Switched on Pop
Vulture
Songwriters and musicians deconstruct their creative processes and recent hits with musicologist hosts.
Why we picked this
We picked Switched on Pop because it reverse-engineers pop music with the rigor of musicologists and the ears of working musicians. Hosts Nate Sloan and Charlie Harding explain how a song works—why a dragged snare creates tension, how reverb buries a vocal to signal vulnerability, what a minor chord progression does to a dirty joke—without stripping the pleasure out of the track. The show treats Top 40 as a text worth close reading, and its feed is a reliable catalog of that analysis.
Recent episodes
Paul McCartney went back to Liverpool for something new to say
Jun 9, 202642 min
How a sci-fi dystopia became a personal utopia (ft. Arc Iris)
Jun 5, 202613 min
Why bands give us purpose (ft. MUNA)
Jun 2, 202652 min
Drake's Slop Era
May 26, 202655 min
Kacey Musgraves walks country’s borderlands
May 19, 202639 min
Rostam reimagines American music
May 15, 202654 min
Eurovision is back – but not without controversy
May 12, 202654 min
Samara Cyn is rap's best new writer
May 8, 202637 min
Olivia Rodrigo and the second verse massacre
May 5, 202644 min
Hrishikesh Hirway made an album about running out of time — in no time
Apr 28, 202643 min
BTS is back. But K Pop is not the same.
Apr 21, 202648 min
Maggie Rogers: going viral is a trap
Apr 17, 202637 min
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