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Alan Cross
Hey, it's Alan, and I just wanted to let you know that you can now listen to the ongoing history of new music, early and ad free on Amazon. Music included with Prime Spring is in full bloom at the Home Depot. So what are you working on? How about a quick and stylish patio furniture update? Check out a variety of on trend dining sets with plenty of space for entertaining. And what's outdoor dining without a shiny new grill? Find a wide selection of grills under $300 like the next grill 4 burner gas grill for only $200. Then add a little ambiance with string lights. Transform your space this spring with everything you need from the Home Depot. This episode is brought to you by State Farm. You might say all kinds of stuff when things go wrong, but these are the words you really need to remember. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there. They've got options to fit your unique insurance needs, meaning you can talk to your agent to choose the coverage you need, have coverage options to protect the things you value most, file a claim right on the State Farm mobile app, and even reach a real person person when you need to talk to someone. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there. Humans are weird species. Yeah, we can be inquisitive, but we can also be very docile, especially when it comes to tradition. We're told to do something because, well, it's always been done this way. The old ways are the best. They've worked for us for decades. Centuries. So who are you to ask questions or dispute things? Okay? But this is a rational, modern, scientific world. It's supposed to be anyway. So it doesn't seem right that we not question something that seems a little off. For example, for the three days leading up to Mardi Gras, the people of Ivrea, Italy, and this is true, divide themselves into nine different teams. They dress up in battle gear and start throwing oranges at each other. And here's the wild thing. Nobody knows why. They've just always done it. Oh, there are rumors it may have had something to do with defending the town against a tyrant ruler in the 12th century. Or wait, maybe. Maybe it was the 13th. Anyway, we're not sure. This tyrant may have assaulted a young woman the night before her wedding. She not only fought back, but she cut off his head. What this has to do with nine teams throwing oranges at each other is unclear yet. It's a thing, but we don't have to get that weird. Let's look at things from a different perspective. There are many objects in everyday life that we just accept as being there. It never occurs to us that these things might have names. Have you ever heard of a Glabella? That's the space between our eyebrows. Before I heard that word, it never occurred to me that this part of the body would have a name. Can't get out of bed in the morning. Well, you have a condition known as dysania. What's overmorrow? Well, that's a more efficient way of saying the day after tomorrow over morrow. And the word crapulence is real. It's that sick feeling that you get when you eat or drink too much. One more what's a nurdle? That's what you call a tiny dab of toothpaste on your brush. That's a nurdle. None of this information is going to change your life, but it does open up our lives to new perspectives on the world. We encountered the same sorts of things in music. Where do accents go when people sing? Why do singers mess with the melody lines when they perform live? How come we hear lyrics wrong? Let's get those answers in the latest episode of the Rock Explainer. This is the ongoing History of New Music podcast with Alan Cross. Baby, I think it's love say to you when I feel blue. David bowie from his 1972 album Pinups and his version of the who's Can't Explain. Hello again, I'm Alan Cross, and this is the fifth edition of an occasional series called the Rock Explainer. The idea is to explore the strange, unexplained, and traditional things about rock culture that don't get enough attention and analysis. In many cases, we just accept these things and don't question them as much as we perhaps should. But if we stop for just a second and cock a quizzical eyebrow and actually ask the question, then it's possible to learn new things about music that you might not have ever imagined. For example, and this has happened to you many times. I know it has. Have you ever realized that you've heard a song lyric wrong? Maybe you unknowingly keep hearing it wrong for years. I'll give you an example. How many people get it wrong with Jimi Hendrix and Purple Haze? What is he singing here? There are generations of people who believe that Jimmy is singing Excuse me while I kiss this guy and have never questioned that what he's actually saying is, excuse me while I kiss the sky. Now that you know, listen again, Excuse me while I kiss this guy. Here's another famous misheard lyric. What is Manford man singing here? Despite what you May have heard since 1975. He's singing Blinded by the light, Revved up like a deuce Another runner in the night. In case you don't know, Blinded by the Light is a Bruce Springsteen song, and if we go back to the original, we can hear it a little better. Okay. Revved up like a deuce Another runner in the night. All right, so what does that mean? Well, it's a reference to a hot rod engineering, specifically One related to three models of Ford cars from the 1930s known as Deuce coupes, which were once favorites of hot rod modifiers. Springsteen is singing about revving up a four cylinder engine and not anything else, including any feminine hygiene products. Misheard lyrics are known as mondegreens. You hear it wrong, and as a result, the line gets a completely new and unintended meaning. The word goes back to 1954, when an American writer named Sylvia Wright wrote in Harper's Magazine that she messed up with an old Scottish ballad entitled in the Bonny Earl Moray, which dates back to at least 1765. Her mother used to read it to her. The last line of the poem reads, laid him on the green, as in, you know, out in the meadow or the lawn or whatever. But young Sylvia heard it as Lady Montagreen. And in that article, she declared that all misheard lyrics and lines of poetry should be called mondegreens, and it is now an official word in the Oxford English Dictionary. Okay, so we know what mondegrenes are called, but why do we mishear lyrics in the first place? This has to do with the psychological response known as confirmation bias. If we hear a phrase indistinctly, our brains automatically, instinctively try to fill in the gaps with something familiar. This may lead to situations of cognitive dissonance. When we can't make out the words, the brain just shoves in something to make it make sense, Sort of. The error then gets burned into our minds and we can't hear anything else. We might even rebel and actively fight against hearing the correct lyrics. And we may insist on mishearing the words, because somewhere deep down inside, we hear what we want to hear, even though it's wrong. With the emergence of mass media in the 20th century, mondegreens began to spread, and now they're common worldwide and in every language you want to mention. Here are a few more. In Lucy in the sky with Diamonds, John Lennon does not sing. The girl with colitis goes by, and John Fogarty does not sing. There's a bathroom on the right in Bad Moon Rising, and Kurt Cobain is not singing about being in containers and hot potatoes. Although, now that I mention it, that's probably all you're gonna hear from now on. Hey, sorry if I ruined the lyrics to Smells Like Teen Spirit for you after all these decades, but at least you know what a mondegrin is and why they exist. Here's another thing that you've probably never questioned too much. You know when a lyricist runs out of words and just starts singing la la la or na na na or doot doot doot, those placeholders or nonsense sounds are called vocables. They don't have any meaning. There are so many of these. Dum dum dum la dee da. Many indigenous songs use vocables. Some Jewish melodies are nothing but vocables. And here's a wild back in the 15th century, classical composers used a specific vocable as a filler word for songs. Now I'm going to read you the lyrics from Will you buy a fine dog? This was written by Thomas Morley sometime in the 1500s. I'm quoting from the lyrics directly. Will you buy a fine dog with a hole in his head? With a dildo, With a dildo, with a dildo. So, yeah, dildo was once a vocable for lyricists who had no idea what to write, in the same spirit as hey diddle diddle the cat in the fiddle. But if we drill deeper, maybe that was the wrong phrase. It's very possible that Morley was trying to be a little cheeky as well. So the etymology of the word dildo is a bit sketchy, including in this whole thing about vocables. Whatever the case, sometimes a song screams for singing that doesn't say anything, doesn't mean anything, but feels good. And when it comes to audience participation, you know, an audience singing along in public, it just works great. This song is loaded with vocables, especially right at the end, and I can't imagine it being any other way. As it stands, it is perfect. Simple minds taking us out of don't yout Forget About Me with many la la la's the singing placeholder known as a vocable. Since we're talking about singing, here's another thing that needs an where do accents go when we sing? This happens 99% of the time, no matter how thick a brogue might be. So why? First, we have to understand the characteristics of an accent. Vowels and consonants are examples of what linguists call phonemes. These are sounds that distinguish one word from another. People from different parts of the world will pronounce phonemes differently, even with a common word. And second, melody and rhythm play a factor. The melody of a song tends to override how someone would normally pronounce a word and its phoneme. It cancels out what makes an accent an accent. Think about what's involved in singing. You're not speaking words, you're making them musical. For example, you stretch out certain songs, especially vowels. When you do that, things become more neutral. Add in expression and emotion and bouncing along with the rhythm and things may get flattened out even more. A few artists will work to keep their regional accent. Think the Proclaimers and 500 miles, Elton John producing Calf as Cough in, Benny and the jets and anything by the British band Idols. Unless you make that effort, the music will guide your pronunciation into something that sounds, well, North American or at the very least, mid Atlantic. The best example I can give you is the Gallagher brothers. They're from Manchester, where the dialect is very strong and very distinct and the boys can spread it on quite thick. Here is something called wibbling rivalry. This is a 1995 recording of Liam and Noel getting into a fight during an interview. Situations like that have been happening to me and him before we were in a band, this band. Therefore, why should it all change situations? He's just said. He's just said 70%. I've got a life about the band. The band. He's got another form. Right. The band is about music. Exactly. It's not about getting thrown off. You fellies are about. I've never said that. Yeah. Why don't you go downstairs and smash the bar up and say you're the singer of Oasis. You know what if I did? If it was going to go down and smash the barrel, I'd do it. And there's nothing. So you don't make a scene. Now here's Liam and Noel singing. Where did all that Manxpeak go? Well, it got absorbed into the melody and the rhythm of the Oasis and acquiesce almost devoid of any Mancunian accents, thanks to the magic of music altering phonemes. More things from rock that need explaining coming up, including a few things to pay attention to the next time you go to a concert. Are you still quoting 30 year old movies? Have you said cool beans in the past 90 days? Do you think Discover isn't widely accepted? If this sounds like you, you're stuck in the past. Discover is accepted at 99% of places that take credit cards nationwide. And every time you make a purchase with your card, you automatically earn cash back. Welcome to the now. It pays to Discover. Learn more@discover.com credit card Based on the February 2024 Nielsen report, Ryan Reynolds here from Mint Mobile with a message for everyone paying Big Wireless Way too much. Please, for the love of everything good in this world, stop with Mint. You can get premium wireless for just $15 a month, of course, if you enjoy overpaying. No judgments. But that's weird. Okay, one judgment anyway. Give it a try@mintmobile.com Switch upfront payment of $45 for 3 month plan equivalent to $15 per month required int rate first 3 months only, then full price plan options available, taxes and fees extra. See full terms@mintmobile.com this is another episode in the Rock Explainer series, a chance to learn why certain heretofore unexplained things exist in the world of rock. Let's move to the concert stage. You may have noticed or known about these things already, but let's go through them just in case. When you go to a concert, there's usually an opening act or two. In most cases, they don't sound as bad big as the headliner, and that's usually because they don't get full use of the pa. You just don't want the opening act blowing the headliner off the stage. Second, we usually hear music playing through the PA between the opener and the headliner. You may notice that the closer it comes to the main event, the louder the music gets. This is an old soundman trick designed to build the energy in the building before the headliner hits the stage. Not everyone uses this technique, but once you start listening for it, you'll see that it's quite common. And finally, when the main act does hit the stage, their singing may be different. This can be annoying to fans who expect the sound from the stage to be the same as the song from the recording. So what's going on here? Well, mostly it's the physical frailties of the human voice. It's hard to hit high, powerful notes night after night. The singer needs to adapt lest they blow out their voice and can't sing at all and ruin the tour. Another issue is age. As we get older, our voices change. The muscles and cartilage in our larynx, the place where our vocal cords live, get old and tired and begin to deteriorate. The vocal cords themselves lose flexibility. They get thinner and become stiffer. Some men find their voices increase in pitch. Women may find the opposite. Because of the stiffness of the vocal cords, they don't vibrate as easy as they used to. This makes hitting High notes, moments of extreme vibration. Very hard, if not impossible. It becomes very hard to control those vibrations which is necessary for singing. So as a result, some older singers will be forced to do one of two things. First, they'll change the performance so they avoid hitting too many high notes. A second option is to lower the key in which the song is performed. A lower key means any high notes in the original arrangement are transposed down to a level that is more easily singable. Paul McCartney has had to do this in his later years. There are some really high notes in the song, maybe. I'm amazed. And if we go back to 1968 and the recording of hey Jude, a song that features four minutes of the vocable Na Na Na McCartney takes his tenor range to a very High F in 1968. He could do that when he was 26. Now that he's in his 80s, well, no, not his fault. It's just the human body. He compensates in concert by dropping the key of the song and by also having some very clever and subtle backup vocals from his band. Bono has done an excellent job in keeping his voice in shape. He's very careful with his instrument. But if you have seen U2 in concert over the last, I don't know, 15 years or so, you may notice that a song like this is performed in a lower key. And depending on the night, Bono may sing the chorus with a little less gusto and in a lower range. He also depends on the Edge's background vocals to give things extra oomph. On this particular night in Berlin, things were pretty much on point, although maybe he was holding back just a little. Let's move to the concept of backwards masking or backmasking. Maybe you've heard about this before, maybe you've heard about some of this without even knowing it. This is a recording trick where you record something forward and then dub it backward into a song so that when it's played, that piece is heard backward. It can be a cool audio effect. Now, who came up with this? Well, the technique has a very long history that goes back to the early days of recorded music. Aleister Crowley, the occult weirdo and self proclaimed evilest man alive, conducted audio experiments spinning phonograph records backwards. As early as 1913. He thought he might find hidden messages or perhaps learn how to think backward. Reversed audio can be found in the movie gold diggers of 1935. And then in 1959, a group called the Eligibles released a song called Car Trouble. It only reached number 107 on the billboard charts. But it was the first record on that chart to contain backmasking. There are two backward passages. Here's the second one. Car trouble on a lonely road Car trouble on a lonely road we started in a Walking back to town Couldn't get a ride Everybody turned us down as we walked in the gate I could hear a dance daddy yell it was easy enough to get that effect. The guy playing the part of the father did his bit like normal. Then the tape was flipped over, meaning that when it was played back, it went in the opposite direction, creating a back mask. That sounds like an angry, deranged father concerned about his little girl. And what's being said? Let's find out. Now look at here, cats. Stop running these records backwards. Now look at here, cats. Stop running these records backwards. Doubles as a nice Easter egg, doesn't it? The Beatles were very big into backmasking. They experimented with backward bits on songs like Tomorrow Never Knows, Rain and throughout the White Album. Those backward bits were intentionally placed in those recordings. But then everyone started running records backwards in hopes of finding messages that, frankly, just were not there. Some people thought they heard something satanic. For example, on this reverse bit of Stairway to Heaven, fundamentalist religious types swore that Zepp deliberately planted that message in the song so it would subconsciously influence unwitting stupid kids. It supposedly says, oh, here's to my sweet Satan, the one whose little path made me sad. Whose power is Satan? He will give you 666. There was a tool shed where he made us suffer Sad Satan. Um, sure. If you want to know more about this slice of insanity, you can check out the Satanic Panic episode of my other podcast, Crime and Mayhem in the Music Industry. It's just weird. Anyway, back to the main topic. Tons of artists used backmasking effects in the 70s and 80s. That seems to be when things reach their peak. Iron Maiden, Pink Floyd, Styx, Prince, B52s Weird Al. They were all into it. But then backmasking sort of went away in the era of the CD because, well, how are you going to spin a CD backward? But once digital sound editing software became widely available in the late 90s and early 2000s, the practice came back. Today, there's a Wikipedia page that lists dozens and dozens of backward messages. Beck, Cake, Coldplay, Eminem, Franz Ferdinand, Linkin Park, Marilyn manson, Moby, Soundgarden, Tool 21 pilots, and a ton more. And of course, more than just a few of them do it just to mess with people. For example, in early 2000, the New York electropunk band Mindless Self Indulgence released an album entitled Frankenstein Girls Will Seem Strangely Sexy. It leads off with a song called Back Mask Warning, and it contains the line, play that record backwards. Here's a message. Yo you suckers, play that record backwards. Two minutes into the song we start hearing some weird stuff and I will translate singer Jimmy Urine Yes, I did say urine says these words backwards. Respect your parents, clean your room, do your homework, don't stay out too late and eat your vegetables. So take that, satanic panickers. And that's the story of backmasking. I have a couple more things to explain before we're done. We'll look at why songs are repeated on the radio, and I'll explain why we need Canadian content laws for music Eczema isn't always obvious, but it's real. And so is the relief from EBGLIS. 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Ask your doctor about epgliss and visit epgliss.lilly.com or call 1-800-lilyrx or 1-800-545-5979. Out here, there's no one way of doing things, no unwritten rules, and no shortage of adventure. Because out here the only requirement is having fun. Bank of America invites kids 6 to 18 to golf with us for a limited time. Sign them up for a free one year membership, giving them access to discounted tetons at thousands of courses. Learn more@bankofamerica.com golf with us what Would you like the power to do bank of America restrictions apply. See BFA.com golf with us for complete details. Copyright 2025 bank of America Corporation. Hi, I'm Donna Friesen from Global National. Life moves fast these days and we want to make it even easier for you to get the news you need. That's why you can now get Global national every day as a podcast. The biggest stories of the day with analysis from award winning global news journalists. New episodes drop every day. So take this as your personal invitation to join us on the Global National Podcast. You can find it on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, and wherever you find your favorite podcasts. This is a Rock Explainer Episode one of those shows where I try to draw attention to and then demystify things in music that might otherwise remain unexplained. I get this asked a lot why do radio stations play songs over and over again? Well, there is a scientific reason for this. The vast majority of people tend to listen to the radio in chunks. 20 minutes here, 10 minutes there, an hour later in the day. Each time, there is an expectation of every individual listener to a radio station that when they tune in, they are going to hear a song that they like. But because radio isn't customizable by the end user, a listener can't get a specific song from a radio station just whenever they want it. So the only way to make sure as many people as possible hear the biggest and most popular songs is to play those songs more often, thereby increasing the chances that any individual, when they tune in, will hear in what they're hoping for. It's an inexact way of programming, but it does work. The theory of repetition leading to more listeners goes back to the early 1950s, when a guy named Todd Stortz implemented a high repetition playlist on a radio station in Omaha, Nebraska. The legend is that he was sitting in a bar, depressed about his station's financial situation. When the bar closed, he noticed a waitress plugging her tip money into the jukebox. And what songs was she choosing? The exact same ones customers had been playing all night long. Huh? He thought, what if we just play the hits, the popular songs, over and over and over again? So he did. He implemented that at the radio station, and within weeks his station was at the top of the market. And this was the beginning of Top 40 radio, a format built on repetition. Now, people tell me that radio stations play the same songs 20 times a day. That's an exaggeration. Mostly top 40 pop stations. We call this contemporary Hit radio now are all about repetition, because their audience loves hearing the same songs over and over and over again. Okay, so how many times will one of these stations play a song? Well, it depends on the station. The most popular songs of the moment are placed in a special category that's called power or something similar. These are the songs that get played the most. And there might be anywhere from two to five power songs depending on the radio station. Depending on the characteristics and the demands of the audience, the rotation of power songs is optimized. In extreme cases, that might mean playing a single song 120 times a week. Since there are 168 hours in a week, that means one of these power songs comes up on average every 1 hour and 24 minutes. Radio stations that play music other than Top 40 know that their audience won't stand for that. Oh, they still have songs in power rotations, but those songs are played 30 or 40 or 45 times a week and often much less. Those are for new songs. Well, what about older ones? Again, it depends. A rock station will have a power gold category or something like it. These are songs, usually more than two years old, that have established themselves as all time favorites with the station's audience. Something that's determined through rigorous audience research and testing. A typical rock station might play something like this five to eight times a week, maybe more, maybe less. Again, it all depends on what the audience wants and the nature of the radio station. In fact, this may not be the first time you've heard this track. Today, there are all kinds of theories and practices when it comes to determining how many times a song should be played on the radio during a given day or throughout a given week. It all depends on the philosophy and objectives of a given radio station. And believe it or not, decades and decades of running radio stations has proven that repetition can equal higher ratings. Art and science come together in determining the perfect level of repetition for each individual station. And no, no, no, no, no. No one pays a radio station to play a song, at least not legally. That's called payola, and such pay for play is illegal, although that hasn't stopped some people in the US the biggest payola market in the world. I cover that story too with an episode of Crime and Mayhem in the Music Industry. I highly recommend that you listen. The final thing I want to explain is why Canadian radio stations must devote a certain percentage of their broadcast playlist to Canadian music. Before January 18, 1971, there really wasn't much of a Canadian music industry. There were remote Offices run by foreign record companies. There were a few domestic record labels, but they were minuscule and had no clout. Canadian radio, and therefore popular music in all of Canada, was dominated by artists from the UK and the US it was extraordinarily rare to hear a Canadian artist on Canadian radio. We weren't just losing our musical identity as a nation because we didn't really have one. But Starting in the mid-1960s, there was a movement within Canada to do something about our moribund music industry. After years of discussion, argument and pushback, it was decided that beginning on January 18, 1971, all Canadian radio stations would have to ensure that 30%, three out of every ten of all songs they played on their radio station were by Canadian artists. The object here was twofold. First, make sure that Canadians got to hear music from other Canadians instead of just a steady diet of American and British music. In that sense, it was a cultural strategy. But this was also an industrial strategy. By creating a law whereby Canadian radio had to play Canadian music, a music creation infrastructure was needed. This meant recording studios, record labels, producers, engineers, agents, promoters, and all the things needed to produce, promote and sustain a domestic music industry. There was a lot of pushback in the beginning. A quota system. How sad is that? But because it was the law, the Canadian content rules were here to stay. And yes, it took about a decade for things to get good, but now the Canadian system cranks out more music to the rest of the world than a country of our size should. Otherwise, we have a very strong domestic scene and strong music exports. The Cancon rules have been a great success. Today the minimum requirement is 35%. Some stations voluntarily wrote into their licenses a %age higher than that, 40% or even 45%. The whole Cancon story is very complicated and it's very easy to get lost in the weeds and to explain it all takes an entire show. And there is one somewhere in the ongoing history podcast archives. You should take a look. Meanwhile, please enjoy some classic Canadian content from Our Lady Peace. And that's what I have for this edition of the Rock Explainer. Like I said, this was the fifth in a series of programs, so if you would like to have more things explained to you, check the ongoing history podcast and you'll find the other shows. Meanwhile, if you have something about rock that you would like explained, I will do my best. Drop your question to AlanLancross CA and I will put it on the list for the next installment. Music news and information daily through my website, ajournalofmusicalthings.com. you should get the daily newsletter too, just so you're always up to date. And search for me on social media platforms. I'm lurking there all the time. And then I'll say this again. There's my other podcast, Crime and Mayhem in the Music Industry and it explores the intersection of true crime and music. Get it wherever you get your podcasts, technical productions by Rob Johnston, there's an explanation in itself. Talk to you next time. I'm Alan Cross. Want to transform your space and your Sundays? Well, Home Network is giving you the chance to love your home with $15,000. There can only be one winner. Tune in to Renovation Resort every Sunday and look for the code word during the show. Then enter at HomeNetwork CA WatchAndWin for your chance to win big Amazing. The small details are the difference between winning and losing. Watch and win with Renovation Resort on Home Network.