Malcolm Breaks Down the Perfect Break Up Song

In this Valentine’s Day special from Pushkin Industries, Malcolm breaks down the perfect break up song. But first, Broken Record hosts Justin Richmond and Leah Rose make their cases: is R&B the undisputed sound of love? Are sad songs more romantic? Can country win the day? Plus, Ben Naddaff-Hafrey writes a love song of his own, and the legendary songwriter Babyface talks about how young love shaped his most enduring ballads. Whether you're mid-swoon or nursing a broken heart, this episode is Pushkin’s Valentine to you. Listen to Broken Record https://open.spotify.com/episode/7aISES4rpqTVMLt4gBcJTT?si=jSkiymxLTge_y68E2g3sQw’s interview with Babyface. Listen toa Revisionist History episode about sad songs. https://www.pushkin.fm/podcasts/revisionist-history/the-king-of-tears And hear more from Ben’s band, Rookin https://open.spotify.com/artist/15USQcj27CHI93eBCNLxBs?si=WS8icAgWTQ-d192I5dlmtg. Plus, our battle of the playlists continues… here’s Leah’s sad songs playlist https://open.spotify.com/playlist/0cnGZ0JOSNkxqBE0uIWq96?si=ae58cc4f1f2c4fd5. And Justin’s for love songs https://open.spotify.com/playlist/7vzWBgmTKIQIn3F8UTqDql?si=34fffb8d83db4484. Pick your fighter and… enjoy! See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:09Speaker 00

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• 0:37Malcolm Gladwell?

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• 1:24Malcolm Gladwell?

  These days, there are more people than ever telling you how to manage your health. Your social media feed is packed with wellness trends telling you to cold plunge, protein max, and so much more. But what's actually real? What's exaggerated? What's just wrong? Health vs. Hype from the American Medical Association breaks it all down. Emmy-nominated host Trace Dominguez talks to health influencers, real people, and most importantly, doctors, to separate fact from fiction. Because when it comes to your health, who you listen to matters. Listen to Health vs. Hype wherever you get your podcasts.

• 2:08Speaker 03

  Hey, everyone. Welcome to All You Lovers Out There. This is Justin Richmond.

• 2:11Speaker 04

  And I'm Leah Rose.

• 2:13Speaker 03

  We're the hosts of Broken Record, where we interview your favorite musicians and bring to life the stories behind their music, behind some of your favorite recordings. If you're listening to this in the Broken Record feed, welcome back. But if you're hearing us as a listener of another Pushkin show, that's because today, we're doing something special.

• 2:30Speaker 04

  That's right. This is our Valentine's Day special. And today, to celebrate the music we love, Justin and I are going to do what we love, which is argue about music.

• 2:40Speaker 03

  We're also going to be talking to some of our friends here at Pushkin, people who have equally strong opinions about the songs they love. I'll be talking to Malcolm Gladwell, who has a very Gladwellian take about why he believes country is the best genre for love songs. And I can guarantee it's not for the reason you may think.

• 2:58Malcolm Gladwell?

  It's depressive music. That's what it is.

• 3:00Speaker 04

  We'll also hear from Ben Natafahri, the sometimes host of The Last Archive, about a love song he wrote that's so good, it helped him score his forever Valentine.

• 3:11Speaker 05

  I think that folk music does love songs the best.

• 3:14Speaker 04

  But first, Justin, I'm going to ask you what I think is the central question of today's episode. I think I know what you're going to say, but out of every genre and subgenre that exists today, which one do you think does love songs the best?

• 3:32Speaker 03

  R&B.

• 3:33Speaker 04

  I knew it.

• 3:34Speaker 03

  Look, when you think about it, it's really the shorthand in music and in audio for love. Like, if you were scoring a love scene in a movie for, like, Netflix, for, like, the most amount of people possible to watch, like, you would probably throw in an R&B song. You know, maybe, uh...

• 3:48Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 3:48Speaker 03

  You know, "I'll green, let's stay together."

• 4:03Speaker 03

  Come on, that's really, those are the sounds of love right there, you know?

• 4:06Speaker 04

  It's very much like, what song are you choosing for the first dance at your wedding?

• 4:11Speaker 03

  The first dance, right. The first, the first slow dance at your junior high welcome dance, you know what I'm saying? Or your senior prom, like, it's gonna be R and B. It's kind of the cliche genre that we go to, and I don't, I think, I should give a deeper reasoning here because I think R and B kind of gets short shrift in, in the music world, like, you know, rock and roll and hip hop have taken up all the air in the room for sixty years now?

• 4:37Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 4:37Speaker 03

  You know, since, since the, since the British Invasion.

• 4:40Speaker 04

  A couple of years were spent on EDM, but yeah.

• 4:42Speaker 03

  Couple of years, yeah, right. Skrillex was big there for a second.

• 4:45Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 4:46Speaker 03

  It's not a sexy topic for some reason. I think because it's so ubiquitous, because in some ways it's so ever-present and, and we just find it very easy to ignore. But when you think about the fact that R and B comes out of, really, like, it comes out of gospel, you know, like, gospel is about love and devotion to a higher being, to God. And at some point, all these gospel musicians that go out, they want to write popular songs or sing popular music instead of just singing in the church, and they take everything they've learned in gospel music about how to sort of create a stir and a fervor around God, and they just sort of center romantic love. So they just take God out and put in a man, a woman, a lover, you know? A classic example is Sam Cooke, who was originally with the gospel group, The Soulstirs.

• 5:30Speaker 03

  And he releases a song, "He's So Wonderful," which is, you know, it's a gospel track.

• 5:48Speaker 03

  Then when Sam Cooke wants to cross over, like about a year later, and wants to just make an R and B cut, he reworks that same song and instead of wonderful, becomes lovable.

• 6:08Speaker 03

  So then how could you not say that R and B isn't like the preeminent genre for love songs? It's like it has to do with the ethereal and the theological, down to the romantic and the platonic, like it's everything.

• 6:20Speaker 04

  And then it just gets dirtier and dirtier as the years go on. And then we land at the thong song.

• 6:26Speaker 03

  Yeah, Cisco's thong song, although shout out to Cisco. I love Cisco. That's a great album.

• 6:30Speaker 04

  I love Cisco too. R and B does do love very, very well. But there's other genres too. I mean, look at Dolly Parton on Jolene. She's begging and she's pleading and she's out of her mind. Please don't take my man.

• 6:43Speaker 03

  But then who takes, and we love Dolly, but then who takes a Dolly song like "I'll Always Love You" and takes it to the next level?

• 6:52Speaker 04

  Whitney.

• 6:53Speaker 03

  Whitney.

• 7:10Speaker 04

  Speaking of Whitney, someone who could sing anyone's song and make it sound phenomenal. This makes me think of the interview you did with Babyface for Broken Record back in 2023. And he wrote some of Whitney's biggest hits.

• 7:22Speaker 03

  I mean, he wrote some of my favorite Whitney songs. Forget about his, this is some of my favorites. And, you know, a million other unforgettable songs that, yeah, they also happen to be hits. "Boys and Men's End of the Road," "Moriah Carey's We Belong Together," "Breathe Again" by Toni Braxton.

• 7:38Speaker 04

  Yes, that was such a great interview.

• 7:40Speaker 03

  Yeah, man, I mean, I'm sitting there with Babyface and I'm watching him play guitar in front of me. It was just crazy, you know, and he's left-handed. He plays upside down like Hendrix. I mean, he's not as good as a guitar player as Hendrix, but I mean, it was just incredible to be that personal up close with him and seeing how he wrote these songs. And he played for me a song he's never recorded with anyone. And it's the very first song he ever wrote about an early love of his, and his first love actually, in high school.

• 8:09Speaker 04

  Let's hear some of that.

• 8:11Speaker 06

  Here I go falling in love again. That was my first song. And I wrote it for a girl. Because I was like in love and stuff. And so the guitar really was just an instrument for me to get these songs out of me. I always like to say, even when I play and learn things on the piano, I play. I'm not really a piano player. I learned things to support my songwriting. And that's what I did then. I turned that into my first song. So I was just learning chords to support all my little songs.

• 8:45Speaker 03

  Wow. And for you, songwriting was about writing songs for the girls you were in love with.

• 8:52Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 8:52Speaker 03

  That had crushes on.

• 8:53Speaker 06

  Yeah, crushes and stuff. And it was purely kind of an escape, so to say.

• 8:57Speaker 03

  Wow.

• 8:58Speaker 06

  It wasn't anything but that. I didn't think they were gonna go anywhere. But that was the, that was the drive.

• 9:04Speaker 03

  And you would have been like 11, 12, 10, 11, 12?

• 9:06Speaker 06

  Yeah, yeah.

• 9:07Speaker 03

  Yeah? Can I play a Deal song?

• 9:09Speaker 06

  Sure.

• 9:10Speaker 03

  Sweet November?

• 9:11Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 9:27Speaker 03

  Wow, man. That's, that's a great song.

• 9:31Speaker 06

  I wrote that right out of high school.

• 9:34Speaker 03

  Out of high school?

• 9:36Speaker 06

  Yeah, I was, it was, um, because I was a man-child. So I was second year or something, 78 or so. 78, 79, right in that time. So it was a girl. It was like this one girl, she was like the most, while we were in high school, we were really good friends. And there's no way I would have ever thought I would have been with her. But when I got out of high school, we, we started talking. Then we actually started dating. I remember Darryl was like, how, how is this even happening? How do you have her? And then I remember we went to go see Brooke Shields' Endless Love. We saw Endless Love together. And then something happened, I think.

• 10:23Speaker 06

  Right before we were going away in Man child, all of a sudden she stopped calling me and I couldn't, I couldn't reach her. And I don't know what happened, but it was just like, we were just like broken up. And then there was no cell phones, there was no good, you couldn't reach her on the phone.

• 10:41Speaker 03

  No social media.

• 10:43Speaker 06

  It was just done. And I was really messed up about it. And, and that's when I wrote this, you know, cause you know, that was the time period. It was in the fall and so then I was thinking, maybe, maybe when I come back, maybe, maybe this November, we'll get back together and find it. So that was actually a love song that was written way back then.

• 11:04Speaker 03

  And would you have written the words or would you write the words first?

• 11:07Speaker 06

  I sat with the piano and wrote it.

• 11:08Speaker 03

  Sat at the piano?

• 11:09Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 11:10Speaker 03

  Wow.

• 11:11Speaker 06

  So.

• 11:12Speaker 03

  Cause it's kind of beautiful even just divorced from the music. If you just look at the words, it's like, it's high level, you know?

• 11:18Speaker 06

  Yeah, it was, uh, when autumn first arrived, you were my lady, we were dating.

• 11:23Speaker 03

  It was the second rain of autumn, we shared a feeling.

• 11:25Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 11:26Speaker 03

  Come on, that's.

• 11:27Speaker 06

  It was like, we started dating and then all of a sudden we like, I remember it was raining and like, it looks like something's gonna happen here.

• 11:35Speaker 03

  So that song was really personal.

• 11:37Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 11:38Speaker 03

  Exhale was more from watching the movie.

• 11:42Speaker 06

  Watching the movie.

• 11:43Speaker 03

  You don't necessarily have to write from personal experience. You can, you can, but you, you can watch others and.

• 11:48Speaker 06

  No, yeah, it's, it's really about watching others and, and how they, how they feel and how they, imagining having to go through that. I'm always asked, how are you able to write for women?

• 11:59Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 12:00Speaker 06

  And said, if you just kind of think of it and think of whatever they go through and think of how you'd feel, you know, it's not that hard to figure out, damn, that's fucked up. I feel, you know, I go write about that, you know?

• 12:14Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 12:14Speaker 06

  And as a kid that was always falling in love and thinking I was in love.

• 12:20Speaker 03

  Feeling like you were in love.

• 12:22Speaker 06

  You know, that's what it was. I mean, my very first song was about a girl named Rhonda Newble, I always say her name. And that was in Here I Go Falling in Love Again.

• 12:33Speaker 06

  And the second song that I wrote that I clearly remember was about the same girl, which was two years later, from sixth grade to eighth grade, because she broke my heart, was called "The Bitter Taste of Life."

• 12:43Speaker 03

  Oh.

• 12:47Speaker 06

  Those are feelings that I that I had, and everything was exaggerated. I had written a song called "So Shy." So there were pieces, there would be pieces of things, of songs that I would write. I wrote a song called "Tanita," wrote a song called "Shelley." One of the best songs I ever wrote was a song called "Last Song Forever," which was, I wrote that when I was in my senior year. Never recorded it. I think some, I think I let a group record it, as they turned it into a gospel record.

• 13:13Speaker 03

  Do you remember any of it?

• 13:14Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 13:14Speaker 03

  Could you play a little of it?

• 13:15Speaker 06

  I don't know what my voice is like right now, but...

• 13:22Speaker 06

  When I think of special thoughts, I remember special feelings we share.

• 13:34Speaker 06

  Then I think of special moments. Those were special times you told me you cared.

• 13:47Speaker 06

  You know, when all the guns and leaves will float away, I hope you know by now, my love will always stay. I know I will love you forever. You should know my love can't get no better.

• 14:08Speaker 06

  Last song forever. I couldn't love you no better. Um, how'd it go? Been my duty right now. And love is forever. That's a little piece of...

• 14:31Speaker 03

  You can hear all of my conversation with Babyface in the Broken Record episode that we're going to link to in the show notes. There's so much more to it, including how some of his biggest influences were singer-songwriters like James Taylor and the Beatles. Coming up after the break, Pushkin producer Ben Adifafri tells Leah about writing his own love song.

• 15:00Speaker 00

  This is Jacob Goldstein. With ChatGPT, you can do more than get answers. You can get things done. When you're running a business and looking to expand, you need a clear view of the landscape before making any decisions. ChatGPT can help you prepare. Connect your Google Drive, point to relevant files and reports, and ask it to research competitors, industry forecasts, and market signals. It can turn the findings into a strategic deck in your team's template that you can review before presenting to your leadership team. Growing a business is ambitious, and ChatGPT can help you do it with confidence. Get started today at chatgpt.com.

• 15:38Speaker 07

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• 16:11Speaker 04

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• 16:33Speaker 07

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• 16:50Speaker 05

  I think that folk music does love songs the best.

• 16:53Speaker 04

  That's star Pushkin producer and sometimes host of The Last Archive, Ben Naddaff-Haffrey.

• 16:58Speaker 05

  Folk or country, either one would be my leading contender for the genre that is best at love songs. And I think it's because on some level,

• 17:11Speaker 05

  like, I think like a breakup song or a lost love song is superior to a straight up love song.

• 17:18Speaker 04

  Me too.

• 17:19Speaker 05

  Because I think like, you don't, if you're in love, you don't really need a song. Like, you feel this kind of symphonic happiness, like, there's something specific that you're experiencing with another person. Like, if you are experiencing lost love or unrequited love, there's something about a particular breakup story or sad romance song that, like, creates a community with you when you maybe feel otherwise alone or bereft. But I think that there's, like, wistful folk music, wistful country music, kind of toes the line between these two things.

• 17:55Speaker 04

  To be honest, I also think that sad songs might make the best love songs. But the real reason I wanted to talk to Ben is because I learned at our holiday party that he also has a second life as a musician and as a songwriter with the band Rookin.

• 18:10Speaker 05

  Yes, and this is part of my long con, to get interviewed on Broken Record for my music.

• 18:16Speaker 04

  Well, you're close.

• 18:17Speaker 05

  Yeah, exactly.

• 18:18Speaker 04

  So this is our Valentine's Day special, and I was tipped off by our producer Izzy about a love song that you wrote a couple of years ago, and it actually ended up having sort of like a big impact on your life. So I wanted to ask you about this song, "If I Didn't Know You By Now." So set the stage for us. How did this song come to be?

• 18:44Speaker 05

  Well, I wrote this song about like a year after I first moved to Brooklyn. So I was like just out of college and I had moved to Brooklyn and I was living with a bunch of friends in what was, you know, actually quite a nice apartment. I had not made my corner of the apartment particularly nice. I was not having the best time that year. And I had, I think as an expression of vague despair, just like not really done anything to set it up. I don't remember why this is, but I remember I had like a tarp in the corner of the room. I had a tarp in the corner of the room, like a mattress and then a saw on the wall.

• 19:23Speaker 04

  Oh, my gosh.

• 19:24Speaker 05

  I thought it would be like fun to put on my wall, but it looked terrifying. And that was like pretty much it. And I remember distinctly walking into the apartment one time with a good friend of mine from high school. And I had like change in my pocket and I like took the change out of my pocket and I threw it in the corner. And she was like, why did you just throw your change in the corner? I was like, that is, that is the corner of the apartment where I keep my change. And it was like, it was indeed like next to the tarp, like a pile of change. So there were no shades on the window. This was like a crucial thing. I just was like, not super taking care of myself.

• 20:06Speaker 05

  Like everything was totally fine, but um, my life was not in order.

• 20:10Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 20:10Speaker 05

  And then I started dating a friend of mine from college. Her name was Julia. And she was living in Nashville at the time and we sort of like picked back up, talking to each other at a distance. And then when she came to New York, we would hang out. And I noticed that like, as Julia and I had been talking more and started seeing each other in Nashville and also in New York, that slowly I had begun to set up my room. I got shades for the window. I put like, they didn't actually fit, but I got like handkerchiefs that extended them to the bottom. I got rid of the tarp. I did in fact, leave the saw on the wall. Cause that was by then a crucial part of the decor in my identity and remains so. I don't remember what I did with the change corner.

• 20:55Speaker 05

  There's a good chance the change corner sort of remained.

• 20:57Speaker 04

  The growing up process is a slow one.

• 21:00Speaker 05

  The growing up process is a slow one, but it began, it began with fixing up that first room.

• 21:08Speaker 05

  There was a moment I remember where she came and visited. It was early spring and we had this really wonderful weekend together exploring the city and she'd grown up in New York and I was kind of new there and she was showing me around and we went to like a Lebanese church and I'm Lebanese and it was kind of like a, they just wandered in because they were having like a food festival kind of thing. Like there were a lot of wonderful serendipitous things.

• 21:34Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 21:34Speaker 05

  Um, and I remember it was after that visit, I think on the day that she had left, that I was hanging out in my room and I was playing guitar and I started writing this song.

• 21:52Speaker 05

  Like a lot of hack guitar players, I use a lot of open tunings. And around that time, I'd been playing The Rain Song by Led Zeppelin, which is a version of Open C tuning. And so I just was like, keep my guitar in that. And I remember figuring out the sort of main guitar line and then messing around with the words over it.

• 22:16Speaker 05

  If I didn't know you by now, would I ever hang the blinds up on my window? Fall away and pack up all my clean clothes without complaining.

• 22:38Speaker 05

  You know, I'm not a professional songwriter. This was a song that like definitely did not come easily to me, but it felt sort of like inspired by that moment and that feeling. It was kind of like a reflection of the fact that I was noticing that my life was changing. And an expression of gratitude to her for bringing me to the place where I wanted to do that.

• 23:04Speaker 04

  At what point did you realize I'm writing a love song for Julia?

• 23:07Speaker 05

  I think that that is just what it was. I think it's just because that was sort of where it came from. So I don't think it was a realization ever. It was just kind of that was the feeling it started from.

• 23:29Speaker 05

  So yeah, I was in a long distance relationship, both then with Julia, because she was living in Nashville, but then also with the lead singer of my band, Adam, who he was in like the UK getting a masters in medieval literature or something. And we were always working on an album in the background, usually as like an escape hatch from like one or another job that we didn't want to do. Yep. So we were always like kind of trading versions of things. We spent a lot of time basically on every song, just like trying to get it right, recording and re-recording, that kind of thing. And I would always share those things with Julia. And she, like a joke evolved where she sort of teasingly would be like, is this song about me?

• 24:10Speaker 05

  A thing that I would always like flatly deny, she'd come to shows and she would like, we would always have these long introductions to our songs, but often we wrote historical songs. It was like Mark Twain's brother died in a steamship accident and like there would be a long preamble to the, the song about, you know, Samuel Clemens's brother who dies in this horrible way. But there would notably be no, no preamble or introduction to this song. And so this was the thing I was often mocked about. And it kind of reached a head when we were like crowdfunding an album that we were doing, which is a fancy way of saying like asking our friends for money. Yeah. And there was a thing that we offered that was like a handwritten lyric sheet with a story behind the song.

• 24:53Speaker 05

  And so Julia bought that, requested a lyric sheet with the story behind the song for this song. Oh, wow. Which as a way of like cornering me into having to admit the provenance of the song. And I did not fulfill that lyric sheet for like quite a while. And it wasn't until, and again, sort of as like a joke in return, but it wasn't until we got engaged that I then did actually deliver the lyric sheet with the story as a kind of like, you know, obviously this is a song about you and the way I feel about you.

• 25:53Speaker 04

  Do you have a favorite part of the song?

• 25:57Speaker 05

  I always love everything Adam writes. He like wrote the last verse that I think kind of like takes it to a totally different place. It gets like a lot darker right at the end in a way that I wouldn't have done, but think it gives it a lot of heft.

• 27:03Speaker 04

  Well, thank you so much, Ben.

• 27:05Speaker 05

  Thanks for having me. This was fun. Happy Valentine's Day.

• 27:13Speaker 04

  Such a beautiful song. Again, that's "If I Didn't Know You By Now" by Rookin. I'm not sure if Ben's going to convince Justin that folk is the best genre for love songs, but in a minute, Malcolm Gladwell weighs in and he gets us thinking about this question in an entirely different way.

• 27:43Speaker 00

  This is Jacob Goldstein. With ChatGPT, you can do more than get answers. You can get things done. When you're running a business and looking to expand, you need a clear view of the landscape before making any decisions. ChatGPT can help you prepare. Connect your Google Drive, point to relevant files and reports. And ask it to research competitors, industry forecasts, and market signals. It can turn the findings into a strategic deck in your team's template that you can review before presenting to your leadership team. Growing a business is ambitious, and ChatGPT can help you do it with confidence. Get started today at chatgpt.com.

• 28:21Speaker 03

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• 29:01Speaker 04

  What's that? My fresh detector? Uh, your what? There it is. What is it detecting? Fresh produce? Fresh meat? Okay, what happens if it detects something really fresh?

• 29:15Speaker 04

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• 29:30Malcolm Gladwell?

  Yeah, I don't think country music does good love songs. I think it does good breakup songs, heartbreak songs. It does the reverse.

• 29:40Speaker 03

  Malcolm Gladwell is a bestselling author, the host of Revisionist History, and Pushkin's resident country music aficionado. When I heard we were doing a Valentine's Day music episode, I knew we were gonna have to get a steak.

• 29:52Malcolm Gladwell?

  So, country music, which is consistent with its role in American popular culture, it is the downer to rock music's upper. Right. Rock music, and I did a whole revisionist history episode on this. It was, you know, the striking thing about rock music is the inability of rock musicians to write effective sad songs. Their sad songs are terrible. They're just not sad, right? They're not believably sad. They're rock and roll songs that are kind of, you know, trying to pretend to, like, I gave the example of Wild Horses, which is supposed to be a sad song. It's not sad. What's sad about it?

• 30:34Speaker 03

  It's oh sad and faux country.

• 30:37Malcolm Gladwell?

  It's also banal and like, wild, wild horses, like, what is going on? I mean, it's just like, it doesn't work. Country, though, is totally comfortable in that kind of emotional morass. That's the whole, it's depressive music. That's the whole point. It's the South. It's like white guys who lost the Civil War, never got over it. That's what it is. You know, I was talking to some guy yesterday about the Church of Christ, which is a almost overwhelmingly Southern denomination of, a Christian denomination, and Nashville

• 31:16Malcolm Gladwell?

  is the heart of Church of Christ. The music in Church of Christ churches is insane. The Church of Christ is famously has no orchestral music. They've got no, it's all a cappella, which is way more demanding. The Church of Christ, it is not a happy denomination. It's not Pentecostals, jumping up and down and welcoming the risen Lord. No. It's like, it's like white Southerners bemoaning the loss of their status and like, bowing their head in the face of a vengeful God.

• 31:48Speaker 03

  And no piano to lift their spirits.

• 31:49Malcolm Gladwell?

  And no piano to lift their spirits. No organ, no piano, no nothing. Use your own voice, damn it. Which is why, by the way, so many country singers come from the Church of Christ. Amy Grant is Church of Christ, Merle Haggard is Church of Christ. I could go on and on. Listen, if you look it up, it's insane.

• 32:05Speaker 03

  Yeah, I'm looking at this church. I'm like, this is Roy Orbison.

• 32:08Malcolm Gladwell?

  They're all Church of Christ. They're all Church of Christ.

• 32:11Speaker 03

  Loretta Lynn.

• 32:12Malcolm Gladwell?

  Woody Guthrie. So like, It is any surprise that country music, which comes from Nashville, the epicenter of the Church of Christ, is like the least happy music known to man. No, it's like depressive.

• 32:24Speaker 03

  So Stan stands to reason then that like in the continuum of, you know, when it comes to love songs and the continuum of sort of emotions that go along with love, country music would fall more on the side of sad over a breakup, sad over unrequited love, sad because I'm in a marriage I don't want to be in, but I'm still in love with my high school sweetheart, or whatever, you know, whatever those songs are, that these sad kind of, love's not going right or breaking up.

• 32:51Malcolm Gladwell?

  One of my favorite country songs about heartbreak is, I think it's George Strait, "Does Fort Worth Ever Cross Your Mind?", which is a classic. I mean, if you can't, if we're going to talk about country music and sad songs, we're starting with George Strait. Now, okay, so I'm going to read to you some lyrics to "Does Fort Worth Ever Cross Your Mind?" This is the opening stanza. Cold Fort Worth beer, this is how it begins. Just ain't no good for jealous. I've tried it night after night. You're in someone else's arms in Dallas. Does Fort Worth ever cross your mind? Darling, while you're busy burning bridges, burn one for me if you get time.

• 33:51Malcolm Gladwell?

  What's hilarious about this is this song is all about parsing the cultural distinction between Fort Worth and Dallas, which looms large in the minds of people from Texas. And the rest of us are like, what? This song makes no sense to anyone who's not from Texas. I want to give you a, "You left me here to be with him in Dallas." And I know it hurts you at the time. Well, I wonder now if it makes a difference. Does Fort Worth ever cross your mind? It's 20 miles away. It's a whole song. It's a whole song about a stretch of interstate. It's just so fantastic. This is what's so hilarious about it.

• 34:32Speaker 03

  It's so petty.

• 34:34Malcolm Gladwell?

  It's so petty and so... But like, this is why rock and roll can't do a breakup song. Because a breakup song requires a certain level of emotional and narrative specificity. And rock and roll is too obsessed with being universal.

• 34:52Speaker 03

  Yeah, they're not enough in the details in rock.

• 34:54Malcolm Gladwell?

  No detail. Did Prince ever write a song about, did St. Paul ever cross your mind? No. No, because that's not the business he's in. He's not in the business of evoking this kind of strong emotion. He was aware of the distinction between Minneapolis and St. Paul, but chose to overlook it in his songwriting. That's why he's a rock musician or a R&B musician, not a country musician.

• 35:24Speaker 03

  So he's saying that. You left me to be with him. He's saying Dallas with a level of disdain.

• 35:30Malcolm Gladwell?

  No, no, no, no. You have to understand a song here. The reason why it's not, does Dallas ever cross your mind? That's a wholly different song.

• 35:39Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah.

• 35:40Malcolm Gladwell?

  That Fort Worth is the ugly stepsister. Fort Worth is one step down the rung. So she left him to upgrade in Dallas.

• 35:50Speaker 03

  To move up.

• 35:51Malcolm Gladwell?

  Yeah, that's why it hurts. If she left him for a dude in Fort Worth, he's fine. He's moved on. He's finding another girl in Dallas. No, no, no, no, no. He's in Fort Worth. And what did she do? Got up one morning, drove down the interstate and upgraded her situation, leaving him in a pile of tears in Fort Worth.

• 36:10Speaker 03

  Well, you see, this is why, and you know, I was talking to Leah. This is why I think R and B is the greatest genre for love songs. I don't ever want to be the guy in Fort Worth pining about the woman who left me to upgrade to go to Dallas. Like, that's why, like Whitney Houston, like, you know, in her song, she catches like the guy cheating. And she says, it's not right, but it's okay. I'm gonna make it anyway. Like, I want, I wanna, you left me, fine, I'm not gonna wallow. I'm just gonna move on with my life. Bigger, better things. Like, that's where I wanna live.

• 36:41Malcolm Gladwell?

  No, no, it's, you're just, what you're just identifying is that she's made stronger stuff. That's what that's about.

• 36:48Malcolm Gladwell?

  And some of this is like, is, uh, bathos. Am I pronouncing that right? Is it bathos or pathos?

• 36:55Speaker 03

  Yeah. Pathos, pathos or pathos?

• 36:57Malcolm Gladwell?

  No, batho, I think bathos is the word I want.

• 37:00Speaker 03

  Bathos?

• 37:00Malcolm Gladwell?

  B A T H, bathos, definition. Yeah, anti-climax created by an unintentional lapse in mood from the sublime to the trivial or ridiculous. Like, that's what, does Fort Worth ever cross your mind, is bathos? Right? That's what that is, right? That's, uh, that's the, that's the appeal of the, uh, of the song.

• 37:19Speaker 03

  Is, is, so, I mean, is there a hope for the country music fan? I mean, like, you know, I guess there are country music songs explicitly about love. They're just not as good. They're just not, they're not the, the A-tier country music songs, right? I mean, there's like Forever and Ever, Amen, Randy Travis. People play at their wedding or whatever.

• 37:35Malcolm Gladwell?

  But that's a song, but think about that song. The way he sings it, he sings it like it's a sad song. I'm gonna love you forever and ever.

• 37:47Speaker 03

  It's very wistful.

• 37:48Malcolm Gladwell?

  Forever and ever, um, it sounds like he's committing to a prison sentence. Aw, man, like.

• 37:54Speaker 03

  What does it say about you, Malcolm? That when, when you're asked to think what genre might be the greatest for love songs, your mind goes to the breakup song.

• 38:05Malcolm Gladwell?

  I, I once, um, uh, I had a friend named Mike, and he didn't know me very well, and we decided to go to a ballgame together. This is in the eighties. And we drove from Washington DC to Baltimore to see the Orioles. And I played some mixtapes in the car. And at the end. He turned to me and he said, I had no idea how depressed you are. Because every single song on the mixtape was a song about some kind of broken heart, suffering, sadness, death. I don't know, that's what I wanted in a song.

• 38:42Speaker 03

  But there is no part of being around you that feels mired in sadness or depression.

• 38:48Malcolm Gladwell?

  No, but I don't, I don't want, I don't like upbeat songs. It's my problem with rock and roll is it's just like, just calm down already. Like, just, can we wallow in our emotions for a moment here? And not just beating our head against the wall in ecstasy? It strikes me as unseemly.

• 39:11Speaker 03

  Leah, I mean, several points well taken from Malcolm. You know, I love country music dearly. I think songwriting is impeccable and they certainly do a love song and a sad song incredibly well. But, you know, I just, I guess I just, I just like a more happy song. I like a more, I just, I don't know, I don't know if I can live like in that kind of misery.

• 39:36Speaker 04

  I think it's so funny. I mean, you know that I love a sad song over a happy song and I'll take a depressed, unrequited love song over a happy, over the moon love song any day.

• 39:48Speaker 03

  Well, Leah, you know, I feel like we're back to where we started, which is, you know, I mean, you're probably right. Look, the whole idea of genre is, and it's a manmade creation and there's probably no way to categorize what sort of genre and what culture does the love song the best.

• 40:10Speaker 04

  It's so subjective.

• 40:11Speaker 03

  It's so totally subjective and, you know, it's for me, based on my personal experiences, still R and B. I mean, I think I'm even further entrenched in my position now at this point. But, you know, I love that Malcolm and Ben both have their strong feelings and I love that you're ever sort of non-committalness around any of this.

• 40:33Speaker 04

  No, I'm just gonna keep it open. I'm keeping it open for new experiences and I'm gonna sit here and I'm gonna celebrate Valentine's Day by listening to songs that make me cry.

• 40:43Speaker 03

  Well, you know, no, no, no, celebrate Valentine's Day. I made a great playlist of love songs. Listen to that. We'll put that in the show notes and listen to that, not the sad songs, please.

• 40:54Speaker 04

  Wait, I just saved a playlist, and this is real. I just saved a playlist from Spotify called Classics for Crying. So I'm getting that queued up.

• 41:06Speaker 03

  This episode was produced by Isabel Carter and edited by Sarah Nix. Our mix engineer is Sarah Brugger.

• 41:13Speaker 04

  Special thanks to Ben Natafafri, Malcolm Gladwell, Costanza Gallardo, Owen Miller, and Eric Sandler.

• 41:20Speaker 03

  I'm your host, Justin Richmond.

• 41:22Speaker 04

  And I'm Leah Rose. Happy Valentine's Day.

• 41:33Speaker 04

  Wait, I came in for two things. How is this $47?

• 41:38Speaker 06

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• 42:02Malcolm Gladwell?

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• 42:47Malcolm Gladwell?

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