Switched on Pop

Bruno Mars is back with a new album called The Romantic, his first solo release since 2016’s 24k Magic. At first listen, the lead single, “I Just Might,” sounds like an outtake from 2021’s collaborative album with Anderson Paak, the Philly soul-inspired An Evening with Silk Sonic. Listen closer though and another element emerges: a fast-paced conga drum line.

The rest of Mars’s nine-track confection chases that Latin influence. This is not just another retread of 70s funk and soul. In fact, The Romantic makes the case that Mars is pop’s great counter-programmer, finding styles of the past that no one else has yet mined.

Charlie and Nate break down all the new territory covered by Mars, from Latin boleros to Cuban cha chas, Nuyorican boogaloo to a mariachi “My Way.” The results may not change your mind about Mars, but they might make you appreciate the finer points of what is sure to be an omnipresent new release. 

Links: ⁠Newsletter⁠, ⁠YouTube

Songs discussed:

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Emerald Fennell's new adaptation of Emily Brontë's 1847 gothic romance "Wuthering Heights" is the most talked-about film of the year. But for pop lovers, the soundtrack is the real event: Charli xcx, asked to write one song, ended up recording an entire album for the movie while in the middle of the BRAT tour.

If BRAT gave people permission to be messy on the dance floor, this score gives permission to be messy in your souls. But Charli isn't the first artist to channel "Wuthering Heights" into music. Line up her hyperpop strings and cavernous reverb against Kate Bush's winding harmonies, a Hollywood orchestral score from 1939, and Ryuichi Sakamoto's unsettled piano, and something surprising emerges: the most operatic, passionate, Wuthering Heights-obsessed recording of them all might belong to someone you'd never expect.
Songs discussed:

Charli xcx “Everything is Romantic”

Charli xcx “Always Everywhere”

Charli xcx “House” (feat. John Cale)

Hans Zimmer “Inception score”

Charli xcx “Wall of Sound”

Ike & Tina Turner “River Deep, Mountain High”

Charli xcx “Chains of Love”

Charli xcx “Out of Myself”

Charli xcx “Funny Mouth” (co-written with Joe Curie)

Alfred Newman “Wuthering Heights score (1939)”

Ryuichi Sakamoto “Wuthering Heights score (1992)”

Kate Bush “Wuthering Heights”

Celine Dion “It’s All Coming Back to Me Now”

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It's the middle of award season, and Ryan Coogler's ode to the Black music canon Sinners has emerged as the Oscars frontrunner and the most nominated film in Academy Awards history. The love the movie has for the Delta blues is front and center, and begs the question: will the movie's legacy help bring the blues back into popular culture? There's already been a precedent for films reviving dead genres – think The Sting and its ragtime score, or O Brother Where Art Thou's relationship to bluegrass – and on this episode of Switched On Pop, Reanna and Nate talk with Vulture writer Fran Hoepfner about the times in which movie soundtracks have shifted the musical culture.

Read Fran's piece on movie scoring, The Death of the Classic Film Score, here.

Songs discussed:

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A$AP Rocky’s latest album, Don’t Be Dumb, is a wild ride through a cacophony of sounds — punk, industrial, drum ‘n’ bass, indie rock, and of course, hip hop. But on one track, “Robbery,” he and the rising superstar Doechii sample the world of jazz, specifically Thelonious Monk’s 1955 cover of Duke Ellington’s “Caravan.” In the process, Rocky and Doechii don’t just loop and flow, they create a whole narrative of jazz age victors and villains inspired by the rhythms and harmonies of jazz greats. The result is a song, and album, that makes the case for why hip hop matters more than ever in 2026.

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What makes Weird Al songs so indelible? Why is Bo Burnham more than just a comic? How do the biggest pop hits make us crack up in the middle of a somber ballad? Humor is always present in music, but we rarely confront it head on. Until now. With the help of Comedian Chris Duffy, author of the book Humor Me: How Laughing Can Make You More Connected, Present, and Happy, and a series of lyrical submission from our listeners, we try to answer the question once posed by Frank Zappa, once and for all: Does humor belong in music?

Songs discussed:

Sabrina Carpenter – Manchild
Marcia Belsky – 100 Tampons
Bo Burnham – From God’s Perspective
Snoop Dogg – Gin and Juice
The Gourds – Gin and Juice
Taylor Swift – All Too Well (10 Minute Version)
“Weird Al” Yankovic – Amish Paradise
“Weird Al” Yankovic – My Bologna
Stevie Wonder – Pastime Paradise
Coolio – Gangsta’s Paradise
Bo Burnham – That Funny Feeling
Bo Burnham – FaceTime With My Mom
Elaine Stritch – Are You Having Any Fun?
Barenaked Ladies – If I Had $1,000,000
Kendrick Lamar – Not Like Us
Eminem – The Real Slim Shady
2 Chainz – Birthday Song
Lil Jon – Snap Yo Fingers
Olivia Rodrigo – Get Him Back
Chappell Roan – Casual
Audrey Hobert – I like to touch people
Audrey Hobert – Bowling alley
Jensen McRae – Immune

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The ultimate gauntlet of popular music is upon us once again: it's Grammy season, and this year, the competition is pretty tight across the board. Big ticket A-listers like Bad Bunny, Sabrina Carpenter, Kendrick Lamar, and Lady Gaga occupy three of the four big categories (Song, Record, and Album of the Year), while folks like Olivia Dean, Lola Young, Leon Thomas, and Addison Rae duke it out in Best New Artist.

On this episode of Switched on Pop, Charlie, Nate, and Reanna take a look at the "big four" categories, and stump for their respective frontrunners in order to predict who will be taking home a golden phonograph (or two).

Links: ⁠Newsletter⁠, ⁠YouTube

Songs discussed:

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Swedish pop star Robyn emerged as a phenomenon in the mid 1990s, an ingenue whose work with Max Martin presaged the R&B crossover hits of acts like Britney and the Backstreet Boys. Since her debut, she’s released a string of albums that have shaped the sound of dance music as we know it.

Now, Robyn is releasing her first new album in eight years, Sexistential, and she’s given us three singles made up of her signature combination of thumping bass and ethereal vocals, while innovating into new personal –and vulnerable — territory. With raps about IVF, references to Blondie, a return to her collaboration with Max Martin, and our introduction of “drum n grace” to the lexicon, this episode is manna for Robyn fans and tyros alike.

Stick around as we unveil a new feature, “Quick Hits,” a down-and-dirty carousel ride through the most interesting new releases, from ASAP Rocky to Zach Bryan.

Songs discussed:

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Two years ago, Audrey Hobert had never written a song. She was a staff writer on a Nickelodeon series and had recently moved in with her childhood friend Gracie Abrams in Los Angeles. About six months later, a phrase spoken by a heartbroken acquaintance caught their attention; Hobert and Abrams sang it back to each other and wrote a complete song that night. Within the following year, Hobert co-wrote songs including “I Love You, I’m Sorry” and “Risk” for Abrams’s number-two album The Secret of Us. When the television show she was working on was later canceled, Hobert made a hard pivot into her own music.

What happened was Who's the Clown, a debut album where every track came from Hobert's own pen. In this live conversation recorded at NYU Steinhardt's Music and Performing Arts Professions program at Chelsea Studios, Hobert traces her path from dance classes choreographed to One Direction to eight-hour writing sessions that yield two good lines on a lucky day. She explains why she can't write in front of anyone, why she refuses to repeat a chorus three times, and why the Steve Martin documentary made her open her album with the disarmingly strange declaration: "I like to touch people."

The conversation moves from craft to confession as Hobert reflects on what it means to finally be looked at, and whether the view from inside the spotlight is everything she'd imagined.

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SONGS DISCUSSED

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It’s a brand new year, and what better way to ring it in than with the second annual Switched On Pop bingo? Like last year, Charlie, Nate, and Reanna polish their crystal balls and play Popstradamus, each throwing out eight outlandish pop predictions for the coming months. This time, there’s piano ballads, cover songs, and what Charlie calls the impending “death of auto-tune.” 

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Songs discussed:

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A scientist asked people to sit in a silent room for 15 minutes. Almost half of them decided to give themselves a painful electric shock instead. What is it about our brains that makes our relationship with silence so strange? And should we learn how to listen to it?

This is the third episode of the four-part Unexplainable series, The Sound Barrier.

Links: ⁠Newsletter⁠, ⁠YouTube

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