Two artists who haven’t released new music since 2013 recently remerged into the limelight: Katy Perry, with her dystopian disco banger “Chained to the Rhythm” and Lorde, with the melodramatic-yet-uplifting anthem “Green Light.”

With the Academy Awards around the corner, Charlie and Nate try something new: a break down of the movie musical La La Land through two of its key songs, “City of Stars” and “Start a Fire.”

“I Don’t Wanna Live Forever,” the new track from Zayn and Taylor Swift, finds two members of the pop pantheon joining forces with producer Jack Antonoff to craft an inexorable hit song.

“I Feel it Coming” might be the slowest burning jam to hit the charts in ages, in which the Weeknd enlists the robotic hum of Daft Punk to help craft a perfectly calibrated climate of desire.

White Christmas holds the Guinness World Record for most singles sold and has been covered over 500 times. We use our scientific formula for holiday hit success to break down what makes this song so timeless.

On the surface, Tove Lo’s new hit “Cool Girl” boasts a snappy, earworm chorus and an empowering message of self-reliance. Beneath its chill exterior, though, Lo’s song burns with a passion bordering on rage, and sinister sonic undertones suggest an unreliable narrator who doesn’t always mean what she says.

Toby Keith’s country smash and Jay Z, Kanye West and Frank Ocean’s soulful hip hop anthem have little in common except a firm conviction that each song knows what it really means to be American.

50 episodes in, hosts Charlie and Nate take a step back to think about how they listen to music and try to define what might be called The Switched on Method™.

Host Charlie spent the last two weeks listening to every song on the Billboard Hot 100. What did he discover? That the sonic similarities of most chart-toppers sound closer than ever.

The Nokia ringtone used to be heard more than a billion times per day, making it one of the most popular songs in the world. We zoom in on one of these annoying melodies to see if there’s not some hidden musical craft present in the ubiquitous bleeps and bloops that envelop us.

On first listen, Lady Gaga’s songs may sound like just another catchy pop tune and this is intentional. Gaga lures us close with the sound of pop fame and then hooks us and reels us into into her dungeon of monstrous sounds.

From Beyoncé to Johnny Cash, savvy pop songwriters know a well-placed harmonic modulation can leave listeners reeling. But what is this mysterious musical trick, and how does it work?

As dance music takes over the charts and new software grants vocal manipulation at the click of a button, this uncanny production technique has become nearly ubiquitous. But is this ultramodern sound really that new?

With Charlie away, host Nate, aka “Hubcap,” takes us on a home-show tour of the Scottish Highlands with his traveling minstrel act, The Gideon and Hubcap Show. It’s an entirely different kind of summer music spectacle.

The fingerprints of house music are all over mainstream pop, but much of its sound has been whitewashed. That ubiquitous four-to-the-floor kick and synth bass sound draws from Chicago’s queer, black and latinx warehouse club culture.

How do you create a hit that both breaks sound barriers and chart records? Drake has done this with a unique mix of international music from Africa, the Caribbean, the U.K. and Canada.

We have more information about pop stars lives than ever before, but this transparency is not always uplifting for music lovers. As listeners, this undoubtedly colors the way we hear our old favorite songs.

Summer heat is upon us and so are the jams. Our ears are hooked on Justin Timberlake’s “Can’t Stop The Feeling!” What you may not know is that this song leans on the success of mononymous giants: Pharrell, Michael and Handel.

With Meghan Trainor’s new singles “No” and “Me Too” ubiquitous on the radio dial, a larger discussion about the uneasy relationship between social movements and selling records takes a feminist bent.