Writing candidly about intimate, private moments and feelings is today such an accepted practice in pop songwriting that it can be startling to go back to 1971 and find Joni Mitchell reflecting that, at that point, 'the only thing that I could see to do fresh, that hadn't really been explored poetically, was the internal landscape. … [to] write from my own experience … was one of the few territories left for a poet to be a contributor of any kind'. The album she's talking about is Blue, and if she's right, then it might be viewed as the origin of this tradition of songwriting as 'an investigation of self, self-analysis of sorts', as she put it elsewhere. In this final episode of the series, I look at the penultimate song on this great album, 'A Case of You', in the context of wider shifts in American society, as well as Mitchell's particular musical and philosophical development, to see what's revealed in this bold venture inwards.

All the songs discussed in this episode, including the original recording of 'A Case of You' can be heard here. If you've enjoyed it, please leave a review on Apple podcasts; thank you.

With very special thanks to Paul Wierdak, the producer of this episode.

When Bruce Springsteen was asked why he was invited to write the theme song for 'Philadelphia', the first mainstream motion picture about the AIDS crisis, and one of the first films made in Hollywood featuring a gay protagonist, he responded that the film's director, Jonathan Demme, had 'wanted to take a subject that people didn’t feel safe with and were frightened by and put it together with people that they did feel safe with'. The song that Springsteen would create in response to this brief was 'Streets of Philadelphia', and it plays over the film's long opening credits sequence, Springsteen's murmured vocals echoing over shots of the city's inhabitants and some of its historical landmarks. Why would the presence of Springsteen have helped viewers feel less frightened by the subject of AIDS? And what does this particularly strategic soundtrack casting do to the meaning of the song?

All the songs discussed in this episode, including the original recording of 'Streets of Philadelphia' can be heard here. If you've enjoyed it, please leave a review on Apple podcasts; thank you.

With very special thanks to Paul Wierdak, the producer of this episode.

'I Wanna Dance with Somebody' is now safely embedded in the pantheon of great songs: a 2023 Billboard poll named it the greatest pop song of all time, and it continues to be an ever-present on pop radio and wedding playlists. When it was first released, however, as the lead single from Whitney Houston's second album, it prompted a widespread critical backlash. Rolling Stone found it 'ridiculously safe' and the novelist Trey Ellis called it 'lifeless'. This would culminate in the notorious moment at the 1989 Soul Train awards when Houston was audibly booed by the live TV audience. What was behind this controversy and what does it tell us about freedom, a concept which seemed to attach itself to Houston throughout her career, which people heard in her singing and expected her to represent?

All the songs discussed in this episode, including the original recording of 'I Wanna Dance with Somebody (Who Loves Me)' can be heard here. If you've enjoyed it, please leave a review on Apple podcasts; thank you.

With very special thanks to Paul Wierdak, the producer of this episode.