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. They’d prefer listeners explore alternative paths to hear their ...
Nov 25, 2025•44 min
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 shortest charting project to date. On this episode of Switched On Pop, ...
Nov 18, 2025•48 min
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, Rosalía has gone on record referring to Lux as, ultimately, a pop albu...
Nov 11, 2025•44 min
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 album, West End Girl . On this episode of Switched On Pop, Charlie a...
Nov 04, 2025•34 min
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 forgotten producer Rod Temperton, and turning "You Are My Sunshin...
Oct 28, 2025•38 min
On October 14th, the visionary musician D’Angelo passed away at 51 years old. Only releasing three albums during his lifetime, he synthesized influences from gospel, jazz, rock, and hip-hop to create a singular and transcendent sound artists still try – and fail – to emulate today. On this special episode of Switched On Pop, Charlie and Nate are joined by producer Reanna and engineer Brandon to celebrate D’Angelo through his music, discussing one song from each of his albums and highlighting his...
Oct 21, 2025•37 min
John C. Reilly joins to discuss Mr. Romantic , his theatrical tribute to the Great American Songbook that treats Irving Berlin and Tom Waits as equals in the canon of timeless American song. Reilly recorded live in one room with his band using vintage ribbon microphones, embracing the squeaks and imperfections while layering in cinematic sound effects—crickets outside a lover's window, a collect call from prison—to transform each standard into an immersive scene. But what makes a song from the 1...
Oct 14, 2025•57 min
Taylor Swift's twelfth album has sparked endless speculation about who each song is "really about," but that might be the wrong question entirely. The Life of a Showgirl isn’t biography, it’s polyphonic auto-fiction, where Swift writes from multiple character perspectives while blurring the lines between autobiography and theatrical performance. The album's "showgirl sound" traces from Shakespearean tragedy (Ophelia's drowning rewritten as salvation) through Golden Age Hollywood orchestration to...
Oct 07, 2025•1 hr 9 min
There's no lead singer in Trousdale. The trio of Quinn D'Andrea, Georgia Greene, and Lauren Jones, has shared vocal duties equally since they started singing together as students at the University of Southern California's Thornton School of Music. Since then, they've touring the world and released a sophomore album, Growing Pains , that features the trio's impeccable harmonies over 70s-inflected country-rock grooves. In this episode, Trousdale returns to their alma mater to play acoustic version...
Oct 03, 2025•49 min
This summer, one singular artist could be heard everywhere from the new Cardi B album to the TikTok charts: Janet Jackson. The incomparable Queen of Pop has had her fingerprints all over pop music for the past few months, and it’s never been more apparent than on Doja Cat’s “Jealous Type.” The lead single from Doja’s new album Vie has all the hallmarks of the Janet Jackson sound, from breathy and percussive vocals to nods to iconic production from Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis. This episode of Switc...
Sep 30, 2025•36 min
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 Rae, and you're hearing Sweden's sonic fingerprint so embedded in pop's DNA that it now ...
Sep 23, 2025•43 min
It's time. Nate and Charlie break down the K Pop Demonhunters soundtrack to uncover the musical secrets behind its unprecedented success. From West Side Story to Gregorian chant, Phrygian modes to musical theater clichés, we 'll explain why you can't stop listening to the sounds of Huntr/x and Saja Boys. Songs Discussed Huntr/x - How It's Done, Golden, What it Sounds Like Saja Boys - Soda Pop, Your Idol Aldred Deller and the Deller Consort - Dies Irae West Side Story - Jet Song Aespa - Drama Rii...
Sep 17, 2025•42 min
Halfway through the opening track of Joe Keery's The Crux , a line emerges that sounds like casual conversation: "My dog is at my house again, but I live somewhere else." The song refuses to settle into predictable pop architecture, drifting from whispered confession to baroque strings that recall Pachelbel more than indie rock. Recorded live at NYU, Charlie explores how this structural restlessness reflects broader questions about authenticity in contemporary music, examining how Keery's creati...
Sep 15, 2025•55 min
Everyone should be in a band at some point—and Finneas and Ashe prove why. The Grammy-winning producer and rising singer-songwriter discuss how their friendship evolved into The Favors, a new band debuting their album The Dream on September 19th, 2025. We explore what it means to create as a band, how stepping back from confessional songwriting freed them creatively, and why sometimes the best way forward is embracing older ways of making music. SONGS DISCUSSED The Favors - "The Little Mess You ...
Sep 09, 2025•52 min
Fleetwood Mac has had a phenomenal resurgence in recent years, from TikTok viral fame to Broadway plays and streaming TV series inspired by the band. Their growing fandom among a new generation has created demand for the long out-of-print album Buckingham Nicks , the 1973 album by Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks recorded before they joined Fleetwood Mac. The vinyl record is a collector's item, as this pre-band album helped secure the duo their spot in Fleetwood Mac. Now after four decades, o...
Sep 02, 2025•54 min
You've heard those shimmering disco strings in Miley Cyrus's "Flowers," the cinematic arrangements on Phoebe Bridgers' Punisher , and the orchestral flourishes across Taylor Swift's catalog, but you probably didn't know they're all the work of one person: Rob Moose. The violinist and multi-instrumentalist has contributed to nearly 1,000 albums, quietly becoming pop music's most prolific string architect. In this conversation, Moose reveals how he translates classical training into contemporary p...
Aug 26, 2025•52 min
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 Brandon join Charlie for a tour through rap music's latest sweaty offe...
Aug 19, 2025•53 min
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 listeners—to try categorize, historicize, and, perhaps, celebrat...
Aug 12, 2025•43 min
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 seasonal bops, and suggest some possible contenders for sleeper summer...
Aug 05, 2025•37 min
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. On this episode of Switched On Pop, we tap into the SWAG minds...
Jul 29, 2025•44 min
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 classical public radio strings into today's signature blend of plinking...
Jul 22, 2025•46 min
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 sound like Dire Straits and Tom Petty had a baby. Along the way, t...
Jul 15, 2025•50 min
In which we explore the unlikely rise, and surprising backlash against, one Benson Boone. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Jul 08, 2025•32 min
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. Host Jonquilin Hill explores this musical phenomenon on Vox's "Ex...
Jul 01, 2025•32 min
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 technique. In bluegrass artists like Billy Strings and roots musicians lik...
Jun 27, 2025•35 min
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 "country music." In this episode of Switched On Pop, in honor of coun...
Jun 26, 2025•33 min
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" and "Blue Strips." Songs discussed: Lainey Wilson – 4x4xU Jessi...
Jun 25, 2025•28 min
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" serves as an exemplary example of the country-rap hybrid done right. B...
Jun 24, 2025•36 min
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 him more relatable, not less. Despite having every reason to write ...
Jun 23, 2025•36 min
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 witty takedowns that reclaim power through clever wordplay, genre-...
Jun 17, 2025•30 min
