WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:02.240 Welcome back to the Deep Dive. We are so glad 00:00:02.240 --> 00:00:05.700 you're here because today we are testing a hypothesis. 00:00:06.480 --> 00:00:10.240 Oh, okay. I'm intrigued. The hypothesis is that 00:00:10.240 --> 00:00:13.960 the simplest, most innocent sounding songs, they 00:00:13.960 --> 00:00:16.760 often have the most cutthroat histories. Right. 00:00:16.820 --> 00:00:18.760 It's the duck syndrome, isn't it? Calm on the 00:00:18.760 --> 00:00:20.800 surface, just paddling furiously underneath. 00:00:21.059 --> 00:00:24.059 Exactly. And the specimen we've got on the table 00:00:24.059 --> 00:00:28.260 today is a tune that I guarantee, I 99 % guarantee 00:00:28.260 --> 00:00:31.679 you associate with early childhood okay maybe 00:00:31.679 --> 00:00:33.799 a nursery or you know a kindergarten classroom 00:00:33.799 --> 00:00:38.659 the song is a you're adorable ah yes the quintessential 00:00:38.659 --> 00:00:40.859 earworm you hear that first line a you're adorable 00:00:40.859 --> 00:00:43.240 and your brain just automatically fills in b 00:00:43.240 --> 00:00:46.200 you're so beautiful it does it feels like it 00:00:46.200 --> 00:00:48.200 belongs to the public domain you're like twinkle 00:00:48.200 --> 00:00:50.240 twinkle little star or something but it doesn't 00:00:50.240 --> 00:00:52.619 and that is where our deep dive begins we're 00:00:52.619 --> 00:00:54.719 looking at the archival records the chart data 00:00:54.719 --> 00:00:57.100 the recording logs for the song and what we found 00:00:58.640 --> 00:01:01.359 Well, it isn't a nursery rhyme. Not at all. It's 00:01:01.359 --> 00:01:03.520 a case study in the post -war music industry, 00:01:03.679 --> 00:01:06.760 a three -way battle for chart dominance, and 00:01:06.760 --> 00:01:09.420 a lesson in how physical media, vinyl, and shellac 00:01:09.420 --> 00:01:11.859 actually shaped what people listen to all over 00:01:11.859 --> 00:01:14.780 the world. And, we have to mention, it eventually 00:01:14.780 --> 00:01:17.079 involves a blue monster eating the alphabet. 00:01:17.340 --> 00:01:19.180 We will definitely get to the monster, but I 00:01:19.180 --> 00:01:20.819 want to start with the context. We're looking 00:01:20.819 --> 00:01:24.329 at 1948. The war is over. The baby boom is just 00:01:24.329 --> 00:01:26.950 revving up. What's the musical landscape looking 00:01:26.950 --> 00:01:29.530 like when this song lands? It's a fascinating 00:01:29.530 --> 00:01:32.670 transition period. Swing bands are starting to 00:01:32.670 --> 00:01:35.530 fade and the crooner is becoming the dominant 00:01:35.530 --> 00:01:38.409 force. But the industry itself was structurally 00:01:38.409 --> 00:01:40.730 different than what we know today. How so? Today, 00:01:40.989 --> 00:01:44.510 the artist is the product. You buy a Taylor Swift 00:01:44.510 --> 00:01:48.150 record because it's Taylor Swift. In 1948, the 00:01:48.150 --> 00:01:50.370 song was the product. Right, the composition 00:01:50.370 --> 00:01:53.709 itself. The publishers held the power. When a 00:01:53.709 --> 00:01:55.989 song like A You're Adorable was written, the 00:01:55.989 --> 00:01:58.530 goal wasn't to find one artist to record it. 00:01:58.590 --> 00:02:00.730 The goal was to get every artist to record it 00:02:00.730 --> 00:02:02.989 simultaneously. You wanted to flood the market. 00:02:03.310 --> 00:02:06.109 You wanted to flood the market. Which explains 00:02:06.109 --> 00:02:09.389 why the charts in 1949 look so bizarre to modern 00:02:09.389 --> 00:02:11.389 eyes. You could have three different versions 00:02:11.389 --> 00:02:14.289 of the exact same song in the top 20 at the same 00:02:14.289 --> 00:02:16.050 time. And that's exactly what happened here. 00:02:16.229 --> 00:02:18.069 Precisely. But let's look at the architects first. 00:02:18.509 --> 00:02:21.090 Who actually built this thing? Okay, so the credits 00:02:21.090 --> 00:02:24.729 list a trio. The music was by Sid Lipman. And 00:02:24.729 --> 00:02:27.389 the lyrics came from a team, Buddy K and Fred 00:02:27.389 --> 00:02:30.229 Wise. Now, looking at their other work, I mean, 00:02:30.229 --> 00:02:32.750 these weren't amateurs. Buddy K wrote for Sinatra 00:02:32.750 --> 00:02:35.430 and Sarah Vaughan. They were pros. Absolute pros. 00:02:35.590 --> 00:02:38.310 And they understood a specific genre that was 00:02:38.310 --> 00:02:41.810 huge at the time. The list song. Give us the 00:02:41.810 --> 00:02:43.870 technical breakdown. What makes a list song work 00:02:43.870 --> 00:02:47.229 so well? It's basically a mnemonic device disguised 00:02:47.229 --> 00:02:50.199 as pop music. Humans love order. We love catalogs. 00:02:50.240 --> 00:02:52.280 Cole Porter was the master of this. Think of 00:02:52.280 --> 00:02:54.000 let's do it. Let's fall in love. It's just a 00:02:54.000 --> 00:02:56.819 list of animals that fall in love. Or these foolish 00:02:56.819 --> 00:02:58.960 things, which is just a list of objects that 00:02:58.960 --> 00:03:01.520 remind the singer of their ex. Exactly. It provides 00:03:01.520 --> 00:03:05.020 a scaffold. Lipman, Gay, and Wise just took the 00:03:05.020 --> 00:03:07.139 most fundamental scaffold in the English language, 00:03:07.340 --> 00:03:10.180 the alphabet. It's almost aggressively efficient. 00:03:10.460 --> 00:03:12.379 They didn't have to think about narrative arcs 00:03:12.379 --> 00:03:14.360 or emotional bridges. They just needed, what, 00:03:14.439 --> 00:03:17.539 26 compliments? And it worked. The song was published 00:03:17.539 --> 00:03:21.539 in 1948, and by early 1949, the cover war began. 00:03:22.199 --> 00:03:24.439 And this brings us to our heavyweight title fight. 00:03:24.659 --> 00:03:26.939 In the blue corner, representing RCA Victor, 00:03:27.180 --> 00:03:30.860 we have Perry Como. Mr. C. The king of relaxation. 00:03:31.180 --> 00:03:33.479 The man who could make singing look like he was 00:03:33.479 --> 00:03:36.159 taking a nap. And in the red corner, for Capitol 00:03:36.159 --> 00:03:39.419 Records, we have the powerhouse duo of Joe Stafford 00:03:39.419 --> 00:03:42.240 and Gordon McRae. And this wasn't a small skirmish. 00:03:42.300 --> 00:03:45.139 I mean, this was a battle for the soul. of the 00:03:45.139 --> 00:03:48.800 1949 jukebox perry como went into the studio 00:03:48.800 --> 00:03:52.259 on march 1st 1949 he brought the fontaine sisters 00:03:52.259 --> 00:03:54.539 with him for backing vocals i want to pause on 00:03:54.539 --> 00:03:56.780 the perry como sound for a second why was he 00:03:56.780 --> 00:03:58.879 the front runner here he had a warmth that was 00:03:58.879 --> 00:04:01.699 just perfect for this specific song a you're 00:04:01.699 --> 00:04:04.240 adorable is intimate it's not a belter it requires 00:04:04.240 --> 00:04:07.120 a certain Gentleness to pull off without sounding 00:04:07.120 --> 00:04:09.719 cheesy. Como had mastered that intimate microphone 00:04:09.719 --> 00:04:11.919 hugging technique. And the charts backed him 00:04:11.919 --> 00:04:14.379 up. His version hit number one on the U .S. Billboard 00:04:14.379 --> 00:04:18.040 chart on April 9th, 1949. A certified smash. 00:04:18.639 --> 00:04:21.180 But here's the interesting technical detail from 00:04:21.180 --> 00:04:23.860 the RCA archives. They didn't just release it 00:04:23.860 --> 00:04:27.259 on the standard 78 RPM records. The big breakable 00:04:27.259 --> 00:04:30.220 shellac discs. Right. RCA was in the middle of 00:04:30.220 --> 00:04:33.209 a format war. They were trying to launch the 00:04:33.209 --> 00:04:36.810 45 RPM vinyl single, that little 7 -inch disc 00:04:36.810 --> 00:04:39.470 with the big hole in the middle. They used Perry 00:04:39.470 --> 00:04:42.509 Como in the song as a battering ram to push that 00:04:42.509 --> 00:04:45.790 new technology. So if you wanted the hit version 00:04:45.790 --> 00:04:47.949 of the Alphabet song, you might have been forced 00:04:47.949 --> 00:04:51.089 to buy a new record player to spin it. That's 00:04:51.089 --> 00:04:54.250 the idea. It's the 1949 equivalent of an exclusive 00:04:54.250 --> 00:04:57.389 streaming release. But Capitol Records wasn't 00:04:57.389 --> 00:04:59.810 sitting this out. Joe Stafford and Gordon McRae 00:04:59.810 --> 00:05:01.870 released their version around the same time. 00:05:01.990 --> 00:05:04.610 And Joe Stafford is no slouch. She was technically 00:05:04.610 --> 00:05:07.009 one of the most proficient singers of the century. 00:05:07.209 --> 00:05:09.649 Absolutely. Perfect pitch. And their version 00:05:09.649 --> 00:05:13.290 was huge. It debuted on March 25th, 1949 and 00:05:13.290 --> 00:05:15.029 peaked at number four. Think about that for a 00:05:15.029 --> 00:05:17.209 second. The number one song in the country is 00:05:17.209 --> 00:05:19.089 A Year Adorable. And the number four song in 00:05:19.089 --> 00:05:21.189 the country is also A Year Adorable. It's what? 00:05:21.470 --> 00:05:24.009 It really highlights how the song was king. People 00:05:24.009 --> 00:05:26.149 liked the melody and the lyrics so much they 00:05:26.149 --> 00:05:28.230 were willing to consume multiple interpretations 00:05:28.230 --> 00:05:31.430 of it all at the same time. And just to add to 00:05:31.430 --> 00:05:34.889 the chaos, there was a third player, a dark horse. 00:05:35.850 --> 00:05:38.750 Tony Passer and his orchestra, recording for 00:05:38.750 --> 00:05:41.889 Columbia Records. And on vocals, the Clooney 00:05:41.889 --> 00:05:44.250 sisters. Which included a young Rosemary Clooney. 00:05:44.350 --> 00:05:47.000 The very same. long before she became a massive 00:05:47.000 --> 00:05:50.259 solo star and a Hollywood icon. So what happened 00:05:50.259 --> 00:05:52.420 with their version? Their version hit the charts 00:05:52.420 --> 00:05:56.240 in May 1949. It wasn't quite the juggernaut the 00:05:56.240 --> 00:05:58.240 others were. It only stayed for two weeks and 00:05:58.240 --> 00:06:01.000 peaked at number 12, but it still cracked the 00:06:01.000 --> 00:06:03.540 top 20. So at one point in the spring of 1949, 00:06:03.800 --> 00:06:06.259 you had Como at number one, Stafford and McRae 00:06:06.259 --> 00:06:08.939 at four, and Pastor and Clooney at 12. The airways 00:06:08.939 --> 00:06:10.660 were just saturated with the alphabet. It was 00:06:10.660 --> 00:06:12.519 total market dominance by a single composition. 00:06:13.180 --> 00:06:15.399 And for the songwriters, this is the passive 00:06:15.399 --> 00:06:17.439 income dream. Every time any of those versions 00:06:17.439 --> 00:06:20.199 played, they got paid. Now, we tend to think 00:06:20.199 --> 00:06:23.139 of these chart battles as purely American phenomena, 00:06:23.399 --> 00:06:26.300 but the music business was global even then. 00:06:26.480 --> 00:06:29.600 I want to pivot to how this song traveled, because 00:06:29.600 --> 00:06:32.120 the archival notes on the international releases 00:06:32.120 --> 00:06:34.579 reveal something really weird about marketing. 00:06:34.720 --> 00:06:38.759 The flip side strategy. Right. The B -side. Today, 00:06:39.000 --> 00:06:41.899 on Spotify, there's no back of the track. But 00:06:41.899 --> 00:06:44.939 on vinyl, you had two sides of real estate. And 00:06:44.939 --> 00:06:46.939 what you put on the back told you a lot about 00:06:46.939 --> 00:06:48.800 who you thought was buying the record. It's a 00:06:48.800 --> 00:06:51.720 fascinating little map of regional tastes. The 00:06:51.720 --> 00:06:54.500 A side, A, you're adorable. That was the global 00:06:54.500 --> 00:06:57.259 constant. That was the hit. But the B side changed, 00:06:57.399 --> 00:06:59.699 you know, depending on the country. So let's 00:06:59.699 --> 00:07:02.339 look at the U .S. release first, Pericomo. What 00:07:02.339 --> 00:07:04.519 did Americans get on the flip side? They got 00:07:04.519 --> 00:07:07.720 a track called When Is Sometime. Which... Frankly, 00:07:07.759 --> 00:07:09.680 has been completely lost to history. I don't 00:07:09.680 --> 00:07:11.560 think I've ever heard it. It didn't stick. It 00:07:11.560 --> 00:07:14.180 was a standard filler ballad. But when the record 00:07:14.180 --> 00:07:16.839 crossed the Atlantic to the United Kingdom, released 00:07:16.839 --> 00:07:19.939 on the His Master's Voice label, they changed 00:07:19.939 --> 00:07:21.839 the pairing. What did the British audience get? 00:07:22.120 --> 00:07:24.240 They got Forever and Ever. That's a much stronger 00:07:24.240 --> 00:07:26.300 title. That sounds like they were doubling down 00:07:26.300 --> 00:07:28.939 on the romance angle. You're adorable on side 00:07:28.939 --> 00:07:31.620 A, forever and ever on side B. That's a date 00:07:31.620 --> 00:07:34.519 night record. It's a cohesive package. But the 00:07:34.519 --> 00:07:36.480 one that really stands out to me is the Japanese 00:07:36.480 --> 00:07:39.220 release. This is the one from Victor Entertainment? 00:07:39.540 --> 00:07:43.579 Yes. In Japan, they paired A, You're Adorable 00:07:43.579 --> 00:07:47.600 with Bolly High. Bolly High in the Showstopper 00:07:47.600 --> 00:07:50.259 from South Pacific. The very same. That's a massive 00:07:50.259 --> 00:07:52.420 song. That's not a B -side. That's a double A 00:07:52.420 --> 00:07:54.500 -side. Well, it makes sense if you think about 00:07:54.500 --> 00:07:57.319 the cost of importing or pressing Western music 00:07:57.319 --> 00:08:00.560 in post -war Japan. You want to maximize the 00:08:00.560 --> 00:08:03.240 value for the consumer. You give them two absolute 00:08:03.240 --> 00:08:05.620 giants on one disc. It's like buying a single 00:08:05.620 --> 00:08:08.139 ticket and seeing Gone with the Wind in Casablanca 00:08:08.139 --> 00:08:10.639 back to back. Exactly. And then you have Australia. 00:08:10.680 --> 00:08:12.680 They went a completely different direction. They 00:08:12.680 --> 00:08:15.959 paired it with My Melancholy Baby. A jazz standard 00:08:15.959 --> 00:08:19.199 from way back in 1912. It's an interesting choice. 00:08:19.319 --> 00:08:21.560 It suggests they were marketing to an older demographic, 00:08:21.720 --> 00:08:24.810 perhaps. Someone who wanted that nostalgic pre 00:08:24.810 --> 00:08:27.550 -war jazz feel on the back and the modern pop 00:08:27.550 --> 00:08:30.250 hit on the front. And it worked. The data shows 00:08:30.250 --> 00:08:32.529 A, your adorable hit number one in Australia 00:08:32.529 --> 00:08:35.009 as well. So this thing conquered North America, 00:08:35.129 --> 00:08:37.470 Europe, and Oceania. It was a global phenomenon. 00:08:37.809 --> 00:08:40.470 And because of that saturation, the song managed 00:08:40.470 --> 00:08:43.610 to survive the death of the 78 format. It migrated 00:08:43.610 --> 00:08:46.330 to the LP. Then to the cassette tape. Ah, the 00:08:46.330 --> 00:08:48.669 gas station cassette. The best hits of the 40s 00:08:48.669 --> 00:08:51.429 compilations. That's how a lot of Gen X and older 00:08:51.429 --> 00:08:53.230 millennials first heard the song, probably in 00:08:53.230 --> 00:08:55.509 the backseat of a car. And this is the big pivot. 00:08:55.830 --> 00:08:58.769 There's a very specific reason why younger millennials 00:08:58.769 --> 00:09:02.490 and Gen Z recognize this melody. And it has nothing 00:09:02.490 --> 00:09:04.970 to do with Carrie Como or chart battles. No, 00:09:04.990 --> 00:09:07.529 it has to do with the educational pivot. We're 00:09:07.529 --> 00:09:09.669 moving from the recording studio to the television 00:09:09.669 --> 00:09:13.090 set, specifically 123 Sesame Street. This is 00:09:13.090 --> 00:09:15.889 the song's second life. And, you know, arguably 00:09:15.889 --> 00:09:18.210 it's more enduring life. We're talking about 00:09:18.210 --> 00:09:20.450 the very first season of Sesame Street in 1969. 00:09:20.929 --> 00:09:22.970 Now, Sesame Street was revolutionary because 00:09:22.970 --> 00:09:25.549 it used the aesthetics of commercials and pop 00:09:25.549 --> 00:09:28.909 culture to sell literacy. So how did they repurpose 00:09:28.909 --> 00:09:31.809 a 1948 love song? They kept the premise remarkably 00:09:31.809 --> 00:09:35.029 intact, at least at first. The sketch features 00:09:35.029 --> 00:09:37.700 a Muppet named Jack. He looks a bit like a beatnik, 00:09:37.740 --> 00:09:40.000 very 60s. And he's singing to his girlfriend, 00:09:40.259 --> 00:09:42.620 a muppet named Adrienne. So the romance is still 00:09:42.620 --> 00:09:46.240 there. It is. Jack is crooning. Hey, you're adorable. 00:09:46.399 --> 00:09:48.460 And to reinforce the lesson, they have these 00:09:48.460 --> 00:09:50.340 alphabet blocks coming down a conveyor belt. 00:09:50.500 --> 00:09:53.840 A, B, C. That's brilliant pedagogy. You have 00:09:53.840 --> 00:09:56.779 the auditory cue, the song, the visual cue, the 00:09:56.779 --> 00:09:59.950 blocks. And the narrative cue, the love story. 00:10:00.070 --> 00:10:02.450 Until the antagonist arrives. The agent of chaos. 00:10:02.730 --> 00:10:04.590 The key monster. Now, we should probably clarify 00:10:04.590 --> 00:10:06.549 for you listening. This is season one, Cookie 00:10:06.549 --> 00:10:09.710 Monster. He wasn't quite the lovable, googly 00:10:09.710 --> 00:10:12.149 -eyed, plush toy we know today. He was a bit 00:10:12.149 --> 00:10:15.049 scarier. He was cure -eyed. He was hunger personified. 00:10:15.190 --> 00:10:18.169 He enters the scene, scares Adrian away, so the 00:10:18.169 --> 00:10:20.629 romance is officially dead, and claims the blocks. 00:10:20.809 --> 00:10:23.289 He tells Jack, these are my blocks. So the song 00:10:23.289 --> 00:10:25.750 shifts gears. It stops being a serenade and becomes 00:10:25.750 --> 00:10:29.529 a negotiation for survival. It does. Jack realizes 00:10:29.529 --> 00:10:32.669 he needs to get through the song to get the blocks, 00:10:32.710 --> 00:10:35.879 too. Well, to keep the monster appeased. The 00:10:35.879 --> 00:10:37.700 source material notes he sings a looser form 00:10:37.700 --> 00:10:40.799 of the song. He's rushing. Like, okay, F, you're 00:10:40.799 --> 00:10:42.620 a flower. G, you're good looking. Just take the 00:10:42.620 --> 00:10:45.259 blocks. And as he hands them over. Cookie Monster 00:10:45.259 --> 00:10:47.259 does the only thing Cookie Monster knows how 00:10:47.259 --> 00:10:50.240 to do. He eats them. He eats them. One by one. 00:10:50.340 --> 00:10:52.879 Crunch, crunch, crunch. It's such a subversive 00:10:52.879 --> 00:10:55.559 piece of comedy. They took a song that had been 00:10:55.559 --> 00:10:57.879 treated with such reverence by Perry Como, so 00:10:57.879 --> 00:11:01.799 smooth, gentle, romantic, and turned it into 00:11:01.799 --> 00:11:04.460 a sketch about a monster eating educational supplies. 00:11:04.759 --> 00:11:07.139 But that sketch is likely why the song is still 00:11:07.139 --> 00:11:09.899 known today. It stripped the song of its 1940s 00:11:09.899 --> 00:11:12.789 context. For a child watching in 1975 or 1985, 00:11:13.309 --> 00:11:15.590 this wasn't an oldie. It was the Cookie Monster 00:11:15.590 --> 00:11:18.330 song. It completely recontextualized the melody. 00:11:18.370 --> 00:11:20.690 It proved that the structure of the song, the 00:11:20.690 --> 00:11:23.149 list, was stronger than its original theme. That's 00:11:23.149 --> 00:11:26.190 the key insight. Lipman, Kay, and Wise built 00:11:26.190 --> 00:11:28.409 such a sturdy vessel with that alphabet structure 00:11:28.409 --> 00:11:30.409 that you could swap out the cargo. You could 00:11:30.409 --> 00:11:32.750 take out romance and put in literacy, and the 00:11:32.750 --> 00:11:34.909 ship still sails. It makes me think about the 00:11:34.909 --> 00:11:38.210 nature of pop culture longevity. Usually we think 00:11:38.210 --> 00:11:41.370 a song survives because it's timeless or emotionally 00:11:41.370 --> 00:11:44.009 deep. But in this case, it survived because it 00:11:44.009 --> 00:11:46.529 was useful. Utility is a huge factor in cultural 00:11:46.529 --> 00:11:49.450 survival. It was useful for Perry Como to sell 00:11:49.450 --> 00:11:52.330 45s. It was useful for Japanese labels to sell 00:11:52.330 --> 00:11:54.850 double features. And it was useful for the children's 00:11:54.850 --> 00:11:57.850 television workshop to teach the ABCs. So if 00:11:57.850 --> 00:12:00.629 we zoom out, what's the lesson here? We've traveled 00:12:00.629 --> 00:12:03.769 from a 1948 publishing house to a 1949 chart 00:12:03.769 --> 00:12:06.669 war, across the ocean to Japan and Australia, 00:12:07.009 --> 00:12:09.629 and finally to a brownstone in New York City. 00:12:09.970 --> 00:12:11.990 I think the lesson is that once a song leaves 00:12:11.990 --> 00:12:14.730 the songwriter's hands, the culture owns it. 00:12:14.990 --> 00:12:16.830 And the culture will do whatever it needs to 00:12:16.830 --> 00:12:18.590 do with it. It's a living organism. Exactly. 00:12:18.769 --> 00:12:21.649 In 1949, the culture needed reassurance and romance 00:12:21.649 --> 00:12:24.490 after the war, so it was a love song. In 1969, 00:12:24.769 --> 00:12:26.669 the culture needed to educate a new generation 00:12:26.669 --> 00:12:29.570 of kids, so it became a lesson. The song adapted. 00:12:30.090 --> 00:12:32.490 It's a testament to that list song format, too. 00:12:32.570 --> 00:12:34.549 You can't really do that with a complex narrative 00:12:34.549 --> 00:12:36.889 ballad. You can't repurpose Bohemian Rhapsody 00:12:36.889 --> 00:12:38.870 to teach the alphabet. Well, the Muppets did 00:12:38.870 --> 00:12:41.330 try that with Bohemian Rhapsody, but that was 00:12:41.330 --> 00:12:45.190 pure chaos. With A, you're adorable. The structure 00:12:45.190 --> 00:12:47.929 is the hook. It leads to a provocative thought 00:12:47.929 --> 00:12:50.529 for the future. We're currently living in the 00:12:50.529 --> 00:12:53.450 TikTok era, where snippets of songs go viral 00:12:53.450 --> 00:12:56.830 for very specific memes or dances. Right. If 00:12:56.830 --> 00:13:00.330 we look 30 or 40 years into the future, Which 00:13:00.330 --> 00:13:02.590 of today's chart toppers is going to get the 00:13:02.590 --> 00:13:06.330 A, your adorable treatment? Which Drake or Olivia 00:13:06.330 --> 00:13:08.809 Rodrigo song is going to be repurposed to teach 00:13:08.809 --> 00:13:12.009 algebra or history in the year 2060? That is 00:13:12.009 --> 00:13:15.629 a terrifying thought. Imagine a future educational 00:13:15.629 --> 00:13:18.970 AI singing WAP to teach plumbing mechanics. OK, 00:13:19.049 --> 00:13:20.909 OK, let's not go there. But the point stands. 00:13:21.169 --> 00:13:23.809 It does. The melodies that seem disposable today 00:13:23.809 --> 00:13:27.129 might be the educational tools of tomorrow. If 00:13:27.129 --> 00:13:29.889 a romantic ballad from 1948 can become a snack 00:13:29.889 --> 00:13:32.610 for Cookie Monster, nothing is safe. It changes 00:13:32.610 --> 00:13:34.309 how you listen to the radio. You aren't just 00:13:34.309 --> 00:13:36.610 hearing a hit, you're hearing raw material for 00:13:36.610 --> 00:13:38.970 some future reinvention. And you're hearing a 00:13:38.970 --> 00:13:41.590 battleground. Just remember, for every simple 00:13:41.590 --> 00:13:43.850 song you hear, there are probably three record 00:13:43.850 --> 00:13:46.009 executives fighting over who got to release it 00:13:46.009 --> 00:13:48.710 on the B -side in Australia. A complex history 00:13:48.710 --> 00:13:52.019 for a simple tune. Next time you find yourself 00:13:52.019 --> 00:13:54.539 humming A, You're Adorable, just remember, you 00:13:54.539 --> 00:13:57.639 are humming a chart -topping, globe -trotting, 00:13:57.639 --> 00:14:00.200 monster -feeding survivor. And maybe check your 00:14:00.200 --> 00:14:02.059 local listings to see if Perry Como is still 00:14:02.059 --> 00:14:04.220 at number one. Thanks for taking this deep dive 00:14:04.220 --> 00:14:05.700 with us. Keep your ears open.