Strong Songs
Music: it's good. On each episode of Strong Songs, host Kirk Hamilton takes listeners inside a piece of music, breaking it down and figuring out what makes it work.
Episodes
Strong Songs Season Eight will kick off on Friday, January 16!
If you want to listen a week early, get monthly "Inside the Episode" bonuses, and support the creation of Strong Songs, go sign up for the Patreon. We're running a sale for the whole month of January - use the code STRONG8 when signing up, and your first month will be just $1.
See you in a couple weeks for the season premiere!
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Kirk sits down with jazz piano legend Peter Martin to talk about Peter's musical background, his momentous early encounters with Wynton Marsalis and Kenny Kirkland, the jazz scene of the 1990s, how the Suzuki method works, and why jazz students today should be less shy about talking to their heroes.
Check out Peter's online jazz education program Open Studio, as well as You'll Hear It, the music podcast he co-hosts with Adam Maness...
Writer, composer, and Peabody Award-winning podcaster Jad Abumrad joins Kirk to talk about Fela Kuti: Fear No Man, his new 12-part series on the life, music, and legacy of Afrobeat superstar Fela Kuti.
DISCUSSED/REFERENCED:
- “Miryea’s Death” by Jack Nitzche from Revenge, 1990
- “Prologue” by Alexandre Desplat from Birth, 2004
- Excerpt from Port(al), music by Paola Prestini and Jad Abumrad, performed by the Brooklyn Youth Chorus
- “It’s Hi...
This episode of Twenty Thousand Hertz originally ran in August 2025.
Kirk's 2020 episode of Strong Songs about the music of Super Mario
TWENTY THOUSAND HERTZ SHOW NOTES:
This episode was written & produced by Casey Emmerling.
From the springy jump sound to the iconic Overworld Theme, the sound of Super Mario Bros. is instantly recognizable. With just five lo-fi audio channels and 40 kilobytes of space, composer Koji Kondo created a sou...
It's fun to talk about TV theme songs, so that's what Kirk and special guest Leigh Sales did. Does this episode need any more introduction than that? Probably not.
Check out Leigh's wonderful podcast Chat 10 Looks 3
A YouTube Playlist of many of the themes discussed (and some they didn't get to)
DISCUSSED/REFERENCED:
- The Office Theme - “Handbags and Gladrags” - 1967 by Mike D’Abo, perf. Big George Webley -
- US theme 2005 by Jay Fergu...
Originally Aired October 20, 2020
The Wildlings are south of the wall, the robots are rising up, Seventh Kavalry's on the move, and two percent of the world's population has vanished. Time for another edition of Strong TV Songs!
This time around the focus is on HBO, a network that has defined much of the broader TV landscape over the past couple of decades. So let's dig into a bunch of great music from a bunch of good shows, with the...
With so many dozens of albums over so many wildly disparate eras, it can take a lifetime to truly get your arms around Bob Dylan. On this episode, Kirk is joined by two guests who have spent their lifetimes doing exactly that. Matt Sitman and Sam Adler-Bell, in addition to co-hosting the terrific political history podcast Know Your Enemy, are both lifelong Dylan fans. This spring, they came on the show to give listeners a tour of D...
The Wailin' Jennys have been singing together for more than two decades - recording albums, touring the world, and filling venues large and small. After all these years, the trio—Ruth Moody, Heather Masse, and Nicky Mehta—have reached both a plateau and an inflection point. What's it like for a musical group that's been together for that long; for singers who've found such perfect vocal harmony for one another? How do they each thi...
Back in May, Kirk joined pianists Adam Maness and Peter Martin of the You'll Hear It podcast to talk about what makes Tower of Power great. It was a very fun conversation, so he asked if he could run their episode in the Strong Songs feed. And here we are!
Listen to You'll Hear It anywhere you find podcasts, and find both Adam and Peter (and many others) teaching jazz lessons at OpenStudio.com.
ORIGINAL SHOW NOTES
May 19, 2025
We hand...
THE APOCALYPSE WERE:
Tony Capuano - Guitar, Lead Vocals
John Shorb - Alto Sax
Gene Meros - Tenor Sax
Greg Novik - Bass, Backing Vocals (guitar on Stormy Monday)
Oggie Hamilton - Drums, Backing Vocals
Featuring The Apocalypse playing:
- “Good Good Lovin’” and “Try Me” by James Brown
- “Hi-Heel Sneakers" by Tommy Tucker
- “The Shadow of Your Smile” by Mandel & Webster
- "I Don't Want To Cry" by Dixon/Jackson
- “Sack of Woe” by Cannonball Adderley
- “Thi...
For the Season Seven finale, Kirk takes a look at Bill Withers' enduring hit "Lean On Me." In the process, he takes a broader look at a bunch of Withers' other most famous songs to better understand how this plainspoken, seemingly ordinary guy managed to write so many extraordinary songs.
Written by: Bill Withers
Album: Still Bill, 1972
Listen/Buy via Album.Link
ALSO REFERENCED/DISCUSSED:
- “Ain’t No Sunshine” and “Grandma’s Hands” by...
Kirk answers a bunch of listener questions on topics like bluegrass guitar, the music of Blue Prince, good apps for training theory skills, Robert Fripp's "Frippertronics," a mysterious sound on a Gene Clark song, different types of music notation, and the legacy of the blues. All that, and a trio of terrific singer/songwriters stops by the studio to help answer a question about lyrics.
In 1981, Sting brought a demo of a song he'd been working on down to AIR Studios in Montserrat to see what his bandmates thought of it... and they wound up keeping the demo and just recording their parts on top. The result was "Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic," an unusual Police song, but an enduring hit.
On this episode, Kirk goes deep on every aspect of Sting's exuberant yet frustrated love song, unearthing the magic that li...
The jazz standard "All The Things You Are" has been performed countless times by master jazz vocalists, 30s big bands, bebop small groups, hard-bop combos, modern deconstructionists, and even soon-to-be Kings of Pop. On this episode, Kirk takes listeners through the history of the now-famous tune, from its humble Broadway origins all the way to his recording studio in Portland, where he and some friends recorded an all-new arrangem...
Turn around... every now and then I get a little lonely and the snare is sounding small
Turn around... every now and then I get a little bit tired of listening to the sound of sleigh bells
Turn around... every now and then I get a little bit nervous that the cannons will not fire
Turn around...
...every now and then Kirk decides to take on a classic 80s power ballad, and winds up learning a thing or two about when to use castanets and ...
How should you count The Police's "Bed's Too Big Without You?" Why do so many people revere Marty Friedman's solo on Megadeth's "Tornado of Souls"? What's going on with those pauses during the Bluey theme? And what the heck is that sound on Sly and the Family Stone's "Sex Machine"? Those questions and many more on the first mailbag episode of Season Seven.
Thanks to Nevada Jones (voice) and Scott Pemberton (guitar) for their expert...
Kirk pays a visit the musical world of The Muppets, from their Sesame Street origins in the 60s to the globe-hopping, cinematic heights of the 70s and 80s, with plenty of detours along the way.
FEATURING:
"Sesame Street Theme" by Joe Raposo, Jon Stone, and Bruce Hart
"Mah Na Mah Na" by Piero Umilliani from Sweden: Heaven and Hell
"Pinball Number Count" by Walt Kraemer and Ed Bogas, feat. The Pointer Sisters
"Rainbow Connection" by Paul ...
Kirk digs into one of the most dense and challenging records in his collection, with an analysis of "Roulette Dares (The Haunt Of)" from The Mars Volta's 2003 progressive rock opus De-Loused in the Comatorium.
Written by: Omar Rodríguez-López, Cedric Bixler-Zavala, and Jeremy Ward
Produced by: Omar Rodríguez-López & Rick Rubin
Album: De-Loused in the Comatorium, 2003
Listen/Buy via Album.Link
ALSO REFERENCED/DISCUSSED:
- Excerpts from ...
Kirk digs into Fiona Apple's breakneck 1999 single "Fast As You Can," a cornerstone in her late 90s collaborations with Jon Brion, as well as her work with drummer Matt Chamberlain.
Written by: Fiona Apple
Produced by: Jon Brion
Album: When The Pawn..., 1999
Listen/Buy via Album.Link
ALSO REFERENCED/DISCUSSED:
- Jon Brion in Performing Songwriter Magazine, 2000
- "Criminal" by Fiona Apple from Tidal, 1996
- "Tymps (The Sick in the Head Song)...
Strong Songs Season Seven kicks off with two of the most famous songs ever recorded, from one of the biggest bands in the world. U2's "Where the Streets Have No Name" and "With or Without You" make up two-thirds of the three-song "suite" of hit singles that kicked off their 1987 album The Joshua Tree. As it turns out, the two songs have a lot to say to one another! They also have a lot to say about how U2 wrote music, and about the...
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