Aug 5, 2020

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...

Jul 22, 2020

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...

Jul 15, 2020

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...

Jul 8, 2020

Classic video game consoles like the Nintendo Entertainment System didn't just play games; they also played music. Their onboard synthesizers put strict limits on what kinds of music game composers could write, but from those limits came a cornucopia of musical themes that remain iconic even today.

On this episode, Kirk...

Nov 18, 2018

On the first episode of Strong Songs, Kirk breaks down Toto's hit song "Africa," a single so good that it still lights up the Internet today.

Band/Artist: Toto

Album: Toto IV, 1982

Composed by: David Paich and Jeff Porcaro

Listen/Buy: Apple Music | Amazon | Spotify

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