00:03:22.020So you were the person that came immediately to mind when I decided I wanted to do this show.
00:03:27.020And part of the reason I wanted to do this show was because I watched a whole lot of Rush Talk videos for my reporting on Rush Talk.
00:03:34.820And the Rush Talk, like the dances that all of these 17 through 21-year-olds were doing, so many of them were songs from my college and post-college years.
00:03:47.300and i am a huge fan of your show and i was like the only person who can be like really smart about
00:03:53.960this and not just say like oh music comes back again would be you so can you describe for me
00:04:01.440what the sound of the 2000s is broadly this is like such a big question but if you anything
00:04:08.660comes to mind yeah no i mean you're right because it is pop music is always so diverse but there
00:04:15.240are certain trends in the early 2000s you can detect and a lot of them have to do with changing
00:04:21.000technology music is becoming more digital it's becoming more synthesized more processed more
00:04:27.860manipulated and some of these ways can be very apparent you know it's it's it's right in 1999
00:04:34.960so just on the cusp of the millennium that we get a song like shares believe which is
00:04:42.160attributed to be the first use of conspicuous autotune on a track. And as we move into the
00:04:49.4202000s, we hear that effect more and more. We hear voices that are chopped and processed and
00:04:57.000sped up and slowed down. We have whole songs that have been created inside a computer. Inside the
00:05:03.560box is the parlance of the music producer. So everything from the drums up to the guitars have
00:05:10.540been you know completely digitally synthesized and that that becomes i think a hallmark of that
00:05:18.600sound especially because it contrasts to the more rock oriented organic sound of the 1990s
00:05:27.160when artists like nirvana and alanis morissette were really highlighting these classic instrumental
00:05:36.000combos of drums bass and guitar and very powerful naked vocals so so that's that's part of the sound
00:05:43.200is this more kind of digital texture and then I think there's also a move towards more kind of
00:05:51.820anodyne uh I'm not saying this in a negative way but but more uh universal sort of simplistic
00:06:00.480lyrics in in pop songs if if music in the 1990s like some of those artists we were just talking
00:06:06.760about dealt with social ennui and female empowerment and engaged to some degree with
00:06:16.460issues that were happening in the world music in the 2000s kind of turned inward and was really
00:06:21.500about let's dance, let's love, let's have a good time. It was a little less engaged with the wider
00:06:33.220world, I would say. So if I had to boil it down to two things, musically, I would say more digital.
00:06:40.900Lyrically, I would say a little bit more hermetic and sort of hedonistic, maybe.
00:06:48.540One song that is resurgent right now comes to mind, which is 50 Cent's Candy Shop, which does not have a ton of message.
00:06:58.800This is the candy shop, which has, you know, connotations, but not necessarily like a deeper, a deeper message.
00:07:07.460How much of the sound, too, is the sound of Timbaland like as a producer?
00:07:14.120It's absolutely the sound of Timbaland.
00:07:16.180It's the sound of the Neptunes, the duo made up of Pharrell Williams and Chad Hugo.
00:07:22.640It's the sound of other R&B hip hop producers like The Dream who worked with and Tricky Stewart who worked with Destiny's Child in the early 2000s.
00:07:32.580And of course, what these all have in common is this is a resurgence of black musical style of hip hop, of R&B really starting to surge onto the charts, which is nothing new, obviously, in the history of popular music.
00:07:49.580But it is kind of the beginning of a takeover that will unfurl over the next decade and a half in which hip hop really becomes the most dominant commercial genre in the pop music landscape.
00:08:06.320So we do see the seeds of that being sown in the early 2000s as well.
00:08:11.360yeah when you think of like quintessential 2000 songs you know we've talked about some of the
00:08:17.900style but what are songs that come to mind for you okay for me the first song i think of is hey
00:08:25.120ya by outcast this is a song that came out in 2003 it was the first song to uh go platinum i
00:08:35.220believe on the iTunes platform which was brand new so to me it it sort of represents this this
00:08:42.020technological shift in terms of music consumption that's happening it is a song that well it's funny
00:08:50.540because it does meet that criteria I was talking about earlier on the surface it seems very happy
00:08:57.100go lucky and today I think it's a very common song to hear at like weddings and parties but
00:09:02.560But actually, underneath the surface, there's a little darkness to this song.
00:09:09.240Oops, I Did It Again by Britney Spears, which came out right at 2000, a Y2K classic.0.98
00:09:15.660I love this song because I feel like not only is it so definitive of its time, but Britney Spears has had a reappraisal in the last five years.
00:09:27.880and so much of the sort of criticism and dismissal
00:09:31.360that she met when she arrived on the scene
00:09:33.940has now changed to a certain level of respect
00:09:38.880and understanding of just how musically gifted
00:13:20.520Or Peter Frampton. My partner got really into Peter Frampton.
00:13:23.980That's funny. I didn't have my own Frampton journey, but I definitely know others who have.
00:13:29.800Yeah. Well, it's a way to distinguish yourself to that isn't necessarily like delving deep into like indie or avant garde stuff. You're like, I'm cool because I listen to like Sam Cooke or something. Right. Which isn't like like this is popular, popular music, but seems unpopular or interesting when all of your peers are listening to Z100, as you said.
00:13:54.760I think so. I think there was perhaps more of a sort of binary to between mainstream and not mainstream. That is that is less that is more sort of opaque today. It's a little bit more inchoate, like what is mainstream and what is not and who what are you what are you supposed to be listening to versus what is your own taste? And yeah, but yeah, but all to say I was, I was not listening to pop radio when I was growing up.
00:19:06.280Well, this is where I think something like Scabini Toilet comes in handy,
00:19:10.960because I think that the same way that I discovered songs through soundtracks to movies,
00:19:17.220their discovery apparatus is probably through reuse in video games in youtube memes like
00:19:24.820scabiti toilet right like that are created by people our age so the use of those might reflect
00:19:34.940the tastes of the creators and then those get filtered down into the younger consumers i i find
00:19:43.300that compelling and and i in in the course of doing our podcast sometimes we will pose a similar
00:19:49.860question like why is this song having a resurgence right now the way that pop culture circulates
00:19:57.620through time and space is endlessly surprising and fascinating and we'll talk about a song
00:20:03.780sometimes and and say why is this popular and people write in let's say oh my kids know that
00:20:08.320song because it was featured in kids bop or uh we're re-watching the office with our kids and
00:20:16.640at one point they make a reference to Lou Bega's mambo number five and now they that's all they
00:20:21.460want to listen to and so I I think you're you're right that you know these these songs for millennial
00:20:29.080creators these songs occupy some kind of foundational knowledge and then they use those
00:20:34.500songs in their own videos and content and then that gets filtered down to a younger generation
00:20:40.900of listeners that that seems pretty compelling to me i also think we can't discount how many
00:20:47.220of these songs are like used in the various jukebox style cartoons animated features right
00:20:56.060so like yeah one of my friend's kids knows like all of these queen songs like just a lot of stuff
00:21:02.520and it's all from um oh it's like some cartoon that has like lots of animals in it that are
00:21:09.160performing um someone's gonna write in and be like i've watched that movie 1700 times i know
00:21:15.780exactly what you're talking about but sing melody says it's sing sing oh yeah yeah yeah and so i
00:21:23.600think like even if you really absorb that when you were five or six it sticks with you right like
00:21:30.180the songs i know from when i'm five or six five or six was like all of the little mermaid soundtrack
00:21:34.460or all of the aladdin soundtrack and now instead of like these ballads written by elton john
00:21:41.120specifically for the lion king it's their version of oldies redone and repackaged for them and they
00:21:49.120can listen to them whenever they want to soundtracks yes trolls yeah trolls minions perhaps
00:21:55.300despicable me no you're right movie soundtracks are such a powerful vector and you know historically
00:22:02.160that's nothing new i mean the first ever rock and roll hit bill haley's rock around the clock in
00:22:10.3601955 which changed the face of music forever really became popular because it was featured
00:22:16.680in a film and that was what essentially i i think it's fair to say we wouldn't have had the rock
00:22:23.560revolution without the movie soundtrack that sparked that so this is like a tried and true
00:22:30.600way to sustain popular culture interest is to feature in a film yeah okay our next question
00:22:38.160this is like such a music nerdery question it's perfect for us so next question theory comes from
00:22:44.180chris who's citing a chuck klosterman theory of course right isn't the early 2000s thing
00:22:50.580just like chuck closeman's theory on listening to old bands like the eagles like i don't like
00:22:56.620newfound glory but newfound glory sounds like a time when everything was fresh and exciting
00:23:01.860and weird in my life and they were adjacent to the bands that i did like so basically this theory is
00:23:07.680that we are nostalgic for like i mean personally i am not nostalgic for the early 2000s but um
00:23:15.280kids who weren't alive in the early 2000s are nostalgic for that time and this fits with the
00:23:21.980theory that i have heard from gen sears about why they like this particular type of music
00:23:28.260which is that you can't dance to contemporary music very well right they're not fun to like
00:23:37.560do a dance to yeah whereas a lot of that music from the 2000s is like really fun to dance to
00:23:45.340well i think i'd take some issue with that uh because i i do i do look around and find a lot
00:23:53.580of highly danceable music including dua lipa's uh true hit like levitating or don't don't start
00:24:01.720now um or you know i don't know looking back over the last decade pharrell williams happy
00:24:07.300bruna mars mark ronson's uptown funk but but perhaps in the aggregate there there are less
00:24:13.040dance forward songs and in of recent vintage uh i i find chris's theory compelling yeah that
00:24:22.120chuck klosterman writing about the eagles and discovering that the hatred that he felt for that
00:24:29.640band has has mellowed over time and and uh in his middle age I guess sort of stepping back and
00:24:37.320and finding himself thinking wow I don't feel anything about this I don't where did all that
00:24:41.980ire go I don't I don't feel it anymore and uh and I think I can I can relate to that to that
00:24:49.200sentiment in terms of the nostalgia of that period it's it's interesting right on one hand
00:24:54.700i could see having nostalgia like for the 80s or the 90s those those seem like very um yeah you
00:25:01.300know relatively sort of placid decades yeah the the 2000s began with with 9-11 and then moved into
00:25:10.040an endless war and quickly followed by hurricane katrina and i mean i don't remember it as a
00:25:18.480particularly rosy time period but perhaps people who didn't live through it can look back and think
00:25:24.640well you know compared to what we're dealing with now that was that was so lovely you know1.00
00:25:30.700what do we had to worry about y2k and you know like like our internet speed like yeah your dial
00:25:39.000up i i just i do imagine it seems very innocent in in a way in in comparison social media didn't
00:25:47.900really didn't exist at that point and that must have that must seem very edenic you know in a way
00:25:53.100or something even the idea of like cds or napster culture or like the idea that you couldn't have
00:25:59.600everything that you want at your fingertips yes right it was right physical media was still uh
00:26:05.600the the dominant way that we experienced things and still went to the video store um so so yeah
00:26:13.640so maybe there maybe there is a lot to be nostalgic for and i can see that i mean it's
00:26:18.520interesting there's there's definitely a lot or not a lot but a few songs that explicitly reference
00:26:24.080that time period troy savant and uh charlie xcx had a song called 1999 that came out a few years
00:26:32.240ago oh right an artist named ann marie had a song called 2002 that also came out a few years ago
00:26:38.320so i do i do think like gen z artists pine for that moment and and and perhaps it is because
00:26:47.020compared to the contemporary landscape it does seem sort of bucolic or something right and
00:26:54.940who covers what's that cover of blue that's on top 40 radio right now like i feel like that's uh
00:27:01.360david guetta i believe is that david is he the one who does that i was just thinking like that
00:27:07.000some of these covers are also from younger people who are like i want to recover that musical feeling
00:27:12.440yeah and put it into into a contemporary feeling and i think that there is actually a hunger for
00:27:19.940an acoustic style almost that is somewhat 90s too and you see this i've seen this on tiktok with
00:27:28.520younger people and women in particular talking about like discovering that lilith fair exists
00:27:35.140did you know there was a festival in the late 90s right like and all of these artists toured
00:27:42.420like and there's part of me that's like oh my god I'm so old like how do they not know about
00:27:47.500Lilith Fair but then there's part of me too that thinks what a joy to discover that this existed
00:27:53.580I agree because I don't think there has been a lot of space for those kind of artists for Sarah
00:28:00.240McLaughlin or uh and Alanis Morris I don't think she was part of Lilith Fair but but I'll if it's
00:28:06.040okay I'll group her we can we can loosely group her there those artists were critically and
00:28:11.660commercially successful but for a long time for first of all that that acoustic sound that you
00:28:18.320were referring to and that that sort of more in your face political empowered vulnerable kind of
00:28:30.920yeah lyrical message didn't have a space on the billboard hot 100 i do sense that that might be
00:28:37.260changing with artists like billy eilish billy eilish exactly olivia rodrigo yeah yeah olivia
00:28:45.000rodrigo to me like i love her new album so much it makes me feel like listening to if you own
00:28:51.140apple for the first time or something right because it's musically complex and emotionally
00:28:54.940complex and there's such a strong sense of authorship running through it yes that's kind
00:29:01.400of an exciting development to me uh and does augur something hopeful for the future in terms
00:29:08.580of the culture having space for those voices but i guess to return to chris's initial question i
00:29:15.460i i'm as we talk about it more i am feeling more impressed by the power of of nostalgia and
00:29:23.380realizing that it doesn't have to be accurate you know that is that is nostalgia is exactly
00:29:27.960the sort of glossing over fine detail to to just selectively remember the things that you want to
00:29:35.140and and again probably the things that specifically stand out in contrast to this
00:29:40.360modern moment so so those kind of artists those kind of sounds those kind of dance oriented
00:29:47.300grooves that maybe aren't as common today feel very like a form of of escapism I think
00:29:55.240Yeah. You know, I think, too, of how a lot of people approximately our age was very into like 60s culture in the 90s. Right. And I can just imagine our parents being like, you think that it was like all Woodstock and like summer of love. And my mom's like, what it actually was, was my brother and my dad fighting about the war constantly at the dinner table. Right.
00:30:21.640Like, that was a time of incredible unrest that I think is rivaled by our current moment.
00:30:31.140But that's not what, when I was a teen, what I was trying to evoke or what I was feeling when I listened to, I don't know, Joan Baez.
00:30:40.140Right. And also, I don't feel very qualified to say this, but I am vaguely aware that there's also a 2000s fashion renaissance happening.
00:30:50.780happening oh there right now like yeah again i'm not i don't feel confident telling the audience
00:30:57.680exactly what that consists of but i can talk to you okay i mean it's basically everything that
00:31:04.480we wore in high school and this is for women and for men to some extent but i think it's more vivid
00:31:09.280for women because women's fashion is just more like i don't know visible demonstrative whatever
00:31:14.340um all of those things are back and that's down to like the fabric of the t-shirt right it's like0.81
00:31:21.440velvet t-shirts yeah to the cut of pants right and the type of boots all of those things and i think
00:31:29.080that what's difficult for people who are older to understand is like part of our reaction to those
00:31:36.780clothes is so incredibly invested in like how we felt at that age right right so like i when i think
00:31:44.120of being a junior in high school and wearing these clothes that i see all over you know whether it's
00:31:49.940in urban outfitters or like just like on kids that i see it doesn't make me feel like wow what a time
00:31:56.780of possibility 1998 right like it makes me feel like i felt bad about my body i didn't know who
00:32:04.080liked me i wish i could get asked to prom like all of these like incredibly you know banal and
00:32:10.500essential ways of feeling when you're that age and so i think it's hard to disarticulate those
00:32:18.500emotions from that music yeah in good ways and bad ways right so when i hear tupac like when i
00:32:27.600hear all eyes on me i'm like this i loved the feeling that i had when i was listening to tupac
00:32:33.160writing in the car right yeah not saying the swears because like that was back when i didn't
00:32:38.900say swears like i would just pause and not say the swears um but then there's some music that
00:32:45.220makes me feel like this is when no one would ask you to dance at like the dance after the
00:32:51.700the football game or whatever yeah songs you'd rather forget i i definitely have a few of those
00:32:57.280as well yeah what's a song you'd rather forget um i maybe uh like cotton eye joe comes to mind
00:33:06.080that that that that is a song that um i just remembered dreading coming on and
00:33:15.960and having to like fake like yeah having to do a like yeah a horrible approximation of a line
00:33:23.700dance with a bunch of 10 year olds it was um yeah uh one of mine used to be for complicated
00:33:32.920reasons return of the mac but since listening to 60 songs that explained the 90s the episode
00:33:40.580from from that podcast on that that song i have an incredible appreciation for the song like i love
00:33:49.380that sort of like kiss from a rose actually yeah like i think it got so overplayed in the 90s that
00:33:55.160i was like i don't need to hear the seal song again but now that i understand musically everything
00:34:00.280that's going on with it it makes me appreciate it so much more from a distance so do are you
00:34:06.600telling me i have to go listen to cotton eye joe until i no i actually that's actually a bad song
00:34:12.220until i understand it's it's hidden sit in wonders i don't think there's any recuperation
00:34:19.540of okay i've gotten i joe i'm grateful so our last theory is the same theory but a little bit
00:34:26.520different and i think we're gonna have to put ourselves in a slightly different headspace here
00:34:29.800so this comes from Michaela and it's coming from the Gen Z perspective I associate early
00:34:36.4602000s music with the drive to elementary school and with middle school dances do you think it's
00:34:41.180becoming popular again because of Gen Z nostalgia as we come into adulthood so this is like this is
00:34:46.720not us right like we are in we are in late adulthood or mid-adulthood not late mid-adulthood
00:34:52.280this is like we have to put ourselves back at like age 29 what did we like to listen to then
00:34:59.540like did we have that feeling of nostalgia for the music that defined our teens and our tweens
00:35:04.340that sort of thing so this is something that i think would probably be you know more anecdotal
00:35:11.740but i can relate to this i i can't speak for michaela but i feel like a certain level of
00:35:20.600nostalgia for for my own past was accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic and lockdown and during that
00:35:30.920period I sort of retreated a little bit from the modern world I guess and went into places of like
00:35:42.000maximum comfort which involved going and getting out my cd collection you know like two giant
00:35:51.200booklets of double-sided plastic cd cases i can feel it in my hand right now it's so heavy
00:35:58.880it's so heavy yeah and going through and going oh i remember this album that i got and and going
00:36:06.480into my car because that's the only cd player i have at this point and putting it in and listening
00:36:11.100to it and and and that was true of other media too i was like re-watching shows like seinfeld and
00:36:18.180and the office and things that i didn't want to watch anything new i just wanted to watch the
00:36:22.700things that i was already familiar with so so i i think it's a natural reaction to want to
00:36:30.200recapture that feeling of lost childhood and additionally there's there's even a neurological
00:36:35.160explanation there's a fusing that happens when your brain is developing and you're listening
00:36:42.380to music those songs become really locked into your synaptic pathways in this way that that
00:36:50.380lasts a long time yeah that's not just like a story i tell myself about like why i listen
00:36:55.740to sarah mclaughlin's fumbling towards ecstasy all the time still that's that's a very yeah you
00:37:01.360can you can blame that on neuroscience that that song is is in your in your neurotransmitters and
00:37:07.860perhaps at someday when you're 112 you'll still be able to to recall you know every every lyric
00:37:13.640of that song yeah so because of this neurological connection and perhaps for other people as well
00:37:19.560this desire for like things that are familiar and comforting i do see more and more reaching
00:37:27.640back into your personal musical past to to recreate some of those feelings of of joy and
00:37:36.640familiarity i think that sometimes this is something that makes people feel bad because
00:37:42.800they're not seeking out the new but i also as someone who has so this past year i saw natalie
00:37:50.260merchant and it was like life-changing like it was really wow um i love that so good my best
00:37:57.400friend and i were front row and everyone else was 10 years older than us because it's like all of
00:38:03.500these fans who were um really 10 000 maniacs fans gotcha but she and i we would like we played all
00:38:10.420of like natalie merchant's ophelia motherland these kind of mid-career albums of hers all the
00:38:17.200time in college we were roommates and we had like you know a 50 disc changer which a lot of people
00:38:22.300as like graduation gifts you know in high school there's like a classic graduation gift was the
00:38:28.780ridiculously numbered cd player and you'd be like okay put this on put this like this is the next
00:38:35.120one right and so those were like woven into our subconscious and you know i still listen to new
00:38:42.020music but then there's something incredibly powerful about experiencing it in concert or
00:38:47.780just like giving yourself space to listen to it again i think the other thing and this i
00:38:53.960maybe is true for gen z but i think it's particularly true for people around our age
00:38:58.460is that listening to an entire album can take you back to that time when like you put on music and
00:39:06.040you stared at the ceiling right yeah so like a different experience of music than how we often
00:39:12.400experience music now and maybe that's where the nostalgia is from too interesting where
00:39:16.960where music now is often happening in the background of some other activity yeah it's
00:39:23.980it's being played on a crappy iphone speaker or like out of a pair of of airpods that you can
00:39:31.000hear someone sitting next to you on the subway uh that that's interesting i it makes me think of um
00:39:37.600my wife whitney always talks she doesn't know the names of songs she's like oh yeah that's track
00:39:44.000five so that gets back to some of the technological shifts that we've been discussing and how they
00:39:49.400have changed our relationship with music and music has become less tactile and possessing
00:39:55.640less aura maybe as as as Walter Benjamin would say wow even did the Benjamin like did it like
00:40:02.740didn't pronounce the j like wow I am an academic so I had to I had to drop him in there
00:40:09.180so I think that like where we're arriving is this interesting complex uh not like
00:40:18.920we have no forceful argument here like this is a top-down thing as in millennials are playing
00:40:25.040this music and it's somehow filtering down but then it's also i think arriving somewhat organically
00:40:31.460from younger kids who are discovering this music and like as someone said to me talking about how
00:40:37.440hey is all over the place again like they said like a bop is a bop right like that that song
00:40:43.340is back because that song is good yes a bop is a bop i think that was uh stravinsky who first
00:40:48.200first said that yeah yeah do you have any other overarching thoughts about this
00:40:54.340no i mean i do i i hope no one listening is disappointed that i i we haven't arrived at a
00:41:01.080grand theory yes uh but but i think that speaks to the the the fascinating and unruly ways that
00:41:10.880music and other media and popular culture move through society that you can't really predict
00:41:17.820where a song will start and where it will end up and hopefully there there's some matrix of all
00:41:25.720these explanations that we've come up with that will be satisfying but i find your your the bop
00:41:31.700is a bop uh theory to be particularly strong and that and that's why i would be interested
00:41:37.720whenever you have a question about something larger happening go go to a single song and
00:41:43.380trace it you know songs songs are like whole they're like whole universes and they're like
00:41:48.660portals into different times and places and the way a song can be created and and in in its creation
00:41:56.600reference the past i mean let's yeah let's talk about hey ya for a second if if that i feel like
00:42:01.200that could be a great way to conclude this hey ya written by andre benjamin not benjamin was
00:42:08.420a deliberate tribute to Aretha Franklin's Say a Little Prayer. It uses the same metric structure,
00:42:16.760the same rhythmic structure as that song. So that song is reaching back into the past,
00:42:24.560but then it's also looking forward to the future. It's a rapper singing, and just that idea would
00:42:31.580change the face of music as we know it. And every Drake and every other singing rapper
00:43:03.280because it's a song about how no relationship is built to last.
00:43:06.380And if you think it is, you're deluding yourself. And I imagine this song will continue to be sampled and reinterpreted over time. And some core part of its meaning will stay the same, but it also changed to adapt and reflect the tastes of the people who gravitate towards that song in that moment.
00:43:25.640So songs are entire worlds. And when you start to listen and and study a song and and hear all of its sort of manifold meanings, it just it can take you to so many different places and connect even the silliest song.
00:43:44.260even cotton eye joe probably could connect to some powerful common core of humanity so
00:43:50.580so that that that feels like maybe hopefully a satisfying that's a future episode of switched
00:43:56.800on pop is you recuperating cotton eye joe um noted we did we actually i'm remembering we did
00:44:04.120do something about it many many years ago so maybe it's time to revisit that so our last question is
00:44:10.160for our advice time segment and normally this bonus content is only for paid subscribers but
00:44:15.880we love this conversation so much that we wanted all of you to benefit from it this question is
00:44:21.640nostalgia adjacent and it comes from natalie and i think it's absolutely in line with everything
00:44:27.080we've been talking about how do i get out of a pop culture rut i often find myself re-watching
00:44:32.960the same shows and movies listening to the same songs on repeat i'll even listen to the same
00:44:38.540podcast episodes multiple times on one hand the repetition is comforting and I already know that
00:44:44.700I like that thing so why not listen to it again but on the other hand there's so much out there
00:44:50.020that I want to have experienced but sometimes it feels like a chore to start something new
00:44:54.280what's the deal with that okay so the first thing I'm going to say Natalie is I think you're burned
00:45:00.240out i think that this is a symptom of like having no energy to grapple with new things and like
00:45:10.640you and you by seeking out these things that are comforting like you are performing a kindness to
00:45:15.820yourself she is being kind to her brain by finding these things that like just feel like home they
00:45:22.400feel comfy and i don't think that there's anything wrong or shameful about that the same way that
00:45:28.580you were discussing like the things that you went to in the pandemic right like that's just a way
00:45:35.200that we cope with the world around us so yeah i don't think that that's anything to be shamed
00:45:40.440about but i think that like trying to think about the fact that like maybe this has to do with other
00:45:45.460things in my life and not necessarily like me having no taste or anything like that what do
00:45:50.760you hear when you hear this i i definitely relate to this yeah as i was saying earlier this is
00:45:57.220something I felt especially acutely during the pandemic. And I'll give like three pieces of
00:46:05.240advice or answers for Natalie. And the first, I guess, is you can start to branch out from the
00:46:14.260things you love by actually going deeper into them. And you mentioned earlier a podcast called
00:46:21.74060 Songs That Explain the 90s by, I think, Rob Harvilla is the host of that. And you could
00:46:28.480listen to, forgive me, our own podcast, Switched on Pop, and find episodes about songs you love.
00:46:36.080I think what's really cool is to take something that you love and understand it even deeper.
00:46:42.960And you can do that by reading about it, by listening to it. And there's like,
00:46:47.060What I love about this moment is there's more resources than ever. Speaking of nostalgia, I was rediscovering one of my favorite songs from the late 2000s, Combination Pizza Hut and Taco Bell by Das Racist. I don't know if you're familiar with that one.
00:47:06.400and um i'm at the pizza hut i'm at the taco bell i'm at the combination pizza hut and taco bell i
00:47:12.120mean it's a classic and i was like what what is this what is this song and i went online i was
00:47:17.400like what did you know i don't know what i googled what how did combination pizza hut and taco bell
00:47:23.440get made and there's a whole article on slate that's an oral history of the song and they
00:47:27.420interview the members of the band and they talk all about and they and they and they talk to the
00:47:31.980people who listen to it and i'm like what a moment we live in where i can literally just go online
00:47:36.500and find this deep dive into a novelty song that you that you thought no one had ever thought of
00:47:41.660and so that's not getting you out of that rut necessarily i guess but it is like allowing you
00:47:49.080to understand and appreciate these things as as not just something you love for no reason like
00:47:56.380these are these are artistic objects and they have their own histories and stories and it's fun to
00:48:00.680unpack those with with other people who love them i will say that the way i got into switched on pop
00:48:06.000was during the pandemic and the series on britney spears it's like a five-part series right a four
00:48:13.720part series yeah yeah yeah and like i had seen it somewhere in a a culture study thread about
00:48:20.460podcasts and recommendations for podcasts and it just like it absolutely beguiled me because like
00:48:25.560a lot of people was re-appreciating Britney Spears at that time um but yeah I think that that's such
00:48:31.720a great idea it's it's not getting out of the rut but it's expanding the rut right it's like making
00:48:35.760it more roomy like there's more room to to figure out like your your place in it the other thing I
00:48:41.980would do is like I don't know it seems cheesy but we used to do this all the time like ask your
00:48:47.540friends what they're listening to that is probably the most tried and and true method of music and
00:48:53.880and other media discovery yeah and uh i will do exactly this i'll just text a few trusted
00:49:01.680confidants and be like what what's what's your favorite record right now and invariably that
00:49:06.860whatever answer they give becomes the the thing that i become obsessed with for for the next
00:49:13.040series of months the uh i i love that you said that and and and if i'm might be so emboldened
00:49:19.880I could give some of the things that I'm listening to right now.
00:49:43.100She's a 24-year-old Icelandic Chinese jazz-inspired singer-songwriter.
00:49:49.880And you listen to her and you hear, it sounds like it's something like a lost recording from 1952 that was just rediscovered with these lush orchestral strings and jazz harmonies.
00:50:03.520And she's got this voice that feels very sort of old and weathered for her age.
00:50:10.140This is an artist that you listen to and you're like, oh, the future of music is great.