dads, bible camp indoctrination, and perpetual peer pressure all take the stage in Dacus’ coming of age album. 

Dacus says that writing about those years is “a process of extorting control over things that I didn’t have control over at the time.” With untethered teenage dreams safely behind her, Dacus now gets to reclaim the meaning of youth: “I am the narrator of my own life so I get to say what this meant.”

Songs Discussed

Lucy Dacus - Night Shift

Frank Zappa - Sharleena

boygenius - Souvenir

Lukas Graham - 7 Years

Kendrick Lamar - Beyonce

Justin Bieber - Baby

Mandy Moore - Fifteen

Hilary Duff - Sweet Sixteen

The Beatles - When I'm Sixty Four

ABBA - Dancing Queen

Sound of Music - Sixteen Going On Seventeen

Avril Lavigne - 17

Kings Of Leon - 17

Lake Street Dive - Seventeen

Sharon Van Etten - Seventeen

Alessia Cara - Seventeen

Stevie Nicks - Edge of Seventeen

Janis Ian - At Seventeen

More

Playlist of coming of age songs 

Study on songs that references age

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