Looking for a blog, podcast, or website that dissects songs.

April 21, 2012 5:03 PM

Looking for a blog, podcast, or website that dissects songs.

I have a few friends who understand music much more fully than I do, and they can talk at length about the production of a song, the recording decisions, tunings, instruments, rhythms, and so on. I find this fascinating.

I'd love to find blogs (or whatever) that sort of dissect a song - tell the listener things to watch for, analyze different components, and so on. Genre doesn't really matter, though to be honest I'm not as interested in classical.

If you know anything like this, I'd love to hear about it!

posted by iftheaccidentwill to media & arts (7 answers total)

Alan Pollack did a series on every Beatles song back in the 90s on the Usenet newsgroup rec.music.beatles. They're still held in very high regard.

They're available at http://www.recmusicbeatles.com/public/files/awp/awp.html.

Have a look at a couple of songs with which you're familiar and see if they're the sort of thing you're after.
posted by paleyellowwithorange at 5:15 PM on April 21, 2012 [2 favorites]

In February 2008, Josh Hoisington started a blog on the Beach Boys' 1970 album Sunflower, analyzing the recording session notes and the recordings.

http://recordingsunflower.blogspot.com.au/

Unfortunately he stopped after track 6, so the blog is incomplete; but what's there is quite interesting - if you're interested in that particular album.
posted by paleyellowwithorange at 5:20 PM on April 21, 2012

You might also find the long-abandoned ByrdWatcher website of interest.

There's a section on albums, and although the analysis isn't as technical or detailed as the Beatles and Beach Boys series I linked to above, the author (Tim Connors) still writes with insight in his overviews.
posted by paleyellowwithorange at 5:28 PM on April 21, 2012

What Goes On is a site dedicated to anomaly minutiae in Beatles recordings.

So, for example, they point out a 'sudden intake of breath' in the right channel at 2:17 in 'A Day in the Life'.

Or, as an example of something more considered, an analysis of the instrumental verse after 3:16 in 'Yer Blues'.

Fun to listen to this stuff with headphones.
posted by paleyellowwithorange at 5:36 PM on April 21, 2012

More Beatles!

Check out the Beatles Music History site, which analyzes the historical context of each song, as well as the relevant recording sessions.

Even songs as lowly-regarded as, say, 'What Goes On?' get the royal treatment.

Man, I've had all these sites in my bookmarks folder for years. Time for a revisit!
posted by paleyellowwithorange at 5:40 PM on April 21, 2012

The Lyrics Undercover podcast does a song per episode. (There's a pay subscription with an episode a week, but I just get the free once-a-month feed.) I don't think it goes quite as in-depth into each song as you're looking for, but, it covers a pretty random selection of genres.
posted by oh yeah! at 5:54 PM on April 21, 2012 [1 favorite]

Wow, a lot of Beatles stuff to dive into. Thanks for all the help! It's difficult to mark any of these answers as correct, since they're all exactly what I was looking for.
posted by iftheaccidentwill at 4:12 PM on April 22, 2012