Nate Sloan’s podcast named best in music

USC Thornton Musicology faculty member Nate Sloan’s podcast, Switched on Pop, was named one of the best music podcasts by Go Erie. Sloan cohosts the show, which is produced by Vox Media, with songwriter Charlie Harding. The podcast explains what makes pop songs resonate with audiences and how songs interact with culture.

This week, Sloan contributed to an NPR Morning Edition story on the impact of Robyn’s song “Dancing On My Own,” saying that the song’s lyrical sparseness makes it unique. “[There’s] like six seconds of silence between each line in the verse,” he said. “Which is not a lot of time in the abstract, but on a pop song, that’s like eons.”