If you want to hear critics debate the issues, make a case for lost classics, or give you a deeper understanding of great artists– there’s a podcast for that
When Switched on Pop began back in 2014, it helped to cement and spread the “poptimism” movement within music criticism, arguing for chart-toppers to be afforded the same attention as rock or classical. Co-hosts musicologist Nate Sloan and songwriter Charlie Harding break down popular songs such as Call Me Maybe to their component parts to explain what makes them so compulsively listenable. In the years since, genre lines have blurred, hierarchies have been broken down and such song-explainers have become mainstream, but Switched on Pop continues to set the bar (as its recent acquisition by Vox media attests). Harding and Sloan know their stuff but wear it lightly, helping the most tone deaf of music fans to understand theory, and drawing parallels that will send you down a Spotify rabbit hole. No other podcast would make a link between Paramore’s 2007 pop-punk smash Misery Business and a Rossini aria sound so plausible.