PODCAST · music
Switched on Pop
by Vulture
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
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Why we need bad music
For the 500th(!) episode of Switched on Pop, Charlie and Nate try to answer the question that has stumped critics and philosophers since the dawn of sound: does bad music exist? Their quest to answer something so nebulous leads them through the annals of taste, and in the process, they recruit...
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Has Taylor Swift jumped the shark?
One year after the release of her twelfth studio album The Life of a Showgirl, Taylor Swift is back with an encore. Specifically, The Encore, four tracks that have polarized critics and Swifties alike, from the country-esque number one hit “Patient Zero” to her ode to married Ohioan bliss,...
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Carly Rae Jepsen’s pop pedagogy
Five years after her first appearance on Switched on Pop, Carly Rae Jepsen returns to the podcast to talk all things Day and Night, her latest album. Born out of Swedish disco, big emotion, and substantive life change – including becoming a wife and a mother – the double album is a tour through…
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Tove Lo wants her music to sound out of control (ft. Tove Lo)
Swedish singer-songwriter Tove Lo’s new album ESTRUS can be summarized in the opening lyrics of the album’s closing track, “source of life”: “Feral, fragile, numb, ecstatic / sad, euphoric, catatonic / Horny, repulsed, proud and shameful / Good, demonic, contradictions.” A songwriter with a…
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Lizzy McAlpine summons Nick Drake & Joni Mitchell
Lizzy McAlpine opens up about her 4th album Angel alongside collaborators Mason Stoops and Taylor Mackall. Recorded live at Power Station at Berklee NYC. Songs Discussed Lizzy McAlpine "Anybody's Fool" Lizzy McAlpine "A Car Wash and a New Pair of Pants" Nick Drake "One of These Things First"…
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The power of singing together (ft. Tiny Habits)
Throughout pop history, groups from The Ink Spots to the Beach Boys to Fleetwood Mac all forged their sound in the alchemy of vocal harmonies, harnessing the magic that happens when different voices join as one. Then suddenly, right around the 1980s, vocal harmonies started to wane in pop.…
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Questionably Country
For the first time in history, five country songs were at the top of the Billboard Hot 100. Ella Langley, Morgan Wallen, Taylor Swift and Stella Lefty all have songs that range from two-stepping hits to borderline Americana: what do these songs say about the state of country music? CREDITS Reanna...
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Phoebe Bridgers opens her Moleskine
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,...
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We have Confessions to make...
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…
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A piano lesson that will change how you listen (ft. Lang Lang)
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...
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IV. Take It to the Bridge (ft. Tayla Parx)
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...
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III. Preaching to the Chorus (ft. Cypress Hill and Trevor Horn)
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…
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II. Justice for the verse (ft. Audrey Hobert)
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...
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I. Let's get it started (ft. Aaron Dessner)
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...
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Switched On Pop on Netflix July 14th
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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Music only the World Cup could make
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…
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Why we can't resist Swedish pop (ft. Zara Larsson) ICYMI
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...
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2hollis is the underground’s genre-hopping vampire
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…
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Pop music for an internet-pilled generation
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...
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The new wave of pop is here, and it’s feral
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...
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Olivia Rodrigo has The Cure for sadness
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…
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Paul McCartney went back to Liverpool for something new to say
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:...
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How a sci-fi dystopia became a personal utopia (ft. Arc Iris)
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....
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Why bands give us purpose (ft. MUNA)
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...
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Drake's Slop Era
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...
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Kacey Musgraves walks country’s borderlands
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.”...
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Rostam reimagines American music
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...
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Eurovision is back – but not without controversy
The flowers are blooming and the calendar says May. That can only mean one thing: the Eurovision Song Contest is upon us once again. This year, thirty-five countries face off to determine the best song that Europe and adjacent continents have to offer. However, the competition comes with a big...
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Samara Cyn is rap's best new writer
How do you write a rap verse that's clever without saying so? Samara Cyn, one of the sharpest young writers in hip-hop, joins us to talk about Detour, her new EP about going analog. We get into wordplay versus narrative, the Missy Elliott blueprint behind "oooshxt!", and why she takes a knee in…
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Olivia Rodrigo and the second verse massacre
Olivia Rodrigo's chart-topping new single "drop dead," the lead single from her forthcoming third album you seem pretty sad for a girl so in love, breaks one of pop's oldest rules by abandoning the traditional second verse and replacing it with something entirely new. From Mariah Carey's…
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Hrishikesh Hirway made an album about running out of time — in no time
Hrishikesh Hirway, host of Song Exploder, returns with his first album in fifteen years, In the Last Hour of Light, made under a premise that's almost contradictory for a podcaster built around isolated stems: session players who had never heard the songs, vocals tracked live in the room, no…
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BTS is back. But K Pop is not the same.
BTS is back. The best selling K Pop group of all time has been on hiatus for four years. They haven’t released an album in six. They were once the biggest band in the world. Can they regain their throne? Or has the world moved on. Leaning on traditional Korean sounds and a bevy of international...
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Maggie Rogers: going viral is a trap
Ten years ago, Maggie Rogers was a senior at NYU, scrambling to finish a song for a music production class she was close to failing. The guest critic that week happened to be Pharrell Williams. She played him "Alaska," a track she'd written in about fifteen minutes. It is a bit of folk…
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Learning to Love Train: "Drops of Jupiter" is back in the atmosphere
Train is the kind of band that some people love to hate. Songs like "Meet Virginia" and "Hey Soul Sister" gave the band huge hits, and no small amount of snark. And then there's "Drops of Jupiter." Released in 2001, the song is almost impossible not to love, no matter how many lyrics about soy...
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Slayyyter might actually be the 'Worst Girl in America'
Going for broke turned out to be the most honest thing Slayyyter ever made. After financial losses and a depressive episode that left her ready to quit music entirely, Slayyyter entered the studio planning to make one final album. In this conversation, she traces how that desperation shaped every...
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How Charlie Puth honored Whitney Houston for 125 million people (live at Berklee NYC)
Charlie Puth joins Switched On Pop in Studio A at Power Station at Berklee NYC, live before a room of current students, ten days after performing the national anthem at Super Bowl 60 and weeks before releasing his fourth album, Whatever's Clever. The conversation is grounded in one question: how…
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RAYE’s maximalist masterpiece is the hope we need
RAYE names Amy Winehouse and Edith Piaf as her artistic predecessors on the opening tracks of new album This Music May Contain Hope. Both died young, undone by the same darkness they sang about, and placing them there reads as a dare to herself. The album that follows is her attempt to find a...
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Where have all the white rappers gone?
On a recent podcast interview, Kentucky rapper Jack Harlow said that, to craft his new album Monica, he “got blacker.” The problem is… Jack Harlow is white. The statement, while extremely tone-deaf, speaks to his intentions with this musical pivot: musically, Monica turns to the historically…
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Jacob Collier can make anyone sing
Jacob Collier is a rare musician: an expert in so many musical languages (western harmony, negative harmony, microtonalism) and a phenomenal communicator about music. He's something like an Ambassador for Music, traveling the world and getting thousands of people, musicians and non-musicians…
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Harry Styles loses himself to dance
The dance floor is where Harry Styles does his therapy, and this album is the session notes. Four years after Harry's House, Styles returns with Kiss All the Time, Disco Occasionally, a record built from minimal ingredients: live drums, Moog bass, nylon guitar, and synth sequences that stretch...
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Can Bruno Mars counterprogram his way to another hit album?
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...
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Charli XCX’s "Wuthering Heights" fever dream
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...
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Will Sinners do for blues what O Brother did for bluegrass?
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...
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Jazz is A$AP Rocky’s secret weapon
A$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…
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Does humor belong in music?
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…
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And the Grammy goes to…
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...
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Robyn’s new songs bring “drum 'n' grace” to the dance floor
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…
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Audrey Hobert says the quiet part out loud
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...
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2026 Pop Predictions: big beat, animated avatars, and Bruno Mars
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…
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The Sound of Silence from Unexplainable
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...
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ABOUT THIS SHOW
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.
HOSTED BY
Vulture
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Frequently Asked Questions
How many episodes does Switched on Pop have?
Switched on Pop currently has 556 episodes available on PodParley. New episodes are automatically indexed when they're published to the podcast feed.
What is Switched on Pop about?
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.
How often does Switched on Pop release new episodes?
Switched on Pop releases new episodes frequently with a large back catalog of 556 episodes. Check the episode list for recent publication dates.
Where can I listen to Switched on Pop?
You can listen to Switched on Pop on PodParley by clicking any episode. We provide an embedded audio player for direct listening, and you can also subscribe via your preferred podcast app using the RSS feed.
Who hosts Switched on Pop?
Switched on Pop is created and hosted by Vulture.
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