Popular Music in America Jenna Thomas

For my second Switched on Pop extra credit assignment I decided to listen to the episode called We *do* talk about Bruno because I love this song and it intrigued me. In this episode they talk about how it is really rare that a Disney song will even make it on the top 100 let alone it gets to be number one, even over the iconic Adele. They go over what the movie is about and tell Bruno’s story and what the song is about. Basically why he is the exiled uncle in the movie. They start out by talking about the piano in the beginning and how it uses syncopated notes and it just makes you want to dance. It is at a slower tempo which makes it seem more mysterious. Lin Manuel who wrote Hamilton, also wrote the music for this movie and he wrote this song in one sitting right after hearing about Bruno. Another reason why they said it could have blown up is because it has lots of different characters singing. Each character has very different styles and kind of mixes it up with their personality....

For this blog post I listened to the podcast Switched On Pop and the episode I chose was "Why do new Christmas songs fail?". In this podcast they talk about why there are no new Christmas songs coming out today. In their words they are all "oldies". They also talk about how holiday music is a huge money maker, Mariah Carey's "All I Want For Christmas Is You" has been out for 27 years and is still as popular as ever. Compared to other songs that are relatively new, other songs are much much older. The second top song was "Rockin Around The Christmas Tree" followed by "Jingle Bell Rock". These songs are classics for sure but why are there no new Christmas songs coming out? They came to the conclusion that we keep listening to these classic songs because we are drawn to the nostalgia that comes when we listen to these songs. We have traditions that are tied to these songs and we don't have that kind of connection with the newer Chr...

For my last blog post I wanted to end with a bang. I can't think of a better way to do that than to listen to the one and only "Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It)" by Beyonce, the queen herself. This song is the ultimate jam. It doesn't matter if you are a single lady, a happily married lady, heck you could even be a man and you know that this song is elite. It has such a fun dancing beat and it is my favorite song to dance to at a wedding dance party or really just any dance event! Like many other songs that I have wrote about this semester this song has a lot of memories for me. When I was little my mom loved this song so for her birthday my dad organized for our family to make a music video to this song. It was choreographed and everything, we were in the car and my aunt videoed it for us. She loved it, and it is still one of our favorite videos to watch! We put it on YouTube but sadly we did not blow up...but many years later we are still hoping! This song is just t...

This week I decided to listen to the song Tim McGraw by Taylor Swift. I know a lot of people are going to write about this song but how could I not choose this iconic song? This was one of Taylor's first big songs and still to this day is a fan favorite. When I think of this song I just think of a high school relationship ending, it could be any relationship but for some reason I just picture young love. The way she talks about the things they did like dancing to her favorite song all night long and talking about him driving a chevy truck just gives me high school love vibes. This song just breaks my heart a little bit. People may disagree with me but I think young love is one of the worst heartbreaks, and this song just kind of illustrates that for me. She has gotten over the pain but she still hopes that he remembers the little things about her. Even though they aren't together anymore he will always hold a special place in her heart and she hopes he feels the same. That was ...

This week I decided to listen to the song Thriller by Michael Jackson. Do I need to explain why? I mean come on it's Michael Jackson! He is an absolute icon in the music industry. He can sing, dance, act, he can do it all. I love this song because it brings back so many memories for me. As I mentioned in some of my other posts I danced all growing up and my favorite show we did at my studio was our Halloween show. It was called scream and it was seriously the highlight of my whole year. It was so much fun. We would do a variety of Halloween dance numbers and our finale every year was thriller. We went full blown zombie make up and it was always the crowd's favorite. I have performed to this song so many times I think I could sing the song better than Michael at this point. Whenever I think of Halloween I think of this song, it is just so iconic. The music video is also really good! It is such a good song and it brings back so many fun memories for me. I love this song so much!

This week I listened to the song Play That Funky Music by Wild Cherry. This song just instantly reminds me of my dad. He loves this type of music and does his funny little dad dance moves to this song every time it turns on. My favorite thing about my dad is that he loves dance parties, I definitely get that from him. What he loves even more is when this song comes on at a dance party. You already know that he is going to be in the middle of the dance circle pulling out his signature dance moves from high school. It is seriously so fun to watch, my dad is a pretty chill, mellow guy so when he is excited about something you know. This is one of the songs that can get him really excited. This song is also just an all around fantastic song, the beat is so unique and so cool I just love it so much. It doesn’t sound like any other songs and it just stands out to me personally. I would love to choreograph a dance to this song or learn a dance to this song. It would be so entertaining for the...