The B-Sides

The B-Sides
The B-Sides

The B-Sides is a podcast for progressives who love pop music. Subscribe today wherever you listen to get biweekly musings from hosts Becky, Hannah, and Mimi on pop’s place in our world, and the music you should put in your ears to fuel your reckoning with the trashfires all around us.

  1. 08/03/2023

    53. Avril Lavigne: An Investigative Report

    So sorry, but: Why'd she have to go and make things so complicated?  Avril is such a rare artist. She made a splash right away with Let Go, which had a rebellious yet old soul sort of vibe to it. And her early eras and albums are still so special to so many of us. She changed the moment, she was the moment, and, in some ways, she always will be. She opened doors almost immediately into 2000s alt rock and pop punk sub-genres in what used to be a far more monocultural world. And yet, she hasn't evolved much herself as an artist over the last two decades. Instead, she regressed in some ways — at least from what we can see and hear and understand. The chaotically cool poetry in motion of Avril's Let Go and Under My Skin eras — the lyrics, sound, music videos, live performances, and core of who we thought she was — dwindled into something else later on. Her trajectory as an artist brings up all sorts of questions. Questions about what artists can mean to us at a formative age; the validity of our expectations of them, consciously or not, as we all grow up; ageism, misogyny, the idea of a sellout and a label’s role in that; what makes a good gateway artist; what makes a good post-9/11 cultural void artist; what makes a conspiracy theory take off; can someone ever be cool again after marrying and divorcing the lead singer of Nickelback, even if she married and divorced the lead singer of Sum 41 first; and more. Join us as we pull on some of these threads... Article and TV citations: CNN — Avril Lavigne: Teen rocker of 2002 Nylon — How Avril Lavigne's Let Go Broke the Mold for '00s Teens People — Avril Lavigne Recalls Making 2002's 'Let Go' as a Teenager: 'I Didn't Even Know What Hollywood Was' Vanity Fair — “I’ve Always Had This Vibe”: Avril Lavigne on 20 Years Since Let Go MTV — Total Request Live interview, August 2002 Thank you for subscribing, and consider leaving a review! Make sure to follow us on insta: instagram.com/listentothebsides and join us on Discord here. You can now leave us a voicemail! Click here to record a voicemail for us. Join us on Patreon! You’ll receive one bonus episode a month and behind-the-scenes content. And find us everywhere you find your podcasts! Including Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Buy B-Sides merch on TeePublic here.

    58 min
  2. 18/01/2023

    50. Our 50th Episode Retrospective!

    It’s our 50th episode!! We are so proud of US! 3  So - let’s reflect. We’ll stare directly at the sun but never in the mirror…until today. Join us on a trip down memory lane. We talk about how pop music has changed since we launched in 2019, revisit our old takes (find out which ones did not age well!), reflect on some pop stars we thought were on the rise and now, simply, aren’t, and play a B-Sides quiz game. We reference a bunch of our own episodes! Here’s most of them, in order of when we discuss them in the podcast: Episode 18: Season 1 Finale, “It was the end of a decade, but the start of an age” Episode 30: Tiktok on the Clock Episode 8: Literally WHAT is pop music?  Glee mini series: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 Episode 19: Why it’s sexist to hate pop music Episode 20: Our positions on “Positions”  Episode 7: Musical Conspiracy Theories  Episode 6: What Lizzo Means In Tr*mp’s America  Episode 33: Let's Go Girls: Country-Pop and the Women Who Are Shaping It Episode 34: The Trials and Tribulations of GirlBossery Thank you for subscribing, and consider leaving a review! Make sure to follow us on insta: instagram.com/listentothebsides and join us on discord here. You can now leave us a voicemail! Click here to record a voicemail for us. Consider joining us on Patreon! You’ll receive one bonus episode a month and behind-the-scenes content. And find us everywhere you find your podcasts! Including Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Buy B-Sides merch on TeePublic here.

    1 h y 2 min
4.9
de 5
56 calificaciones

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The B-Sides is a podcast for progressives who love pop music. Subscribe today wherever you listen to get biweekly musings from hosts Becky, Hannah, and Mimi on pop’s place in our world, and the music you should put in your ears to fuel your reckoning with the trashfires all around us.

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