Switched on Pop
Episodes
Taylor Swift and the music industry's next $20
20 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Streaming feels like it's both at its height and on a precipice. Musicians are fed up at getting paid fractions of a penny, and the whole business mod...
SZA's Endless Melody
18 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Why does SZA's latest album SOS hit different? It's the way her melodies don't repeat where you expect them to, defying all the rules of pop songwriti...
Too Fast? We’re Curious: The sped-up remix phenomenon
10 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Over the past few months, you may have heard your favorite song pop up on the Internet – just slightly faster. You’re not alone: the phenomenon of...
ICYMI 90s Music Canon
03 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Matt Daniels, editor of the publication The Pudding, wanted to find out what songs from his youth would last into the future. So he designed a study t...
ICYMI: We *do* talk about Bruno
27 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The number one song on the charts is a bit of a mystery. “We Don’t Talk About Bruno” is the unlikely hit from Disney’s sleeper animated musica...
Anitta & Rosalía on the borders of Latin pop
20 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
When it comes to distinguishing what exactly Latin music is, what makes the cut? To some, it’s simply music from the Latin American region, and to o...
How Bad Bunny won 2022
13 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
For Switched On Pop’s end of year coverage, we just have one superlative: who won 2022? The answer, of course, is Bad Bunny. This year alone, the pr...
The soft sounds of Kali Uchis (live from Vulture Fest)
06 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Through crafting a unique, cross-cultural sound, Kali Uchis has emerged as one of indie music’s most promising talents. From playing in jazz band as...
Why do new Christmas songs fail?
29 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In case you missed it last year: why are there no new Christmas songs? One one hand, there's more holiday songs than we’ll ever need. Every year pop...
The Art of Flow
22 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In hip-hop, what draws us to an artist is not just the content of their lyrics but how they deliver them. Along with tapping your foot to the rhythm, ...
Willow Smith rocks harder
15 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Coping Mechanism, Willow's new album, is her heaviest music yet. Charlie and Willow chat about the making of the new record and the many multitudes of...
The Sound of Sapphism
08 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Tegan & Sara and King Princess have found themselves placed under the banner, "sapphic pop," a term recently coined referring to music by and/or for s...
Scary Pockets funkify pop classics (with Lizzy McAlpine)
01 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Scary Pockets is the musical collective that has been transforming pop classics into funk anthems for over half a decade. Each week they release a new...
Up late with Taylor Swift’s ‘Midnights’
24 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
A Taylor Swift album is just not a collection of new music, it’s an exploration of a theme. For the last eight years, each release has embodied a ...
Steve Lacy brings bedroom pop to the Billboard top
18 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
It’s the song that launched a thousand TikTok videos – or over 500,000 to be exact: Steve Lacy’s “Bad Habit.” The track is a smooth, psyc...
Why it hurts to release a record (with Sylvan Esso)
11 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Earlier this year, the members of Sylvan Esso took a gamble, making their "most free and wild and strange" album yet: No Rules Sandy. And to add to th...
Santigold sings Spirituals
04 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
After a four-year hiatus – and a name drop on a Beyoncé remix – musical polymath Santigold is back with a brand new album. Known for her signatur...
The future of music pt I
27 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In part 1 of our Vergecast: Future of Music series, Alex Cranz talks with Switched on Pop's Charlie Harding about the trends in music today that make ...
Lady Gaga & The Pequeños Monstruos
20 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
After an enlightening experience at Lady Gaga's Chromatica Ball, producer Reanna Cruz takes a look at the connection between Gaga's music and the Lati...
Invasion of the Vibe Snatchers
13 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Why do so many songs sound familiar? Because the number of chart topping interpolations — songs built off of old hits — has roughly doubled in th...
Into It: Song of Summer 2022
06 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Who had the song of the summer? Sam Sanders chats with Switched on Pop's Charlie Harding and Reanna Cruz about whose song (and album) is in the runnin...
Learning to love the Killers (maybe)
30 Aug 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Are you like Nate? Is there one artist that, every time you hear them, you can't help it—you start to grimace, sweat, seethe. You can't explain it, ...
K-Pop Chartbreakers: BLACKPINK, Girls’ Generation, NewJeans, IVE
23 Aug 2022
Contributed by Lukas
A lot has happened in the world of Kpop this summer, from Girls’ Generation sugar coated banger “Forever 1” marking a triumphant return from a f...
Demi Lovato Searches for "Substance" In Pop-Punk Perfection
16 Aug 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Demi Lovato has found herself in many avenues over the past few years – from releasing a tell-all documentary to uncovering extraterrestrials – bu...
Beyoncé's ‘Renaissance’ Era
09 Aug 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Beyoncé’s new album Renaissance is one of her most ambitious albums yet. On this week’s episode of Switched On Pop, we discuss Renaissance with b...
Into It: The Business of Beyoncé
05 Aug 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Subscribe to Into It with Sam Sanders Listen on Apple Podcasts: https://bit.ly/3vE4jqf Listen on Spotify: https://bit.ly/3bB7Vmf Listen elsewhere: ...
"It's About Damn Time" for Another Lizzo #1
02 Aug 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In the middle of a long, hot summer 2022, the people have spoken, and the people want to dance. Lizzo's "About Damn Time" just replaced Harry Styles's...
Elvis, Big Mama Thornton, Doja Cat, and the Long Legacy of “Hound Dog”
26 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Baz Luhrmann’s hit box office hit biopic Elvis has spurred new interest in the music of The King. Elvis Presley’s streaming subscribers has grown ...
We Won’t Go Back: Pop Music and the Fight For Reproductive Rights (w MILCK and Ann Powers)
19 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
On June 24th 2022 the Supreme Court decided Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization, overturning Roe v Wade and asserting that the Constitution ...
Harry Styles and the Sledgehammer Horns
12 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
As we hit the dog days of summer, the artist that’s started to soundtrack pool parties across the country is former One Direction bandmate and conte...
ICYMI: The 90s’ Most Unlikely Hit (with Baz Luhrmann)
05 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In 1999 filmmaker Baz Luhrmann released the song “Everybody’s Free To Wear Sunscreen,” a 7-minute-long graduation speech set to downtempo electr...
Beyoncé's House
28 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The world stops with a Beyoncé drop. On Monday, June 20th, our prayers were answered with “Break My Soul,” the lead single off of her upcoming a...
Robert Glasper on jazz, basketball, and his score for "Winning Time"
21 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Robert Glasper is the only artist to have an album debut in the top 10 of 4 different Billboard charts. He's a musical polymath whose resume ranges fr...
Scoring Stranger Things with Kyle Dixon & Michael Stein
16 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
We recently deconstructed how Kate Bush’s 1985 song “Running Up That Hill” has found itself at the center of culture due to a placement in the N...
Kate Bush, Stranger Things, and a hit song four decades in the making
14 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Kate Bush’s “Running Up That Hill” enters the latest season of Stranger Things during a brooding high-school hallway scene right out of the Jo...
So your song went viral on TikTok. What’s next?
07 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
On TikTok, pop stars — Halsey, FKA Twigs, and Florence Welch among them — have been complaining a lot lately about their labels forcing them to ma...
The 1980s jam that gave Latto and Mariah Carey Big D*** Energy
31 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
If you've heard Latto's swaggering track "Big Energy"—and after 30 weeks on the Hot 100, you probably have—you may have heard a resemblance to Mar...
Kendrick Lamar and the big samples
24 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
It’s been five years since Kendrick Lamar released his Pulitzer winning album DAMN. Having established himself as a modern rap virtuoso whose songs ...
Modern Classics: PJ Morton made Nas’s Stevie Wonder dream come true
17 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
On all of his projects — Grammy-winning albums, playing keys with Maroon 5, fronting a full string section in his NPR Tiny Desk Concert — PJ Mo...
Will Ukraine win Eurovision 2022?
10 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Greece, Spain, UK, Sweden, Italy and Ukraine are the frontrunners in the 2022 Eurovision competition. Switched On Pop analyzes the top six songs as we...
Belle and Sebastian on the value of staying "young and stupid"
03 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Belle and Sebastian released the first album Tigermilk in 1996, and they’ve released eight more since—a catalog that helped define the sound of ro...
The New Alternative
26 Apr 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Last month, Nirvana entered the Billboard Hot 100 chart for the first time in nearly two decades — only their fifth time in history — thanks to a ...
Jump-starting the creative process with Allison Ponthier
19 Apr 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Allison Ponthier knows the hardest part of making anything is getting started. When she was young, she “always wanted to write songs,” fanatically...
A Higher Power Ballad
12 Apr 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The recorded version of Justin Bieber’s “Peaches” opens with a full-blast chorus alongside driving percussion and ringing guitars. But when he p...
How sound becomes hearing
05 Apr 2022
Contributed by Lukas
We love listening to music at a ridiculous level of detail. But the other day we heard a podcast that made us fundamentally question the accuracy and ...
Listening 2 Britney: Gimme More
29 Mar 2022
Contributed by Lukas
There’s no more iconic Britney lyric than the opening of “Gimme More.” It's 2007, four years since her last album In The Zone was released, and ...
Listening 2 Britney: Toxic
22 Mar 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In 2003 Britney Spears released “Toxic,” a song that would make converts out of pop skeptics, be named one of the greatest tracks of the 21st cent...
Listening 2 Britney: I'm a Slave 4 U
15 Mar 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In the first three years of Britney Spears’ pop music career, she released annual, consecutive albums. In 1999 we got Baby One More Time – its lea...
Listening 2 Britney: ...Baby One More Time
08 Mar 2022
Contributed by Lukas
On a crisp Autumn morning in 1998, the world was introduced to the voice of Britney Spears, and pop would never be the same. Britney’s mix of vocal ...
Chartbreakers (ft. Megan Thee Stallion and the Red Hot Chili Peppers)
01 Mar 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Presenting Chartbreakers, in which Nate and Charlie listen to the Billboard Hot 100 chart from top to bottom and discover a TikTok controversy, a Nash...
Leon Bridges and Khruangbin Sing a Song of Texas
15 Feb 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Leon Bridges is the soul singer hailing from Fort Worth, Texas, who burst onto the music scene in 2015 with the album Coming Home. Since then he’s e...
Shaking Out the Numb with Sylvan Esso
08 Feb 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The last proper, blowout concert Charlie attended was devastatingly long ago, back in the winter of 2019. Bringing some funk to buttoned-up Walt Disne...
We *do* talk about Bruno
01 Feb 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The number one song on the charts is a bit of a mystery. “We Don’t Talk About Bruno” is the unlikely hit from Disney’s sleeper animated musica...
32 Albums in, Elvis Costello is Just Getting Started
25 Jan 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Elvis Costello burst onto the music scene in 1977 with the album My Aim Is True. Songs like “Alison” established him as a powerful new voice in ro...
Accidental K-pop star Eric Nam risks it all to go his own way
19 Jan 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Eric Nam is an accidental K-pop star. Growing up in Atlanta, and graduating from college in Boston, he did not expect that in his twenties he’s sign...
The Weeknd drives through purgatory (with a little help from Jim Carrey)
11 Jan 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Dawn FM is The Weeknd’s most narratively compelling album yet. More than just a collection of eighties-nostalgia single bait, Dawn FM is a concept a...
Why do new Christmas songs fail?
21 Dec 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Why are there no new Christmas songs? One one hand, there's more holiday songs than we’ll ever need. Every year pop stars drop countless holiday-the...
Tai Verdes TikTok-ed his way to a breakout hit
14 Dec 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Whether you’re a TikTok fanatic, or the app’s K-hole-inducing stream of content has forced you to delete it from your phone, its influence on musi...
Robert Plant & Alison Krauss Raise The Roof
07 Dec 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Robert Plant is in his own words “cold” and “prickly” while speaking about his new album with Alison Krauss, Raise The Roof. First thing upon...
The Beatles get back to their roots
30 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
2021 marks the 50th anniversary of the release of the Beatles’ final album, Let it Be. To commemorate the occasion, the remaining members of the ban...
Taylor, Adele & Silk Sonic’s broken hearts club (with Brittany Luse)
23 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
This week we are having a blast feeling really sad. Guest Brittany Luse, cohost of the acclaimed podcast For Colored Nerds, joins Nate and Charlie to ...
Snotty Nose Rez Kids on hip hop and Indigenous protest
16 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Merging hip hop and Indigenous culture, rap duo Snotty Nose Rez Kids are creating a sound that goes hard for a cause. On tracks like “War Club” wi...
The State of the Pop Union
09 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
From time to time, it is our constitutional duty to provide an update to the people on the current state of pop. What are the sounds? Who’s making t...
Why ABBA songs just hit different
02 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Swedish supergroup ABBA is releasing their first album in forty years, making this the perfect time for Nate and Charlie to investigate what makes the...
The Healing Power of Pop with Esperanza Spalding
26 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
It. Has. Been. A. Year. We’ve felt it; you’ve felt it. Sometimes, it’s comforting to consider how universal that overwhelming sense of blah is...
Janet Jackson's Legacy After 'Control' from It's Been A Minute with Sam Sanders
22 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Sam Sanders is one of our favorite friends of the podcast. His NPR show, It's Been A Minute, has released an outstanding three part series exploring c...
James Bond's Spycraft Sound
19 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The latest installment of the James Bond franchise, No Time To Die, closes the book on the Daniel Craig era of the international superspy. The film’...
James Blake & The Return of Harmony
12 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
For a decade James Blake has crafted an idiosyncratic sound. His early work as a minimalist electronic producer fused lush R&B chords with lyrical col...
Sparkle spoke out against R Kelly. It cost her her career.
07 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
On this week’s episode we're sharing a story fromThe Cut where senior writer Angelina Chapin and co-host Jazmín Aguilera talk about and talk with S...
ICYMI: The Mystery of Montero AKA Lil Nas X (feat. Take A Daytrip)
28 Sep 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Lil Nas X has a talent for creating productive controversy. First with “Old Town Road,” he challenged expectations about blackness in country musi...
Deja Vu: Why Olivia Rodrigo keeps giving up songwriting credits
21 Sep 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In the last few years music copyright claims have skyrocketed. More and more artists are giving songwriting credits away. Frequently, credits are give...
CHVRCHES and the sound of 80s horror
14 Sep 2021
Contributed by Lukas
CHVRCHES is well-known for their comprehensive use of synthesizers and their updated take on “synthpop”, a subgenre of pop we most closely associa...
From Taylor Swift to Bon Iver, Aaron Dessner Finds Meaning in Musical Community
07 Sep 2021
Contributed by Lukas
On August 27th Big Red Machine, the joint musical project of Justin Vernon and Aaron Dessner - artists known for their work as Bon Iver and in the roc...
Modern Classics: Carina del Valle Schorske on Cat Power's "Manhattan"
31 Aug 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Recently the hosts of Switched on Pop kept seeing the same byline next to their favorite pieces of music writing. A moving profile of Bad Bunny? There...
The Joy of Music Festivals
24 Aug 2021
Contributed by Lukas
For the past two weeks, our series on summer music festivals has uncovered the interplay of festival fashion and music and examined festival subcultur...
The Beauty and Horror of Insane Clown Posse's Summer Festival
17 Aug 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The Gathering of the Juggalos is the music festival centered around the rap duo Insane Clown Posse. Their songs are hyper-violent and profane; their s...
How Coachella took the Woodstock look
10 Aug 2021
Contributed by Lukas
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 — t...
Modern Classics: Mark Ronson on Ginuwine's "Pony"
03 Aug 2021
Contributed by Lukas
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,...
Summer Hits: Jack Antonoff on Bleachers “Stop Making This Hurt”
30 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
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 tracke...
Modern Classics: Yola on Childish Gambino’s “Redbone” and the Longevity of Soul
27 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In this installment of Modern Classics we speak to the amazing four-time Grammy Nominee musician, singer and songwriter Yola about her new record, Sta...
The Appealing Uneasiness of Listening to L’Rain (Live at JBL)
23 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
L’Rain is the musical persona of singer and multi-instrumentalist Taja Cheek, whose new album, Fatigue, begins with a lyrical quandary: “What ha...
Summer Hits: City Girls - Twerkulator (with Kyra Gaunt)
20 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
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...
Summer Hits: Lorde - Solar Power (w Hanif Abdurraqib)
16 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
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...
Summer Hits: Olivia Rodrigo - good 4 u (with Jessica Hopper)
13 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
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 ou...
Modern Classics: Labrinth's "Sexy MF" (with Sam Sanders)
06 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
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 ...
Growing Pains with Lucy Dacus
02 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Growing up is never easy. But pop songs about adolescence too often gloss over the complicated moments. The “teenage dream” archetype is just a po...
Summer Hits: BTS - Butter (with Jenna Andrews)
29 Jun 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In summer 2020, BTS released “Dynamite,” their first single recorded entirely in English. The song shot up the charts, became one of the most succ...
Pop’s Worst Kept Secret ft. Emily Warren
22 Jun 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In 1974 country music, singer songwriter, Dolly Parton got wind that Elvis Presley wanted to record her new song, “I Will Always Love You.“ Accord...
40 Years Later, Japanese City Pop is Still Crashing the Charts (with Cat Zhang)
15 Jun 2021
Contributed by Lukas
If you listen to a lot of music on YouTube, you may have been recommended a video. The thumbnail image is a striking black-and-white photo of a Japane...
J Cole’s The Off Season and the Power of the 12/8 Shuffle
08 Jun 2021
Contributed by Lukas
J Cole is one of the most successful rappers of his generation, someone who racks up hits while sustaining critical acclaim. But that isn’t necessar...
ICYMI Rina Sawayama Reimagines the 00s
01 Jun 2021
Contributed by Lukas
One of our favorites artists right now is Rina Sawayama. She works with her producer Clarence Clarity to make this mash up of sounds from the late 90s...
Vijay Iyer on why jazz has always been political
25 May 2021
Contributed by Lukas
When you think of jazz, you might think of La La Land, luxury car commercials, or fancy dinner parties. Cool, sophisticated, complex, jazz today seems...
Introducing Galaxy Brains
18 May 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Today we’re sharing something a little different - a new TV and film show from the Vox Media Podcast Network that we think you’ll like called Gal...
Turns out Willow Smith rocks
11 May 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Willow Smith has a new Paramore-inspired emo-slash-pop punk track with a formidable drum groove powered by Travis Barker. Over churning guitars she sn...
Julia Michaels’ Songwriting Superpowers
04 May 2021
Contributed by Lukas
For nearly a decade, Julia Michaels has penned hit songs for the biggest acts in pop music. She is adept at turning people’s vulnerabilities into me...
How Take A Daytrip took off (full interview)
30 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The story of the hitmakers behind Lil Nas X’s “Montero” Sheck Wes’s “Mo Bamba” and many more Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podca...
The Mystery of Montero AKA Lil Nas X (feat. Take A Daytrip)
27 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Lil Nas X has a talent for creating productive controversy. First with “Old Town Road,” he challenged expectations about blackness in country musi...
Pop On A Perilous Planet (w Kyle Devine)
20 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Earth Day 2021 gives us the chance to pause our usual programming and consider the role pop music plays in our deepening climate emergency. On Side A,...
5 Rules of Great Songwriting Collabs, According to Teddy Geiger and Dan Wilson (On Air Fest 2021)
13 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
On Switched on Pop we talk to songwriters and artists about how they make great songs. Most songs are written with two or more people in the room. Som...
Silk Sonic's Retro Soul (with Tayla Parx)
06 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Anderson Paak and Bruno Mars have joined forces as the duo Silk Sonic, and their first release “Leave the Door Open” suggests that their collab is...