On Second Listen pairs song versions from different languages, styles and time periods to reveal something new in what’s familiar.

Each week, we put recordings side by side and listen for the connections between them: an original and a cover, a song and the recording it sampled, English and foreign-language versions, familiar compositions transformed by very different performers—or sometimes connections that are harder to categorize.

The idea isn’t to decide which version is “better.” It’s to hear what changes when we know what came before, what came afterward, or what someone else heard in the same song.

On Second Listen airs Wednesdays from 10 a.m. to noon on WMUH 91.7 FM in Allentown, Pennsylvania. Worldwide, we are are available streaming at www.wmuh.org/listen-live/ and archived at https://spinitron.com/WMUH/show/311488/On-Second-Listen.

OSL is very much a listening project rather than a one-way broadcast. If there’s a song, pairing, translation, cover, borrowing or musical connection you think we ought to hear, send it our way. Some of our best ideas have already come from listeners.