[laughs]

Uh, they see that there is this sort of desire amongst fans to interact and play with their music, to create their own covers.

And so this thing that we're not supposed to be doing, currently m- all the major labels are working with AI companies to create m- sort of legal forms that you can remix preexisting music by the musicians with their permission, and they then, you know, get credit.

And this is sort of like an all behind the scenes legal mechanization that we still have yet to see exactly how it's going to play out.

But the difference between an AI cover and a human cover, I don't know.

I mean, they both sound like a cover.

... kinda threw away immediately.

Making a song requires thousands and thousands of small choices.

Huh.

Four minutes and 29 seconds.

People were really taking their time back in the '90s.

I mean, take for example, Shawn Colvin's Sunny Came Home.

[upbeat music] Mandolin.

I love the mandolin.

And it's still going.

... you, you, you might be a savant.

Yeah.

You know, I did my, like, deep Google search.

I went through databases of famous synth presets from the 1980s, and I couldn't find an accordion sound, but I did find a sound called the harmonium on the Prophet 5, which was one of the most popular synthesizers at the time.

But it costs, like, $10,000 today to buy a used one, and I figured it would be much easier [laughs] to figure out whether or not this was the sound if I just called the guy who made it to see if my hypothesis was correct, that maybe Cindy just grabbed-

[laughs]

[laughs]And here's the thing, like Sam, you're not alone.

So obviously when you first asked me this question, I, I went and did my internet sleuthing and like tried to find the answer there.

What I missed on my first pass were these like really deep older internet forums because lots of other people have actually asked this question, like what is the synthesizer solo? What is the sound? Why did it happen? And so after I heard this Cyndi clip, the accordion, I went and I found this posting on, you know, obviously people were asking this on like Reddit, on forums called Harmony Central, but there's this really popular music forum that is really unfortunately called Gear Sluts-

So, Charlie, what are you hearing in that intro, and is it a quote-unquote bad intro by your standards today? I personally like vocals that have a lot of well-developed instrumental settings like that was setting up.

Yeah, no, exactly.

This is definitely one that sets the scene.

I love the use of the mandolin.

I'm a mandolin player.

It feels almost like the opening credits to a movie.

It is establishing the entire world, and it does it really well by introducing each instrument part by part until the vocal finally arrives.

And you talk about how they managed to walk that back.

Okay.

And I kinda know his work, but I wasn't as familiar, and Jason often plays with a band that's, like really engaging, but this show was a small, intimate theater show, just Jason and his acoustic guitar, which is mesmerizing and beautiful.

... and I'm just like, "I'm talking to music researchers and no one's giving me the answer"

I'm stunned.

I really feel validated and, but also I feel like I fit more in the world now.

[upbeat music]

[rock music]

When you picture Eddie Van Halen.

He's ripped out the pickups, put his own pickups in.

He has painted the body, made it his own.

People are constantly trying to make this guitar their own sound.

And so manufacturers, whether boutique or other big guitar makers, have also tried to make S-style, Stratocaster-style guitars, because again, it is the guitar that people think of when they think of the electric, and it's so modifiable.

Hmm.

And so it is reasonable that Fender would say, "Well, what about our guitar shape?" I mean, frankly, the electric guitar, it doesn't really matter what the shape of the body is, unlike the acoustic guitar, where the body shape really matters, but the electric guitar, you can kinda make it look like anything.

It's like, you know, different guitar pedals or different guitar sounds or just different ins- instruments based on the song's needs and what you wanna convey.

One of my favorite things to do is watch Chromeo recreate their songs, you know, on a short-form video, long-form video, whatever, and, uh, you get to see, like, master painters at work, where most of us aren't...

Our ears are amazing.

We are so tuned to hear timbre and texture and subtlety, but to know how to deconstruct it and recreate it for people is so, it's such a gift.

They are master painters of sound.

And the, you know, when, when they're, when they're in their studio, you know, you guys have, uh, dozens and dozens of keyboards.

Mm, okay.

So, so oftentimes, like, um, in addition to liking electronic dance music, I also love bluegrass, and a lot of bluegrass guitar players will try to seek out these, like, rarefied, incredibly expensive ch- old acoustic guitars that oftentimes don't necessarily even play that well, but they were built in a way, and they've aged in a way, and they used wood that no longer exists today, that just resonates in this gorgeous sort of way.

Love me to my bone.

Why is it happening now? I don't know.

Is it because of the rightward turn in the world where, you know, typically popular music has been very dominant with progressive and secular values, and we're seeing more songs both of religious conservatism and political conservatism finding their way on the charts that might reflect larger swings of, of political persuasion? I also think that what, really what we're seeing is that streaming having matured and become the main way that we listen to music shows how people are actually listening.

Do we have any signs, then, about what might be on tap for 2026? Can we expect Alex Warren-style power ballads? Can we expect this kind of moment of- of inspirational Christian music to continue? Or is there something else afoot that you see in the trend lines that you can tell us to, you know, might be on the charts come 2026?

Here's the thing, Christian music has always been huge.

It doesn't get a lot of mainstream media attention, and so it might seem smaller than the actual listening audience is.

Now that we're seeing what people are listening to as streaming, it's very clear that there is great demand for songs like Ordinary by Alex Warren.

When you have that big of a breakout hit of something which is a little bit left field, we're not expecting it, what you get are follow-ons.

(laughs)

(laughs)Uh, I, definitely, won't do that.

So, I have...

I received some reporting, very few people wanted to talk on the record about the fact that lots of artists like receiving their w- their, uh, vocals on the actual track.

And whether or not they even like it, artists are receiving pitches that sound like them.

This is not totally new practice.

In fact, there were demo artists who were sound-alikes, that when real demos were made, that you'd go get this one person to sound like that other person, because what you're trying to do is show that this song that I've written could be major country star's next hit.

Because that's a, that's a big next step up in people don't care.

Mailchimp your marketing with our new customizable pop-ups.

Hey, it's Charlie.

Uh, I've got this question that's been haunting me, and, and maybe it's been haunting you too.

Why does this economy look great on paper but feel terrible in our wallets? We're all desperately searching for clues about what's really happening to our financial lives.

But what if the answer isn't in the stock market or unemployment numbers? What if it's hiding in our Spotify playlists? I recently joined the Vox podcast Explain It To Me to dive into this exact mystery.

Could our music actually predict whether we're sliding into a recession? We explored recession pop, a term that first lightly surfaced during the Great Recession but really exploded into playlists, radio formats, and even DJ sets throughout 2024 and 2025.

I jump in during the second half of this episode of Explain It To Me with Jonquille Hill, but trust me, the entire conversation is worth your time.

You make me feel like I'm living a teenage dream.

What were you hoping to evoke emotionally, but also kind of like philosophically in a listener who heard that? What did you want them to take away?

I wanted it to be a jingle that was diva-esque that would announce itself as being every kind of pop music.

So, it begins with a radio FM sweep that is completely anachronistic.

It has a sort of like trap orchestra, womp, womp, womp, womp, like those big horns trap sort of sounds.

It's got some wub wub from the dubstep.

It's got a swung piano going bump, bump, buh, bump, bump, duh, dump, dump, duh, dump, dump.

It's got a bunch of sound effects for sort of the cinema stuff.

Hans Zimmer?