Sad Ass Songs

Porter Wagoner led the most successful country music television show of its time, and in 1967 he needed a new “girl singer.” He turned to a 21 year old songwriter named Dolly Parton, who’d just recorded her first hit “Dumb Blonde.” So began a nearly decade-long partnership that, ...  Show more

We journey into the Dollyverse dimension: "Tennessee Mountain Home."Like all law abiding Tennesseans, Jad grew up with the song on a loop. He hadn’t planned to talk with Dolly about it, but much to his surprise, he is drawn into a Tennessee Mountain Trance. The trance opens a por ...  Show more

Radiolab creator and host Jad Abumrad spent the last two years following around music legend Dolly Parton, and we're here to say you should tune in! In this episode of Radiolab, we showcase the first of Jad's special series, <a href="https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/dolly- ...

Looking for relationship advice? Skip the self-help books and turn to Sabrina Carpenter's latest single "Manchild" instead. This deep dive into the art of musical insults reveals how pop's newest sensation joins a legendary lineage of women artists who've perfected the craft of c ...  Show more

Popular music is often riddled with misogynistic lyrics that objectify and demean women ... so why are we listening and dancing to it? Performing a sample of her original song "Top Knot Turn Up" and sharing clips from her female-directed music video of "See Me Thru," activist and ...  Show more

How does music shape us? Digital ethnomusicologist and TED Fellow Kyra Gaunt studies how Black girls can preserve the integrity of their own voices while listening, dancing and singing to pop songs largely engineered by men, often with lyrics that express anti-Black, patriarchal ...  Show more