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- [00:00]
Announcer
You have one new message translating Disney and Pixar's Hoppers is now available on Disney.
- [00:09]
Professor Jeff Dudas
You could say that again.
- [00:11]
Announcer
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- [00:19]
Professor Jeff Dudas
Now we party.
- [00:21]
Professor Stephen Dyson
This is incredible.
- [00:23]
Announcer
Wow.
- [00:24]
Professor Stephen Dyson
I am clearing the rest of the day.
- [00:26]
Announcer
Disney and Pixar's Hoppers now available on Disney. Rated PG.
- [00:30]
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- [01:04]
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- [01:20]
Professor Jeff Dudas
Welcome to the New Books Network.
- [01:25]
Professor Stephen Dyson
And again and again. The core of these songs contain a but in the middle of a sentence. You know I'm so in love with you, comma, but it's making me so sad. I'm Professor Stephen Dyson. And I'm Professor Jeff Dudas, and we are two professors who've spent the last few days listening to Olivia Rodrigo's new album. You Seem Pretty Sad for a girl so in Love. We're going to give our instant reactions some sort of analysis of its lyrical themes, its musicality, the aesthetics surrounding the record and Olivia Rodrigo at this point in her career. Career and some sort of appreciation of the of the album. Jeff, we're two middle aged dudes. I'm not sure we're 100% the target demographic for this record. I certainly don't listen to pop music outside of when we discuss it on this channel. Why should anyone listen to what we think about this record?
- [02:11]
Professor Jeff Dudas
I think that's right. We are not the target demographic necessarily, but I will say that of the current group of pop stars, it does seem to me that Olivia Rodrigo has the broadest kind of appeal generationally. And I think a lot of that is because you always get the feeling with a new Olivia Rodrigo album that she has really been listening to a very particular kind of moment in music history. Or she's really sort of trying to grapple and frequently with in a generational kind of way, with themes and sounds that preceded her and that are, I think, pretty familiar to people of our generation. So in the previous album, Guts, it was very much a kind of grungy, post grunge pop punk kind of element that she had clearly spent a lot of time engaging. And so it sounded very familiar. Like those loud guitars and crashing drums. They sound very familiar and very. They stick out in amongst the sort of current wave of popular music because they're unusual. And I think the same can be said of this album. It's not crashing guitars and loud drums necessarily, but it's very sort of new, wavy, as we'll talk about, you know,
- [03:26]
Professor Stephen Dyson
who else is a middle aged guy. Robert Smith of the Cure.
- [03:29]
Professor Jeff Dudas
Yeah.
- [03:29]
Craft Mayo Advertiser
Who appeased her.
- [03:30]
Professor Jeff Dudas
He's all over this album, both literally and figuratively. And so I think there's a kind of familiarity that older audiences can get with what she's doing. I also think, as we'll talk about, there's what you like to call kind of a craft to the music that she's producing that feels a little more permanent and a little more long lasting. It doesn't feel as momentary as a lot of pop music does to me anyway. So I think that all of those things point to music that feels familiar and feels like it's got a little more depth, a little more craft, a little more reach and ambition to it than a lot of other kinds of pop music staples.
- [04:14]
Professor Stephen Dyson
Yeah. So I totally agree. So I think Olivia Rodrigo, one reason why she's very interesting is that she is extremely musically literate in a couple of different ways. One is she is a musician, right. She's not quote, unquote justice or just a crafter of vocal melodies, although she does both of those really, really well. But she also plays her instruments. And I think it is appealing to people who don't usually listen to pop music to see a pop practitioner who, when they pick up a guitar in a music video, actually makes a proper chord with it, chord shape, and doesn't just put their fingers in random place like they do on the movies. And I think it's important that she has a stable band that she plays with live. And she obviously sings and they perform. And it's also she's musically literate in terms of the quotations that she applies. And here I think you're right. There's a lot of kind of 80s British music in their miserableist music, I think, known as New wave in the United States. The Cure is the obvious reference point. And it's not Just present in Robert Smith and in some of the lyrical quotations that she gives to the Cure. But some of the musicality is very Cure infected. There's a lot of, like, New Order Synthean bass. He kind of sounds on several of the. Of the tracks. And that. That does make her accessible and appealing even to non pop music fans in a way that I think is quite interesting.
- [05:29]
Professor Jeff Dudas
Yeah, I think that's right. And as you were talking, I mean that. How surprised would you have been if there was a background riff of Love Will Tear Us Apart? You know, it's. It's maybe a little too cynical for her, but, you know, thematically and sonically, that's kind of what she's going for here.
- [05:46]
Professor Stephen Dyson
Well, the Cure, a very interesting reference point, as opposed to other reference points that she could have chosen like. Like Joy Division or. Yeah, the Smiths was one that we talked about just before we started recording that. And they wouldn't have quite worked for different reasons. One was, you know, the Joy Division. Sorry, and New Order are a little too oblique or a little too sort of too angular in their sound and even too kind of overboard depressive in the lyricism. The Smiths would have been, musically, I think, different than Olivia Rodrigo. And obviously Morrissey is a problematic figure in a way that Robert Smith. Robert Smith, I think, reads well in this current context. You know, he has an appeal or a way of approaching things that I think would fit well with Olivia Rodrigo's fans. Right. In that there's a joy about Robert Smith that also belies a misery. Right. There's always a paradox at the heart of the Cure's records, including the ones that Olivia Rodrigo's been performing with Robert Smith, like Friday I'm In Love or Just Like Heaven. You know, Robert Smith had elements of depression and elements of. In his Persona, and I think you see some of that on this record. It's really, to me, if we think about it thematically or lyrically, it's a record that's built on a paradox and a core paradox. And it's the paradox that's very well titled. That's in the title. You seem pretty sad for a girl that's so in love in the aesthetics of the COVID shoot, which is a girl flying so high on a swing that she's literally upside down and about to plunge to the ground. And again and again, the core of these songs contain a but in the middle of a sentence. You know, I'm so in love with you comma, but it's making me so sad. Yeah, I hope this lasts forever, comma. But the key word there is hope. Yes, I know. It won't last forever.
- [07:34]
Professor Jeff Dudas
Yeah. And that is unusual in sort of genre terms. Right. And I am much more of a pop music fan than you are, but you're not wrong to point out that much of pop music is built on this most simplistic and cliched sort of evacuations of human life or excavations. I love human life.
- [07:56]
Depop Advertiser
I love the baby.
- [07:57]
Professor Stephen Dyson
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [07:58]
Professor Jeff Dudas
The but or the complexity or the ambivalence is. Is rare. It's not completely unpresent, but it's unusual and it's unpresent. It's not frequently present, I should say. And that's a lot of what audiences are going for, right? It's. To the extent that pop music is popular for a lot of audiences, it's because it's kind of background stuff. They're not listening very closely. And that's for a lot of listeners. That's kind of the point is not to listen very closely. It's just kind of a pleasant hum as you go about your day doing things. And so even when you do run across occasional pop songs or occasional pop artists in which complexity and ambivalence is part of the story, it frequently probably goes unexamined or unheard by a lot of audience members. One of the things that I like about Olivia Rodrigo is I don't think you can let it go unexamined. I mean, you can. It can operate in the background. But I think that she's so sharp and present in what she's doing and how she's making the case for these songs that it would be awful hard to not hear exactly what you're saying. Right. This is the kind of the core ambivalence at the heart of them.
- [09:09]
Windows 11 Advertiser
Right.
- [09:09]
Professor Stephen Dyson
And even the first single, the Drop Dead, you know, which I think had to be the first song on the album, both because it sets up the narrative and it is a narrative kind of song cycle, pretty obviously about a relationship. But also I think the way that it's such a pure. It's such a pure pop single, and to me, it stands out slightly from the rest of the album. I'm not sure it could have come halfway through. I think it would have disrupted the flow of the album. But even the core sentiment of that single, Kiss Me and I might Drop dead. You know, Drop dead can. Is of course, a dual meaning phrase, right? Drop dead from happiness. Drop dead in. In stunned bliss.
- [09:45]
Professor Jeff Dudas
Yeah.
- [09:46]
Professor Stephen Dyson
But also just drop dead. You know, you're killing Mortal or you're going to kill me. And it sort of presages what is a fairly dark turn.
- [09:55]
Professor Jeff Dudas
Yeah. In the.
- [09:55]
Professor Stephen Dyson
In the album. Towards the end.
- [09:57]
Professor Jeff Dudas
Yeah. And this is a. A point that the Pitchfork reviewer came. You sort of noticed, which is that one of the things that unites all of these songs through this song cycle is that the experience of being in love is analogized to illness and sickness all the time, and bodily sickness and illness. Think about Maggots for Brains, for example. Right. And so this is a kind of. I mean, I think that's right. These are not uncomplicated imaginations of what it means to feel like one's identity is being lost in a relationship with someone else.
- [10:37]
Professor Stephen Dyson
Yeah.
- [10:38]
Professor Jeff Dudas
Which is frequently, you know, portrayed as a great thing. Right. And here there's a real kind of exploration of the undercurrents of the darker undercurrents of that.
- [10:48]
Professor Stephen Dyson
Yeah. And. Yeah. So the kind of bodily illness, the Robert Smith collaboration. I think you what's Wrong With Me, as it very much ties into that. The Cure, which is obviously a pun on the band title. And I thought you were going to be the Cure to what it tells me.
- [11:04]
Professor Jeff Dudas
Yes.
- [11:04]
Professor Stephen Dyson
Yeah. But it is very interesting. It's a. Olivia Rodrigo has not just appropriated those themes. I was thinking about the link to something like the Cure and the Smiths, which would have this similar kind of yearning and this similar sort of need for joy while enmeshed in kind of your own world of illness. I think with the Cure, and certainly with the Smiths, those relationships were never consummated, though they remained always relationships of value. Whereas the Olivia Rodrigo thing is to actually enter into the heart of the relationship, to show it blossoming and all its promise, and then show the explosion. But even in its most florid blossoming, there's always the dark hint of the coming collapse.
- [11:46]
Professor Jeff Dudas
I mean, the closest thing it seems to me to a straightforward love song in this album is the song Honeybee, which is the third song. So it appears it's kind of early in the cycle. And even there, you know, the part of the chorus is, I hope I never see your face essentially walking away going. Yeah. And so there's already even in what would come across as the most sort of uncomplicated, romance y types of song here on this cycle is actually already kind of nervous and a little bit skeptical about what's gonna happen. Yeah.
- [12:18]
Professor Stephen Dyson
And the line is, I hope I never see what your face looks like going a face I swear I could spend my whole life knowing. Here's to hoping. So that, here's to hoping is crucial when you tie it to I hope I never see your face going. There's no confidence that she'll never see that even in the high point of the. Of the love. Yeah, there's here's to hoping. I mean, here's to hoping is commonly a phrase of, I think, resignation rather than expectation or confidence.
- [12:41]
Professor Jeff Dudas
Yes.
- [12:42]
Professor Stephen Dyson
And that recurs again and again. Stupid song. Honest love is a cage that makes you free, they say. Honest love is a cage that makes you free. Again, that paradox. It's both a cage and it's. Yeah, it's something that frees you.
- [12:55]
Professor Jeff Dudas
Even. Even in the song, you and me, you plus me makes a heart forever. There's the line of, you know, they say. They say love is misery.
- [13:04]
Professor Stephen Dyson
They say modern love is a cruel endeavor.
- [13:06]
Professor Jeff Dudas
Yeah.
- [13:07]
Professor Stephen Dyson
And so that I say fuck it,
- [13:09]
Professor Jeff Dudas
whatever, and fuck it. Right. This is so. This is a reprise of her famous line from. From Guts. You know, fuck it, it's fine. In both. In both ways. They are these kinds of. It's both a kind of embrace of risk, but it's also a resignation in a certain way. Fuck it.
- [13:25]
Professor Stephen Dyson
Yeah.
- [13:26]
Professor Jeff Dudas
Like, it's probably not gonna work out. It doesn't really matter. Whatever. It's fine, whatever.
- [13:31]
Professor Stephen Dyson
And it's also a reprise of one of Olivia Rodrigo's finest points as a. As a songwriter and a performer. She is tremendous at swearing. Yes, she's really good. We said this. We covered. What was the last one called Guts. We covered Guts a few years ago and really liked that album for different reasons, but really, really liked it. And one point you really harped on was Olivia Rodrigo is one of the premier swearers in contemporary popular culture, and she remains so.
- [14:00]
Professor Jeff Dudas
Although much more measured, it seems to me, in this album, it happens far less often. But she is. You know, certain people just have a facility with the full spectrum of language, and she's one of them. Yeah.
- [14:13]
Professor Stephen Dyson
Yeah. So it's not affected. And it's only ever used when it's actually the right necessary word rather than just a word to shock or look at me, I'm so big, I can swear on a pop record.
- [14:25]
Professor Jeff Dudas
The other thing that I think is notable about this album, and we talked about this off camera, is that it is not an album of singles necessarily, which distinguishes it from a lot of pop albums, particularly in the contemporary period of streaming, in which it's not uncommon, for example, for artists to release a song and then a month later, another song, and then a few songs a few months later, another song. And so it's this kind of extended play or what we used to call EP culture. And it's unusual, has always been unusual in the pop world, but it seems extremely unusual these days for an artist to create a self consciously coherent song cycle, an album.
- [15:10]
Announcer
Right.
- [15:10]
Professor Jeff Dudas
In the way that, you know, you and I grew up listening to albums. Right.
- [15:14]
Professor Stephen Dyson
The point of an album being it's a physical media medium that you can own.
- [15:17]
Professor Jeff Dudas
Yes.
- [15:18]
Professor Stephen Dyson
And that you would play. And that certainly in its earlier iterations, it would. It would actually be quite an effort to move the songs out of order. So it was designed to be consumed and was produced as something you'd listen from song one to song whatever, 13, in this case, from start to finish with some sort of intentionality. And it used to be, obviously, with records, you would turn over on the record player that you would have two high points or two cycles. Right. You'd have the side air and then a side. Side air finale and then. Then do it in side B. Yeah.
- [15:49]
Professor Jeff Dudas
And. And so that's what we get here. And so I think about. I mean, this might. This will come across to some as a. Maybe as a strange analogy, but several months ago, we did a. A pod on Bruce Springsteen's Nebraska, which is also very. It's not. It's not a rock opera. Right. These are not. What did you call them off camera?
- [16:08]
Professor Stephen Dyson
A concept.
- [16:09]
Professor Jeff Dudas
A concept album. These are not concept albums. They're. They're thematic narratives.
- [16:13]
Professor Stephen Dyson
Right.
- [16:13]
Professor Jeff Dudas
But the way in which the songs appear and the way in which they're arranged is important, and it's a full cycle, and the audience and the listener is going to get the most out of these products by following them from the beginning to the end. And, you know, as. As has always been the case in popular music, you pull out singles here and there. Right. But the singles are truly promotional material for the album itself, which is what singles used to be in popular music. And so I think there's also a way in which just the. This is another way in which this album in particular, but I think Olivia Rodrigo more generally has a kind of cross generational appeal, because, again, she's doing things musically and sonically in a way that are familiar to audiences who are not simply of her generation.
- [17:05]
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- [17:31]
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- [18:01]
Professor Stephen Dyson
Yeah, I think that's right. I think it's not quite a concept album, because a concept. Concept almost means a more specific thing than what's going on in this album, which is the story of a relationship.
- [18:14]
Professor Jeff Dudas
It's not Pink Floyd's the Wall.
- [18:15]
Professor Stephen Dyson
Yeah, that's a little too universal to be a concept, which is not meant as a denigration. I don't think that's quite the right term, but you're right, it's. It's telling a story as a narrative cycle. And if you think of, you know, that side A, side B analogy, there is a. There is a distinctive shift in emotional and sonic mood kind of halfway through the album. I would say it's After My Way, which is this kind of territorial song.
- [18:38]
Professor Jeff Dudas
Yeah, it's the song Purple, I think, is the hint. Okay. Right. And.
- [18:41]
Professor Stephen Dyson
Or I wondered. The Cure, I mean, anyway, somewhere around that side. Switching into the downslaw, I think.
- [18:48]
Professor Jeff Dudas
I think it's. Purple is the hinge song thematically. And also in the middle of the album, it's appropriately placed. A couple things about that album. Right. That's. This is she. So she's borrowing the line here. I melt with you. Which is, you know, the. The modern English song or the famous new wave modern English song. And it starts off the course to start off, you know, I melt with. You are blue and red becomes purple. Right. But then as the song comes to a. A conclusion, the last several lines are talking about melting with you until we become black. Right. And this is, you know, sort of portends the end.
- [19:28]
Professor Stephen Dyson
Right.
- [19:28]
Professor Jeff Dudas
It portends the. The seedy underbelly. Right. Of this relationship that's going to emerge. So I think that's the song. And then by the time you get to the Cure, it's fairly clear. It's fairly clear. Yeah.
- [19:40]
Professor Stephen Dyson
The stuff with. With Robert Smith, I think is interesting, sort of. Musically, there's a couple of points I wanted to make. One was it seems like a fairly Genuine collaboration in that neither of them tries to upstage the other. Yeah. So I watched two performances, or I know of the two times they sing together. There was the live thing where Olivia Rodrigo sang Just Like Heaven, a Cure song. And then obviously there's a song that's a duet on this album. On this album. I think you. What's Wrong with Me? The song with Robert Smith, it. It's clearly an Olivia Rodrigo song, but it actually suits his emotional affect and his voice suits the song. But crucially, what he's doing. And I watched a Justin Hawkins video on this collaboration just this morning. Crucially, what Robert Smith's doing musically in the part that he's singing is he's singing in a way that compliments but doesn't compete with her voice. Like in the actual duet part, he's singing kind of an understated lower thing to let her take the higher and more shoy register, which is very generous. But actually write for the song. And then if you watch their live performance of Just Like Heaven, she is obviously a more accomplished, powerful. She's a big American vocalist. She could blow him out the water if she wanted to. Now, Robert Smith has a great voice, but it's distinctive to Robert Smith. It's not a massive stadium, you know, American pop thing. But she doesn't try to out sing him on his song, which is Just Like Heaven, because that song is for his voice and she compliments him. And I do think that was quite a nice sort of musical.
- [21:08]
Professor Jeff Dudas
I think that's a really interesting point I picked up in the chorus. Their voices blend really nicely together and their accents blend really nicely together in a way that's, as you say, I think that's right. It's complimentary. Rather than Robert Smith is not using this as his big opportunity to get in front of a new audience.
- [21:31]
Professor Stephen Dyson
Although it may, in fact be that.
- [21:33]
Professor Jeff Dudas
May what happens.
- [21:34]
Professor Stephen Dyson
Yeah, yeah. And I do think there's a useful. An interesting point about this being an album. One of the things that has made that a less. A more rare form of the delivery of music is stuff like Spotify that just by default. Was it Taylor Swift who had this campaign to turn off the shuffle function on Spotify? It was some pop artist who said, yeah, I don't know, maybe it wasn't Taylor Swift. It's someone else who said, actually these records are supposed to be listened to in order. Can you please not have it default that you just jumble them up. So one thing that's made that's promoted singles culture as opposed to a coherent album is this default manner of listening to music that jumbles things all up so that she's kind of.
- [22:12]
Professor Jeff Dudas
And shuffle culture, I should say, not to cut you off. Shuffle culture is itself based upon the rhythms of listening to pop radio.
- [22:19]
Professor Stephen Dyson
Yes.
- [22:19]
Professor Jeff Dudas
Right. And so it's just kind of reinforces this episodic, sporadic kind of presentation of different artists.
- [22:28]
Professor Stephen Dyson
Yeah. Whereas with this album, the songs have to be in this order. Not just. Not just lyrically, but musically and just for mood, they need to be in that order. The other thing that sort of cuts against that, it may be more in favor of shuffle culture or Spotify culture, is if you think of the Cure. And how would a person who's listening to Olivia Rodrigo discover the Cure prior to something like Spotify? It has to be like, well, your dad owns the records. You know, that's how I got into the Smiths, which I was too young for, or Dire Straits or things. My dad had the cassette tapes and you played them in the car and you could get them off his shelf and put them in the cassette. Nowadays, and this has happened to the benefit of a lot of quote, unquote, legacy bands. The Cure albums are as instantaneously available as the new Olivia Rodrigo album is. So when Olivia Rodrigo would platform someone like Robert Smith and the Cure and some portion of her fans go off and find the Cure, they don't have to, like, try and get a record player from Goodwill or find their dad's record or just hope, you know, they can just cue it up on Spotify and like, wow, I really like this. Which has led to a lot of confusion over what is contemporary music. Because a lot of older. Older artists can be as listened to as a lot of brand new.
- [23:36]
Professor Jeff Dudas
Yeah, I mean, that's a really good point. And this. This happens, right? We've seen, like, Fleetwood Mac, right, The. The Rumors album. There's been a big renaissance amongst. Actually amongst Olivia Rodrigo's generation, right. Of that album. And there are others. Nirvana never really kind of went away, but they seem to have again hit. Hit the spot for this generation of. Of people.
- [23:55]
Professor Stephen Dyson
And when. When Stranger Things used that Kate Bush song and that Running up the Hill, it became the number one hit or whatever.
- [24:01]
Professor Jeff Dudas
Or when Weezer covered Africa right, by Toto. And it was a huge hit. Not, I think, amongst people like us, but amongst younger people, right. Who were for the first time hearing this. I mean, it's a really interesting point. Right. So there is a kind of, I don't know, melding of generational aesthetic.
- [24:21]
Professor Stephen Dyson
Yes.
- [24:21]
Professor Jeff Dudas
Just involved in that. Which sort of interestingly cuts across the. The shuffle culture.
- [24:28]
Professor Stephen Dyson
Yes.
- [24:28]
Professor Jeff Dudas
Right.
- [24:29]
Professor Stephen Dyson
And.
- [24:29]
Professor Jeff Dudas
Or enriches it in a way that would be on you. That wouldn't have used to have happened.
- [24:32]
Professor Stephen Dyson
Right.
- [24:33]
Professor Jeff Dudas
Yeah.
- [24:33]
Professor Stephen Dyson
The songs towards the end of the album, I think are. They're quite remarkable and quite sort of heavy. So something like less.
- [24:40]
Professor Jeff Dudas
Yeah.
- [24:40]
Professor Stephen Dyson
Which is the. The piano ballad song is like, minimalistic in terms of instrumentation. It's just her and a piano for large parts. But really, really affecting. Really, really sort of heavy sentiments. It's full of that paradox that's at the core of the album. You know, if. If. If loving you means this misery then I wish that we had less love and just had existed on a burning less bright. But it's a really, really affecting heavy song that has to be in that order on the album. You couldn't put it on side A of the album. The first half of the album has to be there.
- [25:15]
Professor Jeff Dudas
Exactly. It only makes sense in the context of the. What comes before it and what comes after it.
- [25:19]
Windows 11 Advertiser
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- [25:19]
Professor Jeff Dudas
And it. It also, you know, one of the things that you had noted when we talked about guts a couple years ago is that this, you know, there. There are bangers and there are ballads, and I have felt like, for the most part, I have. I personally have liked her bangers a lot more than her ballads on this album. I think the ballads are better. I. I think they're more interesting. We, Again, we talked about this a little bit off camera. The ballads here are infused with a kind of jazz torch element or aesthetic, sometimes a little bit more theatricality. Right. Something that's more redolent of what, the kind of musical that you'd hear on stage, rather than kind of the modern pop ballad. So I think there's. And. And I. You know, I do think that for the most part, the ballads are more. A little more searing in a certain way. The. The great exception for me would be the, you know, her great sort of original song, Driver's License, which I think continues to be great. But a lot of the ballads, particularly from that first album, are just, to me, are kind of ordinary and they also kind of sound the same. So I think there's real. The bangers are not quite as great for me on this album, but the ballads are a lot better. So there's more balance, I think, on this album than maybe on the previous two.
- [26:35]
Professor Stephen Dyson
I think that's interesting. I came until this morning, you know, in the three days we've been thinking and listening to this album, as for the first Two days I was prepared to have a very hot take, which is Drop Dead was the worst song on the album and I wasn't that interested in it. But then this morning I did revise my opinion because I finally got around to watching her performance of it on Saturday Night Live with her band. Have you seen that performance? If you haven't, it's well worth checking out. It is euphoric and I mean, obviously she's a great performer and I'm a sucker, but they seem so happy to be singing that song that it really gave it that euphoric uplift that you're like, wow, that really kind of pulled me.
- [27:10]
Professor Jeff Dudas
Yeah.
- [27:11]
Professor Stephen Dyson
Pulled me back into that song.
- [27:12]
Professor Jeff Dudas
Yeah, I, I think I've seen it. I'll have to watch it again. But I mean, she is a really dynamic performer.
- [27:18]
Professor Stephen Dyson
Yeah.
- [27:18]
Professor Jeff Dudas
And I, I think she usually sings live. I think the band is always playing live, you know, and this is a. I mean, this is also a sort of a fraught topic, I think. I mean, I, I know that you watch, we both watch on, on YouTube, the wings of Pegasus guy, and he's constantly kind of going through and sort of checking to see just how ubiquitous live auto tuning and other kinds of pitch correction has become. And you know, a lot of people don't care about that. A lot of audiences don't care. They go to a concert or they listen to a live performance because essentially they want to hear it perfect like it is on the album. But in so doing. And I think this is his point, I think we both agree with this. You rob that live setting of the kind of spontaneity and unpredictability that it can have. Right. It can bring it. The whole thing could fall apart. That's the whole point. Right. It might be bad, but when it's not bad and it's great, it really brings a kind of energy and a kind of, I don't know, communal embrace. Right. To the performances that are really long lasting and meaningful and that can elevate as they did for you. Yeah. A particular kind of song or even a particular sort of artist. And I mean, I want to hear her missed notes. Right. Yeah, that's the point.
- [28:40]
Professor Stephen Dyson
Yeah.
- [28:40]
Depop Advertiser
Yeah.
- [28:40]
Professor Stephen Dyson
Well, so what I think is interesting, we're going to look like idiots if there has in fact been an analysis of this and it was proven to be.
- [28:47]
Professor Jeff Dudas
I suspect it's some mix. Like having watched. There was a. I think on Disney there was a concert performance from her Guts tour. And I, I think that, I think she. There might be a Little bit of pitch correction on the ballads, but on all the kind of stuff where she's running around on stage and, you know, singing the bangers, I mean, I'm pretty convinced that those are all live because you can actually hear her losing her breath and you can hear. You can hear her struggling to hit.
- [29:15]
Professor Stephen Dyson
Well, even this Saturday Night Live thing, she came out and she was. She was a little flat in the first couple of lines, which. Which apparently commonly happens. It's just almost inevitable not to be a little flat in your first few lines as you're just catching the. The pitch. And so that sounded authentic to me in live. And the arrangement of the song, the band was either performing it live as is, or they'd recorded it that day. And it was. But it was a live arrangement of that song. Yeah. And it used to frustrate artists, I think, and it threw you out of the performance. If you know anything about music, to see people miming along. Johnny Marin, the Smiths used to go out on stage and used to deliberately just throw the guitar around.
- [29:49]
Professor Jeff Dudas
It was a scandal once.
- [29:50]
Professor Stephen Dyson
And twist.
- [29:51]
Professor Jeff Dudas
When Milli Vanilli was. Was exposed as having, like, not as. As a mimed act. It was a huge scandal. Guys were run out in the music business.
- [30:00]
Professor Stephen Dyson
Right.
- [30:00]
Professor Jeff Dudas
It has become par for the course. Even legacy acts like the Eagles, for example, are. Are pitch correcting and auto tuning and miming to all of their live performances. So I think the. To the extent that Olivia Rodrigo is not doing that, it's just another way that it connects her to this sort of broader generational audience.
- [30:20]
Professor Stephen Dyson
Okay, so an album. I think we both. We both appreciate very, very few low points. For me, I thought, you know, maybe Expectations is not my favorite song. A couple of songs I think could have done with. With better names, given how graceful the songs are.
- [30:32]
Professor Jeff Dudas
Yeah.
- [30:32]
Professor Stephen Dyson
Maggots for Brains. You. You plus me. I mean, I couldn't tell what it was saying at first.
- [30:37]
Professor Jeff Dudas
I. I like the title Maggots for Brains.
- [30:39]
Professor Stephen Dyson
The.
- [30:39]
Professor Jeff Dudas
I will admit this is a generational problem. I. I also did not quite get
- [30:44]
Professor Stephen Dyson
the new plus open brackets three.
- [30:46]
Professor Jeff Dudas
I think that's a heart.
- [30:47]
Professor Stephen Dyson
I think that's true. But, you know, it could have been a smiley face. We like.
- [30:51]
Professor Jeff Dudas
Tell us in the comments.
- [30:52]
Professor Stephen Dyson
Yeah, tell us in the comments.