In this episode: Ted and John draw upon their years of working in the radio industry — and in John’s case, being in bands — to chat in-depth about song structure and why it’s so difficult to get your song on the radio. The guys springboard off a New York Times opinion piece titled “The Culture Warped Pop, For Good” into a conversation about basic elements in song structure like verse, chorus, and hooks. From the 1960s to around 2005, pop, rock, soul, and country songs tended to follow a particular structure. After 2005, the internet, social media, and inexpensive audio equipment changed that structure in pop, hip-hop, and some alternative rock by rearranging song elements into new structures. To demonstrate, John grabs his guitar to play songs by Tom Petty, ZZ Top, and even one he co-wrote to show how the structure of those tunes are different from what synthetic beats-based artists like Billie Eilish are doing.

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