The Feed Is Fake

From clipping campaigns to music catalog protections, the cultural consensus isn't what we think — and songs that have nothing to do with love

Beth’s daughter, Ellen, asked why our books aren’t on the bestseller list, and honestly? Great question, Ellen. That one question opens up the whole can of worms today: how popular consensus gets manufactured — from the mysterious black box of the New York Times bestseller list to music catalogs being protected like the financial assets they literally are, to the Vulture piece that confirmed what I’ve suspected for a while now, which is that nothing on your social media feed is actually organic. We also wade into the Michael Jackson biopic, which I have real feelings about, and we end in a much better place, talking about songs that have nothing to do with romantic love. I am warning you now that I cannot discuss Brandi Carlile without crying, so just be ready for that. — Sarah

Remember — we are here for you however you are celebrating America250! Don’t miss our full slate of celebratory treats for premium members":

Your America 250 Summer

Also, if you’re desperate to discuss the primary election results, check out our spicy bonus episode from this week.

The DNC Autopsy Has No Executive Summary

Topics Discussed

• Cultural Consensus and Its Impact

• Art, Trust, and Marketing in the Digital Age

• Outside of Politics: Nonlove Songs

Want more Pantsuit Politics? Subscribe to ensure you never miss an episode and get access to our premium shows and community.

Episode Resources

• Strangers: A Memoir of Marriage by Belle Burden (Penguin Random House)

• Famesick by Lena Dunham (Penguin Random House)

• Jane Austen’s Bookshelf by Rebecca Romney (NPR)

• Written in Water: The Ephemeral Life of the Classic in Art by Rochelle Gurstein (Yale University Press)

• Publishing Confidential by Kathleen Schmidt

• LolaMarie Closet Cleanout

• The Feed Is Fake (Vulture)

• Jackson Pollock’s Number 7A Sets Record at $181.2M at Christie’s (ARTnews)

• Michael (2026 film) (Wikipedia)

• John & Paul: A Love Story in Songs by Ian Leslie

• 60 Songs That Explain the ‘90s — the jock jams/melody episode referenced by Beth (Apple Podcasts)

Episode Transcript

[00:00:00] Sarah: This is Sarah Stewart Holland.

[00:00:02] Beth: This is Beth Silvers. You’re listening to Pantsuit Politics. There was a convergence in the force this week. My 10-year-old daughter, Ellen, asked me randomly how books get on bestseller lists.

[00:00:12] Sarah: Great question, Ellen. No one knows.

[00:00:14] Beth: We had a great conversation about it. And then Sarah, you texted me about the Michael Jackson biopic and why those movies keep getting made. And this story from Vulture about clipping dominating social media has been living in my head. So today we’re going to put those pieces together to think about how the cultural consensus sausage gets made, which is related, I think, to election results. We talked about those on our Spicy Thursday episode on Substack. We needed some space to be very candid in that episode. So if you’d like to find that conversation, we will link it in the notes for you. But we’re going to put those pieces together here today in Outside of Politics. We’ll keep discussing music, but this time we’re going to answer a listener’s request to talk about songs we enjoy that are not about romantic love.

[00:00:58] Sarah: Yeah, we had to talk about the primary results on the Spicy because that’s a fucking open accepting zone. There had to be some cussing, all right. Also on Substack, we are kicking off our America 250 summer. We have relaunched Reimagining Citizenship, our 30-day e-book of meditations for people who want to celebrate a little more quietly. We have Beth’s Murder Mystery Dinner Party Kit and a Family Play Kit, all available to paid members on our Substack. Later in the summer, our beloved listener Norma is doing a special patriotic rendition of our film club. I cannot wait to see the lineup. The week of July 4th, we have all kinds of special themed premium shows, including news briefs from 1776 and Founding Father Karaoke. Everything except our very special guest coming on this show over July 4th is a part of our premium membership, and the link is in your podcast app. If you’ve been thinking about joining us in Minneapolis for the live show in August, June 12th is the deadline for hotel rooms at our first ever Spice Conference and executive producer retreat. So go check it all out. The link is in the show notes.

[00:02:10] Beth: We have so many ways for you to celebrate. You are not going to get spammed with any of those ways though because we do not use the kind of campaigns that we’re going to talk about today. So next up, let’s discuss what is behind popular consensus. Sarah, so Ellen says to me, “Mom, are you and Sarah’s books on the bestseller list?” And I said, “No, they are not, Ellen.” And she said, “Why not?” Which I thought was a great question, because they are good books.

[00:02:43] Sarah: First of all, which bestseller list, Ellen? Because there are some bestseller lists that are pretty straightforward, USA Today, Publishers Weekly. The bestseller list that everybody wants on, the New York Times bestseller list, is a black box, and does not seem to be driven by sales. It seems to be driven by Vibes? I can’t tell. It’s hard to tell. There’s a Substacker I follow that I will link to in the show notes who talks about the publishing industry, and every week it’s another “This doesn’t make any sense. This memoir was number one, and now it’s fallen to five. That’s not how books sell. They don’t rocket to the top of The New York Times bestseller list and then fall off the planet. Something is up here.” And this has been a long time beef with The New York Times bestseller list. And also, let me say, this bugs me. I hate it. And if I ever had a book on The New York Times bestseller list, you would see a reel of me crying about that. So that’s why they can get away with it.

[00:03:41] Beth: Yeah. I told Ellen that we have talked to lots of people about this because when you’re launching a book, there is a ton of conversation about how to successfully get those early sales, especially the pre-orders, and we learned that even those lists that are straightforward, just about numbers and copies sold, those numbers and copies sold get manipulated in all kinds of ways. Especially if you’re talking about political memoirs. You have PACs that order tons of books through different stores all over the country to try to make it look organic, but those PACs are absolutely trying to make sure that the book gets on The New York Times bestseller list so that they can claim that. There are so many tactics where someone is buying those raw copies for the placement, and what you’re not seeing is a representation of the quality of the books. It’s just how good was the campaign behind the book.

[00:04:34] Sarah: Now, I think books are such an interesting place to begin this because they’re still a physical product mostly, even with an e-book. We’re not talking about clicks. We’re not talking about likes. We’re not talking about even listens on Spotify, which I think are a little more ephemeral. We are talking about a physical copy in your hand, for the most part, that are being reported on these lists, and that’s still how most books sell, but they’re not as huge a percentage, I think, as some people would assume of book sales. People still want a copy. And so it’s this very interesting intersection of both online virality, because BookTok drives enormous sales when it comes to the publishing industry. When you are an author and you go to start to talk about your pitch, they want to know about your platform. It’s basically your job to sell the book. So there is this online component, but it’s also still driven massively by word of mouth. When you talk about Virginia Evans, the correspondent, that was a slow burn because it was getting recommended, because you know why? It’s a freaking great book. There’s a part of books that’s like podcasting to me a little bit. You can’t skim a novel and decide if it is deserving of the virality. You have to read the story. Is it going to hold up? Are people going to like it or not? Now, look, I don’t agree with all of the popular novels out. People love Remarkably Black Creatures. That’s a book that kind of had a slow burn and went viral. I hated that book. I didn’t hate it. That’s too harsh. I thought it was very predictable, and insulting to octopus, but that’s neither here nor there. And so there is this swirl around books. It’s still word of mouth. You still have to read it and decide if it was good, but it’s also you have BookTok, and you have platforms, and so it is really an intersection of what’s real, what’s fake, what’s an actual good product that’s being recommended by real people, and where is it like a black box of the New York Times deciding everybody should read Bell Bird and Strangers, which they should. It’s great. It’s well-written. That’s another interesting intersection of that; is that’s a great book, but also, they did six profiles of her. And magically, despite sales numbers that didn’t quite match, she’s at the top of the list.

[00:06:49] Beth: And there are major differences in fiction versus nonfiction, and the way it gets marketed, and who gets to write those books and why, and always, I think, within that community of readers, you’ve got people who want to have the sort of meta publishing conversation. A lot of the people who are writing Goodreads reviews have wanted to sell their own book forever and are mad about it, and so are kind of working things out. There’s just a lot going on around any kind of art, but I think it’s just really helpful and empowering to know when you look at a bestsellers list that it could represent any number of things. And it’s just better to me to have that information in my mind than to go in believing that it is just about sales or just a curated list of what the New York Times thinks are the best books right now.

[00:07:35] Sarah: And particularly in the memoir space I think this is another example of what is represented in this conversation when we talk about what’s a real recommendation, what’s real virality, what are people actually enjoying or whatever. Two memoirs right now that are at the top of the New York Times bestseller list, and there’s some conversation about whether those are real numbers or not. I have read both of them. They are both excellent. Belle Barton’s Strangers is great. Lena Dunham’s Famesick is great. I love both of those books. I love Lena Dunham, well-established. I established my fandom on The Spicy a few weeks ago. And also, I don’t want to just read memoirs from rich people, okay? Educated was also great. I’m glad she made it through. I’m not sure she would now. I think the problem is not that people that are well-resourced or connected never have something to add and don’t make good art. It’s that they’re creating an ecosystem with what gets rewarded and what art gets made is chosen by people from a smaller and smaller group that can control this viral ecosystem. That’s why I’m not mad at BookTok because I think it pushes back on that well. But you talk about Reese or Jenna or all these book clubs or whose memoirs are getting written. It’s rich people. The first book in Jenna’s imprint or whatever is some woman... I’m sure the book’s good. I’m not saying the book’s not good, but it’s some woman her kids go to school with, which you can imagine what kind of private school economic ecosystem Jenna’s kids go to. So it’s like there’s this snaking its own tail thing that’s happening that’s at the same time it gets harder to break through once you’ve made it. That is perpetuating how much harder it is to get the art made in the first place.

[00:09:21] Beth: What you’re describing with memoir feels to me like the book world’s version of existing IP in the movie space or the biopics.

[00:09:28] Sarah: Yes.

[00:09:29] Beth: Because the biopics say essentially we already know this person’s famous. They already have a following. Some fandom, probably a multi-generational fandom, will show up for this movie, and if we’re going to invest a bunch to make this movie, we want to know that there’s an audience for it.

[00:09:44] Sarah: Yeah. And that’s another thing that it’s not simply in one direction. So many of these biopics get made, and I don’t think people know this. I don’t think this is widely understood. I think people get the IP thing. They want to extract as much from these IP. But so often with these biopics, if you’re Michael Jackson, if you are Bruce Springsteen, Bob Dylan, particularly Bob Dylan, particularly Elvis, these catalogs have been sold. They exist as a commodity basically now that has to retain its value because the people who bought the catalog spent an enormous amount of money to purchase the rights to these songs. With Elvis, and this is widely reported, that Baz Luhrmann biopic which certainly hooked my small child at the time, and he was obsessed with Elvis for a year, and we listened to a lot of Elvis music and bought an Elvis record, was meant to maintain the value. I hope nobody yells at me. Some of these catalogs, I don’t care how much they paid for them. They deserve to fade. Elvis has two good songs, okay? He was an important pop icon historically, and I think he was innovative, and I get it. I know all the things. Listen, I’m well-versed in the Elvis universe. But Suspicious Minds is the only song I would choose to listen to over and over again from Elvis. There’s not this deep, rich catalog. It’s not like The Beatles, who don’t do a lot of that for a reason, they don’t have to. They’re The Beatles. But and I wouldn’t even make the same argument about Bob Dylan or Springsteen, but there is this sense of we have to keep pumping value into these. It’s not like we can only extract values from these people and these biopics, but we got to keep putting the value back in. We got to hook new fans. And I think it perpetuates how overwhelmed we all feel. Can’t we just let some music fade, man? I’m reading Ragtime right now with my America 250 Book Club, and I listen to the songs and i’m like this is an interesting moment of history because somebody’s not forcing Ragtime music down my throat all the time. It just faded, which is fine. Some things can just fade, man. We don’t have to listen to Elvis Presley’s music into 2200 or whatever, you know what I’m saying?

[00:11:51] Beth: I do. And the way that you’re talking about these catalogs as an asset that receives continual investment to preserve its value is, at this point, a really well-worn strategy that’s proving to work. It worked with Queen. It worked with Elton John. It worked with Michael Jackson. So his estate financially backed this movie, and after the movie launched, for the first time, Michael Jackson hit the top global artist list. And I’m curious what the streams on his music looked like before this film, but I can imagine that they started to look like a depreciating asset that needed an injection of new life.

[00:12:34] Sarah: It surged a little bit in value after he died. Nothing more valuable to a catalog than a dead artist. But Michael Jackson is complicated. And the way this estate protects and purposely obfuscates what we all know, which is that Michael Jackson, by his own admission, slept with little children, is... What bugs me about this I think there’s all this clipping and virality in the catalog and the greediness. I don’t understand how a country that is obsessed with Jeffrey Epstein is buying ticket after ticket to go see Michael. Make it make sense, America. Because let me tell you something, Michael Jackson was a talented artist. Against all my better instincts, I will bop along when, Don’t Stop Till You Get Enough comes on in a store. Okay, it’s a good song. And if they would just let it go they could continue to be good songs, but they want to clean up his life and that’s what bugs me. And if you’ve seen Leaving Neverland, it is not something you can ever forget. Now, you can’t watch it right now because they have legally pursued it to a point where you can’t watch that documentary anymore. But why can’t they just let the songs be? Like, why do they have to force him down our throat at this particular moment in history? That’s what bothers me so badly about this biopic

[00:13:52] Beth: I read that the director from Leaving Neverland came out recently and said that Michael Jackson was worse than Jeffrey Epstein in his mind

[00:14:00] Sarah: Absolutely. I 100% agree.

[00:14:04] Beth: I also read that there were scenes in this movie originally that dealt with those issues in his life that were cut in connection with non-disclosure agreements, and that the movie ultimately has become merchandise. I read a really good review that said the line between cinema and merchandise has come close to being obliterated here.

[00:14:26] Sarah: It just disgusts me. But so then they’re really not different. Everything is a commodity. The music is a commodity. The life is a commodity. I think the through line of this whole conversation when we talk about the books and the music and all of this is the way that consumption is eating art. You can’t let a music fade if it no longer speaks to a new generation. It’s hard to break through as a new artist that perhaps could speak to this generation because the people protecting the previous commodities or the people guarding the gates at the New York Times or at Marvel or at Disney, because it’s the other piece of this is everything gets so big. Like the publishers, massive consolidation. Movies, consolidation. Streaming, consolidation. And so you have big, giant corporate conglomerates protecting their assets, not interested in producing art as much as they used to. Not that MGM was consumed with artistic integrity—I’m not saying that-- back in the ‘50s and ‘60s. But it was really interesting. I want to know what you think about this. I was talking to a friend who is a artist in America. My friend Mike, lives in Philly. He’s an incredibly talented musician. He was like, “I just think it’s going to be where art is local.” If you want art, music that is not a part of this corporate ecosystem, you will find people performing live and it’s like we’re going back. You will just have to find the live person. You will get the record, which is what I did at my local arts and music festival two weeks ago, and that’s it. Because even in a Spotify ecosystem, like that’s another huge corporate conglomerate that is steering us all in ways that like we don’t understand and they do not disclose, that prevents any sort of breakthrough or connection

[00:16:44] Beth: I think it’s important and interesting right now to tease out the relationship between art and our trust of how the art is promoted.

[00:16:56] Sarah: Yep.

[00:16:56] Beth: Because I don’t think that something made for money is not art by necessity. Art and money have always had a relationship. There have always been patrons. There’s always been a business aspect to intellectual property and music catalogs and everything that we’re discussing. But it’s so important to me to talk about this today in relation to our conversation about AI because the way that you discover that art does change your relationship to it, right? If you see the local band, you’re invested in them differently than you’re invested in someone online, unless you have been so inundated online that you feel that you know that person. And that’s where I think this piece from Vulture called The Feed Is Fake is worth everyone’s time.

[00:17:43] Sarah: Yes.

[00:17:44] Beth: There’s a version of reading this where you walk away and you’re like, “Oh my God, everything sucks.” I’m trying to take the version where I say, “Okay, now I know.” “Now I understand why I’m seeing something over and over.” The article talks about clipping as a strategy employed by lots of different companies, people. Sometimes clipping happens around an artist, not at that artist’s behest, and sometimes absolutely at that artist’s behest. But to your point about breaking through if you’re a new musician, one of the bands called out in this article is Geese. That clips were made of Geese and fake accounts spanned the internet with them, and those accounts were built to look organic, and eventually it does become organic because everybody’s seeing it so much that they get involved. And the way that the algorithms reward something that everybody’s doing means that everybody has an incentive to keep doing it. And when I read this article I thought, “Okay, now I understand why during the recent Olympics I kept seeing clips of Surya Bonaly, who was a figure skater from my childhood.” I couldn’t understand why I kept seeing over and over clips of her. I enjoyed them. She’s an incredible athlete. But I realized someone must be paying a dollar per thousand views to get her out here again for some reason. I’m not saying it’s her. I have no idea. This article makes clear often it is very unclear who’s behind these campaigns. But it’s helpful to me to know that we don’t just have a resurgence of that fandom. There is a strategy behind it.

[00:19:22] Sarah: The title image of the piece has a graphic representation of clearly what’s supposed to be Justin Bieber, and they talk about Justin Bieber in the piece. And I had been wondering, I’m like, “Why all of a sudden?” because I don’t particularly care for Justin Bieber. Everything I’ve ever read about him seems like he’s a jerk. I think he’s kind of sorted it out. I’m not mad at him. I know it’s hard to be famous that young. It was like the Grammys performance. It was the Coachella performance, and I saw people on Instagram watching it over and over again, and I’m like, “What is going on here?” And so when I read all this, I was like, “Oh, okay.” And they were saying you don’t break through without artificial help anymore. If you’re actually going to go viral, unless you’re the poor lady at the Coldplay concert, you have to have somebody behind you pushing that virality. It’s just too hard to break through otherwise. And what I thought about immediately in my own life is Olivia Dean. I love Olivia Dean. But I began to love Olivia Dean because I saw one million Instagram clipping Come Be The Man I Need. And then I started listening to Olivia Dean. There was some fake aspect of that too where they were purchasing. I think you’re right. This is not an invitation to be completely cynical. Advertising and marketing have always existed. There was the payola with the radio stations back in the ‘50s. That was a huge deal because the DJs you thought were picking based on taste were getting paid. So like life finds a way and so does money, right? So there will always be an influence an aspect of this. And I just think there was a moment where we thought the democratization of the internet was really going to elevate all our opinions and influence, and we have these influencers, and they’re just real people that are connecting with us and telling us the truth. And it’s just a reminder like ads are ads. They’re just going to stay being ads. And listen, not irrelevant to politics, the other thing that went around the internet this week was all the paid political content producers, like people who everyone trusts and they think they’re just honest activists and they are getting paid a lot of money to promote certain political candidates. Just important to note, this has applications far beyond just what we’re listening to on Spotify.

[00:21:35] Beth: It also helps me understand why Nick Fuentes is everywhere. I see clips of him constantly. I don’t think he is a particularly insightful person or particularly charismatic or any number of things that would make someone rise to this level of virality organically. Lots of people have interests that make it worth this extremely cheap form of getting a lot of eyeballs around incendiary conduct. I think back to when I read Robert Mueller’s report way back in the day, and that report talked about how when we’re discussing election interference, we have to pivot from thinking Russia hired people to come interfere with physical ballot boxes in Michigan, and understand that Russia plays a very long game here, and they say, “Hey, people in the United States are easily incited by race conversations. Let’s make sure that every story that has an element of racial tension gets recycled and put in front of everyone, and that the temperature on that conversation consistently goes up.” Some of this just helps explain to me the disconnect between what I feel in my community and what I feel online in these political conversations, just remembering, okay, this is no longer really politics as much as it’s advertising.

[00:22:57] Sarah: Yeah. Every time I open Instagram, it doesn’t matter how much I go in the behind the scenes and say I’m not interested in shopping, the first thing I get is some white lady around my age saying, “Here are the things on Amazon worth purchasing. Here are the Amazon pieces of my wardrobe worth adding.” Every time. Every single time. And I will say, the one thing that has broken through, who she is now of course adding Amazon links and things, is I think it’s like Lola something, her name’s Jessica in real life, cleaning out her closet. Has she come to your Instagram feed?

[00:23:31] Beth: No, I have not seen her yet, but I bet I will now that you’ve mentioned her to me.

[00:23:34] Sarah: So she was interesting to me because I’m going to assume that this woman who started with a couple thousand Instagram followers is not out there paying to be clipped. She’s very funny, and watching her clean out her closet, which is massive, she just has so many clothes is pretty entertaining. But so it is super fascinating to me when something breaks through that is clearly not corporate produced. There are still moments of that, but it’s not for everybody. It’s just like for my algorithm, and because they keep all this in a lockbox, we have no idea what that means. But I’m not like opposed to any recommendation coming from the internet. It’s just harder to find any ones that feel or sense real. I’m super skeptical at this point of any like political content creators on Reels, TikTok, YouTube Shorts. I know how those work, and I am very skeptical when they show up. I’m like do you really care about it this much or are you just following the feed?

[00:24:33] Beth: I have a lot of skepticism about them too. You will not see me posting political content on Instagram. This takes me back to what you said about Mike and finding live bands, because I do still really value some influencers on Instagram. It tends to be people that I know or people that I found when they were pretty small. I think about Authentically Emmy, who we know personally. I’ve bought a lot of clothes because she recommended them. She’s excellent at what she does and super ethical about it. Texas Farmhouse Forever is another account that I love. My friend Queen City Lisa, who I’ve talked about before, super local influencer who sends me to a great cup of coffee here or there. So I think it’s like the band. There is a different trust level when I know it’s really small. It doesn’t mean that I think it’s not art if it came through in that clipping way. I love the song Where the Hell is My Husband? There’s a lot of strategy behind that song, right? That song is everywhere all the time and all the places, and I understand that’s not organic. It’s still a great song. So that’s what I’m really fascinated by, especially as more stuff is being made not by people. How do we think of what’s art, and how do we think about trust and art and marketing all existing together in this big cloud?

[00:25:48] Sarah: Yeah. I’m a little less cynical about using marketing, even new aggressive marketing techniques, to tell us about new art. I’m growing increasingly cynical about the way old art is being protected. And I mean that even art, like paintings on the wall. That was another big headline this week is Jackson Pollock entered the $100 million-plus at an auction world. This is not because in the year 2026 everybody’s just decided that Jackson Pollock is a bigger genius. It’s because people are parking their wealth in art, and because we have allowed wealth to grow to such a galaxy-level experiment, and you can only spend so much damn money, so that’s why this important da Vinci sits on Bin Salman’s yacht. It’s just because they’re vehicles for wealth. It’s not about the eternal nature of some of the stuff that’s being created. It’s about we have to protect our wealth. This year I’ve gotten really interested and read a lot of books about what becomes canon and why? So I’m reading this book called Written in Water that’s all about, we didn’t always think Venus de Milo was the picture of classical beauty. Used to be this other Venus de Medici that everybody was obsessed with, and then it shifted. Same with Mona Lisa. She didn’t become famous until she got stolen. Even these things that we consider eternal, they shift. I just read Jane Austen’s Bookshelf, such a fascinating book about the female authors that influenced Jane Austen, and where did they go? Why are they not considered a part of the canon? Big reason we could only have one girl, and we decided it was going to be Jane Austen. So even this idea that there’s these eternal pieces of art that shifts and changes with time, but when it becomes a wealth protection mechanism, that natural process is not being allowed to happen. Elvis is not being allowed to fade because he no longer deserves to be there. Don’t email me. But because it’s being protected because it’s worth value. And there was an aspect of this that could happen with traditional art because they were housed in museums, although, museums care that people still want to come see their eternal pieces of art, but not in the same way that some private equity group that bought Bob Dylan’s catalog cares. And I just feel like it’s like art should feel, and all art, paintings, sculptures, movies, TV, music, books, it should help us make sense of the world. And when it contributes to this sense of overwhelm we feel in the world because nothing’s allowed to die, I got a beef with that.

[00:28:21] Beth: I think that’s a great transition to our listener’s question about art that has moved us but that isn’t about romantic love, because romantic love is certainly the smooth road to a hit song. So let’s talk about the rougher road. Sarah, Kara asked us to talk about music that’s not just about romantic love, and I love this question. The problem is that my brain immediately went to country music, and I have a feeling that yours did, too, because we are both such ‘90s country fans.

[00:29:00] Sarah: The country music is better at this. I’m sorry. Just because I can’t let this go, and I think the evolution of all this is so fascinating, I just want to say before we move on past romantic love, that shit evolves, too. Have you seen all those interesting charts about the words we use and the amount of songs that are about heartbreak, and that kind of shifts over decades, and the way we talk about the phases of romantic love, and where those are represented in pop songs is super, super interesting to me, too. It’s like even that is not static. That shifts and changes. Even this topic that we think is eternal, that changes all the time, too.

[00:29:33] Beth: My digression along similar lines, I was just sitting here thinking about this fantastic episode of 60 Songs That Explains the ‘90s, where they talk about melodies that sound like they have always been because they get picked up for baseball games or jock jams. When we were kids if it gets played in a sports environment over and over, you dissociate the melody from the song and the artist, and the melody has a life of its own. It’s a beautiful episode. We’ll link it here. It’s so well done. But I think the same thing because the type of melody that enters that pantheon today is very different than Sweet Caroline, but Sweet Caroline has not faded because of baseball and weddings. And what’s the chicken and the egg in that cycle?

[00:30:20] Sarah: And that doesn’t just happen on the other side of a song being created and shared. That is the story of Yesterday. That Paul McCartney woke up with a melody, and he thought he’d heard it before because he was in pubs, and they would sing these songs, and they were old songs and songs people had “ always been singing.” And he kept asking “Where’d I hear this one? Where’d I hear this melody?” And there’s this great line in the book I loved called John and Paul: A Love Story Through Songs, where they talk about John Lennon was trying to break what music was considered, and Paul was trying to create music that seemed like it always existed, and that’s when you put them together, that’s why you had such magic, which I thought’s so interesting. And I think there is an aspect of melody that can feel eternal, and then there’s an aspect of narrative and lyrics that when you’re either speaking to a universal experience like romantic love or other universal experiences. I’m a lyrics girly. I’ll just disclose that. I’m a lyrics girly, first and foremost. I love melody. I love harmony. Very important to me. I’m into it, okay? But I’m just telling you, when you put a lyric on something and I go, “Whoa,” then you got me. So it’s like the singer-songwriters for me are the ones who are like, even beyond country, but definitely mostly in country, that are really getting to something deep and universal beyond romantic love, for sure.

[00:31:46] Beth: Three chords and the truth.

[00:31:47] Sarah: Three chords and the truth.

[00:31:48] Beth: Since you read that Beatles book, I want to know if you can tell me if this is true. I saw this about Paul McCartney recently online, and because the world we live in, I don’t know if it’s correct or not. But it said that he does not take photos with fans, and he’s explained it as when he is asked to take a photo by someone, he doesn’t feel like himself anymore. He feels like something different. He compared it to taking a photo of a monkey at the zoo, and he said, “It makes me feel like that monkey instead of like me, and I just want to feel like me all the time.” And I loved that, but I also did not trust it.

[00:32:22] Sarah: I don’t know if it’s true. All I can tell you is that it would align with something I know to be true, which is that when The Beatles performed in Shea Stadium, They could not hear themselves, and the footage is bananas. What was happening was not like a performance-listener relationship. It was like everyone in the stadium was at such an emotional level, and they clearly felt like they were, like, at the center of the sun. And it’s one of the last times they performed for a live audience. They just were like, “Whoa. No. We’ve unleashed something here that’s not good for us or for anybody else.” And so, to me, it would align with that experience in Shea Stadium if he did take that position because... And I think that’s what happens, too, with when they’re writing songs about... the Beatles, the first part of their career, they were, like, singing a lot of girl group songs. Almost every song at the beginning of their discography is, “I want to hold your hand.” It’s all about romantic love, and then you see them shift. because I do think there’s a certain maturity that happens in artists. As they get older and they have more life experiences, then they start to write about other experiences, and so you see a lot of these songs we’re going to talk about later in people’s career, and The Beatles are a perfect example of that.

[00:33:46] Beth: Yeah, The Beatles are a great answer to this question for sure. That’s a great segue to a category of songs that I thought about in response to this question. I love when artists sing about the experience of being famous. Some of my favorite Taylor Swift music reflects on the experience of being famous. I don’t connect with Addison Rae as an artist. I really like Fame is a Gun. I think that’s a super interesting song.

[00:34:08] Sarah: You know this is my favorite topic basically in life, is people talking about being famous. God, this has turned into a Beatles episode, but it is what it is. You get the interplay of their before and after I think in really fascinating ways, not just when they’re talking about fame. But Strawberry Fields Forever and Penny Lane are just two choruses of the same song. They’re talking about childhood. They’re talking about nostalgia. They’re talking about where they grew up. And so they’re in conversation with each other about childhood. I think songs about gr-- I’m, like, tearing up. I feel like country music does this so well. There’s so many songs that capture particularly what it’s like to grow up in rural America that will just instantly catch me. Even cheesy ones like Kenny Chesney’s Back Where I Come From.

[00:34:49] Beth: Is there Life Out There from Reba.

[00:34:51] Sarah: Yes

[00:34:52] Beth: Come on.

[00:34:52] Sarah: I Love it. Now I will say in the country genre, I think, and she’s getting back to this, which makes me happy. You know i love a song... It’s even less about the subject and more about... I love a clever, funny song. There’s some about love, but I think other topics lend themselves better. I think one of the best in the biz is Kacey Musgraves. I’ve never encountered an artist that can write a funnier song. Family is one of my favorite songs, and Biscuits, and they’re both hilarious. They will make you laugh out loud. But Family is just one of my favorites for as far as capturing the like what is it? They buy too much wicker, they drink too much liquor, but blood’s always thicker. I love that song. I love the way she captures something deep, but in a very funny, catchy way.

[00:35:41] Beth: Follow Your Arrow is funny.

[00:35:42] Sarah: Yeah.

[00:35:43] Beth: And it’s not even meant to be as cheeky as those songs. And then on the other side of that, I think Merry Go Round about family is an unbelievable song from her.

[00:35:50] Sarah: About growing up in a small town. There’s a lot of small town... And look, I think that’s true all the way on the other end of the spectrum. I think you get that in other genres. Particularly I’m thinking about hip hop, about what it’s like to grow up in an urban environment, what it’s like to grow up in a different kind of pressure cooker, what it’s like to come to the big city and try to make it. One of my favorite genre of songs is making it songs. There’s a reason we all sing Empire State of Mind, because it’s great. Whether you like New York or not. It’s a great song, and it captures that feeling of being in the place of New York City, but being in a place in your life where it feels like there’s so much possibility.

[00:36:27] Beth: Then on the other end of life, later chapters, I think Americana does a great job of reflecting back and reflecting on what it’s like to get older and what it’s like to raise children and to watch children get older and what it’s like for relationships to change. I think Patty Griffin’s new-ish album, Crown of Roses, is beautiful for that reason. I would recommend everything on that album as just a nice mature woman considering where she is in the world right now.

[00:36:55] Sarah: I totally agree. I think over half of the High Women’s album are songs that are not really about romantic love. They’re about other moments in life, definitely motherhood. My Name Can’t Be Mama Today, what a great freaking song. But Brandi Carlile, let me just say, I’m concerned for myself, for my own emotional life as this progresses. Brandi Carlile songs about motherhood. Okay, so she starts with The Mother when her daughters are very little. Perfect song about raising little. “Welcome to the end of being alone inside your mind.” Yep. My absolute favorite line of that song: “She filled my life with color, canceled plans, and trashed my car, but none of that was ever who we are.” Oh, no, here it comes. Okay, so that’s bad enough. I think her daughters are, like, tweens now. Her new album has a song called You Without Me. It will destroy you as a mother. It will rip your heart out your throat, and it will stomp on it, and then you will be left in the fetal position crying on the floor. Just it’s an attack. I don’t know what to say any other way. It’s an attack. It will leave you weeping. It’s all right there in the title, You Without Me. I saw her live and she was like-- You just start to realize the story she told was hilarious because her and her wife are raising these girls and apparently they’re like sports fanatics, and her wife are like, “ What is happening? We are good-natured lesbians. We don’t want to go to baseball games. Like, why are we being forced.” And they’re going in their own way, man. They’re going to live all this life and there’s a great moment in the song where she talks about “You’re going to start buying your own records and like deciding what you like.” And they’re only tweens. What is coming for me when Brandi Carlile’s daughters graduate from high school or college? I love her so much, but I’m just kind of you can’t do this to us. Stop writing songs about these experiences. I can’t take it, Beth.

[00:38:47] Beth: First of all, I think she’ll find lots of nice lesbians at baseball games. And secondly, I have a sense that’s what Kara’s looking for with her question. Like these kinds of songs that really do speak to what you’re living now. I’m excited that she’s doing this, and I’m hoping Beyonce does more of it, too. I think Protector is one of the best songs on Cowboy Carter about her daughter, and I love how she plays with being her protector and then being her projector. And I think that reflecting on what it’s like to be a famous person raising a child who also wants that life is really fascinating. But it’s hard to write about older kids because you’re contending with them as people, too. You are contending with that separation. Which stories belong to them as much or more than they belong to me, and how do I deal with that in the public sphere? I can’t think of anybody more equipped to take us through that territory than Brandi Carlile and probably also than Beyonce.

[00:39:40] Sarah: But listen. Beth, I can’t take any more lines like, “Heavy are the hands that you are free to slip right through.” Do you understand? I’m not up for it. I can’t do it.

[00:39:53] Beth:  Let’s crowdsource some new music for you then.

[00:39:55] Sarah:  Do you see the tears In my eyes right here? I do. They’re already here, and I’m reading the lyric to you. That’s it. Do you know what happens when I listen to this song for like the 1500th time? Doesn’t matter. Doesn’t matter. Give me some nine to five, just give me some upbeat, keep me focused on the day-to-day. You don’t got to rip my heart out.

[00:40:18] Beth: I do love songs about work, too.

[00:40:20] Sarah: I do too.

[00:40:20] Beth: I am crazy about My Tears Ricochet from Taylor. Yeah. That kind of reflection on work I think is so interesting. So that’s what we’re looking for. Let’s together figure out what songs we’re listening to that aren’t just about romantic love. I like those songs too, but let’s make a good list that won’t only rip Sarah’s heart out.

[00:40:37] Sarah: And I don’t want my fan card taken away. Obviously, you don’t talk about where Brandi Carlile is without talking about The Road Paved by the Indigo Girls, with Get Out the Map, Closer to Fine. The lyrical masterminds over there laying down some truths about stuff beyond romantic love, for sure.

[00:40:57] Beth: I hit Galileo at least once a month to just check in with my philosophy and ethics about life.

[00:41:04] Sarah: So I love Galileo, but my favorite Indigo Girl song that’s not about anything that other people write about, I guess is the best way to say it, is Burn All the Letters. Damn, I love that song. I love Burn All the Letters. And it’s just sometimes like what if we wrote a song about Virginia Woolf’s diary and people that came before us and how they disclosed and what they didn’t disclose, and should we be think-- not a subject rife for songwriting, unless you’re Amy and Emily.

[00:41:30] Beth: Sarah, you and I have talked about starting a music podcast many times, and I think our passion for that project only grows through conversations like this, so thank you Kara for the question. Thank you all for listening today. Please remember that we have your back for America 250 celebrations. All the links are going to be in the notes here, and you can find everything on Substack. We will also be back with you on Wednesday because of the Memorial Day holiday, and until then, we hope you have the best long weekend available to you.

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