Why your brain craves Despacito. Plus: books of 2022
Life and Art from FT Weekend
Forhecz Topher
4.6 • 601 Ratings
🗓️ 18 November 2022
⏱️ 31 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
This week, we learn why we love the music we love. Lilah speaks with Susan Rogers, who was a recording engineer for Prince on albums such as ‘Purple Rain’. Now she's a neuroscientist who has studied what music does to the brain. Her book, 'This Is What It Sounds Like', helps us make sense of our own musical preferences. Susan joins us to listen to some music and explain how it affects us. Why is Despacito one of the most listened to songs of all time? Why does one person love techno, and another just not care? Then, ahead of the FT's Books of the Year special, our literary editors Fred Studemann and Laura Battle come on to share their personal favourite fiction books from 2022.
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Tell us your cultural prediction for 2022! You can record a voice message here: https://sayhi.chat/jzdg3
If you prefer, you can email us at [email protected]. We’re on Twitter @ftweekendpod, and Lilah is on Instagram and Twitter @lilahrap.
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Links and mentions from the episode:
– Susan’s book is called This Is What It Sounds Like: What The Music You Love Says About You: https://www.thisiswhatitsoundslike.com/
– Here’s the Spotify playlist, which you should listen to while reading the book: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5FwghDk8f8jgJdGPIF1RNM
– Fred is on Twitter @frederick65. Laura is on Twitter @battlelaura
– The FT Books of the Year will be published across the FT on 26th November
Books mentioned by Fred and Laura:
– Trust by Hernan Diaz. FT review: https://on.ft.com/3GkYZOW
– Iron Curtain by Vesna Goldsworthy. FT review: https://on.ft.com/3OfuYBT
– The Book of Goose by Yiyun Li. FT review: https://on.ft.com/3tCvtg7
– Punishment by Ferdinand von Schirach
– Grand: Becoming My Mother’s Daughter by Noelle McCarthy
– A Sort of Life by Graham Greene, in Slightly Foxed Magazine
– Magnificent Rebels: The First Romantics and the Invention of the Self by Andrea Wulf
– An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us by Ed Yong
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Special offers for FT Weekend listeners, from 50% off a digital subscription to a $1/£1/€1 trial can be found here: http://ft.com/weekendpodcast
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Original music by Metaphor Music. Mixing and sound design by Breen Turner and Sam Giovinco
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Clips courtesy of Universal Music, DFA/Virgin / Parlophone, and Warner
Read a transcript of this episode on FT.com
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | In the early 80s, Susan Rogers was a small-time audio technician working in Los Angeles |
| 0:05.9 | when she landed a job with a big-time rock star. |
| 0:11.5 | I was an audio technician. I didn't do anything artistically with records, |
| 0:20.6 | but it turned out that when Prince |
| 0:22.4 | was embarking on Purple Rain, he was looking for a technician, someone to keep his home |
| 0:26.6 | studio running, and also, as it turned out, fortunately for me, use the equipment and assist him |
| 0:33.0 | in his recordings. It was a stroke of luck. Susan loved Prince. |
| 0:38.8 | And it turned out they also had a similar taste in music. |
| 0:42.3 | They listened to the same funk and soul records growing up. |
| 0:45.5 | And working with him, Susan learned not just to record music better, but to think about |
| 0:50.5 | what it meant to have a signature sound. |
| 0:53.3 | So he was able to train me and teach me his ear what he liked music to sound like. |
| 1:00.7 | Over the next 22 years, Susan worked with tons of stars. |
| 1:04.8 | David Byrne from the talking heads, the trip-hop artist tricky. |
| 1:08.9 | And then, in the early 2000s, she switched careers entirely. |
| 1:13.0 | She went for a PhD in neuroscience to understand how music affects the brain. |
| 1:18.0 | And she recently wrote a book called This Is What It Sounds Like, |
| 1:21.0 | what the music you love says about you. |
| 1:24.3 | Individual pieces of music are chosen to serve an immediate function. So our little brains are up there |
| 1:31.6 | minding their own business and throughout the day they're going to say to themselves, |
| 1:35.1 | you know what are we good right now? I would like to hear some music. When you're going to go to your |
| 1:39.2 | playlist, you're going to choose something. That's a brain saying there's a particular kind of treat I'm in the mood for |
... |
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