Summer Heat of the 2000s: Nelly + Katy Perry (Pt. 1)

Switched on Pop

Vox Media Podcast Network

Music Interviews, Music History, Music, Music Commentary

4.6 • 2.7K Ratings

🗓️ 9 August 2018

⏱️ 23 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

What made summer jams of the aughties like Nelly's "Hot in Herre" and Katy Perry's "I Kissed a Girl" so hot? The answer: big, sweaty, doses of harmonic tension. Specifically, each track relies on the Baroque technique of the ground bass. Wait, we mean: the Baroque technique of PEDAL POINT! When the chords in these songs don't match up with their bass notes, the ratcheting tension adds heat—fueling both dance moves, and controversy. Featuring: Nelly - Hot in Herre Katy Perry - I Kissed a Girl Katy Perry - Teenage Dream All summer Switched On Pop & Splice have been diving into the DNA of summer hits, and now we want you to show us what you’ve learned. Get inspired by sound packs and chord progressions created by Switched on Pop and share your best song of summer with us and the world. Hosts Nate & Charlie will be listening and will choose their favorite submission to win a year of Splice Sounds and have their track played on the podcast. Check out all the details at http://splice.com/onpop-fire And, read Owen Pallett's excellent article on the use of harmonic tension in Teenage Dream. 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.
0:34.8	I'm songwriter Charlie Harding.
0:36.3	And I'm musicologist Nate Sloan.
0:38.3	Nate, we're going to continue our song of the summer series where we've been really
0:43.1	going kind of retro looking back into the 60s, the 70s, the 80s and the 90s.
0:48.0	But I want to take us into the 2000s and look at what makes a hot summer jam hot.
0:53.8	Okay, literally.
0:55.3	Yeah, oh wow.
0:56.8	Literally.
0:57.8	Okay, I want to figure out how do you make a song sound hot, like hot in temperature,
1:03.7	like hot on the dance floor hot.
1:05.9	Right.
1:06.9	This is going to be an all out song of summer review because I've been diving deep into
1:12.4	the music of the 2000s and some of my favorite tracks from Nelly to Katy Perry to Beyonce
1:17.1	to the Black Eyed Peas have all been colliding and I've noticed that they're using this same
1:22.1	technique to make that heat happen.
1:25.0	I'm on the edge of my seat here, Charlie.
1:27.5	Take me there.
	...

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