Strong Songs

Winter, spring, summer, or fall... all you have to do is call, and Strong Songs will be there with an in-depth analysis of one of the most influential songwriters of the 20th century. This episode takes a deep dive into Carole King's ever enduring, much-covered tribute to friendship, "You've Got a Friend." What starts in Laurel Canyon in the early 70s spread outward to the world, thanks to King's...

Link it to the world, link it to yourself, link it to your podcast app, because it's time to talk about Muse. Kirk takes a deep dive into not one but two songs off of Muse's seminal 2001 album Origin of Symmetry: "New Born," which kicks the album off with a strong pop-rock approach, and "Micro Cuts," a mid-album high point that shows off their more eclectic influences. It's time for some contrapun...

The fine folks at WNYC's fabulous opera podcast Aria Code recently reached out about doing a cross-promotion with Strong Songs, and now here we are, running an episode of their show in the Strong Songs feed. If you enjoy it, you should definitely go check out the show - Aria Code is very easy to find on all major podcast platforms. ORIGINAL SHOW NOTES (via Aria Code) Aired: March 10, 2021 Sometime...

The Strong Songs mailbag has gotten pretty overstuffed lately, so Kirk decided to take another crack at it. That means it's time for more of your musical questions! On this episode, we bounce around between the best songs for performing CPR, country music multiphonics, Noname's strung beats, the slide saxophone, Stevie Nicks guitar tones, Roxanne syncopation, how to find a voice teacher, whether c...

If an emotion is too big for talking, you sing. If it's too big for singing, you dance. And if it's too big for dancing, well, you just gotta podcast! Author, podcaster, and video essayist Lindsay Ellis knows a thing or two about outsized Broadway emotions—in addition to her many other pursuits, she's created a whole side endeavor talking about them on her musical theater podcast, Musicalsplaining...

Mailbag time! Kirk peruses the Strong Songs inbox to answer your questions about jazz drum solos, practicing with play-a-longs, Tame Impala tunes, saxophones with traffic cones, vocal technique, sidechain compression, and several tricky rhythms. REFERENCED/DISCUSSED: “Tubes” by Moon Hooch from their NPR Tiny Desk live concert: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wwBhxBBa7tE “Strangers” by The Kinks fr...

Jazz is all about the contrast between the individual and the collective, and few recordings embody that as beautifully as "Stolen Moments," the opening track from Oliver Nelson's 1961 hard-bop record The Blues and the Abstract Truth . On this episode, Kirk dives deep into Nelson's classic tune, starting with his dense horn arrangement, then considering the three improvised horn solos as distinct...

Open up your heart! Open up your heart! Open up your heart, let Kimbra pull you out! On this episode, Kirk goes for a swim in the extra-buoyant waters of Kimbra's 2011 pop stomper "Cameo Lover." It's an intricate musical narrative told through shifting time-feels, retro drum beats, leaping vocals, and sneaky key changes, and it's just the song to raise our spirits after a long, dark winter. Writte...

What's this? An off-week episode of Strong Songs?? Indeed it is! For this episode of Strong Conversations (working title), Kirk hopped on a call with New York pianist Carmen Staaf to talk about the fundamental elements of music, learning to sing as an instrumentalist, teaching jazz and ear training, her collaborations with vocalist Dee Dee Bridgewater and drummer Allison Miller, and the similariti...

Heathcliff! It's us, it's Strong Songs, we've come home! The time has come for a deep dive into the music of the great Kate Bush, and what better song to analyze than her breakthrough 1978 hit, "Wuthering Heights." This song has it all - odd phrasing, shifting key centers, soaring vocals, character narration, an epic guitar solo, a red dress, and a celesta. Written by: Kate Bush Album: The Kick In...

Time for the first Q&A episode of Strong Songs year three! On this episode, Kirk digs into the mailbag for your questions on Jack White's guitar tone, Shabaka Hutchings' sax sound, 70s kitsch jazz, concept albums, drummers learning mallet instruments, Celtic sounds, "saving" jazz, and SOPHIE. Also, a listener shares a song that came to him in a dream. REFERENCED/DISCUSSED: “O Superman” by Laurie A...

Here comes that Santa Ana wind again, blowing us right into the slightly skewed world of Steely Dan. It was never a question whether Strong Songs would do a Steely Dan episode, it was more a question of which song to focus on. In the end, Kirk chose "Babylon Sisters," a culmination of the band's incredible 1970s run that exemplifies Fagen and Becker's brand of pristine, laser-focused groove. It's...

Where are we? What the hell is going on? Oh right, we're here with our podcast device, listening to an episode of Strong Songs. On this episode, Kirk dives into Imogen Heap's one-woman choral masterwork "Hide and Seek," taking a closer look at the technologies and processes Heap used to get that bewitching sound, her striking use of breath and dynamic contrast, and the many subtle ways she took th...

Let the children lose it, let the children use it, and let all the children join in for Strong Songs year three! Kirk kicks off the new year with a pair of classics by the great David Bowie: 1969's melancholy "Space Oddity" and 1972's triumphant "Starman." What goes up, as they say, must come down. Written by: David Bowie Albums: David Bowie (1969), The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spid...

As Year Two of Strong Songs draws to a close, it's time to take a look back. SCHEDULING NOTE: Strong Songs will be off for the month of December, and will be back for Year Three at the start of January, 2021. But before that! Let's go back, back, back in time one hundred years, to the start of 2020. REFERENCED/DISCUSSED: "Stairway to Heaven" by Led Zeppelin from Led Zeppelin IV , 1971 "Lovefool" b...

Wake up, fall out of bed, and drag a comb across your head, cause Strong Songs is finally doing an episode about The Beatles. It's time for Kirk to tackle the fab four, and what better Beatles song to analyze than Lennon and McCartney's two-tune casserole of a closer, "A Day in the Life." Get ready for some lilting Lennon dreamscapes, some meticulous McCartney melodies,  a really big glissando, an...

Mailbag episode! Kirk answers your burning musical questions about songs from Parks & Rec , Black Sails , Lovecraft Country , and What We Do in the Shadows , as well as microtones, minimalist songwriting, the bebop scale, practicing habits, and more. REFERENCED/DISCUSSED: “Parks & Recreation” by Gaby Moreno and Vincent Jones, 2009 “Black Sails” by Bear McCreary, 2014 “You’re Dead” by Norma Tanega...

The Wildlings are south of the wall, the robots are rising up, Seventh Kavalry's on the move, and two percent of the world's population has vanished. Time for another edition of Strong TV Songs! This time around the focus is on HBO, a network that has defined much of the broader TV landscape over the past couple of decades. So let's dig into a bunch of great music from a bunch of good shows, with...

It's early in the morning; no one is awake. From the top of the mountain, the soft light of dawn comes into view. You take a deep breath, and prepare for a journey with the great genius of musical travel. On this episode, Kirk dives into Björk's 1995 electro-pop masterpiece "Hyperballad," paying special attention to how carefully she weaves together music and lyrics to create a sense of space, and...

Mailbag episode! Kirk tackles your questions on subjects ranging from a Warren Zevon piano part, to the unfortunate prevalence of bad acoustics at live shows, to why Moana is such a good movie. It's been a rough week; thanks everyone who wrote in. REFERENCED/DISCUSSED: “Flaming” by Pink Floyd from The Piper at the Gates of Dawn , 1967 “Golden Brown” by the Stranglers, 1981 “Woke Up Today” and “In...

Thunder only happens when it's raining, and Strong Songs only crams two songs into an episode when it's super warranted. This episode warrants just such a pairing, with a focus on two tunes by the great Fleetwood Mac. First there's the collaboratively written group-sing stomper "The Chain," and then comes Stevie Nicks' heartbeat anthem "Dreams." Both were featured on the band's classic 1977 album...

Who's gonna lay the wedding table? Who's gonna make the wedding bed? And what about the rings? Funny you should ask. On this episode, Kirk takes a deep dive into "Wedding Song," one of the signature numbers from Anaïs Mitchell's 2019 musical Hadestown . It's time for some conversational song form, a bunch of key changes, a touch of Jeff Buckley falsetto, and just a biiiiiit of trombone. Turn off y...

Mailbag! Episode! We've got questions about Tuvan throat singing (how does it work??), the Unsolved Mysteries theme (why is it so creepy??), the intro to Don McLean's "American "Pie" (how do they count it??), Steely Dan (why do some people hate them??), Andrew Bird's whistling solo from 2011's The Muppets (how did he do that??), Lynyrd Skynyrd's "Sweet Home Alabama" (what key is it in??), and more...

It's time for a journey of the mind, as Kirk picks apart one of the best hard rock tunes of the early 2000s. Queens of the Stone Age's "Songs for the Deaf" includes enough bangers that it was tough to pick a single song to focus on, but in the end, "No One Knows" won the day with its combination of grit, groove, and focus. On this episode, Kirk dives deep into the tune's tightly wound, surprisingl...

It seemed pretty unlikely that Strong Songs would ever cover John Cage's infamous "silent" composition "4'33", so we figured, on this off-week, it'd be fun to run an episode of the fabulous podcast Twenty Thousand Hertz on the subject instead. (Also, Kirk and 20KHz host Dallas Taylor like one another's shows and decided to do a little cross promotion.) This episode originally ran on January 22, 20...