Switched on Pop

Switched on Pop

A podcast all about the making and meaning of popular music. Musicologist Nate Sloan & songwriter Charlie Harding pull back the curtain on how pop hits work magic on our ears & our culture. From Vulture and the Vox Media Podcast Network.

Episodes

All roads lead to Pharrell: Tyler, Clipse, and Cardi

August 19, 2025 • 52 mins
The conversation around the new music this summer has been a dour one. Some of the biggest songs in the country right now are downtempo stomp-clap anthems and wistful Cranberries pastiche. Even on this very show, Nate and Charlie have asked: where's the fun? As it turns out, the party (as always) is happening in hip-hop, led by a formidable influence: Pharrell.. On this episode of Switched On Pop, producer Reanna and engineer Bra...
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A brief history of terrible lyrics (with Sam Sanders)

August 12, 2025 • 43 mins
Why do bad lyrics happen to good people? From "suckin' on a chili dog" to "making love to his tonic and gin," even the biggest hits from our favorite artists can feature lyrical turns that make us feel quizzical, offended, or even downright nauseated. With the help of Sam Sanders, brilliant host of The Sam Sanders Show, we plumb the depths of the worst pop lyrics of all time—culled from hundreds of submissions form Switched on Pop ...
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Summer Bummer (with Commotion’s Elamin Abdelmahmoud)

August 5, 2025 • 37 mins
Every music critic seems to agree: 2025 has no true song of summer. Last August, Teddy Swims’s “Lose Control” dominated the charts. This year…Teddy Swims’s “Lose Control” dominates the charts. What’s going on? Why is there no new summer song to unite us in collective listening, and will there ever be again? Elamin Abdelmahmoud, host of the CBC’s daily culture podcast Commotion, joins Nate and Charlie to discuss the dearth of seas...
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Justin Bieber's Lo-fi Bedroom Swag

July 29, 2025 • 43 mins
Justin Bieber is back with his seventh studio album: the aptly-titled SWAG. The lo-fi, reverb-laden record is a remarkably candid look inside the world of Bieber, using the palette of both underground pop and 90's R&B to accentuate lyrics about his wife, his struggles, and his "standing on business." Notably, it's his first album post-split with manager Scooter Braun, and the first where Bieber has been in full artistic control. ...
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How podcasting got its sound ft. Breakmaster Cylinder

July 22, 2025 • 46 mins
What if the entire sound of modern podcasting can be traced back to a single Grateful Dead song uploaded in 2001? We uncover the musical lineage that connects NPR's classical gravitas to dubstep wobbles, from the very first RSS feed experiment to the mysterious masked composer who's scored over 200 podcast themes and shaped what millions of people hear when they hit play. This deep dive reveals how podcast music evolved from classi...
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Is that new song you like AI? Here’s how you can tell

July 15, 2025 • 49 mins
The robots have arrived, and they're making protest songs about boots on the ground. When an AI band called The Velvet Sundown fooled over a million Spotify listeners with their psychedelic folk anthems, it raised an unsettling question: have the machines gotten so good we can no longer hear the difference? Charlie puts Nate to the test with a game of "AI or Human?" featuring Wu-Tang deepfakes, phantom instruments, and songs that s...
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The Benson Boone-Doggle

July 8, 2025 • 32 mins
In which we explore the unlikely rise, and surprising backlash against, one Benson Boone. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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Can Recession Pop predict the market?

July 1, 2025 • 32 mins
Why does the economy look great on paper but feel terrible in your wallet? There might be a more revealing economic indicator hiding in your Spotify queue. "Recession Pop" first emerged during the Great Recession and exploded into playlists, radio formats, and DJ sets in 2024. From melancholy indie anthems to escapist dance tracks, the songs we gravitate toward during uncertain times might predict where the economy is headed next. ...
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How Americana helped mainstream country find its soul

June 27, 2025 • 35 mins
 As we've been examining over the course of Country Week, country music has found a larger audience, in part by widening its sonic palette. For the final episode of this series, we take a look at a genre on the outskirts of country – Americana music – and how it's being used to connect to the scene's musical roots.   Historically, Americana has embraced an acoustic sound, traditional repertoire, and an appetite for virtuosic techn...
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Country music is Mexican (Fuerza Regida and Grupo Frontera)

June 26, 2025 • 32 mins
More often than not, country music is seen as an "American" genre – meaning that the music is seen as strictly from the United States. In some ways, that's true; but the genre's iconography, sound, and ethos can actually be traced to the south of the border, in Mexican regional music. The worlds have been more intertwined than you would think, and in musica mexicana, we find the closest comparison to what we traditionally call "c...
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The Ballad of Lainey Wilson and Jessie Murph

June 25, 2025 • 28 mins
There's often an unspoken (and deeply misogynistic) rule on country music radio: never play two female artists back to back. In this episode of Switched On Pop's country week, we aim to do just that. Looking at two artists on opposite ends of the country music spectrum – traditionalist Lainey Wilson, and genre-bending Jessie Murph – Nate and Charlie try to understand the state of female country through their respective songs "4x4xU...
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The hick hop renaissance (BigXthaPlug and Bailey Zimmerman)

June 24, 2025 • 35 mins
One of the biggest country hits of the year has been "All The Way," by Texas rapper BigXthaPlug and country rocker Bailey Zimmerman, which peaked at #4 on the Billboard Hot 100. The song is a perfectly mixed cocktail of trap sonics with country melodies, held together by a shared southern drawl between the two artists. As the genre of "country" expands and morphs to include different sounds, artists, and styles, "All The Way" ser...
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Is Morgan Wallen the problem with country music?

June 23, 2025 • 35 mins
Country music stands at a crossroads between tradition and evolution, and no artist embodies this tension better than Morgan Wallen. His song "I'm the Problem" opens with beautiful bluegrass guitar before hitting you with hard-hitting 808 basslines, creating a sonic reflection of country's current identity crisis. Wallen has this uncanny ability to turn his endless personal problems into undeniably catchy hooks that somehow make hi...
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"Manchild" and other songs about male incompetence

June 17, 2025 • 29 mins
Looking for relationship advice? Skip the self-help books and turn to Sabrina Carpenter's latest single "Manchild" instead. This deep dive into the art of musical insults reveals how pop's newest sensation joins a legendary lineage of women artists who've perfected the craft of calling out incompetent men through song. From Dolly Parton's subversive "Dumb Blonde" to TLC's iconic "No Scrubs," there's an entire musical tradition of w...
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Frankly, Sinatra still matters (with Seth MacFarlane)

June 10, 2025 • 48 mins
What if the Chairman of the Board's biggest contribution to music wasn't his voice, but the blueprint he created for modern pop stardom? Frank Sinatra didn't just sing songs: he invented the concept album, injected his full personality into every performance, and created a template for artistic control that today's biggest stars still follow. His influence runs deeper than you think: Amy Winehouse titled her debut Frank as tribute,...
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Is the future of pop...heavy metal?!

June 3, 2025 • 45 mins
The UK outfit Sleep Token has done what we once thought impossible: Found commercial success playing heavy metal music in 2025 AD. Their fourth studio album, Even in Arcadia, went to number one on the Billboard 200 upon its release, with all ten of its tracks charting on the Hot 100—this despite the fact that the band has been entirely masked and anonymous through their nine year existence. Sleep Token's willingness to inject the...
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Charli XCX threw this party 4 us

May 27, 2025 • 38 mins
Five years ago, Charli XCX released the track "party 4 u," a melancholic ode to throwing a function for that one specific person. Now, in 2025, the song has gotten a renewed life – motivated by a foolproof cocktail of TikTok trends, the Billboard Hot 100, and a post-Brat Summer clamor for Charli. It's rare for pop songs like this to get a second wind. So, on this episode of Switched On Pop, Reanna, Nate, and Charlie put on our det...
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808: The drum machine that changed music forever (Twenty Thousand Hertz)

May 25, 2025 • 27 mins
The 808 is arguably the most iconic drum machine ever made. Even if you’ve never heard of it, you’ve definitely heard it. It’s in dozens of hit songs -- from Usher to Marvin Gaye, Talking Heads to The Beastie Boys -- and its sounds have quietly cemented themselves in the cultural lexicon. In this episode, we try to understand how that happened and follow the unlikely path of the 808. Featuring DJ Jazzy Jeff and Paul McCabe from Rol...
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Chartbreakers: Lorde & Drake reboot, Worship Pop, and the shortest song ever

May 20, 2025 • 52 mins
What happens when worship anthems climb the charts alongside soul revivals and nostalgia-driven comebacks? The May 2025 Billboard charts reveal a fascinating musical landscape where Drake performs a strategic reset after his epic battle with Kendrick, worship-adjacent pop dominates the mainstream, and The Marias reject conventional song structures with dreamy success. From the bizarre 34-second Minecraft soundtrack hit to the rise ...
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‘Sinners’ summons the demons of American music

May 13, 2025 • 38 mins
We rarely cover movies here at Switched On Pop. But after seeing Ryan Coogler's new vampire musical Sinners, we knew we had to make an exception. The movie is an ode to Black music. Throughout its over two hour runtime, the film pays tribute to the blues: nodding to the musicians, instruments, and melodies that make it a foundational genre in the American musical canon. There's also Irish folk vampires, original music from Ludwig...
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