EAR LODER

Buckle up, loders - spring has sprung and we have a pack of wildflower pop girlies all making their first moves on the Summer 2025 chess board. Alec is back for the quarterly unpack. We start by catching up on the life and times of the Albuquerque gay men's chorus, check-in on some of our 2024 main girlies Muni Long and Jade, and finally stretch out under spring 2025's Teletubby sun where the cabbage patch is all coming up alt pop white girls.

*** A BONUS ***

BEFORE we leave the early+mid 90s ... did you know Mariah wrote and recorded A GRUNGE album simultaneously to Daydream? AND it’s on YouTube? 

Before there was Hannah Montana, there was Chick, and Mariah. Elusive chanteuse indeed - at the pique of both her personal life frustrations, and her commercial and vocal prime, Mariah took solace in living a double life: secret grunge wailer, and pop songstress at the Tokyo Dome (often hailed as one of the greatest concerts of her career.)

The reason the Diva Dive was born - the elusive chanteuse, the woman with 19 #1s as an artist and 18 as a writer - the head Butterfly AND Lamb - and the former title holder for longest running #1 on the billboard charts: Long Island's own, Mariah Carey.

Before smartphones and the ubiquitous internet, before auto-tune and lip-syncing ran amuck, 1990-1996 Mariah defied all the rulebooks by writing and singing her way to the top. From Vision of Love to One Sweet Day, let's cover the diva's most Olympic of vocal seasons, bringing her into her prime as a...

HAPPY 2025 LODERS! A new year, a new you, a new me. Or the same ones with more crows feet!

30m: Where I've been ((SKIP IF U JUST WANT MY TAKES ON BEY))
40m: Grammys 2025 reaction
10m: Where we're going
SEE YOU MORE OFTEN THIS YEAR!

@earloder - insta

It's Wicked Pt. 1 : The Reaction Pt. 2 ;) And, another new welcome to the pod: Michael! In our second Wicked Pt. 1 reaction installment: will Cynthia and/or Ariana do a brief run on Wicked Broadway? How do we rate Ariana as comedic + dramatic actress? Were the cameos too long? Which parts made us cry? What are we looking forward to in part 2? And, our pod segments: I WAS WRONG/PROVE ME WRONG , and USB-REAL. Highlights: Flo, Venus, Deja Vu, and Jessie J.

My pulse is rushing // My head is reeling // My face is flushing /// What is this feeling? Fervid as a flame .... does it have a name? 
WI-CKED!! WI-CKED!!! ....
WIIII - CKKED Yes folks. It's good to [hear] me, isn't it? What a time to be alive: the Wicked soundtrack and film have dropped, and we need to talk - as much as we need to hold space. Today, it's not just me: we have the EAR LODER DEBUT of friend-of-the-podcast, Wicked super-fan, Boston vocal idol, and one of my bffs, Joe Pratolongo. Join us in dissecting the lore, t...

Hey loders! It's the most (controversial) time of the year, and we're not even talking about the election. It's the 2024-25 grammy nominations. Luckily, this has been our superbowl for probably half our lives - so you're in good hands. Alec is back joining Alex on the mic, and we cover the majors, the best-of genres, the omissions, and the wtf's. Join us! 

While you're at it - check out the companion playlists to the Ear Loder podcast on spotify, just search Earloder and you'll find some of my (ever-expanding) tops from 2024, as well as earloder.fm1, m...

Somehow, it's been 4 months since my last upload. Also - hey - Alex, here. Welcome back; and welcome anew, to Ear Lode. Ready for your first?

I wanted to take a different approach to this "comeback" moment and share, in addition to some music, some of my personal 2024. I have barely edited this ep; it's a raw take, scarcely outlined and delivered organically (still up to 40% GMO). I think some of this approach may, as they say, stick.

If you are here for the fun music vibes only, go right ahead and take a pass...

if Q1 2024 found us at the rodeo of pop-artists-gone-country, culminating in the magnum opus of beyonce's cowboy carter, then Q2 finds us on the dance floor, but not the glitter disco of post-pandemic yesteryear -- instead, we're underground, our boots are stuck to old beer on the floor, our tank is sweat through, the turntables are glitching, and we're kind of pissed off. frankly, we're acting a brat - cue Charli XCX's ostensible mainstream breakthrough by the same name. 2024's electronic pop and dance records have gotten heavier, synthier, bassier, bitchier, rawer, and saltier - perhaps 2 years of pink...

WHEW - are we already on month 6 of the year? With the amount of new music releases being packed into 2024, every week feels like a lifetime. Alec's back to jointly metabolize some of the new material by Dua, Becky Hill, and the recorded Chromatica Tour. And, because we haven't caught up in a while (and it's June!) we take a mid-month breather to recount pride festivities from Albuquerque to Los Angeles. This is a 2-parter, so get warmed up here for our next episode that's dedicated to the current critical darling of 2024, the brat herself, Charli XCX.

On this MOST commemorative of days, the day of Normani's debut album release "Dopamine" - galt presents the second of our 2-part, 2-year-old series tracking her early career. In today's vintage episode, we chart(ed) the course from Normani's first solo single, Love Lies, through her then-latest, Wild Side, and explicate the growing pattern of false starts, fumbles, and questionably burned bridges seeming to build in Normani's wake. What we know today, we didn't then - that at least she'd get the album out!!!!

Well hey y'all. Galt took most of May off while traveling to visit and support family and friends. While we reboot over here for a bigger and better next chapter of Galt's Radio, I REALIZED that a long ... long ... LONG awaited landmark is, somehow, finally upon us: Normani's debut album release. Any Normani fan thought this day would come 4-5 years ago, and yet ... here we are. Back in the infancy of this pod, Alex and Alec recorded some trial episodes, and this very one was surfaced today from the dust of early 2022 - one of the MANY times...

Alec Mac is back!!!! and, apparently, so is Jess Glynne! It's ok to admit, you didn't know she was, or wasn't, or wasn't-but-now-is-again releasing music. But let's take a dive, because the pop world (at least our 2020 + 2021) may well not have been, or be, Dua Lipa's disco kingdom without her. WHAT IS JESS' ORIGIN STORY? From where did she come? Who are Alex Newell, Louisa Johnson, Becky Hill, Ella Henderson, Clean Bandit, and did Jess G kick down the door for all of them (especially the queers??) to bring disco back to pop? AND.... IS TRACK 11 ON HER NEW...

Music is always better metabolized. You've heard my predictions, you've heard (and watched) my initial reactions, now here are the takes on Ariana Grande's Eternal Sunshine that took a week+ of listening to brew, stew, chew and now spew ;) 

How a piece of music hits isn't always how it lands. Did the sun shine all the more through the cracks after a week of living with this record? Have I told strangers 'we can't be friends, but I'd like to just pretend?' Is AG7 giving wheat, or is it giving chaff? And does Pitchfork agree? Join m...

JLo . Ariana . Kacey . Bey . Taylor . Jess Glynne . Dua . Normani . Maren . Lana . Shakira . Charli . Camila . Selena . Clairo . St. Vincent . 

Gaga ? Katy ? Billie ? Sia ? Lorde ? 

We're already exhausted!

a THRILL this week to welcome back to the pod...... co-conspirator, college bestie, music and culture maven...... the reason I became a Jazmine Sullivan fan...... the one and only, Alec M! 

The earliest sketches of The Vocal were Alec and Alex on Zoom -- and while better audio days still await given the current latitudes of separation, we couldn't wait any longer to have Alec bac...

galt's FIRST TAKE :: @beyonce act ii // countrYoncé

my inevitable, official thoughts SO FAR 🧠🧐

1) Why was Bey's announcement mid-Superbowl more palatable than Taylor's mid-Grammys?
2) Why do all pop girls end up "going West"?
3) Bey's done this before -- what happened to countrYoncé then, and how it might inform her return to the genre NOW.

All views are my own except the ones that bother you and those are a you thing

#beyonce #actii #texasholdem #16carriages #daddylessons #lemonade

video version of this episode: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cbEIumlg...

It's always a Kelly day // We have SO much content when covering a career like hers. @kellyclarkson #kellyclarkson

@adrewcarrnameddesire // Drew Carr is BACK 

CHAPTER 1 : Kelly's first era // THE DREW CARR 9 YEAR OLD DEMO LEAK EXCLUSIVE - before he, some would say, BROKE AWAY

CHAPTER 2 : Kelly’s husky belt // hidden gems from the pop rock pioneer that never gets enough credit

CHAPTER 3 : Country Kelly •• We’re ready and waiting for the Kelly Clarkson Country LP // AND the Kelly Clarkson Musical !!!

...

On this week's THE VOCAL ... where do all these Beyoncé songs come from?

Also : bedtime magic w Galt??

beyoncebeyoncebeyonce

LP3 [I AM / SASHA FIERCE] -- Smash Into You

LP4 [4] -- I Care , Rather Die Young

LP5 [BEYONCÉ] -- Standing on the Sun , Pretty Hurts

LP6 [Lemonade] -- Pray You Catch Me

fingers crossed copyright doesn’t peel it down for playing a couple snippets of Ms Yoncéeeeeee

@jonmclaughlin #jonmclaughlin @jeffbhasker #jeffbhasker @kevinogarrett #kevingarrett @siamusic #sia

video version of this episode: https...

FIRST GUEST FEATURE — PLEASE WELCOME TO THE STAGE @adrewcarrnameddesire !!! // Drew Carr!

Chapter 1 : HAVE U HEARD OF RENEE RAPP THO?
Chapter 2 : It’s giving vocal technique, it’s giving technician , it's giving vocal prowess
Chapter 3 : white girls and rnb? // vocal affecting // why do most theatre singers NOT successfully ford the river to pop? // IS THERE BEEF BETWEEN GEN Z’S POP ROCK GIRLIES OR NAH?

Say it with us:

1) maybe I’m not the right person to be saying that
2) don’t fact check me

STAY TUNED FOR MORE FROM THE GIR...

✨🔆 the FINAL BJÖRK chapter 🔆✨

her …. masterwork?! 2015’s Vulnicura

In the final installment of our Björk retrospective, I share why I think Björk hit the heartstone in 2015, and why her whole career led her to that point.

Video version of this episode: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qh_Qc1jk1Ok

Follow me on insta: https://www.instagram.com/hes_galt/

Here we are, in something of Björk's final form ... her NATURE NYMPH ERA ☘️🌿🍃🌱🐛🌳🦠🌞🌝⚡️Sit tight for this week's installment of THE VOCAL -- as I spill all the tea you never knew you needed about Björk’s awakening as mother 🌲 nature.

We're covering 15 years of her career this week, so pace yourself and take a self-appointed intermission!

video version of this episode: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_gn425xZcw0

follow me on instagram: https://www.instagram.com/hes_galt/

On this week's THE VOCAL .... You're doing it! You're going back for a second taste of Björk! Today we mine chapter 2 of Bjork's iconic career, and we find some unique, concept-record gems.

video version of this episode: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q-Ol7BKORXA

follow me on insta: https://www.instagram.com/hes_galt/

On this week's ep .... perhaps you've wondered: how do I get into Björk? Or, perhaps you've tried, failed, tried again ... and you still have questions. An acquired taste she is -- and I've acquired it. I'd love to walk you through how I see her career, one chapter at a time. Here's chapter 1.

video version of this episode: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6kj5qiH-qbQ

follow me: https://www.instagram.com/hes_galt/

Call me Galt ..... and welcome to the Vocal!

I've had this podcast in the incubator for a good decade now. Music has been my lifeblood since before I could speak, and I'm excited to share my slices of it with you, and to get to know one another. Here on THE VOCAL - we deep dive into a musician, album, song, genre, industry trend, or piece of hot goss in the world of music.

This week: AG7 is upon us. Is this Ariana's Charmbracelet Era? And, I take a first listen to Ariana's new single, "...