Podcast
How We Heard It
Hosted by howweheardit · EN
Veteran entertainment journalists, music columnists and longtime friends Wayne Bledsoe and Chuck Campbell host ”How We Heard It,” a breezy and sometimes offbeat take on how music and movies got to where they are today and where it’s all going.
They break down who are the most promising Generation Z singers one minute and the next they debate who are the most overrated acts from the past. Sexy songs, soundtracks, controversies and weird movies find their way into the discussion, and they also weigh in with recommendations on who to hear and what to see in music and film from the past and present.
Wayne and Chuck have more than 65 years of experience in professional journalism between them, but they don’t waste time indulging in scholarly breakdowns of their institutional knowledge. Instead, they share behind-the-scenes stories about their odd, funny, inspirational and embarrassing encounters with celebrities, managers, fans and readers. And they laugh at themselves and each other. A lot. Because being an entertainment journalist does that to you.
An important third voice in the ”How We Heard It” podcast is engineer John Baker, himself a musician and producer who reins in Wayne and Chuck when they need it. John’s tastes are a little bit Wayne and a little bit Chuck, and he’s a friendly sort.
Wayne’s primary role in his nearly four decades at the Knoxville News-Sentinel was his work as an entertainment writer and critic. He currently hosts ”The Six O’Clock Swerve” weekly radio show on WUTK, 90.3 FM in Knoxville, he’s a former Grammy nominee, and he’s an organizer of the annual concert series ”Waynestock: For the Love of Drew and Rylan.” He’s also an artist and unconventional garden writer - see more at www.waynebledsoe.com.
Chuck started his career in journalism at the Daytona Beach News-Journal in Florida before joining the staff in Knoxville. He has reviewed more than 5,500 albums, and his column was distributed by the New York Times, Gannett, Cox News Service and the Scripps Howard News Service. He was an entertainment and travel editor in both Florida and Tennessee and a regional news planner for Gannett’s South Region.
”How We Heard It” is a Cozy Planet Productions podcast recorded at The Arbor Studio in Knoxville, Tennessee. Send requests, comments and suggestions to HowWeHeardIt@gmail.com
32episodes
Episodes
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We shoot the moon with these lunar songs
2d ago01:22:28Tap to summarizeIf 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 hosts of "How We Heard It" embarked on a quest to find songs about the moon, and they were overwhelmed - not just by the sheer number of songs they found, but also by the extensive breadth of the songs. Earth's closest companion inspires all manner of emotions. And when you project your feelings on the moon, it reflects and enhances your mood. Are you feeling amorous? Lonely? Anxious? Content? Mysterious? Grounded? Gaze upon the moon and your feelings will intensify. In song, the moon can be blue, red, pink, silver and orange. It can be full, new, half ... or just a sliver. The phases of the moon can reflect the phases of life. Or the moon can just be an old goose. As the podcast's hosts discovered, the moon can be whatever you want it to be. And it seems like most artists have performed at least one song about the moon - from Frank Sinatra to Audrey Hepburn, from Elvis Presley to Creedence Clearwater Revival, from Van Morrison to Neil Young, and from Bjork to Bruno Mars. Just be careful with how hard you dig into moon-themed songs ... or you may end up seeing stars.
Transcribe →These music artists always give 100% ... more or less
1w ago01:25:26Tap to summarizeFor 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 their work off on others, making excuses why they can't do more and invariably disappointing their supporters, time and time again. It's not about talent, it's about effort. This week "How We Heard It" is all about effort. While other artists might knock out a new album every few years, these artists are producing twice that output. Or while other artists are sticking to their established style (same themes, same sound), these super-producers are constantly exploring new ways to express themselves, tweaking and reinventing their art as they go and challenging their followers to keep up. The same goes for live shows: Some artists are constantly on tour, giving their all on stage night after night. Others rarely tour - and when they do, they just phone it in. Not surprisingly, effort and success don't exactly overlap. (Life is never fair, is it?) Some of the most ordinary artists generate the biggest sales, draw the most fans and win the most awards while some extraordinary artists struggle on the edge of obscurity. Yet every now and then, the brightest and hardest working artists will be among the most popular. Where do your favorites rank? "How We Heard It" takes a look at everyone from Bob Dylan and Elton John to Kenny Chesney and Adele to Taylor Swift and King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard. Their conclusions might surprise you.
Transcribe →Here's how (and why) music changed so dramatically in the 1990s
2w ago01:16:16Tap to summarizeThere 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 music reins to millennials. MTV went from a driving force in music to more of a footnote, and music videos lost importance in the gap years between emphasis on cable channels and the advent of YouTube and streaming in the 2000s. Stylistically, hip-hop was a juggernaut, swinging from gangsta rap to a mainstream phenomenon that permeated into R&B, pop and even rock. Also, fueled by the momentum of Madonna in the 1980s, pop in the 1990s became dominated by women artists - with Whitney Houston, Mariah Carey and Celine Dion taking turns at the top of the charts, and wholesome teen singers like Debbie Gibson and Tiffany, who ushered the genre into the 1990s, had been replaced by decidedly less wholesome singers like Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera by decade's end. Latin artists also became permanent fixtures in the mainstream, and thanks to Garth Brooks, country reinvented itself into yet another huge crossover genre, with "hat acts" ruling the roost in the mainstream. And in rock music, huge shifts came in waves. The "hair metal" bands that controlled rock in the late 1980s were all but wiped out by grunge in the early 1990s, flipping the genre's script from mindless, flashy formula pop-with-guitars to something far more introspective, anxious and angry. But grunge was at the forefront for only a few year, and soon enough all manner of "modern rock," "alt-rock" and "college rock" bands - from Weezer to Radiohead to Beck - brought freshness and ingenuity to the sonic landscape. Meanwhile, the 1990s saw the rise of traveling mega-festivals such as Lollapalooza to the Vans Warped Tour. And the Lilith Fair emphasized the unprecedented prominence of women in rock, who came in hard with gritty sounds and raw self-assuredness beyond the jangly pop-rock of 1980s bands like The Go-Go's and The Bangles. This week on "How We Heard It," your hosts - who were young men in the 1990s and at Ground Zero in the music business - shine a light on what was going on in the tumultuous 1990s and how everything seemed to forever change, across the board, in music.
Transcribe →These acts trigger memories of would-be stars, patchouli and blown speakers
3w ago01:29:47Tap to summarizeThe more music you collect - digitally, physically or in a combination - the more you have to keep up with. And let's face it: Most of us aren't as organized as we'd like to be. So if you just keep accumulating music and the years keep rolling by, you can easily lose track of your collection and get disconnected from your memories. This week on "How We Heard It," your hosts take another dive into their collections and turn up near-forgotten acts ... and even completely forgotten acts (who even were those people?). This episode brings up everyone from Jethro Tull to Britney Spears, Mott the Hoople to Beck, Blondie to Radiohead and The Roches to Daft Punk. Meanwhile, the music your hosts found this week prompts impromptu conversations about how collectibles often just end up gathering dust, collaborations between stars can go terribly wrong, and tribute artists can sound better than the original artists. And what's up with all the "greatest hits" collections from one-hit wonders? If you haven't looked over your collection in a while, maybe it's time to take a nostalgia trip.
Transcribe →Songs about moms (and by moms and for moms)
May 201:26:41Tap to summarizeFor many of us, our mothers are among the most important, most loving, and perhaps most complicated, people in our lives. And not coincidentally, mothers have been consistently referenced throughout history in most every art form - including music. So with Mother's Day looming, the hosts of "How We Heard It" have chosen to highlight mothers in music. Songs about mothers range from the nostalgic and sweet to the melodramatic and heartfelt. Others are humorous or weird, and still others throw focus on bad moms - because they're out there too. But your hosts don't stop there. They also bring personal stories about mothers to the table, and they talk about how having children can redirect an artist's career, from their vision to their output. Also, the episode explores how some of the most popular women singers in modern music reacted when their own daughters became performers, and the hosts also hazard a guess at what kind of mothers some popular young singers would make if they become moms - including the most popular singer so far this century, who has indicated her intentions to do just that. What's your mother of all songs about motherhood?
Transcribe →These stellar song titles made us want to listen
Apr 2501:17:39Tap to summarizeA great song title is like a snappy headline: It grabs you and pulls you in with just a few words. With so much riding on that kind of first impression, you'd think more artists would strive to come up with the best song titles possible. Yet in truth, many artists settle for ordinary and unimaginative titles all the time. That's their loss. This week the hosts of "How We Heard It" reveal some of their favorite attention-grabbing song titles. Some made them laugh, some made them cringe, and some just made them want to hear the song to find out what is going on. It turns out some are meaningless, some have double meaning and some are just bizarre. Titles that made the list vary from "The Devil Wears Panties" to "Delicious Demon," from "Angst in My Pants" to "Hot Pants Explosion" and from "Everything Reminds Me of My Dog" to "I Wanna Be Your Dog." Some of these songs were popular with the mainstream, including "The Sound of Silence," "Hotline Bling" and "Smells Like Teen Spirit"; others, like "Teenage Lobotomy," "Kiss Me Where It Smells Funny" and "The Homecoming Queen's Got a Gun," cultivated a cult following. And others, like "Ashtray Heart," "Take the Skinheads Bowling" and "Tell That Girl to Shut Up," were strictly underground. Meanwhile, the artists include everyone from The Beatles and Bob Dylan to Muse and Fall Out Boy to Olivia Rodrigo and The Weeknd. With all the bland song titles out there, it's time to celebrate those that stand out.
Transcribe →These songs about rain are flooded with emotion, from romance to doom
Apr 1801:21:36Tap to summarizeWe have a complicated relationship with rain. We need it to grow our crops, to keep our bodies of water at the right level and to hydrate our own bodies. But just as it gives us life, it can take it away with devastating floods and catastrophic drought. Yet rain is associated with far more than our physical needs. It touches off almost every kind of emotional reaction, varying from one person to the next. A gentle rain may bring feelings of cleansing refreshment, relaxation or a gloomy malaise. By contrast, hard rains and storms can trigger uneasiness and fear or excitement and sensuality. When rain seems never-ending, or by contrast when it seems like it will never come, it can make us feel helpless. On this week's "How We Heard It," your hosts look at how songwriters have used rain to convey themes. Artists throughout the ages have manipulated rain to make us laugh, to make us cry, to make us celebrate and to make us reflect. You might be surprised at how many rain-themed songs there are washing through our consciousness.
Transcribe →Awesome artists made these awful songs!
Apr 1101:25:10Tap to summarizeEven the best of us have bad days - including your favorite musicians. That explains how top-shelf artists can produce a clunker of a song. We try to forget these songs, explain them away as somebody else's fault, justify them as an important learning moment, and maybe even claim that they aren't so bad when we know they are simply terrible. In this week's episode of "How We Heard It," the hosts drill down to the worst of the worst by the best of the best - including terrible songs by the likes of The Beatles, Bob Dylan, Elvis Presley, The Kinks, Leonard Cohen, Bruce Springsteen, Prince, Madonna, R.E.M. and many more. No one is spared as these sonic disasters are dissected. And a special shoutout is given to all the promising collaborations that were abject failures (including tantalizing pairings credited to the likes of David Bowie/Mick Jagger and Paul McCartney/Stevie Wonder). But don't worry. It's all done with love.
Transcribe →Why we hate these popular movies!
Apr 401:24:02Tap to summarizeEvery popular movie has a dedicated group of haters, whether it's the Oscar winner that few people saw, the critical favorite that left everyone depressed or the box-office smash with the formulaic plot and predictable ending. Although the hosts of "How We Heard It" consider themselves big movie fans, they have their limits. So in this week's episode they reveal what movies disappointed them, made them angry or actually prompted them to walk out of the theater or turn off the TV. Some of these movies were celebrated with awards by Hollywood insiders when much better films should have won. Some of them were critically acclaimed far beyond merit. And some of them were terrible "popcorn" movies without an ounce of originality. Then there are those inconceivably popular actors who seem to ruin everything they appear in, and absurd special effects that would draw the scorn of a 3-year-old. But your friendly hosts often disagree with each other this week, and one man's cinematic feast is something another would have swept into the compost heap. Hear them make their points and bicker with each other, and ask yourself where do you stand: Are these movies awesome or awful?
Transcribe →What would we do if the world had no music?
Mar 2801:32:18Tap to summarizeWhat would we do without music? It's a question the hosts of "How We Heard It" hated to even contemplate. Would this mean we wouldn't have songbirds? Would we not hear the wind in the trees or the waves in the ocean? What about the rhythm of a heartbeat? Would humans not hum or whistle? Even if those elements were in play, imagine no concerts, no music at games or bars, no music to accompany driving or workouts, no music at weddings, church services or funerals. Then the hosts decided to modify the question: What if music existed, but it weren't commercially available to us? If we didn't have agency over our music, we couldn't create playlists, share music with friends or use it for romance. A lack of music, or even a lack of control over the music we hear, would limit out ability to bond with others and likely decrease our empathy. It would also make music less effective as a means of comfort or relief from depression, thus leading to feelings of isolation. And what about those whose careers are intertwined with music? Your hosts - which include two music journalists and a musician/producer - consider what they might be doing without music. Let's just say you wouldn't want them as your psychiatrist.
Transcribe →