Switched on Pop

What if the entire sound of modern podcasting can be traced back to a single Grateful Dead song uploaded in 2001? We uncover the musical lineage that connects NPR's classical gravitas to dubstep wobbl...

The robots have arrived, and they're making protest songs about boots on the ground. When an AI band called The Velvet Sundown fooled over a million Spotify listeners with their psychedelic folk anthe...

In which we explore the unlikely rise, and surprising backlash against, one Benson Boone. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Why does the economy look great on paper but feel terrible in your wallet? There might be a more revealing economic indicator hiding in your Spotify queue. "Recession Pop" first emerged during the Gre...

 As we've been examining over the course of Country Week, country music has found a larger audience, in part by widening its sonic palette. For the final episode of this series, we take a look at a ge...

More often than not, country music is seen as an "American" genre – meaning that the music is seen as strictly from the United States. In some ways, that's true; but the genre's iconography, sound, an...

There's often an unspoken (and deeply misogynistic) rule on country music radio: never play two female artists back to back. In this episode of Switched On Pop's country week, we aim to do just that. ...

One of the biggest country hits of the year has been "All The Way," by Texas rapper BigXthaPlug and country rocker Bailey Zimmerman, which peaked at #4 on the Billboard Hot 100. The song is a perfectl...

Country music stands at a crossroads between tradition and evolution, and no artist embodies this tension better than Morgan Wallen. His song "I'm the Problem" opens with beautiful bluegrass guitar be...

Looking for relationship advice? Skip the self-help books and turn to Sabrina Carpenter's latest single "Manchild" instead. This deep dive into the art of musical insults reveals how pop's newest sens...