Shawn Mendes and the Rhythm of Rhyme

Switched on Pop

Vox Media Podcast Network

Music Interviews, Music History, Music, Music Commentary

4.6 • 2.7K Ratings

🗓️ 16 July 2019

⏱️ 31 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Shawn Mendes’ hit song “If I Can’t Have You” is so ridiculously catchy that Charlie had it stuck in his head after the first chorus. How is that possible?! Declamation, or the way that text is set to music, is a big part of the song’s appeal—every word that Mendes sings is perfectly in rhythm. In this episode we use Mendes’ latest track to explore creative declamation throughout history. How do artists from Whitney Houston to Queen to Taylor Swift keep finding new ways to sing the word “somebody”? Why did the composer Georg Friedrich Handel get in trouble for a bit of awkward text setting in one of the most famous pieces of Baroque music? And, does Beyoncé even know how to pronounce “sandcastles”? Finally, Mendes’ hit leads us to ask: is “incorrect” declamation is something to celebrate, or criticize? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Sabotage hired goons and a landfill in Utah.
0:05.0	How Steve Jobs' revolutionary catastrophe of a computer, the Apple Lisa, earned a brief
0:10.7	second life and then was buried for good.
0:14.8	Watch the Verges documentary Lisa's final act now on YouTube.
0:30.0	Welcome to Switched on Pop.
0:36.3	I'm a musicologist, Nate Sloan.
0:38.3	And I'm a songwriter, Charlie Harding.
0:40.4	Charlie, today we delve deep into a song that is making its way up to Billboard charts
0:45.4	by a young artist named Sean Mendez.
0:48.8	It's called If I Can't Have You.
0:52.1	And I'm interested in this song not only because it has one of the funkiest, catchiest
0:57.6	hooks I've been exposed to in a long time, but because it masters one of the dark musical
1:05.2	arts that we have yet to really discuss on this show, what's that?
1:08.4	And that is Declamation.
1:10.6	Ah yes, I would say what's that, but I actually think I know what it is.
1:14.9	Well then, Charlie, I'll put you on the spot and please, like spelling B style, give me
1:20.5	a definition for declamation.
1:24.4	It is the way in which music and words are set to each other.
1:32.6	Great, beautiful.
1:33.6	Wow.
1:34.6	Excellent.
1:35.6	Yeah, I passed.
	...

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