Is that new song you like AI? Here’s how you can tell
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...
15 Jul 202549min
Can Recession Pop predict the market?
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...
1 Jul 202532min
How Americana helped mainstream country find its soul
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 gen...
27 Jun 202535min
Country music is Mexican (Fuerza Regida and Grupo Frontera)
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...
26 Jun 202532min
The Ballad of Lainey Wilson and Jessie Murph
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. ...
25 Jun 202528min
The hick hop renaissance (BigXthaPlug and Bailey Zimmerman)
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...
24 Jun 202535min
Is Morgan Wallen the problem with country music?
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...
23 Jun 202535min
