What do John C. Reilly and Taylor Swift have in common? The Great American Songbook

Switched on Pop

Vox Media Podcast Network

Music Interviews, Music History, Music, Music Commentary

4.6 • 2.7K Ratings

🗓️ 14 October 2025

⏱️ 56 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

John C. Reilly joins to discuss Mr. Romantic, his theatrical tribute to the Great American Songbook that treats Irving Berlin and Tom Waits as equals in the canon of timeless American song. Reilly recorded live in one room with his band using vintage ribbon microphones, embracing the squeaks and imperfections while layering in cinematic sound effects—crickets outside a lover's window, a collect call from prison—to transform each standard into an immersive scene. But what makes a song from the 1920s feel eternal? Music data scientist Chris Della Riva, author of the forthcoming Uncharted Territory and the newsletter Can't Get Much Higher, breaks down how composers like the Gershwins wrote for amateur musicians playing sheet music at home, creating universal lyrics and AABA structures where the hook comes first. That accessibility is precisely what draws Reilly to this repertoire. He sees himself in the lineage of interpreters like Sinatra, not selling his own story but passing along music that already belongs to all of us, like holding up a seashell and saying, "Isn't this one beautiful?" More Get Chris Della Riva's book Uncharted Territory: What Numbers Tell Us about the Biggest Hit Songs and Ourselves Subscribe to Chris Della Riva's Can't Get Much Higher Songs Discussed Taylor Swift "The Last Great American Dynasty" George Gershwin "I Got Rhythm" Village People "Y.M.C.A." Billie Eilish "Bad Guy" Frank Sinatra "On the Sunny Side of the Street" Judy Garland "Over the Rainbow" Ella Fitzgerald "My Romance" George Gershwin "But Not for Me" Elvis Presley "Are You Lonesome Tonight" The Beatles "We Can Work It Out" The Beatles "Get Back" The Beatles "Yesterday" John C. Reilly "Moonlight Serenade" John C. Reilly "Dreams" John C. Reilly "Johnsburg, Illinois" John C. Reilly "Falling in Love Again" John C. Reilly "What'll I Do" John C. Reilly "Picture in a Frame" John C. Reilly "Just Another Sucker on the Vine" Randy Newman "Ragtime" John C. Reilly & David Garza "What's Not To Love" Harry Nilsson "Coconut" Judy Garland "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" Dooley Wilson "As Time Goes By" The New Vaudeville Band "Winchester Cathedral" Andy Williams "The Days of Wine and Roses" Nat King Cole "The Frim Fram Sauce" Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Today we're going to conquer your EV phobia in the all-electric Toyota BZ.
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0:13.0	Toyota, let's go places.
0:15.0	Stage on pop.
0:20.0	Welcome to Switched on Pop. I'm musicologist Nate Sloan. I'm songwriter Charlie Harding.
0:28.4	Charlie, last week we talked more than anybody could possibly want about Taylor Swift's latest release, Life of a Showgirl.
0:36.6	And I think one of the really cool Easter eggs that we
0:39.4	uncovered is that there is a showgirl sound on this record. Right. The sound of the 1920s,
0:47.3	the sound of composers like Irving Berlin, of performers like Ethel Merman. And really, we never said
0:53.9	this out loud, Charlie, but it's the sound
0:55.8	of what we would call the Great American Songbook. Taylor Swift, of course, wrote the last
1:01.3	great American dynasty. Surely she must appreciate the great American songbook. So inspired by
1:07.5	our muse, Taylor, I want to dedicate this episode to exploring the legacy of this repertoire
1:15.7	from the golden age of American popular music about a century ago and find more ways that
1:22.2	these sounds continue to resonate not only through the work of folks like Taylor Swift, but perhaps through some of our
1:30.5	greatest entertainers like John C. Riley, who has a whole album devoted to this repertoire called
1:37.0	Mr. Romantic. Not only that, a whole persona. So this music is alive and well. And I want to
1:44.1	understand it better so we can appreciate these
1:47.5	sounds and the way they continue to influence our modern soundtrack. And in order to do this
1:54.2	properly, Charlie, we need to bring in a special guest. Please welcome back to the show, Chris
	...

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