How We Heard It

Being a music fan can be similar to being a friend. Sometimes you discover them as a school kid and you make a lifelong commitment, and sometimes you discover them later in life, but once you do, you stick by them. But sometimes you just grow apart because either they don't give you what you need any more or you're simply no longer interested in what they offer. Also, sometimes they do or say some...

This time on "How We Heard It," the guys finish the dive into their music collections that they started last week, this week charging through the middle part of the alphabet (i.e. the letters L and M) as they give their quick takes on a genre-hopping range of some 50 artists. Naturally some of the biggest stars in all of popular music are on tap - including Led Zeppelin, Madonna, Paul McCartney, M...

Your “How We Heard It” hosts never know what they’ll find to talk about when they dig through their music collections - albums they forgot they had, albums they didn’t realize they had, albums they could never forget about. This week they’re at it again and unusually focused, concentrating primarily on artists that start with J, K or L. The guys give their short takes on some 50 artists - includin...

We praise "weird" music because it's engagingly unpredictable, creative and nonformulaic. We condemn "weird" music because it's self-indulgent, affected and weird just for the sake of being weird. It's not that we can't make up our mind if weird music is good or bad, it's that weird music can be weirdly good or weirdly bad. This week on "How We Heard It," Chuck, Wayne and John run through a spectr...

Songwriters know there's no place like home - for better and worse. Home is where the heart is, and home is where the hurt is. We might get homesick when we're away and then feel trapped when we return. For some, home is a retreat into seclusion, and they won't even answer the door. Meanwhile others never intend to darken the doorstep of their home again. This week the hosts of "How We Heard It" l...

As we chug deeper into fall, the sunrise comes later each day, and the sundown comes earlier. The thermometer readings are on a steady decline, and there's a pronounced chill in the rain. Somehow those sunny songs of summer just aren't cutting it anymore. But an awesome thing about music is there are songs for every mood, every atmosphere and every season. So this week on "How We Heard It," your h...

We all tend to have our favorite movie genres - whether it's action, romcoms, horror, drama or comedies. But often the movies we find it hardest to forget (for better and for worse) are the weird ones, and weird movies transcend genre and time. On this week's episode of "How We Heard It," your movie-buff hosts talk about some of the weirdest movies they've encountered. They go all the way back to...

Cars are our vehicle to freedom. When you get your first one, you can take off in any direction and just go wherever any highway, road or interstate can take you. What could be more liberating? On the flipside, cars become our prison, ushering us from one obligation to the next while getting us stuck in traffic with other poor souls just like us. They require maintenance and insurance ... and we w...

In prehistoric days - like, say, the 1970s - your local rock radio station might play a song that caught your ear. Then you might have read a review of that band in something like a Rolling Stone magazine you picked up at a newstand. And that review might have been just the motivation you needed to fork over five or six bucks at Kmart for a copy of the band's new album, which you would have listen...

Note: This week's episode of "How We Heard It" is posting two days earlier than usual, and the podcast will resume its regular schedule next week. The world lost Dolly Parton on Aug. 25, 2026, touching off waves of public mourning for one of the most beloved artists in entertainment history. She was a brilliant songwriter and exquisite singer. Yet there was something extra about Parton the person...

Memory is a blessing and a curse.   On one hand, it educates us, it gives us hope, and it reminds us of the most cherished times of our lives. On the other, it forces us to relive our worst moments, it can open wounds in an instant, and it won't let us let go of our mistakes.   In a roundabout way, just about all art, including music, owes a debt to memory - how could we create without drawing on...

There's always been a place in our hearts, and on our charts, for girl groups - who are actually women, not girls, but we digress.   From the Supremes to the Spice Girls to Blackpink, they've showered us with messages of heartache and girl power. Their harmonies have enchanted us across the genres, whether pop, soul, hip-hop or dance. They emerged long ago, when women were rarely the go-to music s...

It's time to party up and party down. End of summer blowout? Back to school bash? Check and check. Even Halloween shindigs aren't so far away. And after that, Christmas and New Year's Eve and ... OK, we're getting way ahead of ourselves. Besides, you don't even need to have a party if you want to listen to party songs. This week on "How We Heard It," your hosts are checking off great party songs f...

We all have our off days, including the most beloved and successful among us. Of course, we tend to let our heroes off the hook by looking the other way and pretending their missteps never happened.   Take your favorite singers and bands, for instance. Maybe they did an album that you quietly avoid or they released a hit song you can't bring yourself to play anymore. We just pretend those inferior...

There's long been some form of "reality TV" kicking around - in the form of news programs, documentaries and game shows, for example. But in the 1990s and especially the 2000s, there was such an explosion of "unscripted" programming on television coinciding with wholesale changes in society that it was hard to separate the two. It could be argued America in particular has been susceptible to the i...

Just looking at the music you've gathered over the years can give you insight into who you are and what you're about.   Whenever the hosts of "How We Heard" dig into their music collections, they always seem to find out more about themselves - sometimes more than they're expecting.   The guys are at it again on this week's episode, which prompts a free-flowing conversation about everything from ol...

If you can find the energy you need to get through every day, how do you do it? A well-balanced diet? A consistent exercise regimen? Regular restful nights? Maybe you need a little boost - like, say, a methodically steady stream of caffeine during the day balanced with diphenhydramine HCl at bedtime? Well, don't forget the power of music. Whether you require a special blast of energy to get throug...

Many of us in the Northern Hemisphere have already had our share of scorching days and steamy nights this summer, and there's only more to come. But rather than take shelter with a cool drink behind blackout curtains, the hosts of "How We Heard It" decided to face the heat head on with a collection of "hot" songs. Some are obvious, some you might have forgotten, and some you may never have heard....

This week on "How We Heard It," your hosts talk about bands and singers they haven't mentioned often on the show but who deserve to have their stories told. For example: How did Lauryn Hill squander the record-breaking fame and adulation for her solo debut so badly that she never released another studio album? Or why didn't Lou Reed's counterpart in The Velvet Underground have anything close to Re...

"How We Heard It" is two years old this week, and Wayne, Chuck and John hope you're having a good time - because they are. Oh sure, they sometimes slip up, say "you know" and "right" too often, lose their way sorting out topics and forget what they're saying now and then. Yet they keep finding their way in sharing lose opinions and hard facts about music, movies and TV from before any of us were b...

In May your "How We Heard It" hosts served an episode of songs about moms in honor of Mother's Day, so it's only fitting that for June they turn out an episode of songs about uncles. Kidding! Of course Father's Day brings about an episode of songs about dads - all kinds of dads. From supportive dads to deadbeat dads, from the doting fathers to the cold fathers and maybe a hot daddy here and there...

Everyone likes to laugh, but not everyone agrees about what's funny. So if something tickles you, don't worry what anyone else thinks. That's the attitude the "How We Heard It" hosts had when they dove into this week's topic: goofy movies we can't resist. There are different kinds of intentionally funny movies, from slapstick to smart humor wrapped in absurd premises. Crude jokes, innuendo, outrag...

If you go looking for songs about the moon, they'll start falling out of the sky. Moon-themed songs are some of the oldest in recorded history as well as some of the most recent to hit the charts. They can be found connected to everything from organized religion to witchcraft, they come from all parts of the planet, and they show up in every genre of music. In honor of the 2026 blue moon, the host...

For the 100th episode of their show "How We Heard It," the podcast team is giving you the music artists who give 100 percent. Musicians are like any other group of workers. Some are tireless - endlessly productive, relentlessly creative or both. Others fill the status quo, doing what might be expected, sometimes a little more and sometimes a little less. Still others are just plain lazy, pushing t...

There are noteworthy changes in every decade of modern music, but the seismic shifts and chaos of the 1990s were unparalleled. Whether it was the music of your youth, your kids' youth, your parents' youth or even your grandparents' youth, most everyone has noticed (either at the time or now, in retrospect) that the '90s were just different. It was the decade that saw Generation X hand over the mus...