Hello, Slate Culture GabFest listeners. I am coming to you on a Friday. This is Julia Turner, the editor-in-chief of Slate, to tell you about something new. We are launching a feature in this feed called Culture GabFest Presents, where we will bring you fascinating culture content on days where we don't give you one of our culture gab-fest shows. Today we are introducing something I'm extremely excited about, a monthly show from one of our culture gab fest shows. Today we are introducing something I'm

extremely excited about, a monthly show from one of our favorite culture gap fest contributors,

Chris Malanfi. Hello, Chris. Hey, Julia. How are you? Good. I'm so excited for what we're

unveiling today. As am I. Please tell our listeners what they are about to hear. So it's going

to be a monthly podcast called Hit Parade.

And it's basically a storytelling podcast, slightly long form, not too long, telling stories about the hits from yesteryear and bringing you up wherever possible to the present day.

So we're going to, you know, take just little stories about number one hits or maybe in the

future smaller hits and talk about how they became hits. As I always say, what's interesting

about why songs become hits as part of my, why is this song number one column for Slate is it's a

mix of art and commerce, right? It's the song itself and it's the machinations behind the song. So

that's what we will do with

hit parade. And a bit of the historical and cultural moment at which those songs drop. I mean,

that's one of my favorite things about your column. Exactly. I love the idea of doing your column

as a podcast. Obviously, your column is very fun to read. It's studded with video clips and

fascinating references. But in the show, you can obviously

just pull up the sound and you get to hear the different versions of songs and get a little bit

of a sense of the texture of the musical history that you're talking about.

Yeah. When I was proposing this one to Steve Lichtai, I was saying that, you know,

if I have any, not regret exactly, but hang up about my column, it's that I densely pack my, my, why is the song number one pieces with links? Because I feel like you need to, you know, experience a piece of the music to understand what I'm talking about. And I realize that that's kind of disruptive sometimes if you're in the middle of a piece of reading. What's great about hit parade is that when I talk about a snippet of a song, you're just going to hear that snippet of a song. And we've packed the episodes with just quick little hits, like 10 seconds here, 15 seconds there. But to either ring a bell if you remember the song from your youth or to, you know, introduce you to it if you've never heard it before. And I think it enriches the experience. Well, I won't spoil the subject of the episode. Our listeners are about to hear, but I will say that I heard many versions of it that I was previously unaware of and came away edified and with a horrible earworm in my ear. So be warned, listeners. And I

guess without further ado, we'll launch the show. Welcome to Hit Parade, a podcast of Pop Chart History

about the hits from coast to coast. I'm Chris Malamphy, chart analyst, pop critic, and writer

of Slate's Why Is This Song Number One series?

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