Coming Wednesday on On Second Listen
This week, we start with songs that have outlived the era that produced them. The Great American Songbook gives us standards that singers have been reinventing for decades—including “Mack The Knife,” a song whose history turns out to be almost as interesting as its many interpretations.
Then we move from borrowing (from “The Songbook”) to the point where borrowing gets expensive. Some musical similarities have inspired admiration. Others have inspired lawsuits. We’ll listen to a few cases where the line between influence, imitation and infringement became more than an academic question—and hear just how close some of those lines can sound.
In our third half-hour, things get bilingual. Sometimes a songwriter translates a verse. Sometimes the languages coexist inside it. And sometimes an artist attempts French, looks back years later, and gives his own performance a review considerably harsher than anything we would have written. Billy Joel, we’re looking at you--as we sit here in Allentown.
Finally: what happens when a song gets a sequel?
Steely Dan returned to a set of gold teeth that had been thrown away. The Police returned to Synchronicity asynchronously. And a few other artists decided that one song simply wasn’t enough to finish the thought. Are the “Part IIs” continuations, transformations—or entirely different songs borrowing a familiar name?
We’ll listen and decide together.
On Second Listen
Wednesday, September 23 · 10 AM–Noon
WMUH 91.7 FM
Streaming live at https://wmuh.org/listen-live/