Popular Music in America Jenna Thomas

  For my last extra credit assignment I decided to listen to the episode called Olivia Rodrigo’s “Driver's License” is a full throttle power ballad. I chose this episode initially because I love Olivia and her music so that piqued my interest. They start out by talking about how Olivia dropped her biggest hit “Driver’s License” when there is usually no new music coming out right before the Grammys . They talk about who Olivia Rodrigo is and where she came from, one of the hosts who had never heard it so it was cool to hear what he had to say with fresh ears. They really try to dive in and see why it was so effective. They talked about how she made the car noises into her song and how that was absolutely genius and then goes onto talk about something so many teenagers dream about, getting their driver's license. They talk about how she introduced a villain “the blonde girl”. They even talk about how there is a lot of drama going on outside the song about who the villain is. She ...

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...