Can Bruno Mars counterprogram his way to another hit album?

The music of global girl group KATSEYE might be confusing on first listen. A less-generous read might consider their songs to be rudimentary: the lyrics are mostly nonsense, the instrumentals evoke lesser 2010s pop songs, and the aesthetic can’t decide whether it’s targeted to children or adults. However, maybe the nonsensical nature of KATSEYE is also… the point? And maybe that point is tethered to early surrealist movements of the early twentieth century?

For the 500th(!) episode of Switched on Pop, Charlie and Nate try to answer the question that has stumped critics and philosophers since the dawn of sound: does bad music exist? Their quest to answer something so nebulous leads them through the annals of taste, and in the process, they recruit several other critics and journalists to give their two cents on the topic. Can things actually be bad, and if so, how do we define them?

One year after the release of her twelfth studio album The Life of a Showgirl, Taylor Swift is back with an encore. Specifically, The Encore, four tracks that have polarized critics and Swifties alike, from the country-esque number one hit “Patient Zero” to her ode to married Ohioan bliss, “Cleveland!” For some, the new songs lean into Swift’s worst writing impulses. But for others, including our hosts (and resident Swiftologists) Charlie and Nate, the tracks call back to earlier eras of Swift’s songwriting, and perhaps evoke more nuanced discussion about what it means to release music as the biggest artist in the world. The question is: are we ready for it?

Five years after her first appearance on Switched on Pop, Carly Rae Jepsen returns to the podcast to talk all things Day and Night, her latest album. Born out of Swedish disco, big emotion, and substantive life change – including becoming a wife and a mother – the double album is a tour through the organic and the synthetic, both in equal measure. For Charlie and Nate, this is a full circle moment, and along with discussing the record, the two talk to Jepsen about the origins of the show, her songwriting process, and what it means to be such an important champion of pop music.

Swedish singer-songwriter Tove Lo’s new album ESTRUS can be summarized in the opening lyrics of the album’s closing track, “source of life”: “Feral, fragile, numb, ecstatic / sad, euphoric, catatonic / Horny, repulsed, proud and shameful / Good, demonic, contradictions.”