Interview: What Makes a Hit Pop Song

It's Been a Minute

NPR

News, Society & Culture, News Commentary, Spirituality, Religion & Spirituality

4.7 • 9.2K Ratings

🗓️ 11 February 2020

⏱️ 20 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Listen up music composition nerds and music lovers! In this episode Sam is joined by Nate Sloan and Charlie Harding, co-hosts of the podcast Switched On Pop. They break down what makes a song: why certain pop songs become ear worms and what their form and structure mean for the future of music. Answers to those questions and more that will leave you singing along. Sloan and Harding's recent book is called Switched On Pop: How Popular Music Works and Why It Matters.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey y'all, Sam Sanders here.
0:07.1	You're listening to It's Been a Minute from NPR.
0:10.5	Most of you know that I talk about music, a fair amount on this show.
0:15.5	For today's episode, my guess, they do that for a living.
0:18.8	I'm Nate Sloan.
0:19.8	I'm a professor of musicology at USC and co-host of Switched On Pop with my friend Charlie
0:26.7	Harding.
0:27.7	That was nice.
0:28.7	Great segue.
0:29.7	We've been doing this for about five years now.
0:32.0	I'm a songwriter and I'm a producer music and I run the show.
0:35.9	That's right.
0:36.9	I run the show.
0:37.9	Yeah, he does all the dirty work.
0:40.0	Switched On Pop is a podcast about pop music from Vox Media.
0:44.0	Charlie and Nate have hosted this show for years.
0:46.8	I listen religiously and now the two of them are out with a new book all about pop music.
0:52.6	It is called Switched On Pop, How Popular Music Works and Why It Matters.
0:57.2	In this book, Nate and Charlie break down 16 pop songs of our current era.
1:02.6	We wanted to make sure that these were songs that we felt would be timeless, that covered
1:07.4	artists that were important had made timeless, cultural impact.
1:11.6	We've called them Drake's Gods Plan.
	...

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