Melomania

One vexation. Two vexations. Three vexations. Four vexations. Five vexations. Six vexations. Seven vexations. Eight vexations. Nine vexations. Ten vexations. Eleven vexations. Twelve vexations. Thirteen vexations. Fourteen vexations. Fifteen vexations. Sixteen vexations. Seventeen vexations. Eighteen vexations. Nineteen vexations. Twenty vexations. Twenty-one vexations. Twenty-two vexations. Twenty-three vexations. Twenty-four vexations. Twenty-five vexations. Twenty-six vexations. Twenty-seven vexations. Twenty-eight vexations. Twenty-nine vexations. Thirty vexations. Thirty-one vexations. Thirty-two vexations. Thirty-three vexations. Thirty-four vexations. Thirty-five vexations. Thirty-six vexations. Thirty-seven vexations. Thirty-eight vexations. Thirty-nine vexations. Forty vexations. Great, only 800 more vexations to go.

On this podcast, we strive to listen carefully to music and examine how and why it’s made, but sometimes, music just isn’t meant to be noticed. This is ambient music. Think hold music, Muzak, and even the pop and classic rock they play in grocery stores—the kind of music that people label as “soulless” or “brainwashing.” Even though it seems like just another corporate invention to get people to buy more stuff, there’s actually a whole history of serious composers who saw value in this idea of what Brian Eno called music that’s “as ignorable as it is interesting.” Long story short: there’s a lot more to it than you would think.

Happy holidays everyone. Featuring "Microcosms of Music" by me, Patrick Simpson, produced in May 2016. Music was Erik Satie's "Je te veux." Podcast recommendations: Radiolab (radiolab.org) This American Life (thisamericanlife.org) Welcome to Night Vale (welcometonightvale.com) Song Exploder (songexploder.net) Criminal (thisiscriminal.com) Love + Radio (loveandradio.org) 99% Invisible (99percentinvisible.org) Planet Money (npr.org/podcasts/510289/planet-money) Revisionist History (revisionisthistory.com) HowSound (transom.org/topics/howsound) Other podcasts I didn't mention but still love: Serial. Duh. Radiotopia has so many more great podcasts beyond the ones I mentioned. To name a few more: The Heart, the memory palace, Radio Diaries, Strangers, The Allusionist, The Truth, and The Bugle. NPR also has several more podcasts I enjoy other than Planet Money—specifically Embedded (which hasn't been updated in a while, I'm waiting!), Code Switch, and of course, the NPR Politics Podcast. Lauren Ober on The Big Listen deserves a shout-out for introducing me to so many great podcasts beyond the small circle of networks I usually listen to—my two favorites right now are Serendipity and Flash Forward. Alice Isn't Dead, Within the Wires, and The Orbiting Human Circus (of the Air) are all surreal serialized audio fiction podcasts produced under the Night Vale umbrella. I love them all. Radiolab produced a podcast about the Supreme Court last summer called More Perfect, which was amazing. Those guys are radio gods. There are several podcasts about sound that I love: The World According to Sound, Sound Matters, Twenty Thousand Hertz, and Reasonably Sound. They're vastly different in style, but they all share the unique ability to change how you listen to the world. On the Media is one of the best news commentary podcasts out there. Bob and Brooke have been doing this for decades, and it shows. Reveal is doing some of the most important work in radio, and I'm proud to support them. The stories are so well researched and reported, and every one of them will move you and change how you look at the world. And finally, the Gimlet podcasts are the new kids on the block, and they're knocking it out of the park. I love Reply All, and lately I've also been enjoying some of the newer ones like Science Vs and Undone. Thanks for a great first season everyone. Melomania will return in the new year.

In the past two episodes of this miniseries, we’ve discussed the reality that pure originality is impossible, and that when artists embrace their influences and build off of the achievements of others, everyone is better off. But what happens when the law disagrees with you?

Sampling is a huge part of today’s music industry. Though producers (usually) have permission from the original creator of the sample to use it, many claim that the practice is making a mockery of the once pure art of composing, and that musicians should be writing their own music rather than just ripping off some catchy riff from another track. However, these critics don’t realize that sampling dates back further than modern hip hop; it’s been a staple of the Western musical tradition since the Renaissance, and probably even further back than that. Back then, it was called “quoting,” and it wasn’t just your average joe composers doing it—Tchaikovsky did it, Mozart did it, even Bach—well not the Bach you’re thinking of, but still. On this episode of Melomania, I talk with Michael Schelle, a contemporary composer who has embraced the custom of quoting, and in the process, has created some of the most original music of the 21st century.

This second installment of Melomania is the beginning of a three-part series about how music grows out of other music. After the massive critical and commercial success of their third album OK Computer, Radiohead didn’t know where to go next. Some wanted to continue on the path of alternative rock, but lead singer and songwriter Thom Yorke felt that guitar music had run its course and that the band needed a new direction. After several grueling months of experimentation in the studios, Radiohead released Kid A, an album that Time magazine would later call “the weirdest album to ever sell a million copies.” A strange melding of electronica, jazz, and rock, Kid A surprised fans expecting another OK Computer, but by the end of the decade, it was widely recognized as one of the best albums of all time. But why did the band make this dramatic shift when they could have easily have been satisfied with what they had mastered on previous albums? Enter the enigmatic producer Richard D. James, known better by his alias Aphex Twin.

Welcome to Melomania, the podcast where I, Patrick Simpson, deconstruct music and what it means. In this episode, we take a look at the underappreciated art of the soundtrack. Our case study is Terry Gilliam’s cult sci-fi hit Brazil, a film in which the majority of the soundtrack only features variations on one song—Ary Barroso’s hit song “Aquarela do Brasil.” By closely examining how Gilliam intertwines plot and theme with this song, we can see just how much a soundtrack can do for a film.