Latest / Broken Record with Rick Rubin, Malcolm Gladwell, Bruce Headlam and Justin Richmond / Pushkin Loves Love Songs: Babyface, Broken Hearts, and the Best Genre for Love

Transcript

Pushkin Loves Love Songs: Babyface, Broken Hearts, and the Best Genre for Love · Broken Record with Rick Rubin, Malcolm Gladwell, Bruce Headlam and Justin Richmond

• 0:15
  Speaker 1: Pushkin.
• 0:22
  Speaker 2: Hey everyone, Welcome to all you lovers out there.
• 0:25
  Speaker 3: This is Justin Richmond and I'm Leah Rose.
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: We're the host of Broken Record, where we interview your
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: favorite musicians and bring to life the stories behind their music,
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: behind some.
• 0:34
  Speaker 2: Of your favorite recordings.
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: If you're listening to this in the Broken Record feed,
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: welcome back. But if you're hearing us as a listener
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: of another Pushkin show, that's because today we're doing something special.
• 0:45
  Speaker 3: That's right. This is our Valentine's Day special, and today
• 0:48
  Speaker 3: to celebrate the music we love. Justin and I are
• 0:51
  Speaker 3: going to do what we love, which is argue about music.
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: Ros's gonna be talking to some of our friends here
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: at Pushkin, people who have equally strong opinions about the
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: songs they love.
• 1:01
  Speaker 2: I'll be talking about Gladwell, who.
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: Has a very Gladwelling intake about why he believes country
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: is the best genre for love song and I can
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: guarantee it's not for the reason you may think.
• 1:12
  Speaker 4: It's depressive music. That's what it is.
• 1:15
  Speaker 3: Well also hear from Ben nattif Hoffrey, the sometimes host
• 1:18
  Speaker 3: of the Last Archive, about a love song he wrote
• 1:21
  Speaker 3: that's so good it helped him score his Forever, Valentine.
• 1:26
  Speaker 5: I think that folk music does love songs the best.
• 1:29
  Speaker 3: But first, justin I'm going to ask you what I
• 1:31
  Speaker 3: think is a central question of today's episode. I think
• 1:35
  Speaker 3: I know what you're gonna say. But out of every
• 1:39
  Speaker 3: genre and subgenre that exists today, which one do you
• 1:44
  Speaker 3: think does love songs the best?
• 1:47
  Speaker 2: R and B?
• 1:48
  Speaker 5: I knew it.
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: Look, when you think about it, it's really the shorthand
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: in music in an audio for love, Like if you
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: were scoring a love scene in a movie for like
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: Netflix or like the most amount of people are possible.
• 1:59
  Speaker 2: To watch, like, you would probably throw in an R and.
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: B song, you know, maybe uh yeah, you know Al Green,
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: Let's stay Together.
• 2:13
  Speaker 5: I'm so.
• 2:18
  Speaker 6: Come on.
• 2:18
  Speaker 2: That's that's really Those are the sounds of love right there.
• 2:20
  Speaker 7: You know.
• 2:21
  Speaker 3: It's very much like what song are you choosing for
• 2:24
  Speaker 3: the first dance at your wedding?
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: The first right, the first, the first slow dance. It's
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: your junior high welcome dance, you know what I'm saying,
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: Or you're a senior prompt like, it's gonna be R
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: and B. It's kind of the cliche genre that we
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: go to, and I don't I think I should give
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: a deeper reason in here, because I think R and
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: B kind of gets short shrift in the music world,
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: like you know, rock and roll and hip hop. I've
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: taken up all the air in the room for sixty
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: years now, yeah, you know, since since the since the
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: British invasion.
• 2:54
  Speaker 3: A couple of years were spent on em but yeah.
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: A couple of years, yeah, right, scrill X was big
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: there for yeah, yeah, Yeah, It's not a sexy topic
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: for some reason. I think because it's so ubiquitous, because
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: in some ways it's so ever present, and we just
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: find it very easy to ignore. But when you think
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: about the fact that R and B comes out of
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: really like it comes out.
• 3:13
  Speaker 2: Of gospel, you know, like.
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: Gospel is about love and devotion to a higher being,
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: to God. And at some point, all these gospel musicians
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: that go out they want to write popular songs or
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: sing popular music instead of just singing in the church,
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: and they take everything they've learned in gospel music about
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: how to sort of create a stir and a fervor
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: around God, and they just sort of sent a romantic love.
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: So they just take God out and put in a man,
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: a woman, a lover, you know, a classic example is
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: Sam Cook, who's originally with the gospel group the Soulsters,
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: and he releases a song He's so Wonderful, which is,
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: you know, it's a gospel.
• 3:49
  Speaker 8: Track, wonderful, God, so.
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: Wonderful than when Sam Cook wants to cross over, like
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: about a year later and wants to just make an
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: R and B cut, he reworks that same song and
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: instead of wonderful, becomes.
• 4:12
  Speaker 2: Lovable, lovable, My.
• 4:19
  Speaker 8: She's lovable.
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: So then how could you not say that R and
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: B isn't like the preeminent genre for love songs.
• 4:27
  Speaker 2: It's like it's it has to do with the.
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: The ethereal and the theological, down to the romantic and
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: the platonic, like it's everything.
• 4:35
  Speaker 3: And then it just gets dirtier and dirtier as the
• 4:38
  Speaker 3: years go on. And then we landed the song.
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: Song Yeah, shout out to I Love Cisco and that's
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: a great album.
• 4:45
  Speaker 2: I love the song.
• 4:46
  Speaker 3: R and B does do love very very well. But
• 4:49
  Speaker 3: there's other genres too. I mean, look at Dolly Parton
• 4:52
  Speaker 3: on Joelene. She's bagging and she's pleading and she's out
• 4:55
  Speaker 3: of her mind. Please don't take my man.
• 4:58
  Speaker 2: But then who takes?
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: And we love Dolly, But then who takes a Dolly
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: song like I'll Always Love You and takes it to
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: the next level Whitney Whitney.
• 5:24
  Speaker 3: Speaking of Whitney, someone who could sing anyone's song and
• 5:28
  Speaker 3: make it sound phenomenal. This makes me think of the
• 5:31
  Speaker 3: interview you did with Babyface for a Broken Record back
• 5:33
  Speaker 3: in twenty twenty three. And he wrote some of Whitney's
• 5:36
  Speaker 3: biggest hits.
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: I mean, he wrote some of my favorite Whitney songs.
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: Forget about his this is some of my favorites, and
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: you know a million other unforgettable songs that you know. Yeah,
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: they also happened to be hits. Boys and Men's End
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: of the Road Mariah carries We Belong Together Breathe Again
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: by Tony Braxton.
• 5:53
  Speaker 3: Yes, that was such a great interview.
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: Yeah, man, I mean I'm sitting there with baby Face
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: and I'm watching him play guitar in front of me.
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: It was just crazy, you know. And he's he's left handed,
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: he plays upside down like Hendrix. I mean, he's not
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: as good as a guitar players Hendrix, but I mean
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: it was just incredible would be that person up close
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: with them and seeing how he wrote these songs, and
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: he played for me a song he's never recorded with anyone,
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: and it's the very first song he ever wrote about
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: an early love of his first his first love actually
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: in high school.
• 6:24
  Speaker 3: Let's hear some of that.
• 6:26
  Speaker 7: Here I go falling in love again.
• 6:28
  Speaker 9: That was my first song, and I wrote it for
• 6:31
  Speaker 9: a girl because I was like in love and stuff, and.
• 6:35
  Speaker 7: So the guitar really was just an instrument.
• 6:37
  Speaker 9: For me to get these songs out of me. I
• 6:41
  Speaker 9: always like to say, even when I played and learn
• 6:43
  Speaker 9: things on the piano, i play, I'm not really a
• 6:45
  Speaker 9: piano player.
• 6:46
  Speaker 7: I learned things.
• 6:48
  Speaker 9: To support my songwriting, and that's what I did.
• 6:53
  Speaker 7: Then I turned that into my first song.
• 6:56
  Speaker 9: So I was just learning chords to support out my
• 6:59
  Speaker 9: little songs.
• 7:00
  Speaker 5: Wow.
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: And for you, songwriting was about writing songs for the
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: girls you were in.
• 7:06
  Speaker 9: Love with crush and it was it was purely kind
• 7:11
  Speaker 9: of an escape, so to say, Wow, it wasn't anything
• 7:14
  Speaker 9: but that. I didn't think they were gonna go anywhere,
• 7:16
  Speaker 9: but that was the that was the drive, and.
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: You would have been like eleven twelve, ten, eleven twelve, yeah, yeah,
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: I can't play a deal song sweet November.
• 7:26
  Speaker 8: But mad that time that will read bad.
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: That we Wow, man, that's that's a great song.
• 7:45
  Speaker 9: I wrote that right out of high school. Out of
• 7:49
  Speaker 9: high school, yeah, it was. It was because I was
• 7:53
  Speaker 9: a man child. So it was second year or something,
• 7:57
  Speaker 9: seventy eight or so, seventy eight seventy nine, right in
• 8:00
  Speaker 9: that time.
• 8:02
  Speaker 7: So it was a girl. It was like this one girl.
• 8:07
  Speaker 7: She was like the most.
• 8:08
  Speaker 9: While we were in highigh school, we were really good
• 8:10
  Speaker 9: friends and there's no way I would have ever thought
• 8:13
  Speaker 9: I would have been with her. But when I got
• 8:16
  Speaker 9: out of high school, we we started talking and then
• 8:19
  Speaker 9: we actually started dating.
• 8:20
  Speaker 7: I remember Daryl was like, how how was this even happening?
• 8:23
  Speaker 7: How do you have her?
• 8:25
  Speaker 9: And then I remember we went to go see Brookshields
• 8:31
  Speaker 9: Endless Love when I saw Endless Love together and then
• 8:35
  Speaker 9: something happened, I think before we were going going away
• 8:41
  Speaker 9: in Manchild, all of a sudden she stopped calling me
• 8:44
  Speaker 9: and I couldn't I couldn't reach her, and I don't
• 8:47
  Speaker 9: know what happened, but it was just like we're just
• 8:49
  Speaker 9: like broken up. And then there was no cell phones,
• 8:54
  Speaker 9: there was no good you couldn't reach our on the phone,
• 8:55
  Speaker 9: and no social media. It was just done. And I
• 9:00
  Speaker 9: was really messed up about it. And and that's when
• 9:04
  Speaker 9: I wrote this, you know, because you know that was
• 9:06
  Speaker 9: the time period. It was in the fall, and of
• 9:08
  Speaker 9: a sudden, I was thinking maybe maybe when I come back,
• 9:11
  Speaker 9: maybe maybe it's November, we'll get back together and find it.
• 9:14
  Speaker 7: So that was actually a loss song that was written
• 9:18
  Speaker 7: way back then.
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: And would you have written the words or would.
• 9:21
  Speaker 7: You write the words for piano and wrote it's.
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: Like the piano.
• 9:24
  Speaker 9: Yeah, wow, So.
• 9:27
  Speaker 1: Because it's kind of beautiful even just divorced from the music,
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: if you just look at the words like high level.
• 9:33
  Speaker 2: You know.
• 9:33
  Speaker 9: Yeah, it was when all the first arrived. You with
• 9:36
  Speaker 9: my lady, we're dating.
• 9:38
  Speaker 1: It was the second reign of Ittom. We shared a feeling.
• 9:40
  Speaker 9: Yeah, come on, that's it's like we start dating and
• 9:44
  Speaker 9: then all of a sudden we like I remember it
• 9:46
  Speaker 9: was raining and like it looks like something's gonna happen here.
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: So that almost really personal. Yeah, exhale was more from
• 9:56
  Speaker 1: watching the movie.
• 9:57
  Speaker 7: Watching the movie.
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: You don't necessarily have to write from personal experience. You can,
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: you can, but you can watch others and.
• 10:03
  Speaker 9: No, yeah, it's really about watching others and how they
• 10:07
  Speaker 9: how they feel and how they imagining having to go
• 10:10
  Speaker 9: through that. I'm always asked, how are you able to
• 10:13
  Speaker 9: write for women? Yeah, and said, if you just kind
• 10:17
  Speaker 9: of think of it and think of whatever they go
• 10:19
  Speaker 9: through and think out how you'd feel, you know, it's
• 10:22
  Speaker 9: not that hard to figure out. Damn, that's fucked up. Yeah,
• 10:26
  Speaker 9: I feel you know, I think all right about that,
• 10:28
  Speaker 9: you know. And as a kid that was always falling
• 10:32
  Speaker 9: in love and thinking I.
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: Was in love, feeling like you.
• 10:37
  Speaker 7: Know, that's what it was.
• 10:39
  Speaker 9: My very first song was about a girl named round
• 10:42
  Speaker 9: the new bould always say her name, and that was
• 10:44
  Speaker 9: in here I Go falling in love again. And the
• 10:48
  Speaker 9: second song that I wrote that I clearly remember was
• 10:51
  Speaker 9: about the same girl, which was two years later, from
• 10:54
  Speaker 9: sixth grade to eighth grade, because she broke my heart,
• 10:57
  Speaker 9: was called the Better Taste of Life. Oh those are
• 11:02
  Speaker 9: feelings that I that I had, and everything was exaggerated.
• 11:05
  Speaker 9: I had written a song called so Shy, So there
• 11:08
  Speaker 9: were pieces, there were be pieces of things of songs
• 11:10
  Speaker 9: that I would write. I wrote a song called Anita,
• 11:13
  Speaker 9: wrote a song called Shelley. One of the best songs
• 11:16
  Speaker 9: I ever wrote was a song called Last Song Forever,
• 11:20
  Speaker 9: which was I wrote that when I was in my
• 11:22
  Speaker 9: senior year. Can never recorded, I think so. I think
• 11:25
  Speaker 9: I let a group record as they turned into a gospel.
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: Do you remember any of it?
• 11:29
  Speaker 7: Yeah? Could you play a little of it? I don't
• 11:30
  Speaker 7: know what my voice is like right now.
• 11:37
  Speaker 10: When I think Spanish, I remember a special feeling sweet se.
• 11:48
  Speaker 7: Then I think.
• 11:51
  Speaker 10: Spanish show moments. Those were special times. You told me
• 11:56
  Speaker 10: you can.
• 12:01
  Speaker 2: You know when.
• 12:04
  Speaker 10: Blown away?
• 12:06
  Speaker 8: I hope you know why now Mark, I will always
• 12:12
  Speaker 8: I love you for you know man of thinking Libeta song,
• 12:28
  Speaker 8: I God love you then, my dude right now and.
• 12:42
  Speaker 7: That's okay.
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: You can hear all of my conversation with baby Face
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: and the broken record episode that was going to link
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: to in the show notes. There's so much more to it,
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: including how some of his biggest influences were singer songwriters
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: like James Taylor and the Beatles. Coming up after the break,
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: Pushing and producer Ben out of Paffrey tells Lea about
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: writing his own love song.
• 13:18
  Speaker 5: I think that folk music does love songs the best.
• 13:21
  Speaker 3: That star Pushkin, producer and sometimes host of the Last Archive,
• 13:25
  Speaker 3: Ben Natif Haffrey Folker Country.
• 13:27
  Speaker 5: Either one would be my leading contender for the genre
• 13:31
  Speaker 5: that is best at love songs. And I think it's
• 13:34
  Speaker 5: because on some level, like I think like a breakup
• 13:41
  Speaker 5: song or a lost love song is superior to a
• 13:45
  Speaker 5: straight up love song. Me too, because I think, like you,
• 13:49
  Speaker 5: if you're in love, you don't really need a song
• 13:52
  Speaker 5: like you feel this kind of symphonic happiness, Like there's
• 13:56
  Speaker 5: something specific that you're experiencing with another person, Like if
• 14:00
  Speaker 5: you are experiencing lost love or unrequited love, there's something
• 14:05
  Speaker 5: about a particular breakup story or yeah, romance song that
• 14:10
  Speaker 5: like creates a community with you when you maybe feel
• 14:13
  Speaker 5: otherwise alone or bereft. But I think that there's like
• 14:17
  Speaker 5: wistful folk music, wistful country music kind of toes the
• 14:21
  Speaker 5: line between these two things.
• 14:23
  Speaker 3: To be honest, I also think that sad songs might
• 14:26
  Speaker 3: make the best love songs. But the real reason I
• 14:29
  Speaker 3: wanted to talk to Ben is because I learned at
• 14:31
  Speaker 3: our holiday party that he also has a second life
• 14:34
  Speaker 3: as a musician and as a songwriter with the band Ruken.
• 14:38
  Speaker 5: Yes, and this is part of my long con to
• 14:40
  Speaker 5: get interviewed on Broken Record for my music.
• 14:44
  Speaker 2: Well you're class.
• 14:45
  Speaker 6: Yeah, exactly.
• 14:47
  Speaker 3: So this is our Valentine's Day special. And I was
• 14:49
  Speaker 3: tipped off by our producer Izzy about a love song
• 14:55
  Speaker 3: that you wrote a couple of years ago, and it
• 14:57
  Speaker 3: actually ended up having sort of like a big impact
• 15:02
  Speaker 3: on your life. So I wanted to ask you about
• 15:04
  Speaker 3: this song if I didn't know you by now, so
• 15:07
  Speaker 3: set the stage for us. How did this song come
• 15:10
  Speaker 3: to be?
• 15:12
  Speaker 6: Well?
• 15:12
  Speaker 5: I wrote this song about like a year after I
• 15:14
  Speaker 5: first moved to Brooklyn. So I was like just out
• 15:16
  Speaker 5: of college and I had moved to Brooklyn and I
• 15:19
  Speaker 5: was living with a bunch of friends in what was,
• 15:21
  Speaker 5: you know, actually quite a nice apartment. I had not
• 15:25
  Speaker 5: made my corner of the apartment particularly nice. I was
• 15:28
  Speaker 5: not having the best time that year, and I had,
• 15:34
  Speaker 5: I think, as an expression of vague despair, just like
• 15:38
  Speaker 5: not really done anything to set it up. I don't
• 15:40
  Speaker 5: remember why this is, but I remember I had like
• 15:43
  Speaker 5: a tarp in the corner of the room. I had
• 15:46
  Speaker 5: a tarp in the corner of the room like a mattress,
• 15:50
  Speaker 5: and then a saw on the wall. Oh my god,
• 15:52
  Speaker 5: I thought it would be like fun to put on
• 15:54
  Speaker 5: my wall, but it looked terrifying, And that was like
• 15:58
  Speaker 5: pretty much it. And I remember distinctly walking into the
• 16:01
  Speaker 5: apartment one time with a good friend of mine from
• 16:06
  Speaker 5: high school, and I had like in my pocket and
• 16:10
  Speaker 5: I like took the change out of my pocket and
• 16:12
  Speaker 5: I threw it in the corner and she was like,
• 16:14
  Speaker 5: why did you just throw your change in the corner?
• 16:18
  Speaker 5: I was like that that is the corner of the
• 16:20
  Speaker 5: apartment where I keep my change. And it was like
• 16:22
  Speaker 5: it was indeed like next to the tarp, like a
• 16:24
  Speaker 5: pile of change. So there were no shades on the window.
• 16:28
  Speaker 5: This is like a crucial thing. I just was like
• 16:32
  Speaker 5: not super taking care of myself, Like everything was totally fine,
• 16:36
  Speaker 5: but my life was not in order. And then I
• 16:40
  Speaker 5: started dating a friend of mine from college. Her name
• 16:43
  Speaker 5: was Julia, and she was living in Nashville at the time,
• 16:47
  Speaker 5: and we sort of like picked back up talking to
• 16:50
  Speaker 5: each other at a distance, and then when she came
• 16:53
  Speaker 5: to New York, we would hang out. And I noticed that, like,
• 16:57
  Speaker 5: as Julie and I had been talking more and started
• 17:00
  Speaker 5: seeing each other in Nashville and also in New York,
• 17:02
  Speaker 5: that slowly I had begun to set up my room.
• 17:07
  Speaker 5: I got shades through the window. I put like they
• 17:10
  Speaker 5: didn't actually fit, but I got like handkerchiefs that extended
• 17:12
  Speaker 5: them to the bottom. I got rid of the tarp.
• 17:14
  Speaker 5: I did, in fact leave the saw on the wall
• 17:17
  Speaker 5: because that was by then a crucial part of the
• 17:19
  Speaker 5: decor and my identity and remains. So I don't remember
• 17:22
  Speaker 5: what I did with the change corner. There's a good
• 17:24
  Speaker 5: chance to change corner sort of remained.
• 17:26
  Speaker 3: The growing up process is a slow one.
• 17:28
  Speaker 5: The growing up process is a slow one, but it began.
• 17:31
  Speaker 5: It began with fixing up that first room. There was
• 17:37
  Speaker 5: a moment I remember where she came and visited. It
• 17:41
  Speaker 5: was early spring, and we had this really wonderful weekend
• 17:44
  Speaker 5: together exploring the city, and she'd grown up in New
• 17:47
  Speaker 5: York and I was kind of new there, and she
• 17:49
  Speaker 5: was shown me around and we went to like a
• 17:51
  Speaker 5: Lebanese church, and I'm Lebanese and it was kind of
• 17:53
  Speaker 5: like a so they just wandered in because they were
• 17:56
  Speaker 5: having like a food festival kind of thing.
• 17:59
  Speaker 1: Like.
• 17:59
  Speaker 5: There were a lot of wonderful, serendipitous things. Yeah, And
• 18:03
  Speaker 5: I remember it was after that visit, I think on
• 18:06
  Speaker 5: the day that she had left, but I was hanging
• 18:07
  Speaker 5: out in my room and I was playing guitar and
• 18:09
  Speaker 5: I started writing this song. Like a lot of hack
• 18:22
  Speaker 5: guitar players, I use a lot of open tunings, and
• 18:26
  Speaker 5: around that time I had been playing the Rain Song
• 18:29
  Speaker 5: by led Zeppelin, which is a version of open C tuning,
• 18:32
  Speaker 5: and so I just would like keep my guitar in that,
• 18:35
  Speaker 5: and I remember figuring out the sort of main guitar
• 18:38
  Speaker 5: line and then messing around with the words over it.
• 18:44
  Speaker 5: If I didn't know.
• 18:46
  Speaker 10: You ran.
• 18:50
  Speaker 11: Whatever the plans upon the window falling away, back up
• 18:58
  Speaker 11: my clean clothes with complain you know.
• 19:07
  Speaker 5: When I'm not a professional songwriter. This was a song
• 19:10
  Speaker 5: that like definitely did not come easily to me, but
• 19:13
  Speaker 5: it felt sort of like inspired by that moment and
• 19:17
  Speaker 5: that feeling. It was kind of like a reflection of
• 19:20
  Speaker 5: the fact that I was noticing that my life was changing,
• 19:25
  Speaker 5: and an expression of gratitude to her for bringing me
• 19:29
  Speaker 5: to the place where I wanted to do that.
• 19:32
  Speaker 3: At what point did you realize I'm writing a love
• 19:34
  Speaker 3: song for Julia.
• 19:35
  Speaker 5: I think that that is just what it was. I
• 19:37
  Speaker 5: think it's just because that was sort of where it
• 19:40
  Speaker 5: came from, So I don't think it was a realization ever.
• 19:42
  Speaker 5: It was just kind of that was the feeling it
• 19:44
  Speaker 5: started from.
• 19:50
  Speaker 8: I didn't know you.
• 19:55
  Speaker 5: I didn't know, so yeah, I was in a long
• 19:58
  Speaker 5: distance relationship, both then with Julia because she was living
• 20:02
  Speaker 5: in Nashville, but then also with the lead singer of
• 20:04
  Speaker 5: my band, Adam, who he was in like the UK
• 20:08
  Speaker 5: getting a masters in medieval literature or something, And we
• 20:13
  Speaker 5: were always working on an album in the background, usually
• 20:15
  Speaker 5: as like an escape patch from like one or another
• 20:17
  Speaker 5: job that we didn't want to do, So we were
• 20:19
  Speaker 5: always like kind of trading versions of things. We spent
• 20:23
  Speaker 5: a lot of time basically on every song, just like
• 20:26
  Speaker 5: trying to get it right, recording and rerecording that kind
• 20:28
  Speaker 5: of thing. And I would always share those things with Julia,
• 20:31
  Speaker 5: and she like a joke evolved where she sort of
• 20:34
  Speaker 5: teasingly would be like, is this song about me a
• 20:38
  Speaker 5: thing that I would always like flatly deny. Did she
• 20:41
  Speaker 5: come to shows? And she would like We would always
• 20:42
  Speaker 5: have these long introductions to our songs about Often we
• 20:45
  Speaker 5: wrote historical songs like Mark Twain's brother died in a
• 20:49
  Speaker 5: steamship accident, and like there would be a long preamble
• 20:53
  Speaker 5: to the the song about you know, Samuel Clemens's brother
• 20:56
  Speaker 5: who dies in this horrible way, but there would notably
• 20:58
  Speaker 5: be no no preamble or introduction to this song. And
• 21:01
  Speaker 5: so this was the thing I was often mocked about.
• 21:03
  Speaker 5: And it kind of reached ahead when we were like
• 21:07
  Speaker 5: crowdfunding an album that we were doing, which is a
• 21:11
  Speaker 5: fancy way of saying like asking our friends for money,
• 21:15
  Speaker 5: and there was a thing that we offered that was
• 21:17
  Speaker 5: like a handwritten lyrics sheet with the story behind the song.
• 21:22
  Speaker 5: And so Julia bought that it requested a lyric sheet
• 21:27
  Speaker 5: with the story behind the song for this song, which
• 21:30
  Speaker 5: as a way of like cornering me into having to
• 21:33
  Speaker 5: admit the provenance of the song. And I did not
• 21:36
  Speaker 5: fulfill that lyric sheet for like quite a while, and
• 21:42
  Speaker 5: it wasn't until again sort of as like a joke
• 21:45
  Speaker 5: in return, But it wasn't until we got engaged that
• 21:48
  Speaker 5: I then did actually deliver the lyrics sheet with the
• 21:51
  Speaker 5: story as a kind of like, you know, obviously this
• 21:54
  Speaker 5: is a song about you.
• 21:55
  Speaker 6: In the way I feel about you, seen.
• 22:07
  Speaker 8: How you have fats it out.
• 22:17
  Speaker 3: If I don't know you, do you have a favorite
• 22:22
  Speaker 3: part of the song.
• 22:25
  Speaker 5: I always love everything. Adam writes, he like wrote the
• 22:28
  Speaker 5: last verse that I think kind of like takes it
• 22:30
  Speaker 5: to a totally different place. It gets like a lot
• 22:33
  Speaker 5: darker right at the end, in a way that I
• 22:36
  Speaker 5: wouldn't have done, but think it gives a lot of hafts.
• 22:43
  Speaker 8: Put back in, Alix.
• 22:49
  Speaker 11: And want to have.
• 22:51
  Speaker 10: With you.
• 22:52
  Speaker 11: Still you haven't closed.
• 22:55
  Speaker 12: All the dogs to the night still feels good, and
• 23:01
  Speaker 12: lean mind into your side.
• 23:09
  Speaker 8: Come to me the first snow.
• 23:13
  Speaker 12: Then when that sound, Yeah, that was so Na you said,
• 23:20
  Speaker 12: all right, canv me back?
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: Well?
• 23:32
  Speaker 3: Thank you so much, Ben, thanks for having me.
• 23:34
  Speaker 5: This was fun, Happy Valentine's Day.
• 23:41
  Speaker 3: Such a beautiful song. Again, that's if I didn't know
• 23:44
  Speaker 3: you by now by Ruken. I'm not sure if Ben's
• 23:47
  Speaker 3: going to convince Justin that folk is the best genre
• 23:50
  Speaker 3: for love songs. But in a minute, Malcolm Gladwell wais
• 23:53
  Speaker 3: in and he gets us thinking about this question in
• 23:56
  Speaker 3: an entirely different way.
• 24:14
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I don't think country music does good love songs.
• 24:19
  Speaker 4: I think it does good breakup songs, heartbreak songs. It
• 24:23
  Speaker 4: does the reverse.
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: Malcolm Gladwell is a best selling author, the host of
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: Revisionist History, and Pushkin's resident country music aficionado. When I
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: heard we were doing a Valentine's Day music episode, I
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: knew we were going to have to get his take.
• 24:37
  Speaker 4: So country music, it's true, which is consistent with its
• 24:40
  Speaker 4: role in American popular culture. It is the downer to
• 24:44
  Speaker 4: rock music's upper right. Rock music and I did a
• 24:49
  Speaker 4: whole Revision's History episode on this. It was, you know,
• 24:53
  Speaker 4: the striking thing about rock music is the inability of
• 24:56
  Speaker 4: rock musicians to write effective sad songs. The sad songs
• 25:01
  Speaker 4: are terrible. They're just not sad, right, They're not believably sad.
• 25:04
  Speaker 4: They're rock and roll songs that are kind of you know,
• 25:08
  Speaker 4: try to pretend to.
• 25:10
  Speaker 2: Like.
• 25:10
  Speaker 4: I gave the example of Wild Horses, which is supposed
• 25:14
  Speaker 4: to be a sad song. It's not sad. What's sad
• 25:18
  Speaker 4: about it?
• 25:18
  Speaker 2: And also it's like total.
• 25:21
  Speaker 4: It's also banal and like wild wild Horses, Like what
• 25:27
  Speaker 4: is going on? I mean, it's just like it doesn't work. Country, though,
• 25:31
  Speaker 4: is totally comfortable in that kind of emotional morass. That's
• 25:38
  Speaker 4: the whole It's depressive music, that's the whole point. It's
• 25:41
  Speaker 4: the South. It's like white guys who lost the Civil
• 25:45
  Speaker 4: War never got over it. That's what it is.
• 25:48
  Speaker 6: You know.
• 25:49
  Speaker 4: I was talking to some guy yesterday about the Church
• 25:51
  Speaker 4: of Christ, which is an almost overwhelmingly Southern denomination of
• 25:58
  Speaker 4: Christian denomination, and Nashville is the heart of Church of Christ.
• 26:04
  Speaker 4: The music in the Church of Christ churches is insane.
• 26:07
  Speaker 4: The Church of Christ is famously has no orchestral music.
• 26:11
  Speaker 4: They God, No, it's all a cappella, which is way
• 26:13
  Speaker 4: more demanding. The Church of Christ. It is not a
• 26:16
  Speaker 4: happy denomination. It's not Pentecostals jumping up and down and
• 26:20
  Speaker 4: welcoming the risen Lord. No, it's like it's like white
• 26:25
  Speaker 4: Southerators bemoaning the laws of their status and like be
• 26:29
  Speaker 4: bowing their head in the face of avengeful God, and
• 26:32
  Speaker 4: no piano to no piano to lift their spirits. No organ,
• 26:36
  Speaker 4: no piano, no nothing. Use your own voice, dammit. Which
• 26:39
  Speaker 4: is why, by the way, so many country singers come
• 26:42
  Speaker 4: for the Church of Christ. Amy Grant is Church of Christ.
• 26:45
  Speaker 4: Merle Haggard is Church of Christ. I could go on
• 26:47
  Speaker 4: and on. Listen if you look it up. Is insane.
• 26:49
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm looking at this church. I'm like, this isn't
• 26:51
  Speaker 2: Roy Orbison.
• 26:53
  Speaker 4: They're all Church of Christ.
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: They're all Church of Christ, Loretta Lynn Woody Guthrie.
• 26:57
  Speaker 4: So, like, is it any surprise the country music which
• 27:01
  Speaker 4: comes from Nashville, the epicenter of the Church of Christ
• 27:04
  Speaker 4: is like the least happy music known to man. No,
• 27:06
  Speaker 4: it's like it's like depressive.
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: So stands the reason then that, like in the in
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: the continuum of you know, when it comes to love
• 27:15
  Speaker 1: songs and the continuum of of sort of emotions that
• 27:18
  Speaker 1: go along with love, country music would fall more on
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: the side of sad over a breakup, sad over a
• 27:24
  Speaker 1: unrequited love, sad because I'm in a marriage I don't
• 27:27
  Speaker 1: want to be in but I'm still in love with
• 27:28
  Speaker 1: my high school sweetheart, or whatever, you know, whatever those
• 27:31
  Speaker 1: songs are that these sad kind of love's not going
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: right or breaking up.
• 27:35
  Speaker 4: One of my favorite country songs about heartbreak is I
• 27:39
  Speaker 4: think it's George Straight does fort Worth Ever Cross Your Mind?
• 27:43
  Speaker 4: Which is a classic. I mean, you can't if we're
• 27:46
  Speaker 4: going to talk about country music and sad songs, we're
• 27:50
  Speaker 4: starting with George Strait now, okay, So I'm gonna read
• 27:54
  Speaker 4: to you some lyrics to does Fortworth Ever Cross Your Mind?
• 27:57
  Speaker 4: This is the opening Stanza Cold fort Worth Beer is
• 28:00
  Speaker 4: how it begins. Just ain't no good for jealous. I've
• 28:03
  Speaker 4: tried it night after night you're in someone else's arms
• 28:06
  Speaker 4: in Dallas. Does fort Worth ever cross mind?
• 28:10
  Speaker 7: Darling?
• 28:10
  Speaker 4: While you're busy burning bridges, burn one for me if
• 28:13
  Speaker 4: you get time.
• 28:15
  Speaker 13: If you get time, there's no orange. Don't fake so
• 28:25
  Speaker 13: weasy word rausm.
• 28:35
  Speaker 4: What's hilarious about this is this song is all about
• 28:38
  Speaker 4: parsing the cultural distinction between fort Worth and Dallas, which
• 28:43
  Speaker 4: looms large in the in the minds of people from
• 28:47
  Speaker 4: Texas and the rest of us are like what this
• 28:50
  Speaker 4: song makes no sense to anyone who's not from Texas.
• 28:53
  Speaker 4: I want to give you a You left me here
• 28:55
  Speaker 4: to be with him in Dallas, and I know it
• 28:59
  Speaker 4: hurts you at the time. Well, I wonder now if
• 29:02
  Speaker 4: it makes a difference. That's for worth across your minds.
• 29:08
  Speaker 4: It's twenty miles away. It's a whole song. It's a
• 29:11
  Speaker 4: whole song about a stretch of interstate. It's just so fantastic.
• 29:15
  Speaker 4: This is what's so hilarious about it.
• 29:17
  Speaker 2: It is like so petty, it's.
• 29:19
  Speaker 4: So petty and so but like, this is why rock
• 29:22
  Speaker 4: and roll can't do a breakup song, Because a breakup
• 29:26
  Speaker 4: song requires a certain level of emotional and narrative specificity,
• 29:32
  Speaker 4: and rock and roll is too obsessed with being universal.
• 29:36
  Speaker 1: Yeah, not enough in the details.
• 29:38
  Speaker 2: No details.
• 29:39
  Speaker 4: Did Prince ever write a song about? Did Saint Paul
• 29:42
  Speaker 4: ever cross your mind?
• 29:44
  Speaker 7: No?
• 29:44
  Speaker 4: No, no, because that's not the business he's in. He's
• 29:48
  Speaker 4: not in the business of mode of evoking this kind
• 29:51
  Speaker 4: of strong emotion. He was aware of the distinction between
• 29:56
  Speaker 4: Minneapolis and Saint Paul, but chose chose to overlook it
• 30:00
  Speaker 4: in his songwriting. That's why he's a rock musician or
• 30:04
  Speaker 4: a R and B musician. I'm not a country musician.
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: So so he's saying that you left me to be
• 30:10
  Speaker 1: with him, and he's saying Dallas with the level of this,
• 30:13
  Speaker 1: I mean, that's.
• 30:14
  Speaker 4: A you want to have to understand a song. Here
• 30:17
  Speaker 4: the reason why it's not Does Dallas ever crossed your mind?
• 30:22
  Speaker 4: That's a wholly different song.
• 30:23
  Speaker 7: Yeah.
• 30:24
  Speaker 4: Yeah, that fort Worth is the is the ugly stepsister.
• 30:29
  Speaker 4: Fort Worth is one step down the wrung. So she
• 30:33
  Speaker 4: left him to upgrade and move up. Yeah, that's why
• 30:36
  Speaker 4: it hurts. She left him for for a dude in
• 30:39
  Speaker 4: fort Worth. He's fine, he's moved on. He's not a
• 30:41
  Speaker 4: girl in Dallas. No, no, no, no, no, no. He's at
• 30:44
  Speaker 4: fort Worth and what does she do? Got up one morning,
• 30:46
  Speaker 4: drove down the interstate and upgraded her situation, Lee, leaving
• 30:50
  Speaker 4: him in a pile of tears in fort Worth.
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: But you see, this is why, and you know I
• 30:56
  Speaker 1: want to talking to Leah. This is why I think
• 30:58
  Speaker 1: R and B is the greatest genre for loves on.
• 31:01
  Speaker 1: I don't ever want to be the guy in Fort
• 31:03
  Speaker 1: Worth finding about the woman who left me to upgrade
• 31:07
  Speaker 1: to go to Dallas.
• 31:08
  Speaker 2: Like that's why.
• 31:09
  Speaker 1: Like like Whitney Houston, like you know, in her song she
• 31:12
  Speaker 1: catches like the guide cheating and she says it's not right,
• 31:14
  Speaker 1: but it's okay.
• 31:15
  Speaker 2: I'm gonna make it anyway, like I.
• 31:16
  Speaker 1: Want, I wanna you left me fine, I'm not gonna wallow.
• 31:20
  Speaker 1: I'm just gonna move on with my life, bigger, better things,
• 31:23
  Speaker 1: like that's what I want to live.
• 31:25
  Speaker 4: No, No, it's you're just what you're just identifying is
• 31:27
  Speaker 4: that she's made stronger stuff. That's what that's about. And
• 31:32
  Speaker 4: some of this is like, is bethos somebody pronouncing that right?
• 31:38
  Speaker 4: Bethosathos pathos, pathos are pathos. I think bethos is the
• 31:43
  Speaker 4: word I want.
• 31:44
  Speaker 2: Bethos b A T H.
• 31:45
  Speaker 4: Bethos definition. Yeah, anti climax created by an unintentional lapse
• 31:50
  Speaker 4: in mood from the sublime to the trivial or ridiculous. Like,
• 31:53
  Speaker 4: that's what does foot worth across your mind?
• 31:56
  Speaker 6: Is?
• 31:56
  Speaker 4: Is Bethos right?
• 31:58
  Speaker 7: That's what that is?
• 31:58
  Speaker 4: Right, that's the that's the appeal, that's the appeal of
• 32:01
  Speaker 4: the of the song.
• 32:04
  Speaker 2: Is it is?
• 32:04
  Speaker 7: So?
• 32:04
  Speaker 1: I mean, is there a hope for the country music family?
• 32:08
  Speaker 1: Like you know, I guess there are country music songs
• 32:10
  Speaker 1: explicitly about love. They is not as good. They're just
• 32:12
  Speaker 1: not They're not the A tier country music songs, right.
• 32:16
  Speaker 1: I mean there's like Forever and Ever aighty man Randy
• 32:18
  Speaker 1: Travis people played at their wedding and there.
• 32:19
  Speaker 4: But that's a song. But think about that song the
• 32:22
  Speaker 4: way he sings it. He sings it like it's a
• 32:25
  Speaker 4: sad song. I'm going to love you forever and ever.
• 32:31
  Speaker 2: It's very wistful.
• 32:32
  Speaker 4: Forever and Ever. It sounds like he's committing to a
• 32:35
  Speaker 4: prison sense. Ah man, Like.
• 32:38
  Speaker 1: What does it say about you, Malcolm that when you're
• 32:41
  Speaker 1: asked to think what genre might be the greatest for
• 32:45
  Speaker 1: love songs?
• 32:48
  Speaker 2: The breakup song.
• 32:50
  Speaker 4: I Want some I had a friend named Mike and
• 32:55
  Speaker 4: he didn't know me very well, and we decided to
• 32:56
  Speaker 4: go to a ballgame together. This is in the eighties,
• 33:00
  Speaker 4: and we drove from Washington See to Baltimore to see
• 33:03
  Speaker 4: the Orioles and I played some mixtapes in a car
• 33:08
  Speaker 4: and end he turned to me and he said, I
• 33:13
  Speaker 4: had no idea how depressed you are, because every single
• 33:16
  Speaker 4: song on the mixtape was a song about some kind
• 33:19
  Speaker 4: of broken heart, suffering, sadness, death. I don't know that's
• 33:24
  Speaker 4: what I wanted a song.
• 33:26
  Speaker 1: But there is no part of being around you that
• 33:29
  Speaker 1: feelsmird in sadness, depressed.
• 33:32
  Speaker 7: No, but I don't.
• 33:33
  Speaker 4: I don't want to. I don't like upbeat song So
• 33:35
  Speaker 4: why it's my problem with rock and roll is just
• 33:37
  Speaker 4: like just calm down already, like just this, Can we
• 33:41
  Speaker 4: wallow in our emotions for a moment here and not
• 33:44
  Speaker 4: just beating your head against the wall in necstasy. It
• 33:47
  Speaker 4: just it strikes me as unseemly.
• 33:55
  Speaker 1: Leah, I mean several points well taken from Malcolm.
• 34:00
  Speaker 2: You know, I love country music dearly.
• 34:04
  Speaker 1: I think songwriting is impeccable, and they certainly do a
• 34:08
  Speaker 1: love song in a setnd song incredibly well. But you know,
• 34:12
  Speaker 1: I just I guess I just I just like a
• 34:14
  Speaker 1: more happy song. I like a mom Just no, No,
• 34:18
  Speaker 1: I don't know if I can live like in that
• 34:19
  Speaker 1: kind of misery.
• 34:21
  Speaker 3: I think it's so funny. I mean, you know that
• 34:23
  Speaker 3: I love a sad song over a happy song, and
• 34:25
  Speaker 3: I'll take a depressed, unrequited love song over a happy
• 34:30
  Speaker 3: over the moon love song any day.
• 34:32
  Speaker 1: Well, Leah, you know, I feel like we're back to
• 34:35
  Speaker 1: where we started, which is you know, I mean, You're
• 34:37
  Speaker 1: probably right. Look, the whole idea of genre is and
• 34:42
  Speaker 1: it's a it's a man made creation, and there's probably
• 34:46
  Speaker 1: no way to categorize what sort of genre and what
• 34:51
  Speaker 1: culture does the love song the best.
• 34:54
  Speaker 3: It's just so subjective.
• 34:55
  Speaker 1: It's so totally subjective, and you know it's for me
• 34:59
  Speaker 1: based on my personal experiences still R and B. I mean,
• 35:02
  Speaker 1: I think I'm even further to entrenched in my position
• 35:06
  Speaker 1: now at this point. But you know, I love that
• 35:10
  Speaker 1: Malcolm and Ben both have their strong feelings, and I
• 35:13
  Speaker 1: love that your ever sort of noncommittalness around any of that.
• 35:17
  Speaker 3: Yes, I know, I'm just going to keep it open.
• 35:20
  Speaker 3: I'm keeping it open for new experiences, and I'm going
• 35:23
  Speaker 3: to sit here and I'm going to celebrate Valentine's Day
• 35:25
  Speaker 3: by listening to songs that make me cry.
• 35:27
  Speaker 2: Well you know, no, no, no, celebrate Valentine's Day. I
• 35:30
  Speaker 2: made a great playlist love songs. Listen to that.
• 35:34
  Speaker 1: We'll put that in the show notes, and listen to that,
• 35:37
  Speaker 1: not the sad songs.
• 35:38
  Speaker 7: Please.
• 35:39
  Speaker 2: Wait.
• 35:39
  Speaker 3: I just saved a playlist, and this is real. I
• 35:41
  Speaker 3: just saved a playlist from Spotify called Classics for Crying,
• 35:45
  Speaker 3: So I'm getting that cute up.
• 35:51
  Speaker 1: This episode was produced by Isabelle Carter and edited by
• 35:54
  Speaker 1: Sarah Nix.
• 35:55
  Speaker 2: Our mix engineer is Sarah Bruguier.
• 35:58
  Speaker 3: Special thanks to ben Atahoffrey, Malcolm Gladwell, Costanza, Guyardo, Owen Miller,
• 36:03
  Speaker 3: and Eric Sandler.
• 36:04
  Speaker 1: I'm your host, Justin Richmond, and I'm Leah Rose.
• 36:08
  Speaker 3: Happy Valentine's Day.
• 36:09
  Speaker 8: Eh Yeah