The idea of a song

A few hundred milliseconds are often all you need to recognize a song, but a lot of recent hits have moved away from intros. Our friends at ⁠Switched on Pop⁠ (along with the National's Aaron Dessner) break down how song intros can shape our perception and what we lose when they disappear. To watch this episode on video, find us on ⁠Netflix⁠! Guests: ⁠Charlie Harding⁠ and ⁠Nate Sloan⁠, hosts of ⁠Switched on Pop⁠; ⁠Aaron Dessner⁠, producer, songwriter, and member of ⁠the National⁠; ⁠Grace Spelman⁠, music writer For show transcripts, go to ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠vox.com/unxtranscripts⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ For more, go to ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠vox.com/unexplainable⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ And please email us! ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠[email protected]⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ We read every email. Support Unexplainable (and get ad-free episodes) by becoming a Vox Member today: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠vox.com/members⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Thank you! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Support for the show comes from Google Gemini. You know that moment when curiosity strikes? You're exploring a new city with the family and a sculpture catches your daughter's eye. What is that? Who made it? With Gemini, you can snap a picture and get a fully interactive breakdown of its history, architecture, and even hidden secrets. Gemini is built for moments like that. Whether you're learning something new, solving a problem, or looking for your next favorite thing, Google Gemini is here to help. Download Gemini, Google's AI app, or visit gemini.google.com to learn more.

• 0:39Speaker 01

  This episode is brought to you by Michelob Ultra. Good times mean competitions between you and your friends, like seeing who can throw some pigskin the farthest or rush the field the fastest. Winner gets an ultra. Because it's not just a superior light beer, it's also giving fans superior access to their favorite sporting events. Superior is worth playing for. Visit michelobultra.com/superioraccess to enter. Enjoy responsibly. Copyright 2026 Anheuser-Busch InBev Michelob Ultra Beer, St. Louis, Missouri.

• 1:10Speaker 02

  Charlie Harding. Hello, great to see you.

• 1:12Speaker 03

  Hey, thanks for having me.

• 1:13Speaker 02

  So I'm recording from my home studio this time. Too bad we can't make it to see each other in person. Where are you recording from?

• 1:20Speaker 03

  I'm in a secret location with a vinyl backdrop drawing of my home studio.

• 1:25Speaker 02

  I love it. Wait, tell me about the backdrop?

• 1:28Speaker 03

  Well, at home, I have a ridiculous collection of guitars and synthesizers and things that entertain me and make music for the show, for Switched on Pop. Right now, I am not there, so I had our great illustrator, Iris Gottlieb, make an illustration of my studio and I printed it out on vinyl. And that just travels with me wherever I go.

• 1:46Speaker 02

  It's fantastic. Maybe you should just use that instead. I loved it. But you host another Vox Media podcast, Switched on Pop. It's excellent. You guys also recently made your debut on Netflix. And you launched with this series on different parts of a song, but not a specific song. You were talking about the theoretical idea of a song. So you had an episode on intros, on verses, choruses, on bridges. And the whole thing, it reminded me of something we do a lot on Unexplainable, which is tell us everything we know about something that's simultaneously both concrete

• 2:28Speaker 02

  and kind of ephemeral. Does that idea resonate with you at all?

• 2:34Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, my show is entirely about helping people listen more closely to music and understand how it operates at a deeper level. So that's exactly what we're trying to do with the series.

• 2:43Speaker 02

  Do you feel like the idea of a song is unexplainable?

• 2:51Speaker 03

  I have spent my entire career trying to understand the song. I'm almost 500 episodes into doing it. I don't think I've cracked the nut yet. And so maybe this special series is like my attempt to understand that deeper, you know, architecture or skeleton, as we said, of the song.

• 3:10Speaker 02

  It's like there's the theory of a song, right? That's sort of abstract and impossible to get at. And then there's the song itself. Like, how do you, how do you think about talking about a song and like the idea of a song?

• 3:25Speaker 03

  You know, every song is like an individual person, right? Like, we have our idiosyncratic stories, our histories, all of our cultures. And that is what makes a story amazing. But also underneath all of us, like, we share most of the same DNA. We have a skeleton. And underneath most songs is the skeleton of the verse-chorus structure. And I figured that this would be a really fun excuse to talk to some of the biggest songwriters and producers and artists in the world to see what they think about each of these sections. I mean, for example, like intros. I'm kind of skeptical about intros. Like, they're really sometimes overly long. They don't always grab my attention. But we got to talk to Aaron Dessner, for example. Aaron Dessner of The National, who has written with Taylor Swift and Gracie Abrams and so many others.

• 4:09Speaker 03

  And the way that he thinks about the introduction radically transformed how I thought about the role of the introduction of music.

• 4:17Speaker 02

  So we're gonna share the first episode of your series today. So we're basically doing an intro for an episode on intros.

• 4:26Speaker 03

  That's very meta.

• 4:27Speaker 02

  Yeah, and for someone that famously hates intros, you got any feelings about this? What's the best way to intro an intro?

• 4:34Speaker 03

  My anxiety is very high at this moment. The best way to intro an intro is just to get right to it.

• 4:41Speaker 02

  To get to it. Okay, so let's end it. Let's get to the series. Here's Switched on Pop.

• 4:56Speaker 03

  Welcome to Switched on Pop. I'm songwriter Charlie Harding.

• 4:58Speaker 04

  And I'm musicologist Nate Sloan.

• 5:00Speaker 03

  Welcome to our Netflix debut. That is right, Switched on Pop is now on Netflix.

• 5:04Speaker 04

  That's right.

• 5:05Speaker 03

  And we're gonna kick it off with a four-part series on the art of the song. We're gonna be breaking down each section, the intro, the verse, the chorus, the bridge, to figure out how each section works to move us emotionally. So let's begin.

• 5:25Speaker 03

  That's the unmistakable intro of the Black Eyed Peas, "Let's Get It Started," from their 2003 album Ella Funk. Somehow, it's actually not the first song on the album. I think that's an oversight.

• 5:36Speaker 04

  Crazy.

• 5:36Speaker 03

  It begins with Fergie's dry vocal, with that vocal fry and those bluesy bends. Then we get this kick drum, eighth notes. Apple the app comes in, introduces a walking electric bass. We get this stacked, building vocal harmonies telling us exactly what to do. Run, don't walk to the party, it's about to go off. And then, there we are. We're off into the verse. It's a complete musical statement. And most importantly, this introduction is also foreshadowing the chorus, the most important part of the song, when Fergie sings "Let's Get It Started," because that, of course, is the hook.

• 6:16Speaker 04

  Yeah, with us making our Netflix debut, I thought you might go with a track like, you know, Jay-Z, "Allow Me to Reintroduce Myself." But I think this "Let's Get It Started" intro is entirely appropriate. This is such an iconic song, and yet I've never thought so hard about how this song starts before. But it actually like sets up the whole track in these subtle ways.

• 6:41Speaker 03

  The Black Eyed Peas know how to get things started.

• 6:43Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 6:43Speaker 03

  And so does every form of music ever made. I mean, all genres, all styles of writing songs, every song has to have an introduction, has to greet you.

• 6:54Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 6:55Speaker 03

  What do you feel like the role of the intro is in a song?

• 6:58Speaker 04

  Well, in the world of pop music, it's often to grab your attention.

• 7:02Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 7:03Speaker 04

  It's to say like, hey, pay attention, listen to this, stop what you're doing, because we have something great in store for you.

• 7:08Speaker 03

  An introduction has to be love at first sight. Because you have to keep on going. And here's the thing, though, Nate. I frankly hate introductions.

• 7:17Speaker 04

  What? Songwriter Charlie Harding hates introductions?

• 7:21Speaker 03

  If you ask my songwriting students at Berkeley and at NYU how I feel about introductions, this is what they're gonna tell you. Charlie needs the intro to be as short as this video.

• 7:31Speaker 05

  Cut the intro in half. Cut the intro. Cut the intro.

• 7:34Speaker 03

  Cut the intro. I just constantly hear songs that are self-indulgent with long introductions that don't grab my attention. And I think that we should cut them. I think that my opinion about this is probably formed by the fact that you and I really came of age in the 90s when, you know, we've done research showing that the average song length peaked in 1998, 4 minutes and 29 seconds. People were really taking their time back in the 90s. I mean, take, for example, Sean Colvin's "Sunny Came Home."

• 8:08Speaker 03

  Mandolin, I love the mandolin.

• 8:14Speaker 03

  And it's still going.

• 8:17Speaker 03

  We've got some drums.

• 8:25Speaker 03

  Some organ, some guitar lines, some nice harmonic changes.

• 8:31Speaker 03

  But what time is it right now? I mean, we are currently at 30 seconds, 32 seconds, 34 seconds before we get a single line. And I gotta tell you, I love this song. It is a smash. And I actually don't think that's a terrible introduction. I actually think it's quite compelling.

• 8:51Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 8:51Speaker 03

  It's constantly changing, it's evolving, but it is long and it's not alone. I mean, the Smashing Pumpkins, "Tonight Tonight."

• 9:05Speaker 03

  I don't even have time to get to the end. Here we are, you know, 10 seconds in. Let's just fast forward, I don't know. 40 seconds.

• 9:13Speaker 04

  Wow.

• 9:14Speaker 03

  Forty-four seconds in, we finally get some vocals, but there's probably no one who's more of a culprit of long intros than the Cranberries. Their song Zombie, 49 second long intro.

• 9:25Speaker 04

  Whoa.

• 9:25Speaker 03

  The song Linger even longer.

• 9:32Speaker 03

  We get some nice strings, some guitars. Let's fast forward a little bit to, I don't know, let's say 45 seconds into the song.

• 9:45Speaker 03

  Woo, we are like

• 9:47Speaker 04

  eons.

• 9:47Speaker 03

  over 50 seconds in. And we finally get to the verse.

• 9:52Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 9:53Speaker 03

  Nate, what is the old adage?

• 9:54Speaker 04

  Don't bore us.

• 9:55Speaker 03

  Get to the chorus.

• 9:57Speaker 04

  Those introductions are like three hours in TikTok time.

• 10:01Speaker 03

  They're epic.

• 10:03Speaker 04

  So if Sean Colvin, Billy Corgan, or Dolores O'Riordan were your songwriting students, you would say, get that out of my classroom. Get it down to a cool six seconds and try again.

• 10:16Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 10:17Speaker 04

  Gotcha.

• 10:17Speaker 03

  And I would be wrong because to be fair, those are all smashes. They're great songs. Those intros definitely feel like they could be a long wind-up scene in a movie. Like, it feels almost more like scoring than the introduction to a song. But having grown up in this time with these long extended intros, and you know, since then, I probably have developed a bad phone addiction. I just feel like I can't bear having these long introductions anymore. And I feel like music has sort of responded the same. Like, I feel like the intro has fundamentally changed. So I guess I want to look at with you, like, does the introduction still matter?

• 10:58Speaker 04

  I like to think the introduction still matters, but you know, part of getting older is accepting change and better understanding it. So yeah, let's, let's discover what's actually happening before we make any judgments.

• 11:10Speaker 03

  Okay, so I began my inquiry about the importance of the introduction by just thinking about, you know, do first impressions actually matter? I would prefer they wouldn't. I mean, I don't love to get dressed and, you know, do my hair upright in the morning. But it turns out that, you know, there's a lot of research on the power of the first impression. Have you ever heard of the concept thin slicing?

• 11:32Speaker 04

  Only with regard to deli meat?

• 11:37Speaker 04

  Gotta be real with you, Chuck.

• 11:39Speaker 03

  The idea of thin slicing is this research proposed by Nalini Ambadi and Robert Rosenthal back in 1992. They published in Psychological Bulletin. This study that basically says that people are able to infer a lot of information and actually make accurate judgments based off of very low amounts of exposure to an idea. So basically, you can meet someone quickly and you can infer some information about them that's quite accurate. Now, this idea is popularized by Malcolm Gladwell's book Blink, which I mentioned because this research is extended into the world of music. Researcher Carol Crumhansel at Cornell University published a 2010 paper called Plink, Thin Slices of Music.

• 12:21Speaker 03

  And this research says that we can instantly know a song from a first impression.

• 12:26Speaker 04

  Wow.

• 12:27Speaker 03

  That if you play just 300, maybe 400 milliseconds of a clip of music, that you can know that song. And I feel like if this research is true, then it means the intros really matter and I need to be paying way more attention to them. And I figured we could test this research on a PhD in musicology, someone who has made nearly 500 episodes of Switched on Pop. Dr. Professor Nate Sloan?

• 12:53Speaker 04

  Oh, you're talking about me?

• 12:55Speaker 03

  Yeah. I've prepared a quiz for you and it includes an important prize if you can get 10 out of 10 songs. Here's how it's gonna go. You've got a first attempt, 300 milliseconds of a song. Second attempt, 400 milliseconds of a song. If you don't get it, I'll just play you the intro. You ready?

• 13:12Speaker 04

  Yeah, I'm ready.

• 13:13Speaker 03

  Here's song one. Any idea?

• 13:15Speaker 04

  Carly Rae Jepsen, Call Me Maybe, 2012.

• 13:18Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 13:19Speaker 04

  Saint Jepson.

• 13:20Speaker 03

  The origin story of our podcast.

• 13:22Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 13:23Speaker 03

  She inspired us to make Switched on Pop.

• 13:32Speaker 03

  All right, one for one.

• 13:34Speaker 04

  Okay, that was encouraging.

• 13:35Speaker 03

  You have some good thin slicing abilities. Song two.

• 13:41Speaker 04

  Haha, that's, um, Let's Get It On by Marvin Gaye.

• 13:51Speaker 03

  Nice.

• 13:52Speaker 04

  That's good, that's good. Wow.

• 13:56Speaker 03

  All right. Song three.

• 13:59Speaker 04

  Oh, it's like an early 2000s. Is it Britney Spears? Is it Toxic? Yeah, it is Toxic. Wow.

• 14:10Speaker 04

  That's wild.

• 14:11Speaker 03

  Isn't that amazing?

• 14:12Speaker 04

  This is, I mean, Plink, thin slicing.

• 14:16Speaker 03

  Let me take you back a little further in history.

• 14:18Speaker 04

  Okay. Uh, the Miles Davis Freddie Freeloader.

• 14:23Speaker 03

  Hey, you're doing great.

• 14:25Speaker 04

  Wait, this is wild?

• 14:33Speaker 04

  Yeah. Witten Kelly on piano.

• 14:35Speaker 03

  You have earned that PhD. How about song five?

• 14:42Speaker 03

  That was 300 milliseconds. Here's 400 milliseconds. People in the study have higher ability to recall a song with a longer slice. 400 milliseconds usually gets a better outcome.

• 14:51Speaker 04

  It's not, uh, Robyn's Call Your Girlfriend, but it is, it's something, it's like a synth dance track.

• 15:03Speaker 04

  Oh, wow. Nope.

• 15:05Speaker 03

  Okay, uh, maybe I'll give you a pass on one of them. Let's see how you do on number six.

• 15:11Speaker 04

  Uh, the Beatles, All You Need Is Love.

• 15:23Speaker 03

  I've saved the hardest ones for last.

• 15:26Speaker 04

  Oh.

• 15:29Speaker 04

  Is it a Led Zeppelin song, one of their acoustic? Something like Over the Hills and Far Away or something like that? I, I don't.

• 15:38Speaker 03

  Nope.

• 15:44Speaker 03

  Do you give your students two free passes and, and, you know, assignments? Maybe we'll give you two free passes. I don't think you're gonna get the next ones.

• 15:53Speaker 04

  Way to set me up for failure here.

• 15:55Speaker 03

  You didn't even hear it. Here it is again.

• 15:59Speaker 04

  Okay, it's a, uh, it's like a turntable sound, uh.

• 16:05Speaker 04

  Wait, give it to me one more time.

• 16:06Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 16:09Speaker 04

  It's like a 90s track. It's, um, Groove is in the Heart by Delight.

• 16:16Speaker 03

  Wow, I mean, some of the outcomes of this research does show that people are able to often accurately place decade and timeframe, even if they can't get the song.

• 16:41Speaker 04

  That's, uh, Missy Elliott's Get Your Freak On, right?

• 16:45Speaker 03

  That's Work It from 2002.

• 16:47Speaker 04

  Work It, obviously. Oh.

• 16:48Speaker 03

  So you were within 10 years or so. Man, you're struggling.

• 16:53Speaker 04

  Something I'm, I'm learning about this is if you don't recognize it immediately, you're not gonna come up with it. It's like, it's like instinctual, you know? You hear it and you know it, or you don't, and you guess and flail and embarrass yourself. Those are the only two options.

• 17:08Speaker 03

  All right. Number nine.

• 17:16Speaker 04

  Okay, I'm gonna ask for it one more time, not that it'll make a difference.

• 17:21Speaker 03

  What are you thinking?

• 17:23Speaker 04

  Despacito.

• 17:24Speaker 03

  Ooh, interesting. This is a really hard one.

• 17:35Speaker 04

  I still don't know what it is.

• 17:39Speaker 04

  Oh, wow.

• 17:45Speaker 04

  That's, that's a 0.1% of listeners. If you, if you're listening or watching this and you correctly identified Luther by Kendrick Lamar and SZA, like, let us know, because that, that, you, you might be a savant.

• 18:00Speaker 03

  Well, and I was really messing with you there because, you know, it begins with this just lovely nylon acoustic string guitar, which basically hardly occurs through the rest of the track. And then it moves on to a classic sample. So I was trying to throw you off multiple ways. I think I succeeded. I have one more for you. Here's number 10. I think you have no chance.

• 18:25Speaker 03

  I don't know if you're gonna get this song within the first like 10 seconds.

• 18:40Speaker 04

  Nothing. It's Mariah Carey.

• 18:43Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 18:44Speaker 04

  But what track is it? Ready?

• 18:52Speaker 04

  Are you, um, are you trolling me right now?

• 18:56Speaker 03

  And no, but the prize was to maintain your musical dignity and you have not succeeded.

• 19:03Speaker 04

  But I'm asking you because we did this with a 90s music quiz like years ago and I didn't know Mariah Carey's fantasy. So, uh, I feel like you're throwing it back in my face and I thought you were my friend.

• 19:17Speaker 03

  It turns out first impressions matter. I think that's what I'm learning from this research. You were able to capture many of those and I tried to deceive you on a number of them.

• 19:27Speaker 04

  Well, I have another takeaway. In addition to, you know, you either know it or you don't. It's like songs that you know really well are easy to identify.

• 19:34Speaker 03

  That's right.

• 19:35Speaker 04

  Songs that you've heard a million times, right? Those are the ones that you can just instinctually get. Songs that you might be familiar with, but aren't like, you know, buried deep in your synaptical pathways, harder to get.

• 19:53Speaker 01

  This episode is brought to you by Michelob Ultra. Good times mean competitions between you and your friends. Like seeing who can throw some pigskin the farthest or rush the field the fastest. Winner gets an ultra. Because it's not just a superior light beer, it's also giving fans superior access to their favorite sporting events. Superior is worth playing for. Visit michelobultra.com/superioraccess to enter. Enjoy responsibly. Copyright 2026 Anheuser Busch InBev Michelob Ultra Beer, St. Louis, Missouri.

• 20:21Speaker 06

  Are your ad campaigns lighting up the dashboard? But not the pipeline? That's bullspend and marketers are calling it out in. Dashboard Confessions.

• 20:30Speaker 07

  My boss asked for results, so I opened my dashboard for the only positive sounding metric I had. Impressions.

• 20:38Speaker 06

  Cut the bullspend. See revenue, not just reach. LinkedIn delivers the highest return on ad spend of major ad networks. Advertise on LinkedIn. Spend $250 on your first campaign and get a $250 credit. Go to LinkedIn.com/campaign. Terms and conditions apply.

• 20:51Speaker 08

  College football is back. So Hilton called to me, the superstition concierge, to make your fan rituals a reality. Need a room to match your lucky number? We got you. Want to make sure our team doesn't wash your lucky jersey? Oh, that smells lucky. Hilton's unmatched hospitality can keep up with any superstition. Even a marching band wake up call at 5:55 in 55 seconds. Hit it. When you need a team that will do whatever it takes on game day, it matters where you stay. Hilton, for the stay.

• 21:26Speaker 03

  It turns out you can reset your expectations about songs though, Nate. You know, at the beginning of the show, I played you "Let's Get It Started" by The Black Eyed Peas. If you were alive back in the 2000s, you would know that it was originally released in 2003 as "Let's Get Our Word," which at the time was slang for getting wasted. The song even included a bridge about an epileptic seizure. Disability rights advocates were rightly appalled at this song, but somehow the song is given a second chance to introduce itself to the world. The Black Eyed Peas rewrite it for the 2004 NBA playoffs and it's a hit.

• 21:58Speaker 04

  So you're telling me that Big Ben Wallace and the 2004 Detroit Pistons are responsible for saving the reputations and careers of the Black Eyed Peas?

• 22:10Speaker 03

  That's right. I mean, I'm willing to admit that there have been good introductions in the past. So many classic tracks. I mean, I think about like, uh, The Who are so good at intros.

• 22:21Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 22:28Speaker 04

  Hold on a second. I'm just gonna go microwave a burrito.

• 22:33Speaker 03

  You won't be fooled again by another long intro. I understand. While you're microwaving your burrito, I'm gonna play you Lynyrd Skynyrd's Free Bird.

• 22:47Speaker 03

  I mean, you're basically strapped in for a nine-minute-long song now, right?

• 22:51Speaker 04

  Totally. You gotta refill your lighter during that intro, perhaps?

• 22:55Speaker 03

  These are both the epically long variety. How about the kind that gets you dancing from beat one?

• 23:10Speaker 03

  It's a long break in superstition.

• 23:15Speaker 04

  I love this, Charlie. It's making me think of one of my favorite stories from like the annals of pop history, which is when The Temptations were recording Papa Was a Rolling Stone.

• 23:31Speaker 04

  Which has an absurdly long intro.

• 23:33Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 23:34Speaker 04

  The producer of the track, Norman Whitfield, didn't tell the lead singer, Dennis Edwards, when he was gonna come in. And Dennis Edwards was just in the recording studio just getting pissed, being like, what? This intro's still going on. There's strings. There's like, like what? And Norman Whitfield intentionally did that because he wanted Dennis Edwards to sound a little mad when he started singing that song to like, you know, it's a song about an absentee father and he wanted to have like an edge in his voice. And Dennis Edwards finally comes in after, I don't know, like two, three minutes and goes, "It was the 3rd of September."

• 24:14Speaker 04

  And he is, he sounds pissed and it's because he actually is because of that long intro.

• 24:20Speaker 03

  I love that story. It tells us that yes, the intro can be purposeful. There were so many great classic ones. I mean, Nate, can I play you one more?

• 24:28Speaker 04

  As long as I don't have to guess it, yes.

• 24:38Speaker 04

  How dare you?

• 24:39Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 24:40Speaker 04

  How dare you?

• 24:42Speaker 03

  That's Rick Astley's "Never Gonna Give You Up." You just got Rick rolled. I mean, but it's a great intro.

• 24:49Speaker 04

  I'm, I'm speechless. Yeah, it is. It is a good intro. It is a good intro.

• 24:53Speaker 03

  I just feel like intros maybe haven't been as good lately. I don't know. I, I'm trying to get into my head of like, why is my primary advice like kill the intro? Maybe it's that, you know, our sort of nostalgia loop obsessed culture has made it so that intros are less original. I found this really long playlist recently called Pairs of Songs with Eerily Similar Beginnings, created by someone with some of the best ears in music.

• 25:23Speaker 09

  I'm Grace Thelman. I am a music writer and professional playlist maker.

• 25:27Speaker 03

  So for the past 12 years, Grace has been collecting songs that sound alike in their introduction. Sonic Twins, if you will. And it started with a new song that sounded like an old song.

• 25:38Speaker 09

  I had heard Back to Black by Amy Winehouse and, um, Baby Love by The Supremes. I had noticed that like they started very similarly.

• 25:48Speaker 03

  Once she heard this first pairing, she started hearing them everywhere. And they weren't just new and old songs. They were also songs that were sometimes made in the same era.

• 25:55Speaker 09

  Then I noticed there was a Kinks song and a Beach Boys song. Kinks Sweet Lady Genevieve and Beach Boys God Only Knows. Those started the same.

• 26:02Speaker 04

  Whoa. Same key and everything? Yep. Grace has some sharp ears.

• 26:07Speaker 03

  This playlist is full of songs where like they start with the same chord, the first few notes. They're almost always in the exact same key. And what's interesting is that for Grace, that this playlist ended up being less about things sounding the same and often more about finding really unlikely connections between songs of very different types.

• 26:26Speaker 09

  I have some favorites. I have like, um, D'Angelo and Eric Satie one. There's this Eric Satie piece that I would play called Je Te Verre on the piano.

• 26:41Speaker 04

  What?

• 26:42Speaker 03

  She says it sounds like D'Angelo's Back to the Future Part One from Black Messiah.

• 26:50Speaker 04

  That is a deep pull.

• 26:52Speaker 03

  So ultimately what Grace finds from this playlist hunting that she's been doing for over a decade is that intros have a lot of information to tell you that they're worth paying attention to.

• 27:01Speaker 09

  I mean, like everybody, especially now, my, my attention span is short, but it always has been even before the introduction of smartphones into my life. And I really, and I find myself being judgy on the first three seconds. Like this is what your first impression is. Like what you, you, the artist had decided that the first impression of me will be. And I know you thought really, really hard about it. And I know that for a lot of artists, it's like, they want you to keep your attention. And so I think there are some artists who I'm sure, like you had said before, like really take their time and luxury over like six minutes of, of guitar or, or whatever. But I just think even that itself is informative. Oh, you're the type of artist that, that thinks that, I, I now think that that's important

• 27:44Speaker 09

  because if you've decided to keep that in there, even though I might be bored by it, what does that say about the rest of the song? Is this a song where like I'm gonna have to do close listening where like, you know, is it, the way I listen to like minimalist music where it's kind of the same thing over and over for a while and I really appreciate the small changes. So if you have a kind of boring intro, then I might go, oh, okay. I might have to like listen to really closely to, to what you're doing and listen for a change. Um, but at the end of the day, my favorite intros are the ones that, that catch my attention and, and the ones that, uh,

• 28:18Speaker 09

  just try to like be as flashy as possible.

• 28:21Speaker 04

  I love what Grace is saying here. It's like whether it's long, whether it's short, whether it's, you know, eye popping or whether it's calm.

• 28:30Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 28:31Speaker 04

  The first thing you hear in a track is essentially announcing to a listener like, this is who I am. This is my sound. This is my artistry. These are my musical values. And going back to our, you know, thin slicing thing, it's like you can get that from maybe just

• 28:49Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 28:49Speaker 04

  a couple hundred milliseconds of sound. You, you learn so much about an artist, which is a, a way I've never really thought about music before, honestly.

• 28:58Speaker 03

  In an episode of Switched on Pop long ago, we theorized this idea of the pop overture, where artists would put a secret chorus melody into the beginning of their song just so that it's familiar by the time you hear it again. I think one of the first ones we identified was "Closer" by The Chainsmokers, featuring Halsey.

• 29:27Speaker 03

  Da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, we ain't never getting older.

• 29:34Speaker 04

  Yeah, okay. Right, so what do you call that? A subliminal chorus?

• 29:40Speaker 03

  Right, exactly. So, so people are basically like, all right, let's get the chorus first, but we're gonna have to have an intro. What are we gonna do about it? And yet, since that sort of like 2010's EDM era where we're hearing a lot of those pop overtures, more and more, the intro has just been chopped off.

• 29:57Speaker 04

  Hmm.

• 29:57Speaker 03

  Take for example Sabrina Carpenter and her song Taste.

• 30:01Speaker 10

  Oh, I leave quite an impression, five feet to be exact.

• 30:09Speaker 03

  She leaves such a strong impression, she doesn't even need a first impression. There is no intro. Boom, right into the song. Benson Boone does the same thing on Sorry, I'm Here For Someone Else.

• 30:20Speaker 11

  I'm sorry I'm here for someone else, but it's good to see your face.

• 30:27Speaker 03

  Unless you count that dunkum as an intro, but I don't think that's enough.

• 30:32Speaker 04

  I wouldn't say.

• 30:33Speaker 03

  Another recent hit does the same thing. Stella Lefty's Boston.

• 30:35Speaker 12

  On a train back to Boston and we're jumping the gun and I'm telling you, baby, this the part I'd run, but I like it when you're nice, like it when you're nice.

• 30:47Speaker 03

  No intro.

• 30:48Speaker 04

  Maybe part of the reason we used to have intros was for radio DJs to be able to transition between songs. I'm just making this up as we go.

• 30:58Speaker 03

  That's a good reason.

• 30:58Speaker 04

  Like, is there an explanation, perhaps that's technological, when you're able to, you know, pull up a song at will on a streaming device? You don't necessarily need to have that padding of the intro. I, I, I'd have to think more about this, but I'm not ready to say it's just a case of like, oh, people don't have attention spans anymore.

• 31:19Speaker 03

  You know, the technology is certainly a reason. You know, we've listened to a number of intros earlier on that were over 30 seconds long. A song on streaming platforms usually does not count as a full stream unless someone has listened to at least 30 seconds of it. And so if you haven't given someone some interesting material early on, you know, they might hit skip and go to the next song, which is incredibly easy now. I mean, you used to have to get up, you know, change records. That was kind of a pain. And so, yeah, people have much more flexible listening habits, perhaps.

• 31:45Speaker 04

  I'm sure there's some music fans who are distressed that the introduction might be a lost art, but I, I feel pretty confident saying that it's not going anywhere. And in fact, I can back this up because I went and spoke to one of the busiest music producers in the game right now. Someone who's worked with Taylor Swift, Noah Khan, Gracie Abrams, and has made music for decades with his band, The National. It's Aaron Dessner. And Aaron is such a fun person to talk to about this topic because not only has he worked on like some massive hits of the last few years, but he's really thoughtful and

• 32:30Speaker 04

  very generous about how he approaches making a song. So I feel like he's the perfect person for us to hear from about how and why introductions still matter in the world of music. And the very first song I asked him about, it might be the biggest track he's worked on. It's Cardigan by Taylor Swift, and it has a very unique intro.

• 33:00Speaker 13

  Vintage tea, brand new phone, high heels on, cobblestones. When you are young, they assume you know nothing.

• 33:12Speaker 04

  Here's what Aaron had to say about this introduction.

• 33:14Speaker 14

  That one's interesting. It's actually what you hear when that song starts, you hear the air conditioning in a, in the backstage of a, of an arena in Germany where The National was playing, where I wrote it, because it was really cold. It was like a hockey arena in Germany or something, an awful, awful situation. But then that's me patting my leg, you know, like playing drums on my leg, which I often do, which I kind of learned, I learned over time that if you record yourself like playing surfaces or your body and record it with an iPhone, it just sounds cool. I wrote the music first and Taylor wrote to it. I think she said that when she heard that sound of the, what is me like playing my, my

• 33:59Speaker 14

  thigh essentially, that it reminded her of someone walking like on cobblestones in high heels, like unevenly. And that gave her an image in her mind of sort of like led her into the, the narrative that she wrote, you know?

• 34:15Speaker 03

  That's wild. Okay. I was like, hmm, choruses are the most important thing. It's the thing you write first. And in fact, the entire song concept came from like Aaron Dessner just going, honestly?

• 34:30Speaker 04

  I know. It's wild to think that one of the biggest songs off Taylor Swift's album Folklore starts with air conditioning from a backstage room in a German like stadium, and then Aaron Dessner just slapping his thighs. That's wild.

• 34:48Speaker 03

  Wow, okay. He has a lot to teach us.

• 34:50Speaker 04

  Speaking of introductions, I also had this theory that another Taylor Swift song might be inspired by one of Aaron Dessner's tracks for The National. There's a national song called "The System Only Dreams in Total Darkness" that has a really striking opening.

• 35:25Speaker 04

  Those angelic voices, they're a little reminiscent of the Taylor Swift song from Tortured Poets Department that Aaron Dessner produced called "So Long London."

• 35:56Speaker 03

  Those breathy cathedral vocals? Yeah, I hear it.

• 36:01Speaker 04

  So I asked Aaron, hey, I have this conspiracy theory that these two songs are related. Is there any truth to it? Here's what he said.

• 36:09Speaker 14

  I'm gonna debunk that.

• 36:10Speaker 03

  Oh.

• 36:11Speaker 14

  It's a good story how this happened. Taylor was, she actually, she arranged those vocals to go at the end of the song. So she was doing those coral, like these angelic coral parts over the end of the last chorus of the song, the kind of that you hear when you listen to the song, you'll hear her doing that. But then she actually said, but what if that went at the beginning of the song? Taylor is interesting when she records because she's kind of mapped it out in her head. I think part of it's like, comes naturally to her. It's also because she's been thinking about it, but so she'll come in and like kind of

• 36:52Speaker 14

  have a whole architecture in her head that she's gonna chase down. And that was one of those things that then we were like, oh, wow, that's so beautiful. But it was at the beginning and then she kind of sang more to it.

• 37:03Speaker 04

  So I was wrong, but it did kind of teach me something, which is that you might think the introduction is the first thing you make when you're making a song, you know? Seems like kind of logical. Start with the intro and then keep going.

• 37:15Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 37:16Speaker 04

  And it turns out that is not the case. In fact, it might be the last thing you, you do is you, you make the whole song and then you're like, okay, now what do we put at the very beginning? And the case of this song, it's what you did at the very end.

• 37:29Speaker 04

  Another really fun introduction that Aaron's cooked up is actually the lead single from Gracie Abrams' forthcoming album. It's called Hit The Wall. And I love what Aaron and Gracie did at the beginning of this track.

• 37:55Speaker 10

  I'm a crack in the pavement, I'm a slipknot, I'm afraid that my fortress is a glass box.

• 38:03Speaker 03

  That is a cool opening sequence. It's like.

• 38:06Speaker 04

  Right?

• 38:07Speaker 03

  It's really organic and yet it feels electronic?

• 38:10Speaker 04

  Yeah, I had a similar reaction. I had another theory that I wanted to share with Aaron. I was like, maybe there's some inspiration from minimalist music, you know, Philip Glass, Steve Reich. Is there any truth there? Let's find out.

• 38:25Speaker 14

  The story of that song is basically that I was searching for something to inspire Gracie, because I feel like we were, we were hitting a wall creatively with the album where it was like, literally, we were kind of stuck where we had like all these different songs and, but we didn't have the centerpiece of it or like the, the glue. And so I was in the studio early searching one day and just was like, fuck it, I'm gonna make the, the coolest thing I can make. I'm gonna sample myself, I'm gonna sequence myself and I'm gonna write chords. And then she walked into that, you know, and she just started and she wrote the song and like, it just, because it's like triggered her brain. And then we were, we felt, oh, hit the wall.

• 39:08Speaker 14

  That's the, that's the glue that binds everything else together because it's kind of minimalist, weird avant garde pop song, but it's also like clearly organic, you know, like related to the folkier side of her world, but then lyrically, it's really.

• 39:26Speaker 14

  Self reflective and existential and just brilliant in the way that she's like looking at herself and the patterns of breakdowns and kind of what her life has been like in recent years and, and, and all the success too. But like, I think, um, the intro is really, on that song, I would say it's very, it's very important. It sets the table in a way and kind of it, it piques your curiosity.

• 39:53Speaker 04

  So the intro for Hit the Wall is actually pretty short, but I feel like it captures so much of not only the song, but also, you know, what went into creating it.

• 40:02Speaker 03

  It's the whole inspiration for writing it. Yeah.

• 40:04Speaker 04

  So when Aaron and I were talking, he was actually speaking to me from his studio called Long Pond in upstate New York, where so many artists, including Taylor, have recorded. And I asked him if there was an introduction from his work that stood out. And he kind of looked around his studio and then he told me this.

• 40:29Speaker 14

  As far as like intros and the introduction of something like Noah Khan, you know, The Great Divide came out recently and, and he, we made a bunch of songs for it. End of August, which opens his record. So it's the intro to his new record. And I was kind of, I was kind of shocked when he told me it was the first song because it's kind of this, in general, it's different. It was like a new world in a way for him. But he had written the like, that kind of impressionistic piano that you hear at the beginning that he sings to. And I created this drone around him. And when we recorded it, it was August. And, and, and here you can actually see like that pond right there. And there's just a ton of crickets and

• 41:14Speaker 14

  frogs and all birds and all kinds of noise making beautiful things. And so we just, I just opened the door and the piano mics on the, on the U1 Yamaha U1 are right there. And so you really, it's like, you hear just late summer feeling and like this drone of organs and other instruments. And he kind of saw that through with me and trusted it so much and loved it so much to make it the, the intro to his record and just how it's being received. That to me is really affirming, life affirming and art affirming. And just felt like, oh, he took a, he took a risk, definitely putting like a long, sort of out

• 41:59Speaker 14

  there song as the first thing that people would, would hear. So I really appreciated that.

• 42:04Speaker 03

  Oh, man. I feel like I've had it all wrong.

• 42:07Speaker 04

  It's right. The, the introduction is alive and well. I mean, take it from one of the most in-demand producers in pop right now.

• 42:15Speaker 03

  And even those long intros, they can be powerful starts of creation. They can help read us into a song. Maybe I've been wrong this whole time.

• 42:30Speaker 04

  Okay. So if you're changing your tune on the introduction, Charlie.

• 42:35Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 42:35Speaker 04

  What, how, how do we want to think about this structural part of the song? Like, what, what is its role? How does one approach it? How are we going to wrap this thing up?

• 42:45Speaker 03

  Uh, well, first of all, I need to make a formal apology to all of my students.

• 42:50Speaker 03

  But, you know, to that point, like, an introduction has to make a memorable and unique first impression. Like, it's got to set that scene, but it can't do so in a way that it's just like repeating the same chords. It, it has to be evolving and taking you somewhere. The sort of musical gesture can't overstay its welcome.

• 43:10Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 43:10Speaker 03

  It has to set up all of our expectations of where the song is going to eventually go. And it has to do that really quickly. It's a lot to pull off as a, as a musician. It's hard work.

• 43:19Speaker 04

  So we've discovered the introduction is alive and well. In fact, it might be one of the most important parts of the song.

• 43:25Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 43:26Speaker 04

  Hopefully we've introduced ourself well. We've captured that, uh, thin slice of your attention for anyone finding us on Netflix who just, you know, scrolled away from binge watching, uh, Bridgerton or, or Love is Blind and stumbled upon our humble podcast. Uh, we hope you come back because we have a whole series planned. What comes after the introduction, Charles?

• 43:48Speaker 03

  Well, the intro matters because you don't get the whole story unless you grab someone's attention and you pull them right into the verse.

• 43:54Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 43:55Speaker 03

  And next week, I believe that Nate, you are going to argue that justice is due for the verse.

• 44:00Speaker 04

  Yes. Very, a very underrated part of song structure. IMO.

• 44:05Speaker 03

  Until then, thanks for watching.

• 44:07Speaker 04

  Thanks for listening.

• 44:07Speaker 03

  And listening.

• 44:08Speaker 04

  Oh. There you go. Got to work on that.

• 44:28Speaker 15

  This episode is brought to you by Born in Roma Fragrances by Valentino Beauty, the iconic fragrance duo. Donna Born in Roma Od parfum is a feminine fragrance featuring juicy black currant, sensual jasmine, woody cashmerin, and warm vanilla. Its masculine counterpart, Womo Born in Roma Od toilette, has notes of fresh violet leaf, aromatic sage, green vetiver, spicy ginger, and mineral salt. Shop at mazies.com.

• 44:58Speaker 16

  Your heart can tell you a lot about your health. Apple Watch Series 12 measures your heart rate every five seconds with the most accurate heart rate sensing in wearable. So your vitals app, now with heart rate variability, can tell you when something is off. And your readiness score can let you know when to rest and when to push. Hear the story in every heartbeat with Apple Watch Series 12. The features described are for wellness purposes only and not for medical use. iPhone 11 or later required. Based on Apple conducted study of heart rate accuracy, August 2026. Visit apple.com slash Apple Watch Series 12.