Has there ever been a pop band which has been as loved - and as hated - as ABBA? Even in the period before they appeared on the Eurovision Song Contest, when they were only well-known in Sweden, there were protests held and satirical songs written about them. In parallel with the long history of critical condemnations of ABBA, however, they have attracted greater love and admiration, from a wider range of listeners, than perhaps any other band of the era. What explains this range of reactions to them and why are they still so popular decades after their late-70s heydey? I break down their early hit, ‘SOS’, among others, to try to answer the surprisingly tricky question of what we’re listening to when we listen to ABBA.

All the songs discussed in this episode, including the original recording of 'SOS' 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 people first encountered Sly and the Family Stone in their early performances in San Francisco they were often struck by how much they really seemed like a family. They eschewed starriness; no one was put on a pedestal and it was clear that each member was valued and cared for. In a few short years, however, as the 1970s dawned, the band and this idealism seemed to implode. Sly Stone, the band's songwriter, had retreated into his Beverly Hills mansion, making music virtually alone and in the grip of substance addictions. In this context, he made the great song, 'Family Affair', which asks some very fundamental questions: who is our family? What do we owe them? What holds us together when promises are broken and lives fall apart?

All the songs discussed in this episode, including the original recording of 'Family Affair' 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 Brian Eno first heard 'I Feel Love' by Donna Summer, produced by Giorgio Moroder in 1977, he declared that he had 'heard the sound of the future'. It was the first pop song to be entirely produced on a synthesiser and quickly came to be seen as an important milestone in the history of record production, pointing the way forward to the dominance of electronic technology in the decades following its release. Equally, it's a song which was immediately embraced by gay clubbing communities; when Sam Smith recorded their cover of it in 2019, they could describe it as a 'queer anthem'. In this episode, the first of a new series focussing on songs from the 1970s and 80s, I ask what it is about 'I Feel Love' which has inspired these responses and what might link these two key strands of its history.

All the songs discussed in this episode, including the original recording of 'I Feel Love' can be heard here. The theme from A Clockwork Orange is not on Spotify but at the time of writing can be found here. If you've enjoyed the episode please leave a review on Apple podcasts. Thank you.

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

The return of the award-winning music analysis podcast, The Secret Life of Songs, is a major event in the worlds of podcasting and pop music writing. Building on the success of the first series, which was awarded Bronze in Best Arts & Culture Podcast at the British Podcast Awards 2021, the ten new episodes explore classic songs from the 1970s and 80s in ways which transform our understanding of popular music and break new ground for the podcast as a medium.

We’ll hear how the fallout from the disappointed hopes of the 1960s was explored in the work of Sly Stone and Joni Mitchell, how the unearthly new sounds unlocked by radical new music technology was used to express both utopian and dystopian impulses by Giorgio Moroder and the originators of Detroit Techno, and how the era’s most divisive cultural concept - postmodernism - was uncannily reflected in the output of the era’s most divisive pop band - ABBA. All of this - and more - will be presented by host Anthony in his inimitable style: deftly weaving fine-grained musical analysis, historical context and philosophical reflection with his own impassioned recreations of the music in question to produce embodied, thoroughly grounded and deeply personal insights into these wonderful songs.

The first three episodes will be released on Thursday August 20th, 2025, then fortnightly on Thursdays after that.

How does a record make us feel like we're in a vast space, one that we've never experienced, one that may not exist? In this episode, the last of the series, I look at the Phil Spector production, 'River Deep — Mountain High', performed in 1966 by Tina Turner, to explore how we hear space in music. It was a groundbreaking record in its time, costing an unprecedented amount of money to make, and it still sounds as if it's pushing at the outer limits of what can be captured on record. I'm interested in how we experience all that as listeners: how something so apparently small as a three-minute pop song can contain intimations of cavernous feeling and impossible depths.

All the songs discussed in this episode, including the original recording of 'River Deep - Mountain High' can be heard here. If you've enjoyed the episode please leave a review on Apple podcasts! Thank you :)

Since I first started listening to pop music, I've wondered about what's really going on in songs about love. Something seems to haunt expressions of romantic affection or loss, something that often seems to go beyond the strict meaning of the words. How can we explain the power of apparently simple songs about heartbreak and devotion? This episode looks into the history of American popular song to seek an answer to the question of meaning in songs about love, and to wonder what a classic love song - Curtis Mayfield's 'The Makings of You' - might be saying to us, if we could take into account the reverberations that echo from its musical histories.

All the songs discussed in this episode, including the original recording of 'The Makings of You' can be heard here. The version of 'Steal Away' heard in the episode is based on a performance by McHenry Boatwright, which isn’t on Spotify but can be found - at the time of publication - on YouTube.

If you've enjoyed the episode please leave a review on Apple podcasts! Thank you :)

When Patsy Cline first heard Willie Nelson's demo version of 'Crazy', she didn't like it, thinking it sounded too vulnerable and heartbroken. Talked into it by her husband and her producer, she would make a record that seemed to capture something fundamental about the lives of its contemporary listeners, but while much has been written on Cline's status as a pioneering woman in the male-dominated world of country music, the fact that the song and many of her other famous singles - like her first hit, 'Walkin' After Midnight' - hint strongly that the persona of the singer is going mad, has been mostly overlooked. In this episode I look at both songs and ask why madness might have played such an important role in the career of the most important female country singer of the late 1950s, and what it might tell us about the lives of men and women of the era.

All the songs discussed in this episode, including the original recordings of 'Walkin' After Midnight' and 'Crazy', as well as Willie Nelson's demo recording, can be heard here.

If you've enjoyed the episode please leave a review on Apple podcasts! Thank you :)

What does a chorus do in a pop song? Among our most basic assumptions about what will happen in a pop song is the expectation that it will lead us towards the fulfilment and clarity of a chorus, so it’s always interesting when a song chooses not to do this. Looking at this question in the context of Otis Redding’s 1966 version of ‘Cigarettes and Coffee’ can tell us something about what pop songs as a whole express to us: the way - perhaps unconsciously - listening to them shapes our understanding of the world.

All the songs discussed in this episode, including Redding’s version of ‘Cigarettes and Coffee’, can be heard here. The original, by Al Braggs, isn’t on Spotify but can be found - at the time of publication - on YouTube.

If you've enjoyed the episode please leave a review on Apple podcasts! Thank you :)