Speaker 1: Hey, what's up y'all? Steven, just the heads up.
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Speaker 2: now that you can take. It's your opportunity to tell
Speaker 2: us what you like about the show, what you would
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Speaker 2: this is something we're gonna be paying very close attention to.
Speaker 2: So you can take that survey by either clicking the
Speaker 2: link in our show notes or going to No Such
Speaker 2: Thing dot show. All right, enjoy today's episode.
Speaker 3: Hi'm Manny Noah, and.
Speaker 2: This is Devin and this is No such Thing the
Speaker 2: show where we settle our dumb arguments and yours by
Speaker 2: actually doing the research. On today's episode, why did Taylor
Speaker 2: Swift stop singing in a cont reaccent? We explore authenticity
Speaker 2: in popular music.
Speaker 3: There's no no such thing, no such thing. No touch, thank.
Speaker 4: Touch thank no touch.
Speaker 1: Than all right.
Speaker 2: So today's episode was inspired by a listener email. This
Speaker 2: is from Joel V. He says, my wife asked me
Speaker 2: a question the other day as we were driving somewhere.
Speaker 2: This is his wife. Why do we only hear pronounce
Speaker 2: accents and country music songs? It seems like whenever Americans
Speaker 2: hear songs by British artists, we can never relate a
Speaker 2: cer in their accent. However, with country songs, the accent
Speaker 2: is clear. Their other top genres were accent is clear.
Speaker 2: All right, Joel, great question and miss Jeel. So this
Speaker 2: is something we've been talking about over the years and
Speaker 2: thinking about accents and music more broadly before we get
Speaker 2: you know, zero in on Joel's question, how do you
Speaker 2: all feel with this general premise that basically outside of
Speaker 2: country music, it's kind of hard to discern accents in music.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I don't know if it's that black and white,
Speaker 3: but I certainly I know what they're getting at, which is,
Speaker 3: you know, growing up, I've been always fascinated hearing or
Speaker 3: like finding out that a singer is English. You know,
Speaker 3: we see this in acting all the time, but it
Speaker 3: adds in in music as well.
Speaker 2: I feel like this is more of a thing in
Speaker 2: pop music, where it's harder to discern. You know, I
Speaker 2: think our classic example is like we think of like
Speaker 2: you're saying, like someone from the UK not being even like,
Speaker 2: oh shoot, I thought you were American, but because you know,
Speaker 2: in let's say genre like rap.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it is very clear when is it's close to.
Speaker 5: The spoken word, Yeah, dizzy Rascal.
Speaker 2: Yes, there are some of our examples of artists that
Speaker 2: you are like, whoa, I didn't realize this person was
Speaker 2: from this place.
Speaker 3: Well I remember, uh do you guys remember Leonna Lewis?
Speaker 1: Oh?
Speaker 3: Yeah, so in two thousand and eight. I think she
Speaker 3: had the song Bleeding Love, and the reason it's more
Speaker 3: clear to me as you guys know. Obviously I am
Speaker 3: married to an English woman and you like that I
Speaker 3: can tell the most obvious difference between the American accent
Speaker 3: and English accent is they don't pronounce r, so instead
Speaker 3: of first, it'd be like first or whatever, or like
Speaker 3: you know, let's go out there, let's go out there
Speaker 3: and Leona Lewis and so you can hear in in
Speaker 3: the verse. It's not just that her accent disappears. They
Speaker 3: are literally pronouncing the words like Americans.
Speaker 2: So outs songs.
Speaker 3: So that's always been you. It would be hard to
Speaker 3: act to like accidentally pronounce first like an American, I think,
Speaker 3: instead of I don't know, maybe when you're singing you're
Speaker 3: reading out enunciating the letters.
Speaker 5: That's kind of my that's my my guess I was
Speaker 5: thinking of. I was thinking about trying to think of
Speaker 5: some examples, and then I was watching a movie yesterday
Speaker 5: and Elvis Costello was in it, and Elvis Costello is English.
Speaker 5: He's a rock kind of new wave rock guy. And
Speaker 5: I was like, oh, let me, let me listen to
Speaker 5: him and see, because I remember listening to him back
Speaker 5: in middle school or something, and I didn't know anything
Speaker 5: about him, and I was listening to him.
Speaker 6: Just I guess.
Speaker 5: I assumed he was American, and he had a lyric
Speaker 5: in a song that was like something mister Oswald with
Speaker 5: a swastika tattoo tattoo el dude, and I assumed he
Speaker 5: was talking about Lee Harvey Oswald.
Speaker 6: And I was like, Okay, there's a lot of theories
Speaker 6: around this guy.
Speaker 5: I've never heard this particular one, so I remember actually
Speaker 5: looking it up then, but it was like, oh, it's
Speaker 5: talking about like a well known fascist British politician.
Speaker 3: Yeah, oh that makes sense, and then the references.
Speaker 6: Yeah, So I was like, so it was from that context, clue.
Speaker 5: But even in his songs, that are some songs he's
Speaker 5: more belting it out and some he's not talking, but
Speaker 5: a little bit more like faster where it's seems more
Speaker 5: closer to language. When I listened to him, I wouldn't.
Speaker 6: I don't hear an.
Speaker 5: Accent at all, so it's only the contextual clues of
Speaker 5: what he's singing about away for So yeah.
Speaker 2: Reverse examples. Are there Americans that try to sound.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I think there's a lot of like like the
Speaker 5: Ramones kind of do a little effect like whatever Blitz
Speaker 5: Creekbop or something you can get, and they're just singing
Speaker 5: in a it's just a little style where it's like
Speaker 5: not how you would actually talk if you're a person.
Speaker 6: They're just like a little you know. That's the most
Speaker 6: prominent example I can think of.
Speaker 5: And then I was there's a band Rancid, who are
Speaker 5: like later On, who are like very influenced by the Class,
Speaker 5: who are an English band, and the guy's just clearly
Speaker 5: doing a Joe Strummer clearly just heard him and is
Speaker 5: singing like him.
Speaker 4: Say, It's like, I don't know, maybe he's just some
Speaker 4: street punk guy doing this thing, but it's like, yeah,
Speaker 4: he's trying to do this thing.
Speaker 5: And that's funny because then there were bands copying. This
Speaker 5: guy becomes a real copy of a copy of all
Speaker 5: these guys mostly American, trying to sound like this British
Speaker 5: guy from you know, generations before.
Speaker 3: Now that's fast.
Speaker 6: But those are the ones I've I've thought.
Speaker 5: Of, Oh, the guy from Grila, Damon Alburn from the
Speaker 5: band Blur, these English and Gorillas and they I guess
Speaker 5: they do a lot more kind of almost talking stuff.
Speaker 6: So he you can hear is he sounds extreme.
Speaker 5: He has a strong accent and it comes through in
Speaker 5: the music because it's more talking.
Speaker 6: Like if you listen to whatever Clint Eastward or any of.
Speaker 7: Those songs that happened glad I got Sunshine in a back,
Speaker 7: I'm useless.
Speaker 6: But belong So there's no no mystery there. Yeah, when
Speaker 6: he's melting it.
Speaker 3: Out here like the English singers that sound English when
Speaker 3: they sing. So that's her name, Lily Allen, that big
Speaker 3: Lily Allen song from like the mid two thousands. It
Speaker 3: was very clear.
Speaker 6: Yeah, and again that's like a little more talking.
Speaker 8: But that down next.
Speaker 9: I want to do that for.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's the lack of ours.
Speaker 3: Yeah, does Adele do this?
Speaker 5: I was I was just yeah, let's pay that's this
Speaker 5: is my my belting theory. If you're belting it out
Speaker 5: and Adele is one of our great belters.
Speaker 6: I think it's a lot harder to hear.
Speaker 2: Ye this way, her singing accent is nowhere near Well
Speaker 2: that's the thing, yeah, because that's the thing.
Speaker 6: You know, she has a very thick accent talking.
Speaker 1: And Jennydale is little chopnut bits of eel which is
Speaker 1: probably just boiled actually now think about it, so got
Speaker 1: no flavor in it at all.
Speaker 5: Because that's I was trying to think of, like, Okay,
Speaker 5: the Beatles, and it's like, I, you obviously know they're English,
Speaker 5: but it's more like, Okay, I recognize that's John Lennon's voice,
Speaker 5: and I know how he sounds when he's talking. Yeah,
Speaker 5: I don't actually think there's an accent when he's singing.
Speaker 5: Then there's obviously song is when they're doing more of
Speaker 5: a talk like you can hear it more, but mostly
Speaker 5: if you hear whatever Tristan Showder or something, Yeah, I wouldn't.
Speaker 3: Think that, but let's hear Adele.
Speaker 9: Yeah, they they by starting in my hoating that fever
Speaker 9: pictures bringing me out the dog.
Speaker 3: It's just kind of like the classic soul singer voice,
Speaker 3: you know that doesn't necessarily sound English.
Speaker 6: What about Taylor Swift.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you think about it.
Speaker 2: Like when she first came out, she was singing in
Speaker 2: that like crazy Nashville country accent. Like I remember one
Speaker 2: of my good friends, his cousin like went to like
Speaker 2: high school with or elementary school younger with Taylor Swift
Speaker 2: and she's from Pennsylvania. And I was like, wait a minute,
Speaker 2: you went to school with Taylor. Isn't Taylor Swift from.
Speaker 6: Like yeah, Kentucky or yeah, somewhere down.
Speaker 1: So it's like, no, she's from Pennsylvania.
Speaker 10: And he said street singing out tadonio window when we're
Speaker 10: on the phone and it's all real.
Speaker 9: So because it's late and your mama don't.
Speaker 3: Know a song is that's crazy? Actually haven't. I don't know.
Speaker 3: I've never heard that song.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: This her transition to pop was like a gradual thing,
Speaker 2: right like nineteen eighty nine, I guess was.
Speaker 1: Like the one that was fully no.
Speaker 11: Yeah, like I'm not.
Speaker 2: Pretending anymore at all, but that early stuff that's really
Speaker 2: like a country toWin.
Speaker 3: Yeah, fully country accent as opposed to what I was
Speaker 3: imagining was like a little bit of a you know,
Speaker 3: a tilt.
Speaker 11: Yeah.
Speaker 2: No, that's like, yeah, that's a little bit crazy and
Speaker 2: then you know, and I she's making pop music and
Speaker 2: like it doesn't exist anymore. But this is the crazy
Speaker 2: thing when I was looking for this. So she performed
Speaker 2: this more recently on the Error's tour, so I was curious,
Speaker 2: how does it sound? How similar this tailor sounds? Does
Speaker 2: she go back to that twang?
Speaker 8: And he said, don't know.
Speaker 1: She's done like the pop version now.
Speaker 3: She completely lost the accent. Wow, or more accurately, she's
Speaker 3: no longer putting on an ac.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's like, you know, obviously she was much younger
Speaker 2: when that song came out. But this is not like, Okay,
Speaker 2: my voice is different, I'm singing in different key.
Speaker 1: This is like the different Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So what I want to do is I'm gonna
Speaker 2: play some songs and I want you guys to try
Speaker 2: to guess.
Speaker 1: It's like where the artist is from. The one rules.
Speaker 1: If you know who the artist is, don't say.
Speaker 3: Anything where the artist is from in terms of just
Speaker 3: their nationality.
Speaker 11: Yeah, I don't know this.
Speaker 3: I don't know this song either. Well, carrying the song,
Speaker 3: I'm just clar there's something away.
Speaker 6: I get five dollars if I get this.
Speaker 3: There was something about the way he said the word
Speaker 3: to t O that I thought was English.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I'm getting English vibes, but I'm I'm in my head.
Speaker 1: Now, okay, So that is McGhee from New Jersey. What
Speaker 1: the he?
Speaker 4: Wow?
Speaker 3: That's incredible?
Speaker 2: All right, let me play and a little faith in me.
Speaker 12: In his car the only star a lord on his
Speaker 12: nerve and the camerasine cops they could have been stars
Speaker 12: and this news scream I'm.
Speaker 11: Going UK again.
Speaker 3: I think he said cameras in a very UK way.
Speaker 5: There's a couple of cameras.
Speaker 1: What do we got?
Speaker 2: This one's a little bit of a cheat. It's Mustafa
Speaker 2: He's so, I'll give you half a point for that.
Speaker 2: We in Canada, Toronto, Toronto?
Speaker 3: Did you have an accent there?
Speaker 2: I'll give you half a point because you know, okay,
Speaker 2: the queen's on the Queen's on the money. Yeah, i'll
Speaker 2: give you that one. Okay, I'll give you guys an
Speaker 2: easy one.
Speaker 1: I ain't really got no, so I pulled. I just
Speaker 1: hope that God don't take them all my niggas. We
Speaker 1: drive step in the street and we.
Speaker 2: Were waiting on the life go and hope he's saved
Speaker 2: the way for the calls right there.
Speaker 1: We hoping.
Speaker 3: I feel I don't know, I'm scared now, but they
Speaker 3: wouldn't be dropping that word like that over there. So yeah,
Speaker 3: this guy's American.
Speaker 2: Yeah this is no cap from Mobile, Alabama.
Speaker 1: All right, let's still.
Speaker 9: Away if left today, but if goodbye to safe.
Speaker 3: But this has to be like one of the one
Speaker 3: direction guys.
Speaker 1: What a flus, the mind.
Speaker 11: Far behind and the.
Speaker 6: Never American American.
Speaker 3: I'm gonna go English, English, you're American.
Speaker 1: You're both wrong?
Speaker 11: What this is?
Speaker 1: Troy Savonne from Australia.
Speaker 3: I was like, he see me too? I thought it
Speaker 3: was like, what's the what's the guy's name from? Not
Speaker 3: him the dane zay because he said never without an R.
Speaker 3: But I guess in Australia they also do that.
Speaker 1: You guys did horrible at that game, did any right?
Speaker 3: Yeah, we got a half point for Canadian. I should
Speaker 3: also get a half point for Australian. So I got
Speaker 3: a full point.
Speaker 2: So maybe we're not so good at well, at least
Speaker 2: you two aren't so good at the certain Yeah, well
Speaker 2: at least we think we are. So we are gonna
Speaker 2: be joined by New Yorker music writer and critic call
Speaker 2: and we're gonna go deep on genre gatekeeping and of
Speaker 2: course accents in popular music. All that after the break.
Speaker 2: All right, fellas, I need you to help me with
Speaker 2: a problem that I got. You know, usually we're the
Speaker 2: ones helping other people with their problems. But I'm about
Speaker 2: to go abroad and I'm going to watch Met games. Noah,
Speaker 2: how can I watch them?
Speaker 1: That's a tough one.
Speaker 6: Maybe get a really large telescope.
Speaker 2: I don't think that's the best way to do it. Manny,
Speaker 2: Do you have any solutions on how I can watch
Speaker 2: Mets games?
Speaker 3: You broad I think I've got a slightly more practical
Speaker 3: solution for you, Devin. If you use nord VPN, you'll
Speaker 3: be able to change the location of your laptop's IP
Speaker 3: address and watch the content with no problem.
Speaker 6: What about my privacy online? I'm worried someone's watching me.
Speaker 3: First of all, no one is watching you, Noah. But
Speaker 3: in case someone was watching you, NordVPN provides you with
Speaker 3: privacy online, leaving no digital footprint by hiding your IP address.
Speaker 3: It's like wearing an invisibility cloak while you're surfing the web.
Speaker 2: Sounds comfy, so, Manny, I've heard about these VPNs and
Speaker 2: how they're super slow.
Speaker 1: How do I make sure my internet is not throttling?
Speaker 3: If you want to use a VPN without slowing down
Speaker 3: your internet, Devin, You're gonna want to use NordVPN because
Speaker 3: whenever I use it, I don't see any buffering or
Speaker 3: lagging while I'm streaming my favorite content.
Speaker 1: How do I get NordVPN, Devin?
Speaker 3: If you or our listeners want to get the best
Speaker 3: discount off of your NordVPN plan, go to NordVPN dot
Speaker 3: com slash nst. Our link will also give you four
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Speaker 3: The link is in the show notes. That's NordVPN dot
Speaker 3: com slash nst.
Speaker 4: So.
Speaker 2: In the studio, we're joined by Quay, who's a critic
Speaker 2: inter writer at The New Yorker and author of Major Labels,
Speaker 2: A History of Popular Music, and Seven Genres.
Speaker 7: Good News, Bad News. You have my book here?
Speaker 1: It's like that.
Speaker 7: I was looking you have the cover. I was like, wow,
Speaker 7: why does it have a kind of a plastic key.
Speaker 7: That's a library book.
Speaker 2: I support my local library, and you know what, I
Speaker 2: was doing early in this podcast was I was buying
Speaker 2: every single book, and then I got some books that
Speaker 2: I didn't want to keep.
Speaker 7: I see you're saying this might be one of them.
Speaker 1: Well, we'll find out.
Speaker 13: This is the audition by the end of the episode.
Speaker 13: You know, is that a thing on your show? Like
Speaker 13: at the end of the episode, if it goes well,
Speaker 13: I get to watch you log onto Amazon.
Speaker 2: And so just as a reminder, uh, this episode started
Speaker 2: with a question from unless your named Joel, why do
Speaker 2: we only hear pronounce accents in country music?
Speaker 1: First of all, do you agree with that premise?
Speaker 7: No, that's insane. Okay, all right, right on the same page. Well, like,
Speaker 7: what's an accent?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 3: And to be fair to Joel, he says pronounced accents
Speaker 3: like you. Yes, I think he thinks you can hear
Speaker 3: you know, if someone's got an English accent, for example.
Speaker 13: Well, I wonder if when Joel says pronounced accents he
Speaker 13: means fake?
Speaker 7: Is that his polite way of saying fake?
Speaker 1: I think he yes.
Speaker 2: From the rest of the email, it seems like performative maybe,
Speaker 2: if not fake.
Speaker 1: Well, yes, it's.
Speaker 13: Funny because in one definition, any musician who has any
Speaker 13: the accent is performative by definition if you're performing. But
Speaker 13: yes in terms of in terms of there being a
Speaker 13: noticeable difference between the accent and the way you talk
Speaker 13: in every day life, or a sense that the accent
Speaker 13: is there to help you try to like fit in
Speaker 13: with the genre you're part of. Yeah, you hear some
Speaker 13: of that in country, but yeah, I think you hear
Speaker 13: in other places too. Obviously, country has a more regional
Speaker 13: identity in some ways, although even that gets a little
Speaker 13: complicated by what.
Speaker 7: We mean by regional.
Speaker 13: There's a lot of different there's a lot of different
Speaker 13: reasons a person might have an accent.
Speaker 7: So yes, you tell me where are we going?
Speaker 2: But I want to start with country music, okay, because
Speaker 2: that was where you know, that was Joe. But you
Speaker 2: talk about this Country is an interesting genre because I
Speaker 2: think it gate keeps in a way that a lot
Speaker 2: of other genres just don't.
Speaker 7: I disagree, but please, oh okay.
Speaker 2: There is this thing in country music in which they
Speaker 2: love to talk about sort of like authenticity and holding
Speaker 2: on to that. And there are certain when you talk
Speaker 2: about this in your books, certain signifiers of country music
Speaker 2: that we all know of. So can you talk a
Speaker 2: little bit about sort of like country music's positioning of
Speaker 2: sort of like authenticity and sort of this fear of
Speaker 2: like almost being too big and like holding on to that.
Speaker 13: Well, I want to zoom out a little bit, because
Speaker 13: when I think about musical genres, I think of them
Speaker 13: as communities. And it's like a community of listeners and musicians,
Speaker 13: sometimes literally in the same room. But sometimes it's just
Speaker 13: like you're listening to the music and you're like imagining
Speaker 13: the other people that might also listen to this.
Speaker 7: Music, and you know, you're listening to Dolly Parton, and.
Speaker 13: For the half hour that the album lasts, you can
Speaker 13: become the kind of person who listens to Dolly Parton,
Speaker 13: Like that's part of the fun. And so when you
Speaker 13: think about a community, any community needs gatekeeping. Sometimes a
Speaker 13: gatekeeping might be like literally turning people away, and especially
Speaker 13: if you want it to feel to have some sense
Speaker 13: of intimacy, some sense of like, oh, me and you
Speaker 13: have something in common that's a little different from those
Speaker 13: people out there. We need some way to distinguish ourselves,
Speaker 13: and you know, accents can be one way of doing that.
Speaker 13: That could be one signal I use this kind of language,
Speaker 13: I you know, you know but also vocabulary and all
Speaker 13: sorts of things. And so I think that I think
Speaker 13: that the question of how inclusive or exclusive a community
Speaker 13: is is a little bit hard to It's a little
Speaker 13: bit hard to define because it depends who wants to
Speaker 13: get in and and you know you're and again, the
Speaker 13: bigger your community is, the more you're going to maybe
Speaker 13: look to charts or other metrics of success to see.
Speaker 7: Like what we all agree on.
Speaker 13: And so yeah, the question of like it's hard. So yeah,
Speaker 13: it's hard to even know how you would rank, Like
Speaker 13: does country is country music more gatekeepery than techno? I
Speaker 13: don't know, man, Like techno has some rules and those
Speaker 13: clubs might be like literally hard to get into, whereas
Speaker 13: like anyone can buy a ticket to a country music concert.
Speaker 13: So I think that in country music, yes there's gatekeeping,
Speaker 13: but there is I think more than that, there's a
Speaker 13: sense of identity. And so the question of what that
Speaker 13: identity is is obviously.
Speaker 7: Extremely vexed in every genre, including country music. You could
Speaker 7: look at them not playing Beyonce, but you have to
Speaker 7: keep in mind these are the same radio stations that
Speaker 7: also don't play Taylor Swift because they also don't view
Speaker 7: Taylor Swift as like really country enough, sure, but they're
Speaker 7: happy to play shaboozi.
Speaker 1: Can you walk us through this country music identity?
Speaker 13: It starts as a kind of disparate thing, right, country
Speaker 13: and Western when Billboard is doing these charts of country
Speaker 13: music and Western music, and those are thought of as
Speaker 13: like maybe slightly separate things. Right, you think about the
Speaker 13: musical traditions of the American Southeast. You think about what
Speaker 13: would be called sometimes hillbilly music, You think about string bands,
Speaker 13: and then you think about Western music, the iconography of cowboys,
Speaker 13: you know, Texas swing, all sorts of stuff, and that
Speaker 13: stuff kind of mashes together and it becomes something with
Speaker 13: a more specific identity. And in some ways that identity
Speaker 13: is inclusive, right, because you know, the idea that someone
Speaker 13: in Nashville, Tennessee would wear a cowboy hat is a
Speaker 13: little weird. In the first place. There's not a lot
Speaker 13: of ranches in Nashville, Tennessee. So the western thing kind
Speaker 13: of migrates, but it also becomes exclusive in various ways.
Speaker 13: One way it becomes exclusive is, you know, it's thought
Speaker 13: of as this is rural music and a lot of
Speaker 13: country songs.
Speaker 7: From the beginning of its existence as a.
Speaker 13: Genre are about the fact that the singers themselves used
Speaker 13: to live in some rural place, or America used to
Speaker 13: be rural, and now we've come to the city, which
Speaker 13: is what creates the country music industry. Right now we've
Speaker 13: come to we're at the Wheeling Jamboree, or we're at
Speaker 13: the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville. But we remember the
Speaker 13: way things used to be. So that sense of like
Speaker 13: we remember how things used to be when things were
Speaker 13: more rural is a big part of the identity of
Speaker 13: country music as a rural genre. At various points, it
Speaker 13: comes to be perceived as a Southern genre. The western
Speaker 13: part sort.
Speaker 7: Of like fades away a little bit.
Speaker 13: You know, nowadays you don't say country in Western you
Speaker 13: say country. Obviously, one of the most fun ones which
Speaker 13: I've saved until now, is it comes to be thought
Speaker 13: of as white music. And this despite the fact that obviously,
Speaker 13: if you look at the history of country music, there's
Speaker 13: tons of black musicians who have contributed to this history.
Speaker 6: Here's Dave Ford Bailey with the fox Chains.
Speaker 13: And what happens at a certain point is that the
Speaker 13: genre itself comes to be seen as segregated in a
Speaker 13: way that kind of mirrors the segregation of American life.
Speaker 13: So the white performers from this genre are kind of
Speaker 13: pulled out towards this thing that gets called country music,
Speaker 13: and some of the black performers you might say, are
Speaker 13: excluded from that tradition or are considered more rhythm and blues.
Speaker 13: And so you know, you have Ray Charles making a
Speaker 13: country album that doesn't necessarily get played on country radio stations.
Speaker 8: Here's that brocm hat what Time has.
Speaker 13: So part of the identity of the genre is it's
Speaker 13: going to be a white genre. Ye, And that's a
Speaker 13: thing that is hard to That's an interesting thing to
Speaker 13: kind of grapple with because I think a lot of
Speaker 13: people have a reaction when they hear that of like,
Speaker 13: that's really that it's white. But then you think about
Speaker 13: R and B, which is thought of as a black genre.
Speaker 1: Well, Jack Carlow would say otherwise.
Speaker 6: That's right, come on and Jack with his extra tall
Speaker 6: hat ely.
Speaker 13: I mean, obviously I love it when people are playing
Speaker 13: in transgressing in that kind of a way. So, but generally,
Speaker 13: the idea that R and B music is black music
Speaker 13: is often talked about as something to celebrate like this,
Speaker 13: this is a black musical tradition, like this is great,
Speaker 13: this is something to be proud of. But you know,
Speaker 13: if you do the math, in a country that's what
Speaker 13: thirteen percent black, if you have black genres, you're also
Speaker 13: gonna have white genres, just like mathematically and so the
Speaker 13: and so to. One way I think about country music
Speaker 13: is that it's it's almost mathematically necessary if you're gonna
Speaker 13: have some disproportionately black genres in America that in a country.
Speaker 7: That's still whatever it is, fifty eight percent non Hispanic
Speaker 7: white or something, you're gonna have some disproportionately white genres.
Speaker 7: And then the question is, well, like, how do we
Speaker 7: think about that, and how do we think about diversity
Speaker 7: within a genre? And the reason I bring up R
Speaker 7: and B.
Speaker 13: Is because it's a good example of how like we
Speaker 13: might not want that. We might not look at R
Speaker 13: and B and be like, wow, that's a shame that
Speaker 13: it's so many black performers.
Speaker 7: I wish it was only thirteen percent black.
Speaker 13: Performers and half percent Hispanic and you know, so you know,
Speaker 13: I don't think it's obvious that musical segregation is bad.
Speaker 7: Or is a problem in a genre.
Speaker 13: One of the things I love about popular music is
Speaker 13: that it reflects America, good, bad, and otherwise. And so
Speaker 13: to the extent that Americans are living somewhat segregated lives,
Speaker 13: I would expect and even in a way celebrate the
Speaker 13: idea that music would reflect that, rather than sugarcoating it,
Speaker 13: or rather than pretending something different is happening. So yes,
Speaker 13: country has and still does kind of grapple with its
Speaker 13: identity as white music. So yes, you get all these things,
Speaker 13: and you still have this, but you do still have
Speaker 13: this trace of an accent. And when we think of
Speaker 13: an accent, we kind of think of a country accent
Speaker 13: as a singular thing taking to the place, whereas, of
Speaker 13: course traditionally someone from Georgia and someone from Texas have
Speaker 13: pretty different ways of speaking, especially if you're from one
Speaker 13: of those places. In country music, one of the things
Speaker 13: that happens is that all these different regional musical traditions
Speaker 13: sort of combine into one sort of all the same
Speaker 13: but sort of different mega tradition. Right, you get country
Speaker 13: music out of all these different regional traditions that exist
Speaker 13: before it. And so similarly, maybe and I'm not a linguist,
Speaker 13: maybe you get something that sort of feels like a
Speaker 13: country accent, so that when Taylor Swift from outside of
Speaker 13: Pittsburgh is making country records and sending them to country radio,
Speaker 13: she's using a little bit more of.
Speaker 7: A country accent.
Speaker 13: And when she starts making records that are more considered
Speaker 13: or marketed or influenced by pop music, you hear less
Speaker 13: of that. Sage Sea, and I think, I think you
Speaker 13: know we're talking about music, right, So we're talking about singers,
Speaker 13: and we're talking about people using their voice and also
Speaker 13: using words to create music. So whenever you're turning words
Speaker 13: into music, the question of how you pronounce those words
Speaker 13: is going to be an important musical strategy. Right, So
Speaker 13: that the sounds of country music, the sound of a
Speaker 13: pedal steel or of an electric guitar, maybe we associate
Speaker 13: that with certain pronunciations, a certain way of dropping a g,
Speaker 13: a certain way of extending a vowel here or there.
Speaker 7: So when you start.
Speaker 13: Making that music, I think, I don't want to say naturally,
Speaker 13: it's hard to know what is or isn't natural, but
Speaker 13: I think it's it's inevitable that people would start using
Speaker 13: that sort of accent.
Speaker 1: Because it feels organic.
Speaker 13: Yeah, it feels like it's linked to the sort of
Speaker 13: music you want you're making, and that you know this
Speaker 13: once you start looking for that, that's everywhere, right. That's like,
Speaker 13: that's like British rock bands in the sixties singing with
Speaker 13: an American accent because that's what seems to go with
Speaker 13: rock and roll, and like, if you try to pin
Speaker 13: down Mick Jagger's accent, you'd be like, whoa, it's not English.
Speaker 13: And you know, a certain kind of American drawl seemed
Speaker 13: like it fit with a backbeat and an electric guitar,
Speaker 13: and so yeah, there is a certain way of having
Speaker 13: an accent that seems to fit with country music. And
Speaker 13: I think that, as with anything that has to do
Speaker 13: with music, I think there's a corny way to do it.
Speaker 13: There's a way to do it that doesn't feel that corny,
Speaker 13: and so obviously part of your job as a as
Speaker 13: a singer, as a a performer of popular music is
Speaker 13: not to seem corny. That's like really important, and there's
Speaker 13: no rules about how to do that. It's just like
Speaker 13: the audience is gonna decide what does and doesn't feel
Speaker 13: a little ridiculous, and you know, and it's fascinating when
Speaker 13: you see people from other parts of the world. Right,
Speaker 13: you see Shania Twain from Canada, you're still.
Speaker 11: The one over.
Speaker 13: You see Keith Urban, Yeah, I believe born in New Zealand,
Speaker 13: but spent some time in Australia. People always getting mad
Speaker 13: if you if you messed that up, but yes, from
Speaker 13: that part of the world somebody, and yes, well I
Speaker 13: personally think it would be fascinating to hear like a
Speaker 13: Keith Urban record with like a thick accent that suggests
Speaker 13: Australia and New Zealand. Obviously, he's found a way to
Speaker 13: do it where it's not corny, he doesn't sound like
Speaker 13: he's on he ha. But it fits into other songs
Speaker 13: you hear on the radio, so it's not jumping out
Speaker 13: at you of like, what's this guy from a different
Speaker 13: country doing on my radio station? So yeah, people find
Speaker 13: a way to fit in and hopefully not make it
Speaker 13: sound too ridiculous.
Speaker 7: Obviously, there are.
Speaker 13: Moments in popular music where people lean into their local accent, right,
Speaker 13: and that can be that could be a musical strategy,
Speaker 13: right if your kneecap and you're like, we're not going
Speaker 13: to rap all the time in English, We're going to
Speaker 13: use our indigenous Irish language mockery, and then in other
Speaker 13: times people want to be part of a tradition, so
Speaker 13: they're delivering lyrics in English. I think a professional linguist
Speaker 13: could probably write a really interesting paper and probably has
Speaker 13: about the use of English in K pop and the
Speaker 13: use of sometimes not quite idiomatic English, And maybe there's
Speaker 13: a maybe there's a specific thing where then, like if
Speaker 13: you're in katsi or something, you're using a kind of
Speaker 13: k pop ish English to signal that you along to
Speaker 13: this K pop community, even though obviously the music and
Speaker 13: the language of K pop is very much influenced by
Speaker 13: American pop music.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it's this weird sort of I think there
Speaker 2: was an interview or people were questioning some of the
Speaker 2: members of cats I about.
Speaker 1: Like why did you guys use these lyrics and his song?
Speaker 2: And they're like if you didn't write this, Like yeah,
Speaker 2: it sounds kind of weird to us too, But now
Speaker 2: it's becoming its own new thing of.
Speaker 7: Like, well, and you see that that's similar, that's like
Speaker 7: Britney spears.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 13: Maybe one more time, Max Martin like he didn't know that.
Speaker 13: We don't say that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, for those of you who don't know Max Martin
Speaker 2: is a legendary Swedish producer and songwriter. He's produced some
Speaker 2: of the biggest pop hits over the last thirty years,
Speaker 2: working with Britney Spears, Taylor Swift, the Backstreet Boys and more.
Speaker 13: Hit Me One More Time, Don't That's Not Yet? Or
Speaker 13: like you know when you think of like Backstreet Boys, Yeah,
Speaker 13: I want to say I want it that way, like
Speaker 13: what are you talking and yes, and if a song
Speaker 13: becomes big enough, we're like, oh, that's just the language
Speaker 13: of pop music.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it becomes its own thing.
Speaker 2: I want to go back to your country music example,
Speaker 2: because you talk about in your book too, especially early
Speaker 2: days of country music, of these white artists who are
Speaker 2: writing speaking to this like hip hop example, as if
Speaker 2: they are a black artists in trying to use black lingo.
Speaker 2: And I think of the Tom Hanks scene in the
Speaker 2: New Elvis movie of like you know, zoom into his face,
Speaker 2: he's like he's white in like just realization that like
Speaker 2: Elvis is not a black guy. You talk about sort
Speaker 2: of like what was the goal of these artists during
Speaker 2: that time, and you know, these white person trying to.
Speaker 1: Sound black quote unquote or you know, taken from black artists.
Speaker 7: You know, it's funny.
Speaker 13: Authenticity is a slippery thing to define, but it's a
Speaker 13: quality that often people seek out in popular music. But
Speaker 13: it's not the only quality that people seek out in
Speaker 13: popular music. You might you might pair authenticity with something
Speaker 13: more like relatability. Right, So you hear a voice and
Speaker 13: you're like, oh, this person's kind of normal, this person's
Speaker 13: kind of like me, and right, maybe.
Speaker 7: The opposite of that is like whoa this.
Speaker 13: Person comes really comes from the real, whatever the real
Speaker 13: is supposed to be, right, this person represents a very
Speaker 13: different world from my world. And so yes, there's certainly
Speaker 13: moments in American music where, you know, in the Elvis example,
Speaker 13: maybe to listeners in that moment, a certain kind of
Speaker 13: rhythm and blues is associated with black singers, like there
Speaker 13: was something exciting about a singer who could get close
Speaker 13: to that. You know, you see maybe some of that
Speaker 13: with Eminem, who Eminem was.
Speaker 7: Always very careful.
Speaker 13: I think that he's not he's not doing anything where
Speaker 13: it sounds like putting on a show exactly, But he's
Speaker 13: also not necessarily talking the way a white kid from
Speaker 13: Detroit who.
Speaker 7: Wasn't a rapper might talk.
Speaker 13: And like there's certain things he can say and can't say,
Speaker 13: and like, you know, he could say yo, and it
Speaker 13: doesn't sound that weird, but there's maybe other things that
Speaker 13: he would say that he would sound as if he
Speaker 13: was leaning into it a little too much. And so yeah, obviously,
Speaker 13: at various points there's this moment in Elvis's career where
Speaker 13: being perceived as like maybe he's black could be helpful.
Speaker 13: But obviously, given the demographics of America, it's more often
Speaker 13: helpful to be perceived as part of the majority group.
Speaker 13: And it's not a coincidence that Elvis, a white guy,
Speaker 13: ends up selling a lot, or that Eminem a white
Speaker 13: guy ends up selling a lot. And so I think,
Speaker 13: and that's something that the musicians have to have to
Speaker 13: figure out, right, like with my voice, like what am
Speaker 13: I signaling to people? And often there's a move I
Speaker 13: think you often see a move early if we're talking
Speaker 13: about this particular thing of like white artists who might
Speaker 13: be perceived vocally as black. Maybe that's something that happens
Speaker 13: a little more early in the career. And sometimes there's
Speaker 13: a move later in the career toward music that seems
Speaker 13: more authentic or race appropriate or something. You know, there's
Speaker 13: some It's funny, you know if you think about like
Speaker 13: the trajectory of kid rock, where he starts his career.
Speaker 7: Really wanting to be part of this hip hop.
Speaker 8: Scene, sway to the groove that no want chop.
Speaker 14: Sam moved to the kid in Black Breath bos not
Speaker 14: a cheap heart job, but a rock the second So
Speaker 14: fuck coryon Man, Johnny Dell.
Speaker 13: Then let's go, and then eventually finds his own identity,
Speaker 13: which is very much a reclamation of his roots and
Speaker 13: the music his father listened to and living way outside
Speaker 13: of the city in Detroit and literally going to Hank
Speaker 13: Williams Junior shows with his.
Speaker 14: Dad, living my life and a slow hell different girl
Speaker 14: every night at the hotel, I Hain't Seen the Sunshine
Speaker 14: and three Damn Day, and there.
Speaker 13: Is this this idea of like, well, yeah, over time
Speaker 13: you return to what you quote unquote really are.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Post Malone another great example of this, starting with
Speaker 2: White iverson.
Speaker 9: Yeah, Saucy, I'm Sargon, I'm swaggon.
Speaker 1: Too, like fully making country music now.
Speaker 2: The Last Cars, Last Chancers, ninety five truck Is Dancers,
Speaker 2: a couple of trucks, an chin.
Speaker 13: And you know, I would I imagine and hope he's
Speaker 13: not done yet. I hope we get a metalcore record
Speaker 13: from him. I know he enjoys, uh that kind of
Speaker 13: music is well. I think sometimes we forget what it
Speaker 13: was like for us when we were teenagers and trying
Speaker 13: to figure out, like, well, I want to be cool.
Speaker 7: What does it sound like if I'm cool? Like if
Speaker 7: I use this word, if I use that word.
Speaker 13: And sometimes in this context we even talk about appropriation,
Speaker 13: which I think sometimes I think sometimes there's more of
Speaker 13: it than we realize. Like there are things that we
Speaker 13: learn and literally hear from birth, from our parents, but
Speaker 13: most of the rest of our lives is things that
Speaker 13: we pick up from our friends, yes, or from someone else,
Speaker 13: or like, yeah, you didn't come out of the womb.
Speaker 13: No matter what race you are, you maybe didn't come
Speaker 13: out of the womb like hip hop, or you didn't
Speaker 13: come out of the womb country, you know. And so
Speaker 13: there is a certain idea of like we're forming our
Speaker 13: identity based on, you know, what sort of feels right.
Speaker 13: And as I said, with musicians, with people, it's the
Speaker 13: same way where sometimes it can feel corny. We probably
Speaker 13: all know people that are like trying a little too hard,
Speaker 13: and it doesn't necessarily mean that they're trying too hard
Speaker 13: in a way that transgresses a racial boundary. Right, it
Speaker 13: could be like a white person trying too hard with
Speaker 13: like a certain identity that we think of as white. Yeah,
Speaker 13: and so yes, the idea of like trying a little
Speaker 13: bit but not too hard is something that musicians definitely do.
Speaker 7: And yes, so you hear that.
Speaker 13: You hear that with accents, And again, accents are an
Speaker 13: important musical tool which you're making pop music with your voice,
Speaker 13: and it's you know, I think you've seen that, especially
Speaker 13: with hip hop, where when hip hop goes international it
Speaker 13: sounds a little different, Like Polish hip hop sounds a
Speaker 13: little different because the rapping is in Polish and so
Speaker 13: you get different rhythms. You hear that in certainly in
Speaker 13: the UK, and the rhythms of like Black English speech
Speaker 13: you know, gives you grime and gives you UK drill
Speaker 13: and like literally the beats are different and the way
Speaker 13: they ride the beats, right, you have rappers being more
Speaker 13: in the front of the beat rather than riding the
Speaker 13: back of the beat. And so yeah, you hear that
Speaker 13: naturally from the speech patterns and the fact that the
Speaker 13: Caribbean influence in West African influence in the UK influences
Speaker 13: the Black British accent, but also means that some of
Speaker 13: the hip hop has closer relationships to afrobeats at the
Speaker 13: dance hall reggae because that's also in the vocals.
Speaker 15: How could you mean that you'll be empty Tommy, then
Speaker 15: breast listen, look baby done your back and then dipen
Speaker 15: your back and then diga back and then more back
Speaker 15: in one minute.
Speaker 2: I feel like we're currently in the era of hip
Speaker 2: hop that is like, at least in the US, well mainstream.
Speaker 7: About to make a big claim. I want to say
Speaker 7: a big claim.
Speaker 1: Mainstream hip hop.
Speaker 2: It it has become a bit flattened in terms of
Speaker 2: regional sounds. I think there are more underground stuff that
Speaker 2: definitely you know, you took about Detroit, and there's definitely
Speaker 2: some more interesting stuff happening that's not in the mainstream.
Speaker 2: But there was a time when certain radio stations wouldn't
Speaker 2: play music from different areas, right, so New York radio
Speaker 2: stations would only play quote unquote New York artists. Think
Speaker 2: about this with outcast in the nineties being booed at
Speaker 2: the Source Awards.
Speaker 1: So here's some background for you who are not hip
Speaker 1: hop heads.
Speaker 2: In nineteen ninety five, Source Magazine is this huge New
Speaker 2: York based hip hop magazine. They have an award show
Speaker 2: based out of New York and Outcasts. The Atlanta Group
Speaker 2: wins for best New Artists and.
Speaker 1: The winner and ladies help me out Outcast.
Speaker 2: And the New York crowd boost them because at the time,
Speaker 2: New Yorkers aren't interested in hearing music from down South,
Speaker 2: for even in the West Coast. And Andre three thousand,
Speaker 2: who's a member of Outcasts, says this infamous line, but
Speaker 2: it's like this, though.
Speaker 6: I'm tied of folks, you know what I'm saying, Clothed.
Speaker 1: Minded folks, you know what I'm saying. We got a
Speaker 1: demo table on them by the want to hear. But
Speaker 1: it's like that the South got something to say. That's
Speaker 1: all I got to say.
Speaker 2: New York radio stations would not play out Cast because
Speaker 2: they weren't seen as you know, being cool to New Yorkers.
Speaker 13: But also this had a lot to do with the
Speaker 13: economy and the technical infrastructure. Like people used to buy
Speaker 13: their records at stores, so there were distributors that would
Speaker 13: distribute records in you know, Southwest wholesale or whatever the
Speaker 13: big distributors were, especially in the nineties, and you would
Speaker 13: build your audience through record stores, through shows, and through
Speaker 13: terrestrial radio stations. So you'd get hot in your town
Speaker 13: and then you'd try to expand outward from your town,
Speaker 13: and literally, in a pre internet age, you're just listening
Speaker 13: to a different radio station in New York than someone
Speaker 13: is in.
Speaker 7: Houston, or in Atlanta or in Orlando.
Speaker 13: And so yeah, it was just like it was literally
Speaker 13: different radio stations, different record stores, different compact discs, and
Speaker 13: also different people. So you know that guy you knew
Speaker 13: from high school that became a rapper, it's gonna sound
Speaker 13: very different if you're in the Bay Area versus if
Speaker 13: you're in Philadelphia. So yeah, like everything, like a lot
Speaker 13: of things in American life, it was very fragmented, like
Speaker 13: it was.
Speaker 7: It's I think it's hard.
Speaker 13: I think it's probably hard for younger people to even understand,
Speaker 13: Like it was hard to get those albums, Like I
Speaker 13: would mail order those albums because there's all this crazy
Speaker 13: down South stuff happening and we're not getting it in
Speaker 13: New York.
Speaker 9: No.
Speaker 13: So, yes, there was a time when the hip hop
Speaker 13: world was a lot more fragmented. And you know, obviously
Speaker 13: at the time the artists it was cool that they
Speaker 13: could sort of make a living, but they were it
Speaker 13: was frustrating to the artists, right, They're like, how come
Speaker 13: how do I break through? And so, yeah, there was
Speaker 13: this idea of fragmentation. And because hip hop is so
Speaker 13: closely based on the rhythms of spoken language, you get
Speaker 13: like different beat patterns based on different on different accents
Speaker 13: and different slang and different vocabulary, and so yeah, you
Speaker 13: get this incredible diversity where the music sounds different based
Speaker 13: on the local slang and the local speech patterns.
Speaker 3: Is that diversity in the sounds of a genre unique
Speaker 3: to hip hop? For such a young genre, you would
Speaker 3: imagine that everything would sound kind of similar and before
Speaker 3: it started to break out, But in other genres as
Speaker 3: they kind of first were formed, did you get that
Speaker 3: level of fragmentation.
Speaker 13: I think hip hop is really good at taking like
Speaker 13: vernacular culture and turning it into music, right, So you
Speaker 13: have this incredible diversity underneath, which is maybe a little
Speaker 13: bit different if you have like a guitar bassed genre
Speaker 13: where everyone's got to learn guitar, and then yeah, the
Speaker 13: licks might be a little different and these people play
Speaker 13: the stratocaster and these people play the telecaster, like and
Speaker 13: you do hear some diversity, But yes, I.
Speaker 7: Think hip hop.
Speaker 13: One of the great strengths of hip hop was that
Speaker 13: there was this incredible untapped linguistic richness in all these
Speaker 13: different communities, where for hip hop it was just maybe
Speaker 13: guys who would be just like telling stories on the
Speaker 13: corner and everyone in the neighborhood would be like, Yeah,
Speaker 13: that guy's really funny, or like they would just gather
Speaker 13: that guy's a good storyteller, or that guy's got good jokes,
Speaker 13: but it didn't have a way to travel outside the neighborhood.
Speaker 13: So so one of the things that hip hop did
Speaker 13: really well was it took this thing that felt really
Speaker 13: local and and blew it up. And I think even
Speaker 13: now a lot of the best hip hop sounds really local.
Speaker 13: There's something there's something really seductive about the idea of like, oh,
Speaker 13: I'm in this person's world and you know, this is
Speaker 13: what it's like when you're like with NBA Young.
Speaker 7: Boy and his crew, and this is the Baton rouge vibe.
Speaker 13: And I can hear that in the music in a
Speaker 13: way that feels really unmediated and and.
Speaker 2: Direct sum trumpsas straight from others.
Speaker 3: Well, I felt like that might have been at the
Speaker 3: core of the whole. I mean the Drake Kendrick or
Speaker 3: he Kendrick makes music that is so personal and intimate sounding,
Speaker 3: whereas Drake and I'm a Drake apologist obviously, but it's
Speaker 3: just like, based on the song, it could sound like
Speaker 3: it's from anywhere in the country. And so I think
Speaker 3: there's a level of authenticity in Kendrick's music where it's like, oh,
Speaker 3: this is clearly his life.
Speaker 7: Yeah, although you know it was, It's funny.
Speaker 13: It was kind of later in Kendrick's career that he
Speaker 13: really started to lean into the sounds of LA hip hop,
Speaker 13: you know what I mean, Like the early records when
Speaker 13: he was considered like a little more conscious or something,
Speaker 13: maybe had a.
Speaker 7: Little less geographical specificity.
Speaker 3: What if the dream?
Speaker 7: What's the stream?
Speaker 2: And as complicated as the scenes things we match it
Speaker 2: actually happened in real life situations.
Speaker 11: They did.
Speaker 13: He was also looking back to freestyle fellowship and other
Speaker 13: more like underground LA things, and so one of the
Speaker 13: interesting things that happened was that you know, over the
Speaker 13: years and then especially at that like uh not like
Speaker 13: us moment, you got something that felt very specific to
Speaker 13: lay Right.
Speaker 1: Hey, I'm Trippman, I'm slatting.
Speaker 11: I'm like, what's that.
Speaker 1: I got?
Speaker 13: Mustard, He's gonna bring the whole city together, And if
Speaker 13: you're from LA you're like part of Kendrick's crew, And
Speaker 13: that's not exactly the feeling you got. And Drake is
Speaker 13: interesting in a different way, right because he has this
Speaker 13: relationship with Houston and he has like probably one of
Speaker 13: the best ears in the history of hip hop. Yeah,
Speaker 13: like just his knack for being like, oh, there's something
Speaker 13: cool going on halfway around the world, right, I think.
Speaker 13: I think One Dance by Drake is like one of
Speaker 13: those songs that's sort of like so prescient, so influential, Right, I.
Speaker 2: Need one got out of scene mind one more time, idol,
Speaker 2: how if I was taking old.
Speaker 13: Kiss think about like the whole afrobeats movement that comes
Speaker 13: after the success of One Dance and the fact that
Speaker 13: Drake was able to hear Oh this African thing and
Speaker 13: it's kind of got a Caribbean feel, which we have
Speaker 13: in Canada, but it's also this interesting other UK London
Speaker 13: legos thing that's happening. So yes, I think, and the idea,
Speaker 13: and you know at various times. You know, there's obviously
Speaker 13: some videos where you hear Drake talking and he's got
Speaker 13: like a thick Canadian accent.
Speaker 7: You're like, oh, right, the whole world, look around, look
Speaker 7: around you, look at this. We created this. This didn't
Speaker 7: exist before we were here. Look around at the square.
Speaker 11: I promised you right now we did this.
Speaker 7: Doesn't matter what anybody says.
Speaker 1: They could say it's.
Speaker 7: Disrespectful, they could say it's dis and that everybody.
Speaker 13: But part of his skill was this thing that traditionally
Speaker 13: rappers weren't supposed to do, which was he can kind
Speaker 13: of like move around and he can borrow sounds from
Speaker 13: different regions. And you know, in the old days that
Speaker 13: might have seemed inauthentic. But you know, Drake's success it
Speaker 13: sort of made hip hop fans think a little differently
Speaker 13: about authenticity.
Speaker 7: Right, He's like, yeah, wearing a sweater, Like, so.
Speaker 1: What I'm gonna say.
Speaker 2: It feels like the slider has changed now, Right, you
Speaker 2: were talking about these two sort of like knobs. There
Speaker 2: is like does it sound good? And is it quote
Speaker 2: unquote authentic? And I feel like now in hip hop
Speaker 2: it's really like does it sound good. People don't really
Speaker 2: care about authenticity that much. Authenticity as long as the
Speaker 2: person feels like it's like it's cool.
Speaker 13: But authenticity can mean so many different things, right. It
Speaker 13: can mean like do you have credibility in your neighborhood?
Speaker 13: Like it might literally in hip hop traditionally, one thing
Speaker 13: it's meant is like can you put on your jewelry
Speaker 13: and walk down the street? Right, that's a kind of authenticity,
Speaker 13: But obviously another kind of authenticity is like does this
Speaker 13: music reflect who you really are?
Speaker 7: Does this feel like you?
Speaker 5: Do?
Speaker 7: We feel like we're getting to know you?
Speaker 13: And that's maybe a more traditional pop kind of authenticity,
Speaker 13: where you're communicating through the music, and what people want
Speaker 13: is a sense that they can make a kind of
Speaker 13: personal connection with you, and that it's less about necessarily
Speaker 13: like what's your reputation in the neighborhood? And it's more like,
Speaker 13: does this highly artificial thing you're doing into a microphone
Speaker 13: somehow feel honest? And I think that kind of that's
Speaker 13: a kind of authenticity too, and that's really important, right,
Speaker 13: And a kid gets that from Tyler the Creator and
Speaker 13: it has nothing to do with like, oh, is Tyler
Speaker 13: the Creator a tough guy or not, They're like, you know,
Speaker 13: I'm getting to know this person and his worldview and
Speaker 13: he doesn't seem like anyone else, and I'm really getting
Speaker 13: a sense.
Speaker 1: This point of view. This is not some guy in
Speaker 1: an office telling him to make this type of music.
Speaker 13: But I think also we've kind of like we sort
Speaker 13: of hinted at but not really talked about one of
Speaker 13: the things that I think a lot of people think
Speaker 13: about when it comes to accents, which is diversity and
Speaker 13: geographical diversity. And this idea that a lot of people
Speaker 13: have that we're so much more connected now we can
Speaker 13: hear each other now, is some of that geographic diversity
Speaker 13: maybe going away? And it's interesting when you look at
Speaker 13: the studies of this, there is some sign of that,
Speaker 13: but the asterisk, as far as I can tell, is
Speaker 13: that that's happening more within races than between races. There
Speaker 13: is some there's some research to suggest that black and
Speaker 13: white speech patterns are actually getting further apart, but that
Speaker 13: within white speech patterns in America, some of the regional
Speaker 13: variety is disappearing, right like the classic New York accent,
Speaker 13: maybe even the classic Boston accent. And then within black
Speaker 13: speech patterns, some of that geographic diversity is disappearing, but
Speaker 13: that black and white are diverging, and there would also
Speaker 13: be that would be confounded also by class. A lot
Speaker 13: of times you have more regional variation among working class people,
Speaker 13: and if there's more if a higher percentage of black
Speaker 13: people are working class than white people, then you would
Speaker 13: you would expect more speech diversity among black people in
Speaker 13: the US to begin with than white people. And so
Speaker 13: but even when you think about culture, like the ways
Speaker 13: in which the Internet in some ways does have a
Speaker 13: leveling effect, but it also enables the creation of these
Speaker 13: weird niches and communities, and you know, whatever, whatever you
Speaker 13: can think of, there's a community devoted to it and
Speaker 13: probably a sub community of people who find it sexually arousing,
Speaker 13: right like, And so the idea that people can find
Speaker 13: these groups the internet feels often and social media feels
Speaker 13: like it's doing both at once. It's kind of connecting everyone,
Speaker 13: but it's also enabling the creation of these communities. And
Speaker 13: so that's something that we're kind of starting only really
Speaker 13: starting to figure out, is like how much regional variety
Speaker 13: is there going to be in accents in ten years,
Speaker 13: in twenty years, And you know, this is just talking
Speaker 13: about English in America. Yeah, right, if you look at
Speaker 13: if you look at other countries, not just in the UK,
Speaker 13: where some of the same stuff is happening, some of
Speaker 13: the regional variety is maybe declining a little bit. But
Speaker 13: then of course you also have British accents that are
Speaker 13: influenced by African languages, by Indian languages, and then you
Speaker 13: have these kind of like international versions of English that
Speaker 13: are emerging because you have so many people using English
Speaker 13: to communicate for whom maybe that's not their native language.
Speaker 13: So you have these different some of them are creoles
Speaker 13: and some of them are maybe not quite creoles.
Speaker 7: So you have that, and then you have that happening
Speaker 7: with other languages.
Speaker 13: Right, You're having you think about the different accents within
Speaker 13: Spanish speakers in the Americas, and you know these moments
Speaker 13: where an English speaker might not notice of like, oh
Speaker 13: that's bad Bunny doing kind of a Dominican accent to
Speaker 13: like tip his cap to dembo music, you know, from
Speaker 13: from the home of reggaetone or something. I think we
Speaker 13: could be having this same conversation in Spanish with people
Speaker 13: talking about like how come everyone who does reggaetone has
Speaker 13: to affront like they're from Puerto Rico even when they're not.
Speaker 13: I think different accents are gonna continue to be linked
Speaker 13: to different genres, right, you think about reggae, and like
Speaker 13: just about anyone who starts singing reggae, whether it's something
Speaker 13: more rootsy or more dance hall, is gonna do something
Speaker 13: that's like a little bit of an accent. Now you're
Speaker 13: gonna hear a little even if you're Jason Moraz or
Speaker 13: something before the cool.
Speaker 11: Doune run out.
Speaker 9: I'll be giving it my bestness and not that's going
Speaker 9: to stop me, but divine into invention. I reckon it's
Speaker 9: again matter to win some more, learn somebody.
Speaker 13: Right because those are the rhythms in the music, So
Speaker 13: that's gonna bring out the rhythms in the speech. So
Speaker 13: I think that that's something that I think that that's
Speaker 13: something that's definitely gonna continue and that you hear again,
Speaker 13: not just in country, not just you know, you hear
Speaker 13: that in you know, if you're listening to Blink one
Speaker 13: eight two and you're like, is that a calid like
Speaker 13: Tom's voice? Is that a California version of an English
Speaker 13: version of an American accent.
Speaker 2: Let's talk a little bit about we've touched on it
Speaker 2: and to all these other genres, but just like pop
Speaker 2: music more generally, you know, talking about like a Harry
Speaker 2: Styles or Adele and this idea of you know, these
Speaker 2: UK artists singing in you know, a quote unquote American accent.
Speaker 2: Would you attribute that to like you're saying, this is
Speaker 2: just like we associate with, you know, quote unquote pop
Speaker 2: music and how it should sound like or do you
Speaker 2: think it's a purposeful like you know, Adele's talking voice
Speaker 2: is very different than her singing voice. Yeah, I don't
Speaker 2: know that. Maybe she would be as big if she's
Speaker 2: singing in her you know, talking voice.
Speaker 7: I would love to hear it.
Speaker 1: I would love to hear it too, but I don't
Speaker 1: know if it would have as wide of an appeal.
Speaker 13: Traditionally, hip hop is unusual, right because hip hop there
Speaker 13: really is the expectation that the talking voice and the
Speaker 13: rapping voice.
Speaker 7: Rapp it is a little closer to talking, so it's
Speaker 7: gonna match.
Speaker 13: Yeah, singing is always going to be like it's not
Speaker 13: necessarily opera where like you open your mouth a big voice,
Speaker 13: you're singing in Italian it's a whole different thing.
Speaker 7: But there is more of a separation between singing a
Speaker 7: song stretching out the words yeah, and doing an interview.
Speaker 1: And so and yeah.
Speaker 13: I think, you know, Adele is making music that's influenced
Speaker 13: by a particular tradition, whether it's you know, Whitney Houston
Speaker 13: or whoever her influence is, and that's an American tradition,
Speaker 13: it's partly a Black American tradition, and so you're hearing
Speaker 13: that in her voice. You know, Harry Styles is kind
Speaker 13: of interesting because like you're hearing some of the American
Speaker 13: boy bands, but you're also hearing, you know, some beatles.
Speaker 1: Sweet Creature.
Speaker 13: Had another talk about where it's going on, but weird
Speaker 13: still young some of that, some of that Paul McCartney
Speaker 13: and some of that stuff, which is you know, influenced
Speaker 13: by America but routed through the UK. So yeah, I
Speaker 13: think that you're definitely again, for most of these singers,
Speaker 13: I think it's pretty intuitive, right.
Speaker 7: It's not like they have a plan.
Speaker 13: It's like they go into the studio and they start
Speaker 13: feeling it, and they start vibing and they're listening to
Speaker 13: their favorite records and what comes out sounds.
Speaker 7: A little bit like their version of their favorite records.
Speaker 13: Like I said, I think because I love hip hop,
Speaker 13: I'm a sucker for vernacular and for local languages and
Speaker 13: for music where the rhythms are different because of the
Speaker 13: local language. Right. But again, one thing that popular music
Speaker 13: does is find what used to be called the lowest
Speaker 13: common denominator, which used to always be said with a sneer.
Speaker 13: And I never understood why. I'm like, you mean, the
Speaker 13: thing that appeals to the most people. Yeah, like, And
Speaker 13: so often that means doing something that's a little bit
Speaker 13: less peculiar and feels a little bit more maybe neutral,
Speaker 13: so that when you're listening to Adele, whether you're in
Speaker 13: America or India, or you know, whether you're in your
Speaker 13: Yugoslavia or Indonesia, like you're kind of hearing the song
Speaker 13: and you're not thinking too much about her specific neighborhood.
Speaker 1: Mm hmm. So we say, in this case, like the
Speaker 1: American accent is the neutral?
Speaker 13: Yeah, yes, it feels a little neutral. And you know,
Speaker 13: obviously in the UK, where the discourse about accent and
Speaker 13: class is a lot more sophisticated than here, and so
Speaker 13: you have all these fights about BBC and received pronunciation
Speaker 13: and the idea of like, you know, the Queen's English, Yeah,
Speaker 13: the King's English, And you know, the idea that certain
Speaker 13: acts sense are related to class, and that if you're
Speaker 13: putting that on that could be embarrassing, the same way
Speaker 13: we might consider certain racial accent transgressions to be embarrassing.
Speaker 13: And I think also pop music is so powerful and
Speaker 13: seeps into our lives that a big enough song, a
Speaker 13: big enough artist can change what we think of as
Speaker 13: the normal accent. You know, you think about the way
Speaker 13: that moment in the nineteen eighties where people discovered so
Speaker 13: called Valley girls speech patterns so like to.
Speaker 7: Guarante it looks like Salawan placing it and I want
Speaker 7: like to get my tarnils done.
Speaker 11: I'm old lady like.
Speaker 7: His Oh my god, your tarnails were like so broady,
Speaker 7: it was like.
Speaker 13: And like that that sort of makes its way into
Speaker 13: popular music, and you know, by the time you hear
Speaker 13: Katie Perry singing California Girls, you're maybe hearing an.
Speaker 7: Echo of that.
Speaker 8: Crazy speaking.
Speaker 13: And again, part of the fun of pop music is
Speaker 13: make believe. Whether we're listening to like some drill track
Speaker 13: or we're listening to.
Speaker 7: Like a main mainstream pop song.
Speaker 13: Part of the fun of it is like you can
Speaker 13: learn the lyrics, maybe in the privacy of your own car,
Speaker 13: you can sing along, and you can like be that
Speaker 13: person a little bit. And I think that's something you
Speaker 13: don't have with movies in the same way you can
Speaker 13: you can memorize movie dialogue, but there is something about
Speaker 13: popular music where you can kind of become that person. Yes,
Speaker 13: and sometimes sometimes an accent might seem like a barrier
Speaker 13: to that, but sometimes an accent might be part of
Speaker 13: the fun.
Speaker 1: All Right. That was Kay, writer and critic at The
Speaker 1: New Yorker.
Speaker 2: If you enjoy this conversation, check out his book Major Labels,
Speaker 2: available anywhere purchase books, or if you want to be
Speaker 2: like me, you can rent it at your vocal library.
Speaker 7: Well, now I'm interested which one of you has the
Speaker 7: strongest accent?
Speaker 3: Probably Devin, I would vote Devon. Yeah, wow, I think so.
Speaker 13: This is like this American Life episode where they got
Speaker 13: their testosterone tested.
Speaker 3: We got to do that anyway, that's also probably Devan.
Speaker 1: We're no such thing.
Speaker 2: After the break, Okay, we're back many Noah, Devin. All Right,
Speaker 2: so that was Okay, I learned a lot.
Speaker 3: Yeah, really fun conversation.
Speaker 1: I felt like, you know, I was back in school,
Speaker 1: you know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, like kind of shooting ship at the cafeteria table.
Speaker 3: M hm, going through all of our.
Speaker 2: Through all our favorite artists, artists I don't really know about.
Speaker 2: I got some people we should make a playlist for
Speaker 2: this episode.
Speaker 5: Yeah, people love the playlist a lot of I'm sure
Speaker 5: I'm looking at the clicks and people are listening.
Speaker 1: I'm sure all ten of you.
Speaker 6: Yeah, so scroll down.
Speaker 2: But what I was trying to think about, you know,
Speaker 2: after you know, we've had that conversation, I guess a
Speaker 2: week ago now, and during that time, I've been trying
Speaker 2: to think through are there any examples We talked a
Speaker 2: lot about, you know, people sort of like playing in
Speaker 2: different playgrounds and sort of like just wearing different hats.
Speaker 2: So it was like, who's the last person that we
Speaker 2: know of who's gotten like sort of like negative backlash
Speaker 2: for doing a thing that is like not what we
Speaker 2: would think of as authentic to them.
Speaker 3: Yeah, mister Harlow, mister Jack Hard Now he's wearing kangle hats.
Speaker 2: It's like give so for for those of you who
Speaker 2: are not online, uh, in a way that us three
Speaker 2: are Jack Carlow is a white rapper, grew up outside
Speaker 2: of I'm going to say Louisville, Kentucky's pop brand.
Speaker 4: I got.
Speaker 2: He has decided on this new album that he's put out,
Speaker 2: he got bored of his wrapping, so he wanted to
Speaker 2: make a R and B album.
Speaker 11: We go around Together singers. That all.
Speaker 2: Part of I feel like some of the conversation around
Speaker 2: this album is really about the conversation he had on
Speaker 2: the New York Times Popcasts, which is their music podcast,
Speaker 2: in which they were talking to him about, you know,
Speaker 2: like we talked about earlier in this episode, a lot
Speaker 2: of white artists who come up in some you know,
Speaker 2: like hip hop, often pivot to wider genres.
Speaker 10: John saying, you didn't retreat into a whiter genre. In fact,
Speaker 10: you arguably went into deeper into its deeper into black.
Speaker 10: So is that was that conscious? Absolutely, because you like
Speaker 10: pushing that boundary that line.
Speaker 1: I think I love black music.
Speaker 3: I love the sound amo, I love the sound of
Speaker 3: black music.
Speaker 2: So Jack Carlow puts out this R and B album,
Speaker 2: there's a little bit of backlash.
Speaker 1: And the fact that he's cosplaying.
Speaker 2: It's kind of like a yeah, a little bit of
Speaker 2: a black guy, you know, both in his you know,
Speaker 2: like sort of the promo for the album in terms
Speaker 2: of like is what he's wearing?
Speaker 1: Yeah? Yeah, My issue with it is just is just
Speaker 1: not very good. Like it's kind of just like a
Speaker 1: boring moment.
Speaker 2: It's not interesting he talks about, you know, in his interviews,
Speaker 2: like he didn't do any like voice training or like,
Speaker 2: you know, it's just sort of I'm like, so, what.
Speaker 1: Did you do? They're prepared to make this R and
Speaker 1: B album?
Speaker 3: You know, it's like that's an interesting question. Is the
Speaker 3: only thing stopping you from kind of respecting this for
Speaker 3: lack of a better word, is that it's not good?
Speaker 3: Like what if the music was good and catchy?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I wouldn't mind as much.
Speaker 5: Because I feel like, oh yeah, because I feel like
Speaker 5: I was never a huge head but Mac Miller, Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 5: he kind of moved into more of an R and
Speaker 5: B space too.
Speaker 1: I feel like that's true.
Speaker 5: And granted I don't think he was ever like I mean,
Speaker 5: obviously very successful, but it's successful in a different way
Speaker 5: where I feel like more respect did I guess then,
Speaker 5: Jack Harlowe and I'm wondering why exactly, even though he
Speaker 5: did change his sound, but not in a you didn't
Speaker 5: get like whiter in the you know, not you know,
Speaker 5: in the same generally the same way or direction as
Speaker 5: what we're seeing.
Speaker 4: Now.
Speaker 2: Well, here's a maybe a weird way to end this episode,
Speaker 2: but I think it does speak to this.
Speaker 1: Who just came to mind.
Speaker 2: Also maybe because he's a friend of Drew Ski, but
Speaker 2: Timothy Shallomey right for Mary Supreme. Yeah, he was promoting
Speaker 2: this latest film, this you know, Oscar nominated film, and
Speaker 2: to get people to go see it, he was doing
Speaker 2: a lot of things that people saw as like black coated.
Speaker 2: He was leaning into his you know, wigger uh wigernoess
Speaker 2: you can say. And there was a little bit of
Speaker 2: backlash online of like Timothy, like, you're doing this rapping thing.
Speaker 2: You're you know, you're hanging out with Drew Ski, You're
Speaker 2: being a little too quote unquote black.
Speaker 16: Really, I'm just a fan, you know, I'm a fan
Speaker 16: of of black culture and hip hop and all of it.
Speaker 16: And how could you be, you know, a child of
Speaker 16: American culture without being influenced by it.
Speaker 2: So it's a fine line, and that rubbed people a
Speaker 2: bit the wrong way because they didn't feel like it
Speaker 2: was authentic to who he was, and there was people
Speaker 2: defending him saying, hey, he grew up in New York
Speaker 2: around black people. He's been rapping, you know, he was
Speaker 2: rapping super Base in high school. You know, like he's
Speaker 2: been down with the cause. But there was this conversation
Speaker 2: about like authenticity or are you putting on a costume
Speaker 2: when it's convenient for you?
Speaker 5: Well, yeah, then it's like that's the code switching thing,
Speaker 5: because then when he's sitting down to do a more
Speaker 5: serious interview, he's not acting. Yes, I think that's more
Speaker 5: what irks people generally, whereas it's so transparent in that way.
Speaker 5: And I don't think it's like conscious conscious in a
Speaker 5: certain way of course, but I don't think, you know,
Speaker 5: I don't think he and like his team sat down
Speaker 5: and were like, Okay, when you go to this, do this.
Speaker 5: It's like I think it comes easy to him. And
Speaker 5: granted he's an actor, you know, but yeah, yeah, I
Speaker 5: guess it's it's not as like manipulative as it might sound.
Speaker 6: Yeah, yeah, like malicious, I guess it is my my thinking.
Speaker 1: I agree.
Speaker 3: I'm also from uh, you know, I grew up in
Speaker 3: a very poor, low income neighborhood that was like fifty
Speaker 3: white and fifty percent black, and those white guys do exist,
Speaker 3: like yeah, totally like and then they'll go to college
Speaker 3: and like you know, kind of uh, straighten up.
Speaker 1: A little bit.
Speaker 3: But I could totally see why some people were skeptical
Speaker 3: because he does come like if your first introduction to
Speaker 3: Timothy Schuldmy was like prestige actor, yes, and then you
Speaker 3: see him doing this, well you really need to do
Speaker 3: is go back to those YouTube videos from him in
Speaker 3: high school.
Speaker 1: I drag, I got Dog Dog.
Speaker 7: Cat with FIFA. Thank you know your little pollard.
Speaker 11: Now I'm a Randrick Pop with a B.
Speaker 1: That's it for today's show.
Speaker 2: If you are a new listener, you may want to
Speaker 2: check out our episode on is Taylor Swift Bigger than
Speaker 2: Michael Jackson. It is number thirty six. I'm going to
Speaker 2: link to it in the show notes, and also just
Speaker 2: check out our whole archive. We got a lot of
Speaker 2: great episodes. They're all pretty evergreen, so you can make
Speaker 2: your way through it. No such thing as a production
Speaker 2: of kaleidoscope content. Our executive producers are kad Osbourne and
Speaker 2: men guest Kadakudur. The show is created by many Fidel
Speaker 2: No Friedman and Me, Devin Joseph. The in credit song
Speaker 2: by Manny, mixing by Steve Bone. Additional music for this
Speaker 2: episode by Zeno Peterrelli. Our guest this week was Kellifa
Speaker 2: from The New Yorker. Thank you UK. Visit No Such
Speaker 2: Thing not show to subscribe to our newsletter. If you
Speaker 2: have feedback for us, or a question you want us
Speaker 2: to answer, you can email us at Manny Noah Devin
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Speaker 1: We'll be back next
Speaker 2: Hes heals No such thing