May the Pod Be With You

As I chip away at this blog, commenting on the music I love with text, sheet music screenshots, and embedded YouTubes, a whole bunch of smarter folks than I are doing this music analysis thing in what seems like its ideal medium: on podcasts. Last summer I discovered the excellent classical music podcast Sticky Notes and more recently the amazing jazz/pop/rock podcast Strong Songs, both of which have directly led me to music I love and to posts on this site. These aren't the first or only podcasts I've enjoyed that have steered me to amazing music and/or thoughts about same. Here's a list of several I've found illuminating and which I think would be well worth your time as well:

Sticky Notes is the Patreon-supported pet project of conductor Joshua Weilerstein that somehow manages to walk the line between accessibility and arcana, between pointing out the obvious to newcomers (Figaro is great) and peeking into less well trod nooks and crannies (the origins of Stravinsky's Pulcinella, for instance). Though I'm generally less fond of his interview shows, he does talk to some heavy hitters (Yo Yo Ma, Frederica Von Stade, Alex Ross), and his multi-interview consideration of the Goldberg Variations proves to be an ideal approach to a kaleidoscopic work (it helped inspire my own post on the two Goulds). If I had to recommend a single gateway episode, you could do worse than his dramatic telling of the writing and premiere of Shostakovich's Leningrad Symphony.

Strong Songs, another Patreon-backed podcast, is almost too good to be true. Produced by a preternaturally sunny sax player from Portland, Ore., Kirk Hamilton, it takes apart pop, rock, and jazz tunes element by element, instrument by instrument, to illuminate how and why they work. He's not shy about taking on some honkingly obvious choices ("Stairway to Heaven," "I Will Always Love You," "Single Ladies," "Paranoid Android"), but he's equally insightful on a wide range of less likely choices (Kimbra's "Cameo Lover," Nina Simone's "Sinnerman," the Cardigans' "Lovefool," Heart's "Barracuda"), and even a few musical theatre selections ("Satisfied" from Hamilton and "Wedding Song" from Hadestown). Hamilton has been doing it for about three seasons now, and you can hear his voice as a thoughtful audio essayist develop over the years (I'd especially recommend his beautiful reading of Sufjan Stevens's "Chicago"). Your mileage may vary with his relentlessly upbeat tone; I for one find his joy infectious, particularly his habit of including his appreciative chortles over playbacks of particularly amazing passages. And it's not an exaggeration to say that his deft recreations and deconstructions of everything from Janelle Monae's "Tightrope" to Bobby Timmons's "Moanin'" have given me fresh ears for everything.

Switched on Pop is co-produced by Vox, and I'll confess I don't follow this one as closely as the first two, mainly because pop is not my main jam. But I never regret spending time with songwriter Charlie Harding and musicologist Nate Sloan, whose charming millennial rapport belies their formidable analytical chops. I particularly enjoyed their episode on the rhythms of Rosalía, on Fiona Apple's Fetch the Bolt Cutters, on Folklore. And their surprising miniseries on Beethoven's Fifth was an impressive feather in their cap.

Song Exploder is a perfect audio product, deceptively simple and straightforward; host Hrishikesh Hirway edits his questions out entirely so that we just hear the artist, oral/aural history-style, as they spin out the story of how they built their songs, sound by sound, idea by idea, track by track. I admit that my interest ebbs and flows based on the song and the artist, something that's less true of other podcasts in which the host's editorial voice is stronger. But it's a great library to dip into, and to cite just a few examples off the top of my head, I cherish the episodes on Tune-yards's "Water Fountain," Sharon Van Etten's "Seventeen," Waxahatchee's "Fire," Yusuf/Cat Stevens's "Father and Son." And the Yo Yo Ma episode is a profound meditation on time, age, and Bach.

Cocaine & Rhinestones is another ideal match of subject, form, and voice. Tyler Mahan Coe grew up around and among the working class of country musicians (his father is outlaw country singer/songwriter David Allan Coe), and this meticulously constructed narrative podcast has both the unimpeachable authority of someone who's lived in this world and absorbed its every scintilla lore and conventional wisdom, and the fierce skepticism of an insider who's eager to debunk myths and set the record straight. It's the audio equivalent of stumbling down the most delightful internet wormhole you didn't know was even there. The first season is exquisite, but if you're like, "Country music? I don't know," the Bobbie Gentry episode is a perfect gateway (IIRC I think it was mine) to Coe's themes, style, and ornery opinionating. I also particularly love the Louvin Brothers episode. The second season, which is going to use the career of George Jones as the lens to talk about mid-century American music and culture, just started and it's as wildly compelling as ever.

Hit Parade is made by journalist and "chart analyst" Chris Molanphy, but he manages to dig deep and uncover as much about pop music as any of the musician-led podcasts above. And while I care as much about the Billboard charts as I do about the Grammys or the Rock Hall of Fame (not at all), Molanphy expertly uses them as a lens to talk about the rise and fall of artists' careers and of whole genres, from yacht rock to musical theatre. He's done some artful pairings to draw out comparisons and contrasts (an episode on two prematurely dead greats, Prince and Tom Petty, or one about the Georgia bands R.E.M. and the B-52s), but some of his best episodes are just deep dives on single artists: Donna Summer, Garth Brooks, Outkast, or, in a true standout episode among many contenders, Billy Joel, in which Molanphy makes a convincing case for the much-maligned Bard of Hicksville as a consummate pop chameleon.

Sound Opinions, the beloved radio-show-turned-podcast from Chicago rock critic veterans Jim DeRogatis and Greg Kot, has turned me on to a lot of music I love: Beach House, Dua Saleh, Sharon Van Etten. Why there aren't more Siskel-and-Ebert-style music-critic podcasts, I have no idea, but this one is the gold standard.