Switched on Pop
Listen closer to pop music — hear how it moves us. Hosted by musicologist Nate Sloan & songwriter Charlie Harding. From Vulture and the Vox Media Podcast Network.
Episodes
March 3, 2026 • 44 mins
Bruno Mars is back with a new album called The Romantic, his first solo release since 2016’s 24k Magic. At first listen, the lead single, “I Just Might,” sounds like an outtake from 2021’s collaborative album with Anderson Paak, the Philly soul-inspired An Evening with Silk Sonic. Listen closer though and another element emerges: a fast-paced conga drum line.
The rest of Mars’s nine-track confection chases that Latin influence. Th...
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February 24, 2026 • 48 mins
Emerald Fennell's new adaptation of Emily Brontë's 1847 gothic romance "Wuthering Heights" is the most talked-about film of the year. But for pop lovers, the soundtrack is the real event: Charli xcx, asked to write one song, ended up recording an entire album for the movie while in the middle of the BRAT tour.
If BRAT gave people permission to be messy on the dance floor, this score gives permission to be messy in your souls. But...
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February 17, 2026 • 51 mins
It's the middle of award season, and Ryan Coogler's ode to the Black music canon Sinners has emerged as the Oscars frontrunner and the most nominated film in Academy Awards history. The love the movie has for the Delta blues is front and center, and begs the question: will the movie's legacy help bring the blues back into popular culture? There's already been a precedent for films reviving dead genres – think The Sting and its ragt...
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February 10, 2026 • 35 mins
A$AP Rocky’s latest album, Don’t Be Dumb, is a wild ride through a cacophony of sounds — punk, industrial, drum ‘n’ bass, indie rock, and of course, hip hop. But on one track, “Robbery,” he and the rising superstar Doechii sample the world of jazz, specifically Thelonious Monk’s 1955 cover of Duke Ellington’s “Caravan.” In the process, Rocky and Doechii don’t just loop and flow, they create a whole narrative of jazz age victors and...
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February 3, 2026 • 48 mins
What makes Weird Al songs so indelible? Why is Bo Burnham more than just a comic? How do the biggest pop hits make us crack up in the middle of a somber ballad? Humor is always present in music, but we rarely confront it head on. Until now. With the help of Comedian Chris Duffy, author of the book Humor Me: How Laughing Can Make You More Connected, Present, and Happy, and a series of lyrical submission from our listeners, we try to...
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January 27, 2026 • 52 mins
The ultimate gauntlet of popular music is upon us once again: it's Grammy season, and this year, the competition is pretty tight across the board. Big ticket A-listers like Bad Bunny, Sabrina Carpenter, Kendrick Lamar, and Lady Gaga occupy three of the four big categories (Song, Record, and Album of the Year), while folks like Olivia Dean, Lola Young, Leon Thomas, and Addison Rae duke it out in Best New Artist.
On this episode of...
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January 20, 2026 • 46 mins
Swedish pop star Robyn emerged as a phenomenon in the mid 1990s, an ingenue whose work with Max Martin presaged the R&B crossover hits of acts like Britney and the Backstreet Boys. Since her debut, she’s released a string of albums that have shaped the sound of dance music as we know it.
Now, Robyn is releasing her first new album in eight years, Sexistential, and she’s given us three singles made up of her signature combination ...
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January 13, 2026 • 55 mins
Two years ago, Audrey Hobert had never written a song. She was a staff writer on a Nickelodeon series and had recently moved in with her childhood friend Gracie Abrams in Los Angeles. About six months later, a phrase spoken by a heartbroken acquaintance caught their attention; Hobert and Abrams sang it back to each other and wrote a complete song that night. Within the following year, Hobert co-wrote songs including “I Love You, I’...
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January 6, 2026 • 58 mins
It’s a brand new year, and what better way to ring it in than with the second annual Switched On Pop bingo? Like last year, Charlie, Nate, and Reanna polish their crystal balls and play Popstradamus, each throwing out eight outlandish pop predictions for the coming months. This time, there’s piano ballads, cover songs, and what Charlie calls the impending “death of auto-tune.”
Get your own bingo card to play along through our ...
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December 30, 2025 • 30 mins
A scientist asked people to sit in a silent room for 15 minutes. Almost half of them decided to give themselves a painful electric shock instead. What is it about our brains that makes our relationship with silence so strange? And should we learn how to listen to it?
This is the third episode of the four-part Unexplainable series, The Sound Barrier.
Links: Newsletter, YouTube
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastc...
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December 23, 2025 • 37 mins
Every Christmas season, pop stars far and wide throw their Santa hats into the ring to see who has the next "All I Want for Christmas Is You," and this year is no exception. It's a yearly tradition on Switched On Pop to explore the deluge of holiday hits, and 2025 sees formidable entries to the canon from folks like Kylie Minogue, Leon Bridges, and Willie Nelson.
Links: Newsletter, YouTube
Songs discussed:
Ariana Grande – ...
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December 16, 2025 • 47 mins
From big-ticket albums by Taylor and Gaga, to a revival of the stomp-clap revival – 2025 had it all, for better and for worse. Now that the year has come to a close, it's time to take a look back at the past twelve months: what happened in the zeitgeist, what we loved listening to, and what we missed here on the show. Reanna, Charlie, and Nate talk about it all, including a look back at our predictions from January to check off box...
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December 12, 2025 • 57 mins
Grammy-winning songwriter Amy Allen joins NYU Steinhardt students live to trace her path from early pitch songs to co-writing some of the decade's defining hits. She explains why Halsey's "Without Me" needed an extended chorus but no pre-made chord loops, how Harry Styles' "Matilda" required character-driven writing for emotional safety, and what made the hypnotic groove of Tate McRae's "Greedy" demand a rare third verse. Allen als...
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December 9, 2025 • 39 mins
Sombr went from crafting raw, reverb soaked songs alone in his Lower East Side bedroom to finding his life shifting in ways he never could have predicted across 2024 and 2025. His biggest tracks kept their imperfections even as world class players at Sound City added new layers, and a disco groove he began as a late night joke transformed into a breakout moment that changed his career’s trajectory. He explains how he writes, why di...
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December 2, 2025 • 51 mins
When it comes to improvisational loop jams, few have gone as viral as Marc Rebillet. From his 2020 lockdown-era video “How to Funk in Two Minutes,” which features him wearing nothing but a bathrobe, to unsuspecting New York street corners, and eventually the Coachella main stage, Rebillet has come to be known as “loop daddy” for his gifted ability to harness spontaneous funk.
On this episode of Switched On Pop, Charlie interviews ...
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November 25, 2025 • 44 mins
In June 2025, indie veterans Deerhoof scrubbed their entire catalog from the world’s dominant streaming platform. The catalyst wasn't low royalties, but Spotify co-founder Daniel Ek’s investment in AI military technology through his investment firm Prima Materia. Greg Saunier and Satomi Matsuzaki explain why they are prioritizing their ethics over exposure. They argue that the "convenience" of streaming traps us in harmful systems....
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November 18, 2025 • 48 mins
This year, there were a few records that delivered less-than-optimal returns on either the Hot 100 or the Billboard 200 – and they all came from former Disney pop stars.
Demi Lovato’s latest album peaked at number nine on the Billboard 200, where it spent one week and then fell off; Selena Gomez’s record with Benny Blanco peaked at number 2 on the Billboard 200, but no songs cracked the top 40; and Miley Cyrus’s album is her shor...
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November 11, 2025 • 44 mins
Spanish pop star Rosalía is back with her new album, Lux. Over eighteen tracks, she trades in the dembow beats that filled her last record Motomami for maximalist orchestral sounds more in line with Björk than Bad Bunny.
The album is dense: there's four movements, thirteen languages, arrangements by Caroline Shaw, and a wide breadth of influences – from Benedictine saints to Patti Smith. But despite (or because) all of this, Rosa...
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November 4, 2025 • 33 mins
They say the best revenge is living well, but if you’re a pop star going through a break up, that’s false. The best revenge is releasing a searing scorched-earth revenge banger that calls out your ex and, ideally, rides that vengeance to the top of the Billboard charts.
That’s exactly what Tate McRae and Lily Allen have done in the wake of their high profile break ups; McRae with the track “TIT FOR TAT” and Allen with an entire a...
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October 28, 2025 • 38 mins
Charlie Puth breaks down his new single "Changes," a maximalist eighties production hiding a melancholy story about drifting friendships. As he prepares for fatherhood, the singer-songwriter reflects on how relationships evolve from deep conversations to small talk, why he listens to lyrics last, and his belief that music should offer a three-minute escape from life's exhaustion. Between demonstrating vocal techniques, championing ...
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