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Welcome back.

Hey, everybody.

This is Chris Melanthe, host of Hit Parade, Slate's podcast of Pop Chart History.

Welcome to The Bridge.

That's all changed by John Sebastian, a number one hit from 1976.

As we told you in last month's hit parade, Sebastian, the former lead singer of The Loven Spoonful, wasn't even supposed to play the Woodstock Festival in 1969.

For Sebastian, Woodstock was an accidental bridge between his career with the Loven Spoonful and his career as a solo artist, which eventually produced this chart-topping hit.

And these mini episodes bridge our full-length monthly episodes, give us a chance to catch up with listeners, and enjoy some hit parade trivia.

This month, I'm pleased to introduce, as my co-host, my new producer for these many episodes, Asha Saluja. This is her first time behind the mic on Hit Parade, The Bridge. So,

Asha, welcome to the Bridge. Thanks so much, Chris. It's an honor to be here doing The Bridge with you.

Well, it's an honor to have you. So you have been producing this show for us since last month. August was your first bridge episode. But I think you've been listening to the show for a while.

That is true. I'm a huge fan. And in fact, I have a favorite episode that I want to tell you about. Oh, fantastic.

The first episode that I had a total galaxy brain experience listening to was the Madonna

episode, the Veronica Electronica edition because it bridged, pun intended, together to parts of my

personal music history in a way that was really

unexpected for me. Growing up, my mom was the musical educator of the house. She had really good

and broad taste, and she taught me a lot of what I know. But my dad only liked one artist,

and that was Madonna.

Wow.

He's a Madonna super fan.

Exactly.

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