February 14, 2025 • 36 mins
Nothing says romance like a perfect playlist—except, maybe, a special network-wide episode about love songs.
In this Valentine’s Day special, 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, the legendary songwriter Babyface talks about how young love shaped his most enduring ballads, Malcolm Gladwell breaks down the perfect break up song, and Ben Naddaff-Hafrey writes a love song of his own.
Whether you're mid-swoon or nursing a broken heart, this episode is our valentine to you.
Listen to Broken Record’s interview with Babyface.
Listen to a Revisionist History episode about sad songs.
And hear more from Ben’s band, Rookin.
Plus, our battle of the playlists continues… here’s Leah’s sad songs playlist. And Justin’s for love songs. Pick your fighter and… enjoy!
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:15):
Pushkin.
Speaker 2 (00:22):
Hey everyone, Welcome to all you lovers out there.
Speaker 3 (00:25):
This is Justin Richmond and I'm Leah Rose.
Speaker 1 (00:27):
We're the host of Broken Record, where we interview your
favorite musicians and bring to life the stories behind their music,
behind some.
Speaker 2 (00:34):
Of your favorite recordings.
Speaker 1 (00:36):
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.
Speaker 3 (00:45):
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.
Speaker 1 (00:54):
Ros's gonna be talking to some of our friends here
at Pushkin, people who have equally strong opinions about the
songs they love.
Speaker 2 (01:01):
I'll be talking about Gladwell, who.
Speaker 1 (01:03):
Has a very Gladwelling intake about why he believes country
is the best genre for love song and I can
guarantee it's not for the reason you may think.
Speaker 4 (01:12):
It's depressive music. That's what it is.
Speaker 3 (01:15):
Well also hear from Ben nattif Hoffrey, the sometimes host
of the Last Archive, about a love song he wrote
that's so good it helped him score his Forever, Valentine.
Speaker 5 (01:26):
I think that folk music does love songs the best.
Speaker 3 (01:29):
But first, justin I'm going to ask you what I
think is a central question of today's episode. I think
I know what you're gonna say. But out of every
genre and subgenre that exists today, which one do you
think does love songs the best?
Speaker 2 (01:47):
R and B?
Speaker 5 (01:48):
I knew it.
Speaker 1 (01:49):
Look, when you think about it, it's really the shorthand
in music in an audio for love, Like if you
were scoring a love scene in a movie for like
Netflix or like the most amount of people are possible.
Speaker 2 (01:59):
To watch, like, you would probably throw in an R and.
Speaker 1 (02:01):
B song, you know, maybe uh yeah, you know Al Green,
Let's stay Together.
Speaker 5 (02:13):
I'm so.
Speaker 6 (02:18):
Come on.
Speaker 2 (02:18):
That's that's really Those are the sounds of love right there.
Speaker 7 (02:20):
You know.
Speaker 3 (02:21):
It's very much like what song are you choosing for
the first dance at your wedding?
Speaker 1 (02:25):
The first right, the first, the first slow dance. It's
your junior high welcome dance, you know what I'm saying,
Or you're a senior prompt 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 reason in here, because I think R and
B kind of gets short shrift in the music world,
like you know, rock and roll and hip hop. I've
(02:48):
taken up all the air in the room for sixty
years now, yeah, you know, since since the since the
British invasion.
Speaker 3 (02:54):
A couple of years were spent on em but yeah.
Speaker 1 (02:57):
A couple of years, yeah, right, scrill X was big
there for yeah, yeah, Yeah, 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 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.
Speaker 2 (03:13):
Of gospel, you know, like.
Speaker 1 (03:15):
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 sent a romantic love.
(03:35):
So they just take God out and put in a man,
a woman, a lover, you know, a classic example is
Sam Cook, who's originally with the gospel group the Soulsters,
and he releases a song He's so Wonderful, which is,
you know, it's a gospel.
Speaker 8 (03:49):
Track, wonderful, God, so.
Speaker 1 (03:59):
Wonderful than when Sam Cook 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.
Speaker 2 (04:12):
Lovable, lovable, My.
Speaker 8 (04:19):
She's lovable.
Speaker 1 (04:22):
So then how could you not say that R and
B isn't like the preeminent genre for love songs.
Speaker 2 (04:27):
It's like it's it has to do with the.
Speaker 1 (04:29):
The ethereal and the theological, down to the romantic and
the platonic, like it's everything.
Speaker 3 (04:35):
And then it just gets dirtier and dirtier as the
years go on. And then we landed the song.
Speaker 1 (04:40):
Song Yeah, shout out to I Love Cisco and that's
a great album.
Speaker 2 (04:45):
I love the song.
Speaker 3 (04:46):
R and B does do love very very well. But
there's other genres too. I mean, look at Dolly Parton
on Joelene. She's bagging and she's pleading and she's out
of her mind. Please don't take my man.
Speaker 2 (04:58):
But then who takes?
Speaker 1 (05:00):
And we love Dolly, But then who takes a Dolly
song like I'll Always Love You and takes it to
the next level Whitney Whitney.
Speaker 3 (05:24):
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 a Broken Record back
in twenty twenty three. And he wrote some of Whitney's
biggest hits.
Speaker 1 (05:37):
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 you know. Yeah,
they also happened to be hits. Boys and Men's End
of the Road Mariah carries We Belong Together Breathe Again
by Tony Braxton.
Speaker 3 (05:53):
Yes, that was such a great interview.
Speaker 1 (05:55):
Yeah, man, I mean I'm sitting there with baby Face
and I'm watching him play guitar in front of me.
It was just crazy, you know. And he's he's left handed,
he plays upside down like Hendrix. I mean, he's not
as good as a guitar players Hendrix, but I mean
it was just incredible would be that person up close
with them and seeing how he wrote these songs, and
he played for me a song he's never recorded with anyone,
(06:17):
and it's the very first song he ever wrote about
an early love of his first his first love actually
in high school.
Speaker 3 (06:24):
Let's hear some of that.
Speaker 7 (06:26):
Here I go falling in love again.
Speaker 9 (06:28):
That was my first song, and I wrote it for
a girl because I was like in love and stuff, and.
Speaker 7 (06:35):
So the guitar really was just an instrument.
Speaker 9 (06:37):
For me to get these songs out of me. I
always like to say, even when I played and learn
things on the piano, i play, I'm not really a
piano player.
Speaker 7 (06:46):
I learned things.
Speaker 9 (06:48):
To support my songwriting, and that's what I did.
Speaker 7 (06:53):
Then I turned that into my first song.
Speaker 9 (06:56):
So I was just learning chords to support out my
little songs.
Speaker 5 (07:00):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (07:01):
And for you, songwriting was about writing songs for the
girls you were in.
Speaker 9 (07:06):
Love with crush and it was it was purely kind
of an escape, so to say, Wow, it wasn't anything
but that. I didn't think they were gonna go anywhere,
but that was the that was the drive, and.
Speaker 1 (07:19):
You would have been like eleven twelve, ten, eleven twelve, yeah, yeah,
I can't play a deal song sweet November.
Speaker 8 (07:26):
But mad that time that will read bad.
Speaker 1 (07:39):
That we Wow, man, that's that's a great song.
Speaker 9 (07:45):
I wrote that right out of high school. Out of
high school, yeah, it was. It was because I was
a man child. So it was second year or something,
seventy eight or so, seventy eight seventy nine, right in
that time.
Speaker 7 (08:02):
So it was a girl. It was like this one girl.
She was like the most.
Speaker 9 (08:08):
While we were in highigh 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 and then
we actually started dating.
Speaker 7 (08:20):
I remember Daryl was like, how how was this even happening?
How do you have her?
Speaker 9 (08:25):
And then I remember we went to go see Brookshields
Endless Love when I saw Endless Love together and then
something happened, I think before we were going going away
in Manchild, all of a sudden she stopped calling me
and I couldn't I couldn't reach her, and I don't
(08:47):
know what happened, but it was just like we're just
like broken up. And then there was no cell phones,
there was no good you couldn't reach our on the phone,
and no social media. It was just done. And I
was really messed up about it. And and that's when
I wrote this, you know, because you know that was
the time period. It was in the fall, and of
(09:08):
a sudden, I was thinking maybe maybe when I come back,
maybe maybe it's November, we'll get back together and find it.
Speaker 7 (09:14):
So that was actually a loss song that was written
way back then.
Speaker 1 (09:18):
And would you have written the words or would.
Speaker 7 (09:21):
You write the words for piano and wrote it's.
Speaker 1 (09:23):
Like the piano.
Speaker 9 (09:24):
Yeah, wow, So.
Speaker 1 (09:27):
Because it's kind of beautiful even just divorced from the music,
if you just look at the words like high level.
Speaker 2 (09:33):
You know.
Speaker 9 (09:33):
Yeah, it was when all the first arrived. You with
my lady, we're dating.
Speaker 1 (09:38):
It was the second reign of Ittom. We shared a feeling.
Speaker 9 (09:40):
Yeah, come on, that's it's like we start dating and
then all of a sudden we like I remember it
was raining and like it looks like something's gonna happen here.
Speaker 1 (09:50):
So that almost really personal. Yeah, exhale was more from
watching the movie.
Speaker 7 (09:57):
Watching the movie.
Speaker 1 (09:58):
You don't necessarily have to write from personal experience. You can,
you can, but you can watch others and.
Speaker 9 (10:03):
No, yeah, it's really about watching others 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? Yeah, and said, if you just kind
of think of it and think of whatever they go
through and think out how you'd feel, you know, it's
not that hard to figure out. Damn, that's fucked up. Yeah,
(10:26):
I feel you know, I think all right about that,
you know. And as a kid that was always falling
in love and thinking I.
Speaker 1 (10:34):
Was in love, feeling like you.
Speaker 7 (10:37):
Know, that's what it was.
Speaker 9 (10:39):
My very first song was about a girl named round
the new bould always say her name, and that was
in here I Go falling in love again. 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 Better Taste of Life. Oh those are
(11:02):
feelings that I that I had, and everything was exaggerated.
I had written a song called so Shy, So there
were pieces, there were be pieces of things of songs
that I would write. I wrote a song called Anita,
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
(11:22):
senior year. Can never recorded, I think so. I think
I let a group record as they turned into a gospel.
Speaker 1 (11:27):
Do you remember any of it?
Speaker 7 (11:29):
Yeah? Could you play a little of it? I don't
know what my voice is like right now.
Speaker 10 (11:37):
When I think Spanish, I remember a special feeling sweet se.
Speaker 7 (11:48):
Then I think.
Speaker 10 (11:51):
Spanish show moments. Those were special times. You told me
you can.
Speaker 2 (12:01):
You know when.
Speaker 10 (12:04):
Blown away?
Speaker 8 (12:06):
I hope you know why now Mark, I will always
I love you for you know man of thinking Libeta song,
(12:28):
I God love you then, my dude right now and.
Speaker 7 (12:42):
That's okay.
Speaker 1 (12:45):
You can hear all of my conversation with baby Face
and the broken record episode that was 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,
Pushing and producer Ben out of Paffrey tells Lea about
writing his own love song.
Speaker 5 (13:18):
I think that folk music does love songs the best.
Speaker 3 (13:21):
That star Pushkin, producer and sometimes host of the Last Archive,
Ben Natif Haffrey Folker Country.
Speaker 5 (13:27):
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, like I think like a breakup
song or a lost love song is superior to a
straight up love song. Me too, because I think, like you,
(13:49):
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 yeah, romance song that
(14:10):
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.
Speaker 3 (14:23):
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 Ruken.
Speaker 5 (14:38):
Yes, and this is part of my long con to
get interviewed on Broken Record for my music.
Speaker 2 (14:44):
Well you're class.
Speaker 6 (14:45):
Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 3 (14:47):
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
(15:07):
set the stage for us. How did this song come
to be?
Speaker 6 (15:12):
Well?
Speaker 5 (15:12):
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,
(15:34):
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. Oh my god,
I thought it would be like fun to put on
my wall, but it looked terrifying, And that was like
(15:58):
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 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?
(16:18):
I was like that 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 is like a crucial thing. I just was like
not super taking care of myself, Like everything was totally fine,
but my life was not in order. And then I
(16:40):
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 Julie and I had been talking more and started
seeing each other in Nashville and also in New York,
(17:02):
that slowly I had begun to set up my room.
I got shades through 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
because that was by then a crucial part of the
decor and my identity and remains. So I don't remember
what I did with the change corner. There's a good
(17:24):
chance to change corner sort of remained.
Speaker 3 (17:26):
The growing up process is a slow one.
Speaker 5 (17:28):
The growing up process is a slow one, but it began.
It began with fixing up that first room. 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
(17:49):
was shown me around and we went to like a
Lebanese church, and I'm Lebanese and it was kind of
like a so they just wandered in because they were
having like a food festival kind of thing.
Speaker 1 (17:59):
Like.
Speaker 5 (17:59):
There were a lot of wonderful, serendipitous things. Yeah, And
I remember it was after that visit, I think on
the day that she had left, but I was hanging
out in my room and I was playing guitar and
I started writing this song. Like a lot of hack
(18:22):
guitar players, I use a lot of open tunings, and
around that time I had been playing the Rain Song
by led Zeppelin, which is a version of open C tuning,
and so I just would 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.
(18:44):
If I didn't know.
Speaker 10 (18:46):
You ran.
Speaker 11 (18:50):
Whatever the plans upon the window falling away, back up
my clean clothes with complain you know.
Speaker 5 (19:07):
When 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
(19:29):
to the place where I wanted to do that.
Speaker 3 (19:32):
At what point did you realize I'm writing a love
song for Julia.
Speaker 5 (19:35):
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.
Speaker 8 (19:50):
I didn't know you.
Speaker 5 (19:55):
I didn't know, 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
(20:15):
as like an escape patch from like one or another
job that we didn't want to do, 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 rerecording 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 a
(20:38):
thing that I would always like flatly deny. Did she
come to shows? And she would like We would always
have these long introductions to our songs about Often we
wrote historical songs 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
(20:58):
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 ahead when we were like
crowdfunding an album that we were doing, which is a
fancy way of saying like asking our friends for money,
and there was a thing that we offered that was
like a handwritten lyrics sheet with the story behind the song.
(21:22):
And so Julia bought that it requested a lyric sheet
with the story behind the song for this song, 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 again sort of as like a joke
(21:45):
in return, But it wasn't until we got engaged that
I then did actually deliver the lyrics sheet with the
story as a kind of like, you know, obviously this
is a song about you.
Speaker 6 (21:55):
In the way I feel about you, seen.
Speaker 8 (22:07):
How you have fats it out.
Speaker 3 (22:17):
If I don't know you, do you have a favorite
part of the song.
Speaker 5 (22:25):
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 a lot of hafts.
Speaker 8 (22:43):
Put back in, Alix.
Speaker 11 (22:49):
And want to have.
Speaker 10 (22:51):
With you.
Speaker 11 (22:52):
Still you haven't closed.
Speaker 12 (22:55):
All the dogs to the night still feels good, and
lean mind into your side.
Speaker 8 (23:09):
Come to me the first snow.
Speaker 12 (23:13):
Then when that sound, Yeah, that was so Na you said,
all right, canv me back?
Speaker 1 (23:31):
Well?
Speaker 3 (23:32):
Thank you so much, Ben, thanks for having me.
Speaker 5 (23:34):
This was fun, Happy Valentine's Day.
Speaker 3 (23:41):
Such a beautiful song. Again, that's if I didn't know
you by now by Ruken. 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 wais
in and he gets us thinking about this question in
an entirely different way.
Speaker 4 (24:14):
Yeah, I don't think country music does good love songs.
I think it does good breakup songs, heartbreak songs. It
does the reverse.
Speaker 1 (24:25):
Malcolm Gladwell is a best selling 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 going to have to get his take.
Speaker 4 (24:37):
So country music, it's true, 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 Revision's 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. The sad songs
(25:01):
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,
try to pretend to.
Speaker 2 (25:10):
Like.
Speaker 4 (25:10):
I gave the example of Wild Horses, which is supposed
to be a sad song. It's not sad. What's sad
about it?
Speaker 2 (25:18):
And also it's like total.
Speaker 4 (25:21):
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
(25:45):
War never got over it. That's what it is.
Speaker 6 (25:48):
You know.
Speaker 4 (25:49):
I was talking to some guy yesterday about the Church
of Christ, which is an almost overwhelmingly Southern denomination of
Christian denomination, and Nashville is the heart of Church of Christ.
The music in the Church of Christ churches is insane.
The Church of Christ is famously has no orchestral music.
(26:11):
They God, 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
Southerators bemoaning the laws of their status and like be
bowing their head in the face of avengeful God, and
(26:32):
no piano to no piano to lift their spirits. No organ,
no piano, no nothing. Use your own voice, dammit. Which
is why, by the way, so many country singers come
for 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. Is insane.
Speaker 2 (26:49):
Yeah, I'm looking at this church. I'm like, this isn't
Roy Orbison.
Speaker 4 (26:53):
They're all Church of Christ.
Speaker 1 (26:54):
They're all Church of Christ, Loretta Lynn Woody Guthrie.
Speaker 4 (26:57):
So, like, is it any surprise the 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 it's like depressive.
Speaker 1 (27:09):
So stands the reason then that, like in the in
the continuum of you know, when it comes to love
songs and the continuum of of sort of emotions that
go along with love, country music would fall more on
the side of sad over a breakup, sad over a
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
(27:31):
songs are that these sad kind of love's not going
right or breaking up.
Speaker 4 (27:35):
One of my favorite country songs about heartbreak is I
think it's George Straight does fort Worth Ever Cross Your Mind?
Which is a classic. I mean, 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 gonna read
to you some lyrics to does Fortworth Ever Cross Your Mind?
(27:57):
This is the opening Stanza Cold fort Worth Beer 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 mind?
Speaker 7 (28:10):
Darling?
Speaker 4 (28:10):
While you're busy burning bridges, burn one for me if
you get time.
Speaker 13 (28:15):
If you get time, there's no orange. Don't fake so
weasy word rausm.
Speaker 4 (28:35):
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 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
(28:55):
to be with him in Dallas, and I know it
hurts you at the time. Well, I wonder now if
it makes a difference. That's for worth across your minds.
It's twenty 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.
Speaker 2 (29:17):
It is like so petty, it's.
Speaker 4 (29:19):
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.
Speaker 1 (29:36):
Yeah, not enough in the details.
Speaker 2 (29:38):
No details.
Speaker 4 (29:39):
Did Prince ever write a song about? Did Saint Paul
ever cross your mind?
Speaker 7 (29:44):
No?
Speaker 4 (29:44):
No, no, because that's not the business he's in. He's
not in the business of mode of evoking this kind
of strong emotion. He was aware of the distinction between
Minneapolis and Saint Paul, but chose chose to overlook it
in his songwriting. That's why he's a rock musician or
a R and B musician. I'm not a country musician.
Speaker 1 (30:08):
So so he's saying that you left me to be
with him, and he's saying Dallas with the level of this,
I mean, that's.
Speaker 4 (30:14):
A you want to have to understand a song. Here
the reason why it's not Does Dallas ever crossed your mind?
That's a wholly different song.
Speaker 7 (30:23):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (30:24):
Yeah, that fort Worth is the is the ugly stepsister.
Fort Worth is one step down the wrung. So she
left him to upgrade and move up. Yeah, that's why
it hurts. She left him for for a dude in
fort Worth. He's fine, he's moved on. He's not a
girl in Dallas. No, no, no, no, no, no. He's at
(30:44):
fort Worth and what does she do? Got up one morning,
drove down the interstate and upgraded her situation, Lee, leaving
him in a pile of tears in fort Worth.
Speaker 1 (30:54):
But you see, this is why, and you know I
want to talking to Leah. This is why I think
R and B is the greatest genre for loves on.
I don't ever want to be the guy in Fort
Worth finding about the woman who left me to upgrade
to go to Dallas.
Speaker 2 (31:08):
Like that's why.
Speaker 1 (31:09):
Like like Whitney Houston, like you know, in her song she
catches like the guide cheating and she says it's not right,
but it's okay.
Speaker 2 (31:15):
I'm gonna make it anyway, like I.
Speaker 1 (31:16):
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 what I want to live.
Speaker 4 (31:25):
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. And
some of this is like, is bethos somebody pronouncing that right?
Bethosathos pathos, pathos are pathos. I think bethos is the
word I want.
Speaker 2 (31:44):
Bethos b A T H.
Speaker 4 (31:45):
Bethos definition. Yeah, anti climax created by an unintentional lapse
in mood from the sublime to the trivial or ridiculous. Like,
that's what does foot worth across your mind?
Speaker 6 (31:56):
Is?
Speaker 4 (31:56):
Is Bethos right?
Speaker 7 (31:58):
That's what that is?
Speaker 4 (31:58):
Right, that's the that's the appeal, that's the appeal of
the of the song.
Speaker 2 (32:04):
Is it is?
Speaker 7 (32:04):
So?
Speaker 1 (32:04):
I mean, is there a hope for the country music family?
Like you know, I guess there are country music songs
explicitly about love. They is not as good. They're just
not They're not the A tier country music songs, right.
I mean there's like Forever and Ever aighty man Randy
Travis people played at their wedding and there.
Speaker 4 (32:19):
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 going to love you forever and ever.
Speaker 2 (32:31):
It's very wistful.
Speaker 4 (32:32):
Forever and Ever. It sounds like he's committing to a
prison sense. Ah man, Like.
Speaker 1 (32:38):
What does it say about you, Malcolm that when you're
asked to think what genre might be the greatest for
love songs?
Speaker 2 (32:48):
The breakup song.
Speaker 4 (32:50):
I Want some 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 See to Baltimore to see
the Orioles and I played some mixtapes in a car
and end he turned to me and he said, I
(33:13):
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 a song.
Speaker 1 (33:26):
But there is no part of being around you that
feelsmird in sadness, depressed.
Speaker 7 (33:32):
No, but I don't.
Speaker 4 (33:33):
I don't want to. I don't like upbeat song So
why it's my problem with rock and roll is just
like just calm down already, like just this, Can we
wallow in our emotions for a moment here and not
just beating your head against the wall in necstasy. It
just it strikes me as unseemly.
Speaker 1 (33:55):
Leah, I mean several points well taken from Malcolm.
Speaker 2 (34:00):
You know, I love country music dearly.
Speaker 1 (34:04):
I think songwriting is impeccable, and they certainly do a
love song in a setnd song incredibly well. But you know,
I just I guess I just I just like a
more happy song. I like a mom Just no, No,
I don't know if I can live like in that
kind of misery.
Speaker 3 (34:21):
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.
Speaker 1 (34:32):
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 it's a man made creation, and there's probably
no way to categorize what sort of genre and what
culture does the love song the best.
Speaker 3 (34:54):
It's just so subjective.
Speaker 1 (34:55):
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 to 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 your ever sort of noncommittalness around any of that.
Speaker 3 (35:17):
Yes, I know, I'm just going to keep it open.
I'm keeping it open for new experiences, and I'm going
to sit here and I'm going to celebrate Valentine's Day
by listening to songs that make me cry.
Speaker 2 (35:27):
Well you know, no, no, no, celebrate Valentine's Day. I
made a great playlist love songs. Listen to that.
Speaker 1 (35:34):
We'll put that in the show notes, and listen to that,
not the sad songs.
Speaker 7 (35:38):
Please.
Speaker 2 (35:39):
Wait.
Speaker 3 (35:39):
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 cute up.
Speaker 1 (35:51):
This episode was produced by Isabelle Carter and edited by
Sarah Nix.
Speaker 2 (35:55):
Our mix engineer is Sarah Bruguier.
Speaker 3 (35:58):
Special thanks to ben Atahoffrey, Malcolm Gladwell, Costanza, Guyardo, Owen Miller,
and Eric Sandler.
Speaker 1 (36:04):
I'm your host, Justin Richmond, and I'm Leah Rose.
Speaker 3 (36:08):
Happy Valentine's Day.
Speaker 8 (36:09):
Eh Yeah
Pushkin.
Speaker 2 (00:22):
Hey everyone, Welcome to all you lovers out there.
Speaker 3 (00:25):
This is Justin Richmond and I'm Leah Rose.
Speaker 1 (00:27):
We're the host of Broken Record, where we interview your
favorite musicians and bring to life the stories behind their music,
behind some.
Speaker 2 (00:34):
Of your favorite recordings.
Speaker 1 (00:36):
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.
Speaker 3 (00:45):
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.
Speaker 1 (00:54):
Ros's gonna be talking to some of our friends here
at Pushkin, people who have equally strong opinions about the
songs they love.
Speaker 2 (01:01):
I'll be talking about Gladwell, who.
Speaker 1 (01:03):
Has a very Gladwelling intake about why he believes country
is the best genre for love song and I can
guarantee it's not for the reason you may think.
Speaker 4 (01:12):
It's depressive music. That's what it is.
Speaker 3 (01:15):
Well also hear from Ben nattif Hoffrey, the sometimes host
of the Last Archive, about a love song he wrote
that's so good it helped him score his Forever, Valentine.
Speaker 5 (01:26):
I think that folk music does love songs the best.
Speaker 3 (01:29):
But first, justin I'm going to ask you what I
think is a central question of today's episode. I think
I know what you're gonna say. But out of every
genre and subgenre that exists today, which one do you
think does love songs the best?
Speaker 2 (01:47):
R and B?
Speaker 5 (01:48):
I knew it.
Speaker 1 (01:49):
Look, when you think about it, it's really the shorthand
in music in an audio for love, Like if you
were scoring a love scene in a movie for like
Netflix or like the most amount of people are possible.
Speaker 2 (01:59):
To watch, like, you would probably throw in an R and.
Speaker 1 (02:01):
B song, you know, maybe uh yeah, you know Al Green,
Let's stay Together.
Speaker 5 (02:13):
I'm so.
Speaker 6 (02:18):
Come on.
Speaker 2 (02:18):
That's that's really Those are the sounds of love right there.
Speaker 7 (02:20):
You know.
Speaker 3 (02:21):
It's very much like what song are you choosing for
the first dance at your wedding?
Speaker 1 (02:25):
The first right, the first, the first slow dance. It's
your junior high welcome dance, you know what I'm saying,
Or you're a senior prompt 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 reason in here, because I think R and
B kind of gets short shrift in the music world,
like you know, rock and roll and hip hop. I've
(02:48):
taken up all the air in the room for sixty
years now, yeah, you know, since since the since the
British invasion.
Speaker 3 (02:54):
A couple of years were spent on em but yeah.
Speaker 1 (02:57):
A couple of years, yeah, right, scrill X was big
there for yeah, yeah, Yeah, 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 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.
Speaker 2 (03:13):
Of gospel, you know, like.
Speaker 1 (03:15):
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 sent a romantic love.
(03:35):
So they just take God out and put in a man,
a woman, a lover, you know, a classic example is
Sam Cook, who's originally with the gospel group the Soulsters,
and he releases a song He's so Wonderful, which is,
you know, it's a gospel.
Speaker 8 (03:49):
Track, wonderful, God, so.
Speaker 1 (03:59):
Wonderful than when Sam Cook 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.
Speaker 2 (04:12):
Lovable, lovable, My.
Speaker 8 (04:19):
She's lovable.
Speaker 1 (04:22):
So then how could you not say that R and
B isn't like the preeminent genre for love songs.
Speaker 2 (04:27):
It's like it's it has to do with the.
Speaker 1 (04:29):
The ethereal and the theological, down to the romantic and
the platonic, like it's everything.
Speaker 3 (04:35):
And then it just gets dirtier and dirtier as the
years go on. And then we landed the song.
Speaker 1 (04:40):
Song Yeah, shout out to I Love Cisco and that's
a great album.
Speaker 2 (04:45):
I love the song.
Speaker 3 (04:46):
R and B does do love very very well. But
there's other genres too. I mean, look at Dolly Parton
on Joelene. She's bagging and she's pleading and she's out
of her mind. Please don't take my man.
Speaker 2 (04:58):
But then who takes?
Speaker 1 (05:00):
And we love Dolly, But then who takes a Dolly
song like I'll Always Love You and takes it to
the next level Whitney Whitney.
Speaker 3 (05:24):
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 a Broken Record back
in twenty twenty three. And he wrote some of Whitney's
biggest hits.
Speaker 1 (05:37):
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 you know. Yeah,
they also happened to be hits. Boys and Men's End
of the Road Mariah carries We Belong Together Breathe Again
by Tony Braxton.
Speaker 3 (05:53):
Yes, that was such a great interview.
Speaker 1 (05:55):
Yeah, man, I mean I'm sitting there with baby Face
and I'm watching him play guitar in front of me.
It was just crazy, you know. And he's he's left handed,
he plays upside down like Hendrix. I mean, he's not
as good as a guitar players Hendrix, but I mean
it was just incredible would be that person up close
with them and seeing how he wrote these songs, and
he played for me a song he's never recorded with anyone,
(06:17):
and it's the very first song he ever wrote about
an early love of his first his first love actually
in high school.
Speaker 3 (06:24):
Let's hear some of that.
Speaker 7 (06:26):
Here I go falling in love again.
Speaker 9 (06:28):
That was my first song, and I wrote it for
a girl because I was like in love and stuff, and.
Speaker 7 (06:35):
So the guitar really was just an instrument.
Speaker 9 (06:37):
For me to get these songs out of me. I
always like to say, even when I played and learn
things on the piano, i play, I'm not really a
piano player.
Speaker 7 (06:46):
I learned things.
Speaker 9 (06:48):
To support my songwriting, and that's what I did.
Speaker 7 (06:53):
Then I turned that into my first song.
Speaker 9 (06:56):
So I was just learning chords to support out my
little songs.
Speaker 5 (07:00):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (07:01):
And for you, songwriting was about writing songs for the
girls you were in.
Speaker 9 (07:06):
Love with crush and it was it was purely kind
of an escape, so to say, Wow, it wasn't anything
but that. I didn't think they were gonna go anywhere,
but that was the that was the drive, and.
Speaker 1 (07:19):
You would have been like eleven twelve, ten, eleven twelve, yeah, yeah,
I can't play a deal song sweet November.
Speaker 8 (07:26):
But mad that time that will read bad.
Speaker 1 (07:39):
That we Wow, man, that's that's a great song.
Speaker 9 (07:45):
I wrote that right out of high school. Out of
high school, yeah, it was. It was because I was
a man child. So it was second year or something,
seventy eight or so, seventy eight seventy nine, right in
that time.
Speaker 7 (08:02):
So it was a girl. It was like this one girl.
She was like the most.
Speaker 9 (08:08):
While we were in highigh 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 and then
we actually started dating.
Speaker 7 (08:20):
I remember Daryl was like, how how was this even happening?
How do you have her?
Speaker 9 (08:25):
And then I remember we went to go see Brookshields
Endless Love when I saw Endless Love together and then
something happened, I think before we were going going away
in Manchild, all of a sudden she stopped calling me
and I couldn't I couldn't reach her, and I don't
(08:47):
know what happened, but it was just like we're just
like broken up. And then there was no cell phones,
there was no good you couldn't reach our on the phone,
and no social media. It was just done. And I
was really messed up about it. And and that's when
I wrote this, you know, because you know that was
the time period. It was in the fall, and of
(09:08):
a sudden, I was thinking maybe maybe when I come back,
maybe maybe it's November, we'll get back together and find it.
Speaker 7 (09:14):
So that was actually a loss song that was written
way back then.
Speaker 1 (09:18):
And would you have written the words or would.
Speaker 7 (09:21):
You write the words for piano and wrote it's.
Speaker 1 (09:23):
Like the piano.
Speaker 9 (09:24):
Yeah, wow, So.
Speaker 1 (09:27):
Because it's kind of beautiful even just divorced from the music,
if you just look at the words like high level.
Speaker 2 (09:33):
You know.
Speaker 9 (09:33):
Yeah, it was when all the first arrived. You with
my lady, we're dating.
Speaker 1 (09:38):
It was the second reign of Ittom. We shared a feeling.
Speaker 9 (09:40):
Yeah, come on, that's it's like we start dating and
then all of a sudden we like I remember it
was raining and like it looks like something's gonna happen here.
Speaker 1 (09:50):
So that almost really personal. Yeah, exhale was more from
watching the movie.
Speaker 7 (09:57):
Watching the movie.
Speaker 1 (09:58):
You don't necessarily have to write from personal experience. You can,
you can, but you can watch others and.
Speaker 9 (10:03):
No, yeah, it's really about watching others 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? Yeah, and said, if you just kind
of think of it and think of whatever they go
through and think out how you'd feel, you know, it's
not that hard to figure out. Damn, that's fucked up. Yeah,
(10:26):
I feel you know, I think all right about that,
you know. And as a kid that was always falling
in love and thinking I.
Speaker 1 (10:34):
Was in love, feeling like you.
Speaker 7 (10:37):
Know, that's what it was.
Speaker 9 (10:39):
My very first song was about a girl named round
the new bould always say her name, and that was
in here I Go falling in love again. 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 Better Taste of Life. Oh those are
(11:02):
feelings that I that I had, and everything was exaggerated.
I had written a song called so Shy, So there
were pieces, there were be pieces of things of songs
that I would write. I wrote a song called Anita,
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
(11:22):
senior year. Can never recorded, I think so. I think
I let a group record as they turned into a gospel.
Speaker 1 (11:27):
Do you remember any of it?
Speaker 7 (11:29):
Yeah? Could you play a little of it? I don't
know what my voice is like right now.
Speaker 10 (11:37):
When I think Spanish, I remember a special feeling sweet se.
Speaker 7 (11:48):
Then I think.
Speaker 10 (11:51):
Spanish show moments. Those were special times. You told me
you can.
Speaker 2 (12:01):
You know when.
Speaker 10 (12:04):
Blown away?
Speaker 8 (12:06):
I hope you know why now Mark, I will always
I love you for you know man of thinking Libeta song,
(12:28):
I God love you then, my dude right now and.
Speaker 7 (12:42):
That's okay.
Speaker 1 (12:45):
You can hear all of my conversation with baby Face
and the broken record episode that was 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,
Pushing and producer Ben out of Paffrey tells Lea about
writing his own love song.
Speaker 5 (13:18):
I think that folk music does love songs the best.
Speaker 3 (13:21):
That star Pushkin, producer and sometimes host of the Last Archive,
Ben Natif Haffrey Folker Country.
Speaker 5 (13:27):
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, like I think like a breakup
song or a lost love song is superior to a
straight up love song. Me too, because I think, like you,
(13:49):
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 yeah, romance song that
(14:10):
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.
Speaker 3 (14:23):
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 Ruken.
Speaker 5 (14:38):
Yes, and this is part of my long con to
get interviewed on Broken Record for my music.
Speaker 2 (14:44):
Well you're class.
Speaker 6 (14:45):
Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 3 (14:47):
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
(15:07):
set the stage for us. How did this song come
to be?
Speaker 6 (15:12):
Well?
Speaker 5 (15:12):
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,
(15:34):
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. Oh my god,
I thought it would be like fun to put on
my wall, but it looked terrifying, And that was like
(15:58):
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 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?
(16:18):
I was like that 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 is like a crucial thing. I just was like
not super taking care of myself, Like everything was totally fine,
but my life was not in order. And then I
(16:40):
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 Julie and I had been talking more and started
seeing each other in Nashville and also in New York,
(17:02):
that slowly I had begun to set up my room.
I got shades through 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
because that was by then a crucial part of the
decor and my identity and remains. So I don't remember
what I did with the change corner. There's a good
(17:24):
chance to change corner sort of remained.
Speaker 3 (17:26):
The growing up process is a slow one.
Speaker 5 (17:28):
The growing up process is a slow one, but it began.
It began with fixing up that first room. 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
(17:49):
was shown me around and we went to like a
Lebanese church, and I'm Lebanese and it was kind of
like a so they just wandered in because they were
having like a food festival kind of thing.
Speaker 1 (17:59):
Like.
Speaker 5 (17:59):
There were a lot of wonderful, serendipitous things. Yeah, And
I remember it was after that visit, I think on
the day that she had left, but I was hanging
out in my room and I was playing guitar and
I started writing this song. Like a lot of hack
(18:22):
guitar players, I use a lot of open tunings, and
around that time I had been playing the Rain Song
by led Zeppelin, which is a version of open C tuning,
and so I just would 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.
(18:44):
If I didn't know.
Speaker 10 (18:46):
You ran.
Speaker 11 (18:50):
Whatever the plans upon the window falling away, back up
my clean clothes with complain you know.
Speaker 5 (19:07):
When 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
(19:29):
to the place where I wanted to do that.
Speaker 3 (19:32):
At what point did you realize I'm writing a love
song for Julia.
Speaker 5 (19:35):
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.
Speaker 8 (19:50):
I didn't know you.
Speaker 5 (19:55):
I didn't know, 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
(20:15):
as like an escape patch from like one or another
job that we didn't want to do, 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 rerecording 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 a
(20:38):
thing that I would always like flatly deny. Did she
come to shows? And she would like We would always
have these long introductions to our songs about Often we
wrote historical songs 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
(20:58):
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 ahead when we were like
crowdfunding an album that we were doing, which is a
fancy way of saying like asking our friends for money,
and there was a thing that we offered that was
like a handwritten lyrics sheet with the story behind the song.
(21:22):
And so Julia bought that it requested a lyric sheet
with the story behind the song for this song, 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 again sort of as like a joke
(21:45):
in return, But it wasn't until we got engaged that
I then did actually deliver the lyrics sheet with the
story as a kind of like, you know, obviously this
is a song about you.
Speaker 6 (21:55):
In the way I feel about you, seen.
Speaker 8 (22:07):
How you have fats it out.
Speaker 3 (22:17):
If I don't know you, do you have a favorite
part of the song.
Speaker 5 (22:25):
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 a lot of hafts.
Speaker 8 (22:43):
Put back in, Alix.
Speaker 11 (22:49):
And want to have.
Speaker 10 (22:51):
With you.
Speaker 11 (22:52):
Still you haven't closed.
Speaker 12 (22:55):
All the dogs to the night still feels good, and
lean mind into your side.
Speaker 8 (23:09):
Come to me the first snow.
Speaker 12 (23:13):
Then when that sound, Yeah, that was so Na you said,
all right, canv me back?
Speaker 1 (23:31):
Well?
Speaker 3 (23:32):
Thank you so much, Ben, thanks for having me.
Speaker 5 (23:34):
This was fun, Happy Valentine's Day.
Speaker 3 (23:41):
Such a beautiful song. Again, that's if I didn't know
you by now by Ruken. 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 wais
in and he gets us thinking about this question in
an entirely different way.
Speaker 4 (24:14):
Yeah, I don't think country music does good love songs.
I think it does good breakup songs, heartbreak songs. It
does the reverse.
Speaker 1 (24:25):
Malcolm Gladwell is a best selling 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 going to have to get his take.
Speaker 4 (24:37):
So country music, it's true, 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 Revision's 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. The sad songs
(25:01):
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,
try to pretend to.
Speaker 2 (25:10):
Like.
Speaker 4 (25:10):
I gave the example of Wild Horses, which is supposed
to be a sad song. It's not sad. What's sad
about it?
Speaker 2 (25:18):
And also it's like total.
Speaker 4 (25:21):
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
(25:45):
War never got over it. That's what it is.
Speaker 6 (25:48):
You know.
Speaker 4 (25:49):
I was talking to some guy yesterday about the Church
of Christ, which is an almost overwhelmingly Southern denomination of
Christian denomination, and Nashville is the heart of Church of Christ.
The music in the Church of Christ churches is insane.
The Church of Christ is famously has no orchestral music.
(26:11):
They God, 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
Southerators bemoaning the laws of their status and like be
bowing their head in the face of avengeful God, and
(26:32):
no piano to no piano to lift their spirits. No organ,
no piano, no nothing. Use your own voice, dammit. Which
is why, by the way, so many country singers come
for 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. Is insane.
Speaker 2 (26:49):
Yeah, I'm looking at this church. I'm like, this isn't
Roy Orbison.
Speaker 4 (26:53):
They're all Church of Christ.
Speaker 1 (26:54):
They're all Church of Christ, Loretta Lynn Woody Guthrie.
Speaker 4 (26:57):
So, like, is it any surprise the 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 it's like depressive.
Speaker 1 (27:09):
So stands the reason then that, like in the in
the continuum of you know, when it comes to love
songs and the continuum of of sort of emotions that
go along with love, country music would fall more on
the side of sad over a breakup, sad over a
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
(27:31):
songs are that these sad kind of love's not going
right or breaking up.
Speaker 4 (27:35):
One of my favorite country songs about heartbreak is I
think it's George Straight does fort Worth Ever Cross Your Mind?
Which is a classic. I mean, 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 gonna read
to you some lyrics to does Fortworth Ever Cross Your Mind?
(27:57):
This is the opening Stanza Cold fort Worth Beer 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 mind?
Speaker 7 (28:10):
Darling?
Speaker 4 (28:10):
While you're busy burning bridges, burn one for me if
you get time.
Speaker 13 (28:15):
If you get time, there's no orange. Don't fake so
weasy word rausm.
Speaker 4 (28:35):
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 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
(28:55):
to be with him in Dallas, and I know it
hurts you at the time. Well, I wonder now if
it makes a difference. That's for worth across your minds.
It's twenty 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.
Speaker 2 (29:17):
It is like so petty, it's.
Speaker 4 (29:19):
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.
Speaker 1 (29:36):
Yeah, not enough in the details.
Speaker 2 (29:38):
No details.
Speaker 4 (29:39):
Did Prince ever write a song about? Did Saint Paul
ever cross your mind?
Speaker 7 (29:44):
No?
Speaker 4 (29:44):
No, no, because that's not the business he's in. He's
not in the business of mode of evoking this kind
of strong emotion. He was aware of the distinction between
Minneapolis and Saint Paul, but chose chose to overlook it
in his songwriting. That's why he's a rock musician or
a R and B musician. I'm not a country musician.
Speaker 1 (30:08):
So so he's saying that you left me to be
with him, and he's saying Dallas with the level of this,
I mean, that's.
Speaker 4 (30:14):
A you want to have to understand a song. Here
the reason why it's not Does Dallas ever crossed your mind?
That's a wholly different song.
Speaker 7 (30:23):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (30:24):
Yeah, that fort Worth is the is the ugly stepsister.
Fort Worth is one step down the wrung. So she
left him to upgrade and move up. Yeah, that's why
it hurts. She left him for for a dude in
fort Worth. He's fine, he's moved on. He's not a
girl in Dallas. No, no, no, no, no, no. He's at
(30:44):
fort Worth and what does she do? Got up one morning,
drove down the interstate and upgraded her situation, Lee, leaving
him in a pile of tears in fort Worth.
Speaker 1 (30:54):
But you see, this is why, and you know I
want to talking to Leah. This is why I think
R and B is the greatest genre for loves on.
I don't ever want to be the guy in Fort
Worth finding about the woman who left me to upgrade
to go to Dallas.
Speaker 2 (31:08):
Like that's why.
Speaker 1 (31:09):
Like like Whitney Houston, like you know, in her song she
catches like the guide cheating and she says it's not right,
but it's okay.
Speaker 2 (31:15):
I'm gonna make it anyway, like I.
Speaker 1 (31:16):
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 what I want to live.
Speaker 4 (31:25):
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. And
some of this is like, is bethos somebody pronouncing that right?
Bethosathos pathos, pathos are pathos. I think bethos is the
word I want.
Speaker 2 (31:44):
Bethos b A T H.
Speaker 4 (31:45):
Bethos definition. Yeah, anti climax created by an unintentional lapse
in mood from the sublime to the trivial or ridiculous. Like,
that's what does foot worth across your mind?
Speaker 6 (31:56):
Is?
Speaker 4 (31:56):
Is Bethos right?
Speaker 7 (31:58):
That's what that is?
Speaker 4 (31:58):
Right, that's the that's the appeal, that's the appeal of
the of the song.
Speaker 2 (32:04):
Is it is?
Speaker 7 (32:04):
So?
Speaker 1 (32:04):
I mean, is there a hope for the country music family?
Like you know, I guess there are country music songs
explicitly about love. They is not as good. They're just
not They're not the A tier country music songs, right.
I mean there's like Forever and Ever aighty man Randy
Travis people played at their wedding and there.
Speaker 4 (32:19):
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 going to love you forever and ever.
Speaker 2 (32:31):
It's very wistful.
Speaker 4 (32:32):
Forever and Ever. It sounds like he's committing to a
prison sense. Ah man, Like.
Speaker 1 (32:38):
What does it say about you, Malcolm that when you're
asked to think what genre might be the greatest for
love songs?
Speaker 2 (32:48):
The breakup song.
Speaker 4 (32:50):
I Want some 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 See to Baltimore to see
the Orioles and I played some mixtapes in a car
and end he turned to me and he said, I
(33:13):
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 a song.
Speaker 1 (33:26):
But there is no part of being around you that
feelsmird in sadness, depressed.
Speaker 7 (33:32):
No, but I don't.
Speaker 4 (33:33):
I don't want to. I don't like upbeat song So
why it's my problem with rock and roll is just
like just calm down already, like just this, Can we
wallow in our emotions for a moment here and not
just beating your head against the wall in necstasy. It
just it strikes me as unseemly.
Speaker 1 (33:55):
Leah, I mean several points well taken from Malcolm.
Speaker 2 (34:00):
You know, I love country music dearly.
Speaker 1 (34:04):
I think songwriting is impeccable, and they certainly do a
love song in a setnd song incredibly well. But you know,
I just I guess I just I just like a
more happy song. I like a mom Just no, No,
I don't know if I can live like in that
kind of misery.
Speaker 3 (34:21):
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.
Speaker 1 (34:32):
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 it's a man made creation, and there's probably
no way to categorize what sort of genre and what
culture does the love song the best.
Speaker 3 (34:54):
It's just so subjective.
Speaker 1 (34:55):
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 to 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 your ever sort of noncommittalness around any of that.
Speaker 3 (35:17):
Yes, I know, I'm just going to keep it open.
I'm keeping it open for new experiences, and I'm going
to sit here and I'm going to celebrate Valentine's Day
by listening to songs that make me cry.
Speaker 2 (35:27):
Well you know, no, no, no, celebrate Valentine's Day. I
made a great playlist love songs. Listen to that.
Speaker 1 (35:34):
We'll put that in the show notes, and listen to that,
not the sad songs.
Speaker 7 (35:38):
Please.
Speaker 2 (35:39):
Wait.
Speaker 3 (35:39):
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 cute up.
Speaker 1 (35:51):
This episode was produced by Isabelle Carter and edited by
Sarah Nix.
Speaker 2 (35:55):
Our mix engineer is Sarah Bruguier.
Speaker 3 (35:58):
Special thanks to ben Atahoffrey, Malcolm Gladwell, Costanza, Guyardo, Owen Miller,
and Eric Sandler.
Speaker 1 (36:04):
I'm your host, Justin Richmond, and I'm Leah Rose.
Speaker 3 (36:08):
Happy Valentine's Day.
Speaker 8 (36:09):
Eh Yeah
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