How We Heard It

Memory is a blessing and a curse.   On one hand, it educates us, it gives us hope, and it reminds us of the most cherished times of our lives. On the other, it forces us to relive our worst moments, it can open wounds in an instant, and it won't let us let go of our mistakes.   In a roundabout way, just about all art, including music, owes a debt to memory - how could we create without drawing on memory? But some music ar...

There's always been a place in our hearts, and on our charts, for girl groups - who are actually women, not girls, but we digress.   From the Supremes to the Spice Girls to Blackpink, they've showered us with messages of heartache and girl power. Their harmonies have enchanted us across the genres, whether pop, soul, hip-hop or dance. They emerged long ago, when women were rarely the go-to music stars, and they continue throug...

It's time to party up and party down.

End of summer blowout? Back to school bash? Check and check.

Even Halloween shindigs aren't so far away. And after that, Christmas and New Year's Eve and ...

OK, we're getting way ahead of ourselves. Besides, you don't even need to have a party if you want to listen to party songs.

This week on "How We Heard It," your hosts are checking off great party songs for the ages.

Always the methodical ...

We all have our off days, including the most beloved and successful among us. Of course, we tend to let our heroes off the hook by looking the other way and pretending their missteps never happened.   Take your favorite singers and bands, for instance. Maybe they did an album that you quietly avoid or they released a hit song you can't bring yourself to play anymore. We just pretend those inferior works don't exist and go on l...

There's long been some form of "reality TV" kicking around - in the form of news programs, documentaries and game shows, for example. But in the 1990s and especially the 2000s, there was such an explosion of "unscripted" programming on television coinciding with wholesale changes in society that it was hard to separate the two.

It could be argued America in particular has been susceptible to the influence of reality television. The...

Just looking at the music you've gathered over the years can give you insight into who you are and what you're about.   Whenever the hosts of "How We Heard" dig into their music collections, they always seem to find out more about themselves - sometimes more than they're expecting.   The guys are at it again on this week's episode, which prompts a free-flowing conversation about everything from old jazz to electronic danc...

If you can find the energy you need to get through every day, how do you do it?

A well-balanced diet?

A consistent exercise regimen?

Regular restful nights?

Maybe you need a little boost - like, say, a methodically steady stream of caffeine during the day balanced with diphenhydramine HCl at bedtime?

Well, don't forget the power of music. Whether you require a special blast of energy to get through a particularly demanding time or ...

Many of us in the Northern Hemisphere have already had our share of scorching days and steamy nights this summer, and there's only more to come.

But rather than take shelter with a cool drink behind blackout curtains, the hosts of "How We Heard It" decided to face the heat head on with a collection of "hot" songs.

Some are obvious, some you might have forgotten, and some you may never have heard. Some are recent, some go back sever...

This week on "How We Heard It," your hosts talk about bands and singers they haven't mentioned often on the show but who deserve to have their stories told.

For example: How did Lauryn Hill squander the record-breaking fame and adulation for her solo debut so badly that she never released another studio album?

Or why didn't Lou Reed's counterpart in The Velvet Underground have anything close to Reed's success?

Then there's the Aust...

"How We Heard It" is two years old this week, and Wayne, Chuck and John hope you're having a good time - because they are.

Oh sure, they sometimes slip up, say "you know" and "right" too often, lose their way sorting out topics and forget what they're saying now and then. Yet they keep finding their way in sharing lose opinions and hard facts about music, movies and TV from before any of us were born to wh...

In May your "How We Heard It" hosts served an episode of songs about moms in honor of Mother's Day, so it's only fitting that for June they turn out an episode of songs about uncles.

Kidding!

Of course Father's Day brings about an episode of songs about dads - all kinds of dads. From supportive dads to deadbeat dads, from the doting fathers to the cold fathers and maybe a hot daddy here and there for those so inclined.

For better o...

Everyone likes to laugh, but not everyone agrees about what's funny.

So if something tickles you, don't worry what anyone else thinks.

That's the attitude the "How We Heard It" hosts had when they dove into this week's topic: goofy movies we can't resist.

There are different kinds of intentionally funny movies, from slapstick to smart humor wrapped in absurd premises. Crude jokes, innuendo, outrageous sight gags and bizarre plot tw...

If you go looking for songs about the moon, they'll start falling out of the sky.

Moon-themed songs are some of the oldest in recorded history as well as some of the most recent to hit the charts.

They can be found connected to everything from organized religion to witchcraft, they come from all parts of the planet, and they show up in every genre of music.

In honor of the 2026 blue moon, the hosts of "How We Heard It" embarked on ...

For the 100th episode of their show "How We Heard It," the podcast team is giving you the music artists who give 100 percent.

Musicians are like any other group of workers. Some are tireless - endlessly productive, relentlessly creative or both. Others fill the status quo, doing what might be expected, sometimes a little more and sometimes a little less. Still others are just plain lazy, pushing their work off on others, making exc...

There are noteworthy changes in every decade of modern music, but the seismic shifts and chaos of the 1990s were unparalleled.

Whether it was the music of your youth, your kids' youth, your parents' youth or even your grandparents' youth, most everyone has noticed (either at the time or now, in retrospect) that the '90s were just different.

It was the decade that saw Generation X hand over the music reins to millennials. MTV went f...

The more music you collect - digitally, physically or in a combination - the more you have to keep up with.

And let's face it: Most of us aren't as organized as we'd like to be. So if you just keep accumulating music and the years keep rolling by, you can easily lose track of your collection and get disconnected from your memories.

This week on "How We Heard It," your hosts take another dive into their collections and turn up near-...

For many of us, our mothers are among the most important, most loving, and perhaps most complicated, people in our lives. And not coincidentally, mothers have been consistently referenced throughout history in most every art form - including music.

So with Mother's Day looming, the hosts of "How We Heard It" have chosen to highlight mothers in music. Songs about mothers range from the nostalgic and sweet to the melodramatic and hea...

A great song title is like a snappy headline: It grabs you and pulls you in with just a few words.

With so much riding on that kind of first impression, you'd think more artists would strive to come up with the best song titles possible. Yet in truth, many artists settle for ordinary and unimaginative titles all the time.

That's their loss.

This week the hosts of "How We Heard It" reveal some of their favorite attention-grabbing so...

We have a complicated relationship with rain.

We need it to grow our crops, to keep our bodies of water at the right level and to hydrate our own bodies. But just as it gives us life, it can take it away with devastating floods and catastrophic drought.

Yet rain is associated with far more than our physical needs. It touches off almost every kind of emotional reaction, varying from one person to the next.

A gentle rain may bring fe...