In my first episode of Earworm, I speak with Warren Lain. He's a Radiohead fan who also happens to be an incredibly talented musician and music teacher. In December 2016 he uploaded a 38 minute video to YouTube about a Radiohead song that I deeply love, "Videotape." He had been thinking about the music theory behind this seemingly simple song for the better part of a decade. The reason? “Videotape”, a slow rhythmically monotonous song, is actually syncopated. I’m joined also by Erin Barra, a professor at Berklee College of Music, who helped Warren and I explain this musical illusion.
Over the past few years a general nostalgia for the 1980s has infiltrated music, film, and television. I deeply love those gated reverb drums of the '80s - you know that punchy percussive sound popularized by Phil Collins and Prince? So for my second episode of Vox Pop’s Earworm I spoke with two Berklee College of Music professors, Susan Rogers and Prince Charles Alexander, to figure out just how that sound came to be, what makes it so damn punchy, and why it’s back.
The fade out in music is one of those necessary tools in a record producers arsenal. But if you listen to today's hits it's much more likely you'll hear a song that has a hard abrupt electronic ending. Bill Weir, wrote a great piece at Slate a few years ago tracking the rise and fall of the fade out in pop music: from one of the very first fade outs created by a literal wooden door to the epic 4 minute fade out of "Hey Jude." In the video above he brings me through that sonic journey.
In 2013, Migos made it to the Billboard Charts with "Versace." It was a viral hit and it put the spot light on a very unique rap flow - the triplet. The triplet, often now called the "Migos flow" happens when three syllables are rapped over one beat. It's now so popular that nearly every mainstream rap artists these days has used it, often to great effect. Kendrick rapped in triplets on one of the most dramatic moments of his latest album, Damn. and Chance the Rapper used triplets on the opening track of Coloring Book. This video is about where the triplet flow came from and how it's been a common tool for rappers since Three 6 Mafia and Bone Thugs-N-Harmony's debut albums in the '90s.
In episode #5 of Vox Pop's Earworm, producer Estelle Caswell, comes to appreciate the art of repetition with the help of Colin Morris and Elizabeth Margulis. Colin is a computer scientist who created two really amazing ways to visualize repetition in song lyrics and how they've increased over the last 50 or so years. Elizabeth Margulis has dedicated her career to music research and runs the music cognition lab at the University of Arkansas. Her book "On Repeat: How music plays the mind" delves deep into the science behind musical repetition and explores the many ways our brains react to it.
Trout Mask Replica, by Captain Beefheart and his Magic Band was inducted into the Library of Congress' national recording registry in 2010 - nearly 40 years after it's release. The album has been widely cited by artists of all kinds as a shining point of creativity and original thought - it also is very very hard to listen to. It's the musical equivalent of a Jackson Pollock painting. Its discordant rhythms and motifs sound made up on the spot by a child, but every sound and riff you hear on the album was arduously rehearsed over the course of a year by a group of young musicians who were remarkable in their own right. Samuel Andreyev and Susan Rogers join me on Episode #6 of Vox Pop's Earworm to breakdown why this album is such a masterpiece.
There's a halo of reverence around J Dilla, a producer and beatmaker from Detroit who made some of the most fascinating and influential beats in hip hop history. Before his early death in 2006, J Dilla worked with countless artists and producers - from Erykah Badu and Janet Jackson to Busta Rhymes and Madlib - and developed an off-kilter style of rhythm and sampling that transcended the machine he used to create music, the Akai Midi Production Center, otherwise known as the MPC.
For the final episode of Earworm I'm digging into N.E.R.D.'s hit song "Lemon" featuring Rihanna. Its sound is quintessential Pharrell: happy, energetic, and bouncy. The more I listened to it though, the more I realized that its bouncy energy was inspired by a genre of hip-hop that has rarely trickled into the mainstream - New Orleans Bounce. To learn more about the genre and to get the definitive answer on whether "Lemon" is a bounce song, I spoke with Big Freedia, a Native of New Orleans and an artist widely credited with bringing bounce music to the masses.
If you listen to the first few seconds of Bruno Mars’ “Finesse” (hint: listen to the Cardi B remix) you’ll hear a sound that immediately creates a sense of 80s hip-hop nostalgia. Yes, Cardi B’s flow is very Roxanne Shante, but the sound that drives that nostalgia home isn’t actually from the 1980s. Robert Fink and the inventor of the Fairlight CMI, Peter Vogel, help me tell the story of the orchestra hit - a sound that was first heard in 1910 at the Paris Opera where the famed 20th century Russian composer Stravinsky debuted his first hit, The Firebird. The video above is, in short, a history of the original orchestra hit sample from The Firebird Suite to the 1982 hit “Planet Rock” to “Finesse.” And as a treat, here’s a playlist of way more songs with orchestra hits than you probably wanted.
When Francis Scott Key attached his poem about the War of 1812 to a popular British song called "To Anacreon in Heaven," he kicked off over 200 years of painfully bad singing by patriotic Americans. The Star Spangled Banner became the official national anthem of the United States in 1931, but it had been used by the Army and Navy for decades before that and was popular from the start. One big problem? The melody wasn't exactly written for the masses, but for trained soloists. Commentators pointed out early on that it was exceedingly difficult for most people to sing, suggesting that "America the Beautiful" might be a better alternative. Critics have noted that the music requires a uniquely wide vocal range, it's full of tricky intervals, and the lyrics are confusing and uninspiring. But if you look at the national anthem as a sport, where we get to watch performers at the top of their game tackle the gauntlet that is the Star Spangled Banner, you may come to appreciate it. In this video, we debate whether the difficulty of the Star Spangled Banner is a feature or a bug for a national anthem.
Two songs that show off Aretha Franklin’s gospel roots.
John Coltrane, one of jazz history’s most revered saxophonists, released “Giant Steps” in 1959. It’s known across the jazz world as one of the most challenging compositions to improvise over for two reasons - it’s fast and it’s in three keys. Braxton Cook and Adam Neely give me a crash course in music theory to help me understand this notoriously difficult song, and I’m bringing you along for the ride. Even if you don’t understand a lick of music theory, you’ll likely walk away with an appreciation for this musical puzzle.
When asked to visualize what jazz looks like, you might picture bold typography, two tone photography, and minimal graphic design. If you did, you’re recalling the work of a jazz label that single-handedly defined the “look” of jazz music in the 1950s and1960s: Blue Note. Inspired by the ever present Swiss lettering style that defined 20th century graphic design (think Paul Rand), Blue Note captured the refined sophistication of jazz during the early 60s, particularly during the hard bop era, and gave it a definitive visual identity through album covers. Some songs don't just stick in your head, they change the music world forever. Join Estelle Caswell on a musical journey to discover the stories behind your favorite songs.
Smooth jazz has gotten a bad rap for decades. It’s often associated with background music for elevators or the soundtrack at the dentist office. Smooth jazz is less a genre of music than a highly researched radio format and, although it’s heyday was in the 1990s and it’s mostly associated with Kenny G, its origins go back the mid 1960s when a select few jazz musicians crossed over to pop music and had music purists riling. Artists like Grover Washington Jr. and George Benson took the style to new heights and created the sound that we all know and love….to hate.
Earworm looks at the political fight over rock and roll lyrics that eventually gave birth to the Parental Advisory Explicit Content sticker that appears on many musical albums. Estelle Caswell looks at the creation of the PMRC and how it became a force against profanity and was involved in the satanic panic over music.
Earworm examines how disco music changed the face of pop music. Before disco the seven inch single ruled pop music resulting in radio-friendly songs that were about three and a half minutes in length. Dance and disco DJs preferred longer music resulting in the popularization of the longer twelve inch single.
Stevie Wonder is one of the most widely celebrated artists in history. His music is infectious, melodic, and thoughtfully inspired by the jazz musicians who came before him. In his legendary song "Sir Duke," Stevie paid homage to the late Duke Ellington and his other predecessors. Jacob Collier is a rising star in his own right and is Stevie Wonder's self-proclaimed greatest fan. Here, he breaks down the jazz influences and syncopations Stevie uses to create the magic that is "Sir Duke."
House has become one of the most popular forms of electronic music since its inception in the late 80’s. It began in Chicago, when local DJ’s and music producers experimented with remixing disco vocals over hard hitting drum machines. They would soon play a huge role in popularizing the sound and distinguishing house music as a global music genre. Chicago gospel singer, Loleatta Halloway, is one of the most widely sampled artists in house music history. Her song “Love Sensation” has been sampled nearly 300 times, including on Black Box’s “Ride on Time”, the notorious hit that became the best selling single in the U.K in 1989.
It’s nearly impossible to turn on the radio and not hear a male artist singing really high. Likely he’s a tenor, and more often than not, he’ll sing in falsetto. Think Justin Bieber, the Weeknd, Bruno Mars, Drake, Charlie Puth, Shawn Mendes, Adam Levine, Sam Smith ... the list goes on and on and on. This isn’t a trend — it has been the status quo for decades. Falsetto, which comes from the Italian word for false voice, has been around for a very long time. However, there have been few attempts to track its popularity in pop music. We teamed up with the Pudding to change that. We analyzed 20,000 songs that charted on the Billboard Hot 100 using vocal data sourced from Pandora’s Music Genome Project to figure out just how popular falsetto singing actually is. ThIs video reveals the biggest trends in men singing high, from the chart-topping falsettos of ’70s disco to the belting high notes of ’80s hard rock.
“Sicko Mode” by Travis Scott was an unexpected chart topper. It sounds more like three songs than one. Its disjointed otherworldly effects, echos, and song structure are a far cry from the pop songs we’re used to, but it’s in these off-kilter moments that we get glimpses of a musical culture built on sonic experimentation that has had a massive impact on nearly every genre for the past 50 years: Jamaican dub.
Bach's G major prelude has captivated cellists and music lovers for years. Cellist Alisa Weilerstein deconstructs it. Bach's six cello suites are considered a rite of passage for cellists. They're masterpieces of classical music, and the prelude in G major — the first movement of the suites — is perhaps the best example of Bach's power as a composer. In it, he's able to achieve rich and complex harmonic movements with just a four-stringed instrument, while using the very basic tenets of music composition. Those basic tenets are what Alisa Weilerstein, a renowned cellist and McArthur fellow, helps us understand.
If you open up your preferred music streaming service and browse its library of curated playlists, you’re bound to find a slew of them labeled “Smooth R&B,” “Chill R&B,” “90s Slow Jams,” or even “Bedroom Jams.” The artists within those playlists might range from recent R&B powerhouse singers like H.E.R and SZA to classic mainstays like Roberta Flack and Anita Baker. These playlists have gained massive followings over the past few years, but they aren’t a new innovation. In fact, they owe their success and sound to a 40-year-old staple of Black radio: Quiet Storm. In the video above, Estelle Caswell is joined by ethnomusicologist Fredara Hadley, along with former and current radio hosts Angela Stribling, Al Wood, and John Monds, to explore the roots of this iconic late-night radio format.
Long-haul truckers were once country music’s heroes.
