Music Untapped

Female artists have had to battle misogyny in the music industry since the very beginning. This week we're shining a spotlight on just a small handful of some of the most egregious ways women in music have been treated by the media, music executives, and even their own fans. We'll be going on a little hiatus after this episode, so pour your favorite drink and settle in with us for the last time for a while!

The impact of Black culture is present in every single popular art form, and this seems doubly true for music. In this week's episode, Chris tells the story of several black composers who were overlooked by the history books in spite of their wildest stories and successes. From fencing-master violinists to international superstars you've never heard of, get yourselves ready! Black history is Human history, and these folks have made it happen.

Some of the best music has come out of the worst heartbreak, an experience we're all familiar with. This week we're pouring some strong drinks (very necessary!) and looking at the other side of love and some of the iconic music it influenced.

One of the most inescapable parts of any live sporting event is the music that accompanies it. From the loudest stadium anthems, to singing along (however poorly and/or drunkenly) to “Take Me Out to the Ball Game.” This week, Heather takes a look at the history behind some of our best-loved arena music traditions and how they came to be, so pour yourself a beer and gain some fun musical facts before the upcoming big game.

We're back with part 2 of our crash course in music appreciation! This week we're talking about the remaining 3 "pillars of music," and how understanding them can make us better music listeners. Make yourself a drink and get ready to be able to listen to your favorite songs with a new perspective.

This week we're going back to basics with a crash course in the fundamentals of music. In part 1 of this 2-part episode, we'll get into why this helps us be better listeners, and analyze first of what we consider the 4 pillars of music. Pour a drink and settle in for the not-as-sober version of the Music Appreciation class you skipped in college.

We often describe music as magical, but beyond how it makes us feel, music and magic have been tied together since before written history. From magical instruments in folklore to megalomaniac composers trying to imbue their music with mystic properties, there's more to this connection than meets the eye. Settle in as Heather (with the help of a mind-blowing margarita!) explores the connection between music and magic.

Who doesn't love a good meme? And they're even better when music is involved! This week, we're looking at some of the most iconic musical memes (they go back farther than you'd think!). Grab yourself a drink, kick back, and learn about the shockingly long history of the musical meme.

It's the end of 2020 (FINALLY) and we're taking a look back at this truly unprecedented year in the music world. Pop some champagne and get pouring with us as we look at some of the biggest hits and how the music industry changed over the last year.

Love it or hate it, Christmas music fills the air every year. Some songs are classics, some are total garbage, but there are rarely any surprises among the bunch. This week, Heather and Chris examine some of the overlooked, underplayed, and completely forgotten tracks in this wide field of "Christmas Music."

As non-experts on the music of Mexico, we're definitely guilty of lumping it all together as "mariachi." This week Heather puts that ignorance to rest, and gets into the rich and varied history of Mexican music. Join us as we kick back some micheladas while exploring the incredible music culture from our neighbors south of the border.

It seems like every popular male singer is a tenor (or sings high) lately. It turns out, though, that this isn't a new thing at all. This week we make a couple of Purple Rain cocktails (thanks, Prince!) and speculate on why this preference for high male voices has persisted throughout music history.

Thanksgiving is one of the biggest holidays celebrated in America, but for some reason, there's a shocking lack of Thanksgiving music. This week, Heather and Chris examine a few "Thanksgiving classics,"sip spiked apple cider and try to answer the questions: Why aren't there any Thanksgiving songs?

We're more likely to set our phones to vibrate nowadays, but for a large chunk of their existence, our ringtones were one of the most visible ways to show off a little bit of our personalities. Pour yourself a drink and listen in to the strangely interesting history of ringtones and how they met their eventual demise.

This week, guests Emily Langton and Drew Sheehy talk through their experiences with falling in love with music, passionately performing, flirting with music as a career, then ultimately deciding to step away from the musician's life. Settle in, grab a beer, and follow the trajectory of our friends as they share what is perhaps the most common trajectory of the serious amateur musician - falling in love with music, then eventually, choosing to step away from it.

This week is all about cult classic musicals, from legendary favorites to ones that are a bit more obscure but have a rabid fan following nonetheless. Pour yourself a cult classic drink and settle in for a look at some of our favorite shows.

From Senegal to Peru, human music is as varied as our societies. In the second part of our dive into The Voyager Golden Records, Chris and Heather dig in to musical selections from all around the world, and propose some revisions for the modern era. Cheers!

If you had 90 minutes to represent all of the music mankind has created through its existence, what would you choose? How would you choose it? In 1977, The Voyager Golden Records were created with this goal in mind. This week, Heather and Chris kick back some "out of-this-world" beers, and talk about one of the most captivating musical projects of all time.

It's so easy to hop online and find an endless number of instruments for sale, but only a few brands are truly legendary. This week, Chris takes us through the fascinating backstories of some of the best-known makers and the artisans behind them while we down a couple of Hugo Spritzes.

Nestled between the Caspian Sea and the Black Sea, the Caucasus region of the world has some of the oldest musical traditions on Earth. This week, mix yourself a White Russian and settle in as Heather talks through this incredible melting pot of cultures unlike anything you've ever heard.

"WAP" has made a splash recently due to its incredibly explicit lyrics, but it's certainly not the first song to unabashedly celebrate sex. This week, we're looking at some of the raunchiest music in history, so pour a drink and settle in for some steamy songs you may or may not know.

This week in the last of our three-part mini-series on musical traditions, we're putting forth our nominations for traditions we'd like to see start or become the standard in the music world. Kick back with a drink and see if you agree with our picks.

This week for part 2 of our 3-part mini-series on musical traditions, we're discussing traditions that we wish would change, for our own personal sanity but also for the good of keeping classical music alive. Pour a beer and settle in for an episode where we're mostly on the same page and argue only a little over things that we're over.

This week in part 1 of an accidental 3-part episode series (file this under things that happen when you underestimate how big a topic can be), we're looking at musical traditions that have changed or no longer exist. Pour yourself a drink and learn about some formerly common music practices that have (for good reason) been left in the past.

What do Will Smith, Phil Collins, and Fergie have in common? They all got their start in bands before going solo and eclipsing their original groups in stardom. This week we're checking out the origin stories of these and other artists, so pour a drink as we all learn something new about some of our most loved musicians.

We wanted to sneak in a little musical vacation before summer is over, so this week we're exploring the music of the Caribbean! Pour yourself a tropical drink (can we suggest something with rum?) as Heather takes us through just a few of the diverse musical styles found in this part of the Atlantic Ocean.

Sequels seem like something reserved for movies and books, but there are more musical sequels than you'd imagine. Pour a drink with us as Chris takes us through some of the more interesting ones, both well-known and obscure.

What if when you heard a note, you saw a particular color, or a certain key made your tastebuds wake up all of a sudden? This week, Heather dives into the fascinating world of synesthesia, as well as a few musicians and composers who are particularly affected by it. Pour a (preferably) colorful drink, and explore this cool neurological anomaly with us.

Most music is written with hopes of major success, but every now and then a song that wasn't even supposed to chart ends up exploding in popularity. This week, Chris explores some of the biggest hits that shouldn't have been more than a blip on our radar while we toss back a couple of beers.

A lot of musicians try their hands at other side careers, but what about celebrities known for other work that decide to make a go of it in music? This week we're checking out some famous folks who decided to attempt musical side hustles, for better or for worse.

Musical theatre phenomenon "Hamilton" just became available to the masses, so we decided to take a look at it and other musicals with a historical bent to see how much they actually reflect the events they describe. Pour a drink and settle in for the ultimate nerd collision of Broadway and history.

This week, we're taking a dive into the history of protest music, which turns out to be a truly American tradition. Pour a drink and learn about this fascinating part of history with us.

This week we celebrate the 4th of July, so we decided to do an episode all about anthems! The U.S. is, of course, not the only country in the world with an anthem, so we're taking a little musical sojourn to explore some other anthems with wild backstories. Pour yourself a patriotic drink and spend your holiday with us!

Two episodes ago, we talked about the musical canon, which was literally completely composed of dead, white guys. Imagine, though, if the canon had been more inclusive of women and people of color. What would it have looked like, and who would have been included who had been overlooked before? This week, we pour a couple of bloody Mary's (in person!) and put forth our candidates for the canon that could have been.

TV theme songs are some of our most beloved forms of music, but has this niche of the music industry changed over time? This week, Heather pours a drink and takes us through the history of these snippets of pop culture that we all know and love.

We reference composers from the musical canon all the time, but what actually is it? Who are the "names to know" in classical music, and why are they ALL white men? This week we give you a crash course in the Western musical canon while tossing back a few drinks.

Plagues and pandemics have a way of permanently changing the course of history. This week Chris takes a look at how history's greatest plagues altered the course of music, and temporarily forgets how to read (thanks a lot, vodka!)

It sounds crazy, but we've been making Music Untapped for a year! For this special anniversary episode, we look back at some of the most popular episodes from our first year and discuss the behind-the-scenes deets on making them. Pour a drink and cheers with us as we celebrate 50 episodes and gear up for year 2!

The short-lived, niche art and social movement known as Futurism was incredibly weird and a little more tied to Fascism than we'd like, but its influence on later major composers like Stravinsky and John Cage is hard to ignore. This week, Heather walks us through this sliver of music history that includes everything from a serious disdain for opera to music created by airplane propellers.

Vinyl: is it really for douchebags? Music lovers and audiophiles can argue for days about sound quality, but what's the absolute best format for listening to music (and in the end, does it even matter)? This week, Chris gets buzzed and tackles the ins and outs of how we listen to music.

One of the most interesting things about music is how national identity weaves its way through the sound of the pieces. Without even thinking about it, we can clearly tell the difference between a piece by a Russian composer and one by an Italian one. But what exactly is making these pieces sound different? Drink along with us this week as we dig into why this music sounds the way it does.

We all have this image in our heads of the stuffy, classical composer who takes his work very seriously. Realistically, though, many of them had great senses of humor that worked their way into their music. This week we drink some music-themed beer and go through some of our favorite examples.

The 27 Club is one of those weird phenomena that some people swear is a curse, while others chalk it up to just eerie coincidences. This week we toss back some drinks and talk about a few of the musicians who are part of this infamous group.

We're all pretty familiar with the idea of birds singing, but can animals really make music? This week, we take a dive into the niche field of zoomusicology and learn about the sounds created by everything from tiny Asian corn borer moths to enormous humpback whales.

This week, we take a dive into a topic we knew almost nothing about before this episode: K-Pop. Pour a cocktail with us while we explore this genre that seems like it exploded onto the scene and is riding a major wave of popularity.

We can all name a bunch of hit songs off the tops of our heads, but how did they even become hits to begin with? This week we pour a couple of cocktails and look at the journey to radio stardom, as well as what makes a chart-topping song.

A pandemic, quarantine, and toilet paper shortages? Sounds like the perfect time for an episode on apocalypse music. From megalomaniac composers trying to bring about the end of the world to anti-war allegorical songs, we talk about some of our favorites and knock back a couple of beers while sheltering-in-place from our homes.

A lot of people's first thoughts when it comes to parody music is "Weird Al" Yankovic, the modern-day king of this genre. However, it has a history that dates far earlier with roots in classical music. Ride out the COVID-19 quarantine with us while we toss back a couple of beers and talk some musical comedy.

There are so many pieces of music out there that we've all heard tons of times, but have no idea what the lyrics actually are. We go through a few of our favorites, drink some music-themed beer, and have an argument about Beethoven.

We're not sure how we haven't managed to do an episode on drinking songs yet, but better late than never! From debaucherous clergy to the Star-Spangled Banner, drinking songs have a long and somewhat sordid history. Pour yourself a drink and join in the fun with us.