The biggest theme song fail

Switched on Pop

Vox Media Podcast Network

Music Interviews, Music History, Music, Music Commentary

4.6 • 2.7K Ratings

🗓️ 14 January 2025

⏱️ 38 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

What happens when your podcast’s theme song—cobbled together from GarageBand loops—gets called “game show music” and likened to a cereal commercial? You rewrite it. In this episode, we take you behind the scenes of Switched on Pop’s sonic makeover, from scathing critiques by music industry heavyweights to the creation of a lush, layered soundscape inspired by Wendy Carlos and PBS science shows. With expert advice from sonic branding maestro Dallas Taylor (Twenty Thousand Hertz) and the composers Zach Tenorio and Jocie Adams (Arc Iris), we dissect every step of transforming our theme into a timeless sonic identity. Tune in for the full story and hear how we turned a jingle crisis into a musical triumph. More Musicares.org is supporting LA based musicians in need of assistance from the destruction of the fire Billboard has compiled more forms of support and assistance Songs Discussed The Monkees: "Theme Song (Hey, Hey, We're The Monkees)" Radiohead: "Kid A" No Name: "Yesterday" Mort Garson: "Ode to an African Violet" Wendy Carlos Switched On Bach Whitney Houston: "The Star-Spangled Banner" (1991 Super Bowl performance) Jimi Hendrix: "The Star-Spangled Banner" (Woodstock performance) Friends theme Song "I'll Be There for You" by The Rembrandts Reading Rainbow theme song “Butterfly in the Sky” by Steve Horelick, Dennis Neil Kleinman, and Janet Weir Bill Nye the Science Guy theme Song composed by Mike Greene 3-2-1 Contact theme Song composed by Tom Anthony Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	This week on the gray area, how are digital devices changing us?
0:07.0	We've become more machine-like, and I think the exhibit A for that is how young people, for example, talk about their sex lives in machine-like terms, performative terms, in ways that actually have shaped their understanding of what an intimate sexual
0:21.8	relationship even should be what it should look like, what it should feel like.
0:26.2	Listen to the gray area with me, Sean Elling.
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0:36.3	Hey, it's Andy Roddick, and I'm not just a former tennis player.
0:40.2	I am a tennis fan, a tennis nerd.
0:43.1	I just can't stop watching it.
0:44.3	I can't stop analyzing it.
0:45.6	I can't stop talking about it to anyone that it will listen, which is why I started my podcast
0:49.5	served with Andy Roddick.
0:50.9	Now a part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.
0:53.8	On the show, we talk about everything
0:55.5	from new up-and-coming players to the champions dominating the narrative to whatever's on my mind.
1:00.2	This January is the Australian Open, and you know I've got some thoughts. So tune in for our
1:04.9	Australian Open coverage, find served wherever you get your podcast or on our YouTube channel.
1:21.3	Welcome to Switched On Pop. I'm songwriter Charlie Harding. And I'm musicologist Nate Sloan.
1:24.5	Nate, what do you think of when I play you this song?
1:32.3	Switched on Pop. play you this song. You know the TV show from the 60s about the band The Monkeys?
1:36.0	Yeah.
1:36.3	It had that theme song, Hey, hey, with the monkeys.
1:39.4	People say we monkey around.
	...

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