Are you a lyric person or a music person?
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Hello, it's Noam, and today is a big day. We're launching a video version of our show on Netflix, and we'll be dropping new episodes over there every Monday. We're still going to have two episodes every week right here in the audio feed. On Mondays, you're going to get the same episode on Netflix, just right here for audio. And on Wednesdays, you'll get another new episode just for the audio feed. So if you want to watch this episode right now, you can check it out over at Netflix. And if you do, shoot us an email. Let us know what kind of mysteries you want us to explore on the video show. Unexplainable at Vox.com. All right, here we go. A while back, my friend Charlie Harding came to me with a question.
Why do I pay attention to the music before I hear the words?
Charlie's a songwriter. He's the host of the excellent music podcast, Switched on Pop. And he was wondering why when he listens to music, he can't really hear the lyrics.
Am I a robot? Like, I kind of feel like I've lost some human trait that is essential to the purpose of music.
So I took this question, I went and talked to a whole bunch of researchers, and I found out that this is a way bigger question than I thought. It tells us a lot more about the brain and how we process what we hear than I realized. So what's going on here? When we listen to Beyonce, The Beatles, or the Beastie Boys, do we actually hear the same thing? Or do we hear something entirely different?
Charlie, thank you for coming on Unexplainable. I'm so happy to be here. A while back, you came to me with this question. Why do you pay attention to music and not lyrics when you listen to a song?
Yeah.
Where'd that come from? Where'd that question come from?
It's like the fundamental question of my life. Music is my job. And yet, when I hear a song, I hear all the music first, and I'll listen to a song for the third, fourth, fifth time. And then I'm like, oh, there's some words. The music always comes to me before the words do. And I find remembering the words very challenging. And I know I'm not alone. I'm the same way.
Yeah, yeah. I'm a music first, can't remember the lyrics kind of guy. What's wrong with us? This is a very good question.
Am I a robot? I kind of feel like I've lost some human trait that is essential to the purpose of music. But the moment that I really realized something is wrong was at my friend Steven Abbey's wedding. Okay. And me and my co-host Nate were asked to play a song at this wedding. We were asked to play the song California Stars, Billy Bragg and Wilco. It's a great sort of like campfire song.
And so I'm like driving in the car with my collaborator, Nate, who's a brilliant musician. and his wife, Whitney. And we are trying to remember this song. We're singing it, we screw it up. We go back and look at the lyrics. We sing it, we keep screwing it up. And Whitney in the front seat is like, guys, what is wrong with you? And she just like knows all the lyrics the first time through.
She's been listening to you guys mess it up over and over again.
And of course, at the wedding, we totally screwed up the lyrics, but nobody noticed, right? Like everyone was watching them. No one was paying attention to us or paying attention to the wedding happening. So it was fine. But obviously on the side, Whitney's just like, oh my God.
Okay, so I'm fascinated by this question. I have felt this myself, right?
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