Switched on Pop
Listen closer to pop music, and hear how it moves us. Hosted by musicologist Nate Sloan & songwriter Charlie Harding. From Vulture and the Vox Media Podcast Network.
Episodes
August 25, 2026 • 36 mins
Many of us keep a journal, but few of us are able to turn our unvarnished thoughts into cultural moments touching on love, death, and guitars quite like Phoebe Bridgers. Her new album Lost Weekend isn’t just throwing the pages of her personal life into song, it’s much more than that: A beguiling, hyper-compositional meditation on the last six years of her life.
The genres range from bluegrass to electronic, and collab...
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August 18, 2026 • 39 mins
Madonna has returned this summer with Confessions II: an album full of huge hooks, pounding bass, and sincere emotion. It’s the queen of pop's first record in seven years, and serves as a sequel to her 2005 smash hit, Confessions on a Dance Floor. The record ties together threads that have existed throughout Madonna’s entire discography, but it also serves a greater purpose. Confessions II is Madonna’s biopic, all...
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August 11, 2026 • 36 mins
For many people – including Charlie and Nate – studying classical piano as a child always felt like a chore. Now, as adults, there’s a newfound appreciation for classical music, but the art form isn’t always accessible. One of the people trying to change that is the world-renowned pianist Lang Lang, classical piano’s greatest interpreter. On this episode of Switched on Pop, Charlie sits down with Lang ...
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August 4, 2026 • 42 mins
Bridges open up the world of a song: they're a breath of fresh air and a point of contrast, typically delivered right before the final chorus. But sometimes they accomplish even more, changing the whole meaning of a song by introducing a note of doubt, or even defiance. This is what the best artists do, from Beyoncé to the Beatles to Taylor Swift, but some critics are concerned that the bridge is in danger of being demolished. On t...
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July 28, 2026 • 50 mins
The chorus was once the part of the song that brought us together, the place we gathered to sing. Now it's the most engineered thirty seconds in music. Legendary producer Trevor Horn and hip-hop icon B-Real of Cypress Hill help Charlie and Nate answer the question on their minds: when everything's a hook, is anything a chorus?
CREDITS
Reanna Cruz: Producer
Iris Gottlieb: Illustrator
Charlie Harding: H...
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July 21, 2026 • 33 mins
Everybody sings the chorus, but superfans quote the verse. On this episode of Switched on Pop, Charlie and Nate trace the verse from Shakespeare through opera to TikTok, and songwriter Audrey Hobert shares her philosophy of specific verses and anthemic choruses: you can't have the payoff without the setup.
CREDITS
Reanna Cruz: Producer
Iris Gottlieb: Illustrator
Charlie Harding: Host, Executive Producer
Dion Lee: Art Director
...
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July 14, 2026 • 40 mins
Research says you judge a song in under half a second. So why write an intro at all? On this episode of Switched on Pop, Charlie and Nate kick off their Netflix launch and probe what an intro means in today's musical landscape, alongside special guests like Aaron Dessner (Taylor Swift, The National, Gracie Adams), who helps build the case for intros and reveals the surprising sources that form the opening sounds of Taylor Swift's &...
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July 13, 2026 • 1 min
We're coming to the big screen with a four part mini series starting July 14th.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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June 30, 2026 • 37 mins
The quadrennial soccer (or fútbol, depending who you talk to) competition is upon us again: it's the FIFA World Cup! And while the World Cup is a sporting event, it's still relevant to the folks at Switched On Pop, because every four years a new crop of songs gets commissioned to drum up excitement for the games.
This year, the official song is by Shakira and Burna Boy, but offerings from IShowSpeed and a madcap collaboration bet...
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June 23, 2026 • 44 mins
In case you missed it:
How does a country of 10 million people dominate the global pop charts? From ABBA's Eurovision breakthrough to Max Martin's methodical hit-making, Sweden has quietly engineered a kind of musical Stockholm Syndrome: we've all become captives to their sound without realizing it. Listen to the crystalline vocal production and deceptively simple chord progressions in tracks by Lisa, Childish Gambino, and Addison...
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June 18, 2026 • 31 mins
In the last episode of our feral pop miniseries, we take a look at the 22 year old rapper primed to take over the world: 2hollis. Splitting the difference between hardstyle and hip-hop while emanating an aura best described as “vampiric,” he’s been one of the most hyped musicians coming out of the underground. His music is distorted, chaotic, and over the top – literally – but he reflects a l...
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June 17, 2026 • 25 mins
This week on Switched On Pop, we’re looking at all things feral pop, the microgenre that takes pop music to its most wild extremes. And no feral pop artist is more tapped into that ethos than underscores. Her music synthesizes dubstep, trance, and Timbaland with ease, and her latest album ‘U’ is filled with boundless energy. She’s already opened up for 100 gecs, PinkPantheress, and Porter Robinson; this fall...
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June 16, 2026 • 32 mins
What would it sound like if pop music was reverted to its most wild state of being? It would sound hyper-digital, influenced by the electronic vanguard of the 2010s, and speak to a post-genre audience. And while the charts have been stagnant, Gen-Z has been crafting this exact sound: one that is exciting, unpredictable, and above all else, feral.
After bubbling underground for the past few years, the subgenre we’ve coined &l...
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June 15, 2026 • 42 mins
Olivia Rodrigo is back with her third studio album, you seem pretty sad for a girl in love. As the title might suggest, it’s a deeply personal affair, with moody soundscapes supporting hyper-detailed lyrics of soul-wrenching depth. This album is a meditation on desire, and intriguingly, the letdown that can occur when desire is fulfilled. Each track is haunted by a band that basically invented the idea of unfulfilled longing,...
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June 9, 2026 • 42 mins
Boys of Dungeon Lane, McCartney's collaboration with producer Andrew Watt, arrived when McCartney was 83 and and he came out swinging: the opening track greets listeners with a dissonant, unresolved guitar chord that sets the album's tone. Harmonic instability runs through the entire record: chromatic mediants, deceptive cadences, and persistent pedal tones prevent even the most nostalgic songs from settling into comfort.
The alb...
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June 5, 2026 • 13 mins
A sci-fi ballet imagined a 2080 where AI strips people of purpose, and the day before its New York premiere, an actual dystopia arrived.
Arc Iris, the trio of Jocie Adams, Zach Tenorio and Ray Belli, built iTMRW as a concept record set in a future ruled by a mega-corporation that shares its name. In its world, AI has taken most jobs and even the thinking left inside them, so the corporation offers pods where anyone can live any ...
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June 2, 2026 • 52 mins
A culture that rewards easily consumable individual identities produces plenty of pop stars and almost no bands. A significant exception: MUNA, the trio of Katie Gavin, Josette Maskin, and Naomi McPherson. MUNA treats the band as a structure that grounds identity beyond the ego and makes any success feel shared among the three. Their new album, Dancing on the Wall, wraps that conviction in blaring, unapologetic '80s production: sla...
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May 26, 2026 • 55 mins
Canada’s favorite export Drake is back! This month, the Toronto singer-rapper extraordinaire released three albums simultaneously: the long-anticipated return to form Iceman, the sultry, R&B Habibti and the pop-focused, clubby Maid of Honour. All three albums have much different vibes, and are Drake’s first official solo efforts since his seismic beef with Kendrick Lamar back in 2024.
There’s a lot of music t...
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May 19, 2026 • 39 mins
Kacey Musgraves' album Middle of Nowhere finds the country outlaw taking a break from exploring her inner life to look outward, back to her roots: the regional stylings of Texas. She says the album was inspired by a sign in her hometown that read “Golden, TX: Somewhere in the middle of nowhere.” The album’s sounds probe this same borderland mentality, encapsulating desert noir, Norteño, tejano, and soft rock. Plus...
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May 15, 2026 • 54 mins
The pedal steel and the saz both live in the spaces between equal-tempered notes, and that gap is where Rostam built American Stories.
Rostam joined Vampire Weekend at Columbia in 2006, produced the band's first three albums, and after leaving in 2016 made records with Clairo and Haim you can identify as his within a few bars.
His solo album, American Stories, reflects his experience as an American whose family is from Iran. He c...
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