This article previously appeared in The Tribune Weekend section on April 22.
If you're a music lover, there's a million and one podcasts and radio shows where you can go and listen to music. But what about going beyond the music, to find out what goes on inside that world? This week's podcasts open the door and allow us a peep inside.
Sound Opinions
It's hard to fathom that there is
anyone who hosts a show who might be more expert in their
subject
than Jim DeRogatis and Greg Kot. Their Sound Opinions show takes
a
quick look at news in the music world – the latest episode for
example touches on the decision by Bruce Springsteen to cancel a
concert based on a state's laws preventing transgender people
from
using certain bathrooms and the furore over a shortage of women
being
nominated for the Rock 'n Roll Hall of Fame. But then the show
plunges into the meat of the episode.
The latest episode includes a
fantastically in-depth interview with producer L.A.Reid, who is
very
open and honest in his discussion of the business, the successes
he
has had and the mistakes he has made.
He talks about how he dropped Lady
Gaga
and you can hear the regret and hurt in his voice when he looks
back
on that, but against that he discusses the auditions in which he
was
wowed by Usher, who was far too confident, assured and
flirtatious
for the then 14-year-old boy he was, or Meghan Trainor, who
showed up
with a ukelele to sing her audition and then was told in no
uncertain
terms by Reid to leave the song alone and not to mix it up,
because
it was perfect. “I felt really smart that day,” he says.
He also talks label politics, and
how
sometimes artists just dry up, and have nothing left to say. He
also
points out occasions when he gets it wrong – such as when he
didn't
figure out how big Rihanna was going to be until Beyonce said to
him,
“She's a beast.”
There's a lot of ego in the world of
music making. Listening to Reid is a refreshing antidote to all
of
that.
Song Exploder
Song Exploder has a simple, but
compelling, premise. Each episode picks a single song and
examines
each aspect of the song – where it came from, what was the
inspiration, how it was put together, what made it tick.
One recent episode takes a look at
Suddenly I See, by KT Tunstall – a song that has become almost a
cliché in the way it has been used by TV shows and films to
represent a moment of positive female empowerment, and probably
most
familiar to people from the opening sequence of The Devil Wore
Prada.
But it all started out with the
Scottish singer-songwriter being inspired by a picture of rock
legend
Patti Smith from the cover of the album Horses, looking so cool
that
she seemed impossible to aspire to. From there, the episode
details
how the producer focused in on the rhythm that Tunstall produced
from
her guitar playing and how the trick was to take out the stock
beat
produced by the drummer but to merge rhythms to support that
driving
force to the song.
It's a great episode, full of
telling
insights from both the singer and the producer, and an excellent
starting point for listening to Song Exploder, before diving
into
their back catalogue of episodes to find your own favourite
star.
Website: songexploder.net
Surprisingly Awesome
After all this talk of music, let's
talk about mathematics. Did you know that the turn in a song
that
shifts your heart, that makes you feel emotion, can be expressed
in
mathematical form?
That's at the heart of the latest
episode of Surprisingly Awesome – a show hosted by Adam Davidson
and Adam McKay. The pair, one a New York Times Magazine
columnist,
the other a former head writer for Saturday Night Live, take a
look
at all manner of topics – from how the 1990s song Tubthumping
can
illuminate economic theory, to the love bonds of pigeons,
through to
how mold is more closely related to humans than plant life.
Rachel Ward and Adam McKay are in
the
hot seats for the latest episode, following a short break for
McKay
promoting the movie The Big Short, which he directed. With him,
he
brings the movie's composer, Nicholas Britell.
He talks about the mathematics
behind
music – how an octave doubles in value from the previous octave
for
example.
Britell particularly focuses in on
the
musical motif of the circle of fifths, a sequence of pitches
where
the next pitch is found seven semi-tones higher than the last.
Understand that? I didn't either the first time the show
discussed
it, but Britell breaks it down to show the songs that use the
same
motif, and how the mathematics behind it can be used to mash up
songs
as different as Walk On By and Fly Me To The Moon – and even
throw
in a dash of Mozart along the way.
Insightful and expert, the show
takes
something that sounds far too complex to understand and makes it
mindblowing instead.
Do you have suggestions for a podcast to feature here? Drop a message to Stephen Hunt on Twitter, at @chippychatty.
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