Listening To Greatness

Like the hosts of this podcast I have been a music lover my whole life, and while I have heard some of these albums, I have often put off some of them because they aren’t my style or I didn’t feel I was ready yet to appreciate them. I imagine there are plenty of people out there like that. What I’m really excited about is this podcast gives me a reason to listen, and also provides some great context for the history of the time, the history of the artist, the instrumentation as well as great commentary from a personal and societal perspective. It’s truly a brilliant idea. I am really excited to be along for the journey and as Aaron and Ben brilliantly said, “do the work of listening.” The hosts are relaxed, conversational and insightful in all the right ways. You can tell if they weren’t recording, this would still be the conversation they would be having about the album. They also challenge the work and come at the record from different musical perspectives. One of my favorite segments is where they pull a riff/part of the song and discuss the complexity of it, even offering the listener some insight into the process of how it serves the overall song. One of my favorite moments came in the first episode discussing “What’s Going On” by Marvin Gaye when Aaron shared the idea that this album stands out among other records in the “protest genre” because it is not about tearing down the system, but more posing the question: “Why don’t people care about people?” A great question but also something I hadn’t thought about with this record before. It was at that moment I felt like I got why this was number one. Thank you for creating a great podcast that really delves into everything that fascinates me about the art of albums and music. I’m looking forward to the next one so I can listen to more greatness!