Switched on Pop’s Nate Sloan and Charlie Harding love fresh vegetables and guitar pedals | The Verge
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Switched on Pop’s Nate Sloan and Charlie Harding love fresh vegetables and guitar pedals
The duo recently brought their deep dives on the art of pop music to Netflix.
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They’re the Lennon–Mc Cartney of overanalyzing pop music.
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Switched on Pop’s Nate Sloan and Charlie Harding love fresh vegetables and guitar pedals
The duo recently brought their deep dives on the art of pop music to Netflix.
Posts from this author will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.
If you buy something from a Verge link, Vox Media may earn a commission. See our ethics statement.
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As if you needed more reason to love Carly Rae Jepsen’s “Call Me Maybe” beyond its pop perfection, it is also, according to lore, the genesis for Switched on Pop, one of the best music podcasts out there. Cohosts Nate Sloan and Charlie Harding obsessively dissect pop songs, from the theory behind their musical choices to their production techniques. If you’re a student of pop music, then this is a must-listen podcast.
Sloan is a composer and professor of musicology at USC Thornton School of Music, where he researches pop, but also jazz and even Tin Pan Alley. Harding is a songwriter, music journalist, and a professor as well. Their combined knowledge is near encyclopedic. Whether they’re talking about text painting in Justin Timberlake’s “Can’t Stop the Feeling!” or Taryn Southern’s AI experiments, the two reveal the rich tapestry of even the most simple-seeming songs.
Now, after 12 years and nearly 500 episodes, the show recently made the leap to video on Netflix, featuring guests like Aaron Dessner (The National), Trevor Horn (The Buggles, Yes), and Cypress Hill. Sloan and Harding told us about the importance of the metronome, fresh vegetables, and what seems to be a slightly problematic relationship with guitar pedals.
Switched on Pop is a production of New York Magazine’s Vulture and the Vox Media Podcast Network.
Charlie Harding: The Martin D-28 is the platonic idea of both what a guitar sounds like and, I’m ashamed to admit how much this matters to me, how a guitar looks. You’ve heard it on “Blackbird,” “Wish You Were Here,” and “Big Yellow Taxi.” I found one from 1970 sitting in an antique shop in Maine. But I’m still waiting for it to produce a timeless classic for me.
Nate Sloan: Sibelius music notation software. Whenever I’m analyzing a song, I don’t truly understand it until I transcribe its melody, harmony, and rhythm.
CH: Keyboard shortcuts and the app Rectangle save me hours of my life every year by doing the mundane task of repositioning windows on my computer. And they also make me feel like I’m mission control on some kind of spaceship.
What is the first app you install on a new phone or computer?
What is one thing you wish you could change about your phone?
CH: This is very nitpicky, but it drives me mad. I extensively use focus modes on i OS to help keep away distractions. But I also need people in my family to be able to reach me, so they get exceptions to the focus modes. However, that means any group messaging chain with just one family member blows up my notifications when I’m presenting to a lecture hall full of songwriting students. This means I’m urgently notified every time my recently retired father catches a fish. I am happy for my dad, but I’d be more happy to find out after 5 pm when I’m off “do not disturb.” If this makes me sound like a curmudgeon, I am.
CH: 92… but they are nicely organized into groups that only I understand.
NS: Two. I used to have hundreds open, but it was killing my attention span, so I now make a point of constantly closing them.
Which social media platform do you use the most (if any)?
CH: Browsing Sweetwater for variations of guitar pedals that I already own.
CH: The Dato DUO synthesizer and Dato DRUM drum machine. They are the easiest way to learn to program a synthesizer, and you can’t make a bad sound. My kids jam on them every night. It’s turned them into Brooklyn DJs, unfortunately.
NS: The i Pod that I traveled around the world with in 2006.
CH: In 2007 I pitched my college friends on creating an app that would allow you to legally hitchhike in other people’s cars. We started a tea company instead, which was ultimately less of a liability.
CH: Switched On Pop. My wife read this and said I should add my children.
NS: Coining the term “pop drop” to describe the instrumental postchorus in a pop song.
CH: My wife read this and said I should say my guitar pedal collection.
NS: Getting dunked on by You Tuber Rick Beato after calling the Jonas Brothers “stupefyingly funky” in a New York Times article.
What’s the best piece of advice you’ve ever received?
NS: Step away from the computer, take a walk, and start recording a voicenote about what I’m trying to accomplish.
When was the last time you went somewhere without your phone?
What’s the last piece of physical media you bought?
NS: One man dared to overanalyze pop music, taking on BTS Army, Madonna stans, and the Little Monsters, and living to tell the tale.
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