We recommend: Podcasts on music history and culture
Editor’s Note: Music history, artist deep dives, trivia, and nerding out on that familiar guitar riff—the splainer team has it all covered with this wonderful selection of podcasts.
Switched On Pop: This is the Vulture’s music podcast that does deep dives on artists and their genre and album reviews. The analysis is more than just name-dropping music producers—the episodes get into how the music is received by the audience and its social media impact as well. Our fave is this one called ‘Learning to love: Tate McRae’ which charts the singer’s rise to fame.
Face 2 Face: Back in his Film Companion days, Baradwaj Rangan—a National Award-winning film critic—hosted this podcast with cinema and music greats from the South Indian Film Industry. So yup, there are interviews with AR Rahman and Shekhar Kapur but we especially love this one episode with the Carnatic music legend TM Krishna. Ragan really gets into the gender and politics of it, almost playing the devil’s advocate to get TM Krishna to spill out his politics.
Ongoing History of New Music: Canadian broadcasting veteran Alan Cross shows off his encyclopaedic knowledge of all things alternative and its adjacent genres, in a bitesized form of 35 minutes or less. This started as a radio show in 1993—long before podcasts were a thing—which means the online library goes insanely deep at nearly 500 episodes. Cross’ snapshot of 1994 is a solid starting point.
Rhythm on the Rocks: Did you know that a forgotten proto metal record in 1972 by the teenaged bubblegum pop Osmonds paved the way for Metallica, Led Zeppelin and Ozzy Osbourne’s solo work? That’s just one of the many hatke histories of iconic artists—best paired with a glass of whiskey, as hosts Frizz and Bob intended. Check out the Osmonds-focused episode here.
What Had Happened Was: Behind the curtain of rhythm and poetry—by the rappers, for the rappers, with the rappers. Chicago-based underground hip hop legend Open Mike Eagle partners up with a single guest for an entire season as they look back on industry giants they crossed paths with. There’s four seasons overall—the first of which features DJ and record producer extraordinaire Prince Paul. We recommend starting right there from the very beginning—about the Gravediggaz and Wu-Tang Clan frontman RZA.
Cocaine and Rhinestones: We’ve saved the greatest deep dives for last and now head to twentieth century Nashville—but this isn’t just for country music nerds alone. Guitarist Tyler Mahan Coe’s storytelling skills are more comparable to a mystery novel, as he peels back the layers behind the genre. There may be just two seasons of 33 episodes so far, but they routinely surpass the 90-minute mark and are well worth it. The first season has self-contained episodes on artists like Ernest Tubb and Loretta Lynn, while season 2 is the magnum opus, a serialised tale about George Jones and Tammy Wynette. Issliye aap chronology samjhiye—break the duck by listening to 'Starday Records: The Anti-Nashville Sound'.
