Hit Parade | Music History and Music Trivia Slate Podcasts

“Summer in the City.” “I Feel the Earth Move.” “Bette Davis Eyes.” “Whoomp! There It Is.” “Get Lucky.” “Espresso.” What do these big summer hits all have in common? None of them was Billboard’s official Song of the Summer.

Wait…there’s an official Song of the Summer? Isn’t that something that just happens organically? Every year, it seems everybody has an opinion on this musical national pastime. But the Hot 100 often tells a different story. For every “Light My Fire,” “Bad Girls,” “Crazy in Love,” “California Gurls” or “Call Me Maybe”—a hot-weather hit that unites the charts and the punditry—there are confirmed summer smashes that no one would pick out of a lineup, from Zager and Evans to Iggy Azalea.

Join Chris Molanphy as he traces the tangled story of how America came to decide there should be one victorious summer hit to rule them all. And he counts down the best Songs of the Summer by decade. Is it getting “Hot in Herre,” or is it just us…?

Podcast production by Kevin Bendis.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

“Summer in the City.” “I Feel the Earth Move.” “Bette Davis Eyes.” “Whoomp! There It Is.” “Get Lucky.” “Espresso.” What do these big summer hits all have in common? None of them was Billboard’s official Song of the Summer.

Wait…there’s an official Song of the Summer? Isn’t that something that just happens organically? Every year, it seems everybody has an opinion on this musical national pastime. But the Hot 100 often tells a different story. For every “Light My Fire,” “Bad Girls,” “Crazy in Love,” “California Gurls” or “Call Me Maybe”—a hot-weather hit that unites the charts and the punditry—there are confirmed summer smashes that no one would pick out of a lineup, from Zager and Evans to Iggy Azalea.

Join Chris Molanphy as he traces the tangled story of how America came to decide there should be one victorious summer hit to rule them all. And he counts down the best Songs of the Summer by decade. Is it getting “Hot in Herre,” or is it just us…?

Podcast production by Kevin Bendis.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this mini-episode of Hit Parade, host Chris Molanphy is joined by widely published author and critic Gavin Edwards, whose Rolling Stone article “'We Are the World’: A Minute-by-Minute Breakdown,” dove deep on the massive charity megasingle and especially Quincy Jones’s central role in its creation. Gavin says Q’s genius was not just musical but psychological—he knew how to stoke positive peer pressure among superstars and get performances they didn’t know they had in them.



Next, Chris quizzes a Slate Plus listener with some music trivia, gives him a chance to turn the tables with a question of his own, and previews next month’s full-length episode. Slate Plus members can sign up for a chance to be our trivia contestant on a future episode here.



Podcast production by Kevin Bendis.

What does a music producer do? If his name is Quincy Jones, a little bit of everything: conducting, arranging, composing. Assembling teams of ace session musicians. Sometimes, even picking a catchy title and telling an artist to go write a song about it— would “Thriller” have worked as well if it had been called “Starlight”?

Quincy Jones was pop’s Renaissance Man, and he could not be limited either by genre or by role. He played in jazz bands…produced teen pop hits…discovered young talent…scored Hollywood films…helped invent Yacht Rock and Yacht Soul…even released hit albums under his own name featuring cavalcades of guest vocalists.

And he worked with so! many! legends! Ray Charles, Frank Sinatra, Little Richard, Lesley Gore, Aretha Franklin, Chaka Khan … and all that happened before he even met a former child star named Michael Jackson and helped him produce the best-selling album in history. No wonder only Quincy had the clout to wrangle the superstars for the recording of “We Are the World.”

Join Chris Molanphy as he tells the story of the music man who truly did it all and is known affectionately by the letter Q. He made the world a better place for you and me.

Podcast production by Kevin Bendis.

Host
Chris Molanphy
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What does a music producer do? If his name is Quincy Jones, a little bit of everything: conducting, arranging, composing. Assembling teams of ace session musicians. Sometimes, even picking a catchy title and telling an artist to go write a song about it— would “Thriller” have worked as well if it had been called “Starlight”?

Quincy Jones was pop’s Renaissance Man, and he could not be limited either by genre or by role. He played in jazz bands…produced teen pop hits…discovered young talent…scored Hollywood films…helped invent Yacht Rock and Yacht Soul…even released hit albums under his own name featuring cavalcades of guest vocalists.

And he worked with so! many! legends! Ray Charles, Frank Sinatra, Little Richard, Lesley Gore, Aretha Franklin, Chaka Khan … and all that happened before he even met a former child star named Michael Jackson and helped him produce the best-selling album in history. No wonder only Quincy had the clout to wrangle the superstars for the recording of “We Are the World.”

Join Chris Molanphy as he tells the story of the music man who truly did it all and is known affectionately by the letter Q. He made the world a better place for you and me.

Podcast production by Kevin Bendis.

Host
Chris Molanphy
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this mini-episode of Hit Parade, host Chris Molanphy is joined by New York Times pop critic Lindsay Zoladz, writer of the paper’s music twice-weekly newsletter The Amplifier. Six years ago, when Lindsay was still at The Ringer, she wrote that girl groups were being extinguished by solo careers. She now says, in the mid-2020s, that the situation for female vocal combos hasn’t gotten much better, but perhaps K-pop will keep the girl group alive.

Next, Chris quizzes a Slate Plus listener with some music trivia, gives him a chance to turn the tables with a question of his own, and previews next month’s full-length episode. Slate Plus members can sign up for a chance to be our trivia contestant on a future episode here.

Podcast production by Kevin Bendis.