On Saturday morning, I went out to mow the lawns since a literal forest was growing in the front and back yards. Just before I started the mower, I was looking through Spotify to pick a podcast to listen to. I decided to change it up from what I had been listening to lately and went back to a podcast I hadn’t listened to for a while.
I remember when The Ringer launched 60 Songs That Explain the ’90s. I didn’t know the host, Rob Harvilla, but growing up in the 90s and coming of age in the 2000s, I love any podcast, article, TV show, or movie from and about those decades. Harvilla also had Yosemite Sam as his Twitter profile pic, so I thought anyone who had a profile pic like that can’t be too bad.
Episode one, released in 2020, is about Alanis Morissette’s You Outta Know. Straight off the bat, Harvilla talks about radio edits, how he writes about pop music a lot and thinks about it way too much, and that 60 songs is a lot, and he didn’t think the podcast through. I was engaged straight away and knew I had found my new favourite podcast.
When the podcast hit song number 60, I thought it would be goodbye, but it turned out to be only see you later. The podcast ended up doing 120 songs, but the name remained the same. This might have been confusing to some, but Harvilla said that 60 songs weren’t enough to cover the decade. Branding consistency was another reason for keeping the name the same.
Once Harvilla and crew hit episode 120, they decided, once again, not to end the show. This time, it was the 2000s’ turn, and thus 60 Songs That Explain the ’90s: The 2000s was born. Just for a little bit of background on me, the 2000s are my all-time favourite decade for music and pop culture, so I was stoked to know Harvilla was going to be covering all my favourite songs, and maybe one or two I had forgotten about.
Fast forward to today, and I returned to my favourite podcast while mowing the lawn. The podcast had taken some time off over the summer (winter if you’re an American) and returned on February 4. The first episode of the return was Buy U a Drank by T-Pain. When I saw that it was going to be a T-Pain song on the podcast, I had never been so excited, and I had every right to be.
This episode of Harvilla’s podcast is easily the best of them all* (I still need to catch up on the rest, but I don’t think anything will change my mind). It shows something that I have always thought about the host; he is one of the best storytellers in pop culture today. The episode starts out talking about Susan Boyle, and how looks can be deceiving, and before you know, Harvilla shifts gears and talks about how similar Boyle and T-Pain’s stories really are.
I will not spoil the episode for you; I will embed it at the end of this article for you to listen to. No doubt, like me, 60 Songs That Explain the ’90s: The 2000s will become your favourite podcast as well.
Throughout the podcast, Harvilla has spoken about his time working as a journalist at different mastheads, as well as about being a teenager listening to a ’90s song in his friend’s car. When he tells one of those stories on the podcast, the picture is so clear, you can see it in your head. I don’t know of many (if any) podcast hosts that do it as well as Harvilla does. I hope to one day be one of those hosts.
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