Revisionist HistoryMalcolm Breaks Down the Perfect Break Up Song
In this Valentine’s Day special from Pushkin Industries, Malcolm breaks down the perfect break up song. But first, Broken Record hosts Justin Richmond and Leah Rose make their cases: is R&B the undisputed sound of love? Are sad songs more romantic? Can country win the day?
Plus, Ben Naddaff-Hafrey writes a love song of his own, and the legendary songwriter Babyface talks about how young love shaped his most enduring ballads.
Whether you're mid-swoon or nursing a broken heart, this episode is Pushkin’s Valentine to you.
Listen to Broken Record’s interview with Babyface.
Listen to a Revisionist History episode about sad songs.
And hear more from Ben’s band, Rookin.
Plus, our battle of the playlists continues… here’s Leah’s sad songs playlist. And Justin’s for love songs. Pick your fighter and… enjoy!
Pushkin.
Hey everyone, Welcome to all you lovers out there.
This is Justin Richmond and I'm Leah Rose.
We're the host of Broken Record, where we interview your favorite musicians and bring to life the stories behind their music, behind some.
Of your favorite recordings.
If you're listening to this in the Broken Record feed, welcome back. But if you're hearing us as a listener of another Pushkin show, that's because today we're doing something special.
That's right. This is our Valentine's Day special, and today to celebrate the music we love. Justin and I are going to do what we love, which is argue about music.
Ros's gonna be talking to some of our friends here at Pushkin, people who have equally strong opinions about the songs they love.
I'll be talking about Gladwell, who.
Has a very Gladwelling intake about why he believes country is the best genre for love song and I can guarantee it's not for the reason you may think.
It's depressive music. That's what it is.
Well also hear from Ben nattif Hoffrey, the sometimes host of the Last Archive, about a love song he wrote that's so good it helped him score his Forever, Valentine.
I think that folk music does love songs the best.
But first, justin I'm going to ask you what I think is a central question of today's episode. I think I know what you're gonna say. But out of every genre and subgenre that exists today, which one do you think does love songs the best?
R and B?
I knew it.
Look, when you think about it, it's really the shorthand in music in an audio for love, Like if you were scoring a love scene in a movie for like Netflix or like the most amount of people are possible.
To watch, like, you would probably throw in an R and.
B song, you know, maybe uh yeah, you know Al Green, Let's stay Together.
I'm so.
Come on.
That's that's really Those are the sounds of love right there.
You know.
It's very much like what song are you choosing for the first dance at your wedding?
The first right, the first, the first slow dance. It's your junior high welcome dance, you know what I'm saying, Or you're a senior prompt like, it's gonna be R and B. It's kind of the cliche genre that we go to, and I don't I think I should give a deeper reason in here, because I think R and B kind of gets short shrift in the music world, like you know, rock and roll and hip hop. I've taken up all the air in the room for sixty years now, yeah, you know, since since the since the British invasion.
A couple of years were spent on em but yeah.
A couple of years, yeah, right, scrill X was big there for yeah, yeah, Yeah, It's not a sexy topic for some reason. I think because it's so ubiquitous, because in some ways it's so ever present, and we just find it very easy to ignore. But when you think about the fact that R and B comes out of really like it comes out.
Of gospel, you know, like.
Gospel is about love and devotion to a higher being, to God. And at some point, all these gospel musicians that go out they want to write popular songs or sing popular music instead of just singing in the church, and they take everything they've learned in gospel music about how to sort of create a stir and a fervor around God, and they just sort of sent a romantic love. So they just take God out and put in a man, a woman, a lover, you know, a classic example is Sam Cook, who's originally with the gospel group the Soulsters, and he releases a song He's so Wonderful, which is, you know, it's a gospel.
Track, wonderful, God, so.
Wonderful than when Sam Cook wants to cross over, like about a year later and wants to just make an R and B cut, he reworks that same song and instead of wonderful, becomes.
Lovable, lovable, My.
She's lovable.
So then how could you not say that R and B isn't like the preeminent genre for love songs.
It's like it's it has to do with the.
The ethereal and the theological, down to the romantic and the platonic, like it's everything.
And then it just gets dirtier and dirtier as the years go on. And then we landed the song.
Song Yeah, shout out to I Love Cisco and that's a great album.
I love the song.
R and B does do love very very well. But there's other genres too. I mean, look at Dolly Parton on Joelene. She's bagging and she's pleading and she's out of her mind. Please don't take my man.
But then who takes?
And we love Dolly, But then who takes a Dolly song like I'll Always Love You and takes it to the next level Whitney Whitney.
Speaking of Whitney, someone who could sing anyone's song and make it sound phenomenal. This makes me think of the interview you did with Babyface for a Broken Record back in twenty twenty three. And he wrote some of Whitney's biggest hits.
I mean, he wrote some of my favorite Whitney songs. Forget about his this is some of my favorites, and you know a million other unforgettable songs that you know. Yeah, they also happened to be hits. Boys and Men's End of the Road Mariah carries We Belong Together Breathe Again by Tony Braxton.
Yes, that was such a great interview.
Yeah, man, I mean I'm sitting there with baby Face and I'm watching him play guitar in front of me. It was just crazy, you know. And he's he's left handed, he plays upside down like Hendrix. I mean, he's not as good as a guitar players Hendrix, but I mean it was just incredible would be that person up close with them and seeing how he wrote these songs, and he played for me a song he's never recorded with anyone, and it's the very first song he ever wrote about an early love of his first his first love actually in high school.
Let's hear some of that.
Here I go falling in love again.
That was my first song, and I wrote it for a girl because I was like in love and stuff, and.
So the guitar really was just an instrument.
For me to get these songs out of me. I always like to say, even when I played and learn things on the piano, i play, I'm not really a piano player.
I learned things.
To support my songwriting, and that's what I did.
Then I turned that into my first song.
So I was just learning chords to support out my little songs.
Wow.
And for you, songwriting was about writing songs for the girls you were in.
Love with crush and it was it was purely kind of an escape, so to say, Wow, it wasn't anything but that. I didn't think they were gonna go anywhere, but that was the that was the drive, and.
You would have been like eleven twelve, ten, eleven twelve, yeah, yeah, I can't play a deal song sweet November.
But mad that time that will read bad.
That we Wow, man, that's that's a great song.
I wrote that right out of high school. Out of high school, yeah, it was. It was because I was a man child. So it was second year or something, seventy eight or so, seventy eight seventy nine, right in that time.
So it was a girl. It was like this one girl. She was like the most.
While we were in highigh school, we were really good friends and there's no way I would have ever thought I would have been with her. But when I got out of high school, we we started talking and then we actually started dating.
I remember Daryl was like, how how was this even happening? How do you have her?
And then I remember we went to go see Brookshields Endless Love when I saw Endless Love together and then something happened, I think before we were going going away in Manchild, all of a sudden she stopped calling me and I couldn't I couldn't reach her, and I don't know what happened, but it was just like we're just like broken up. And then there was no cell phones, there was no good you couldn't reach our on the phone, and no social media. It was just done. And I was really messed up about it. And and that's when I wrote this, you know, because you know that was the time period. It was in the fall, and of a sudden, I was thinking maybe maybe when I come back, maybe maybe it's November, we'll get back together and find it.
So that was actually a loss song that was written way back then.
And would you have written the words or would.
You write the words for piano and wrote it's.
Like the piano.
Yeah, wow, So.
Because it's kind of beautiful even just divorced from the music, if you just look at the words like high level.
You know.
Yeah, it was when all the first arrived. You with my lady, we're dating.
It was the second reign of Ittom. We shared a feeling.
Yeah, come on, that's it's like we start dating and then all of a sudden we like I remember it was raining and like it looks like something's gonna happen here.
So that almost really personal. Yeah, exhale was more from watching the movie.
Watching the movie.
You don't necessarily have to write from personal experience. You can, you can, but you can watch others and.
No, yeah, it's really about watching others and how they how they feel and how they imagining having to go through that. I'm always asked, how are you able to write for women? Yeah, and said, if you just kind of think of it and think of whatever they go through and think out how you'd feel, you know, it's not that hard to figure out. Damn, that's fucked up. Yeah, I feel you know, I think all right about that, you know. And as a kid that was always falling in love and thinking I.
Was in love, feeling like you.
Know, that's what it was.
My very first song was about a girl named round the new bould always say her name, and that was in here I Go falling in love again. And the second song that I wrote that I clearly remember was about the same girl, which was two years later, from sixth grade to eighth grade, because she broke my heart, was called the Better Taste of Life. Oh those are feelings that I that I had, and everything was exaggerated. I had written a song called so Shy, So there were pieces, there were be pieces of things of songs that I would write. I wrote a song called Anita, wrote a song called Shelley. One of the best songs I ever wrote was a song called Last Song Forever, which was I wrote that when I was in my senior year. Can never recorded, I think so. I think I let a group record as they turned into a gospel.
Do you remember any of it?
Yeah? Could you play a little of it? I don't know what my voice is like right now.
When I think Spanish, I remember a special feeling sweet se.
Then I think.
Spanish show moments. Those were special times. You told me you can.
You know when.
Blown away?
I hope you know why now Mark, I will always I love you for you know man of thinking Libeta song, I God love you then, my dude right now and.
That's okay.
You can hear all of my conversation with baby Face and the broken record episode that was going to link to in the show notes. There's so much more to it, including how some of his biggest influences were singer songwriters like James Taylor and the Beatles. Coming up after the break, Pushing and producer Ben out of Paffrey tells Lea about writing his own love song.
I think that folk music does love songs the best.
That star Pushkin, producer and sometimes host of the Last Archive, Ben Natif Haffrey Folker Country.
Either one would be my leading contender for the genre that is best at love songs. And I think it's because on some level, like I think like a breakup song or a lost love song is superior to a straight up love song. Me too, because I think, like you, if you're in love, you don't really need a song like you feel this kind of symphonic happiness, Like there's something specific that you're experiencing with another person, Like if you are experiencing lost love or unrequited love, there's something about a particular breakup story or yeah, romance song that like creates a community with you when you maybe feel otherwise alone or bereft. But I think that there's like wistful folk music, wistful country music kind of toes the line between these two things.
To be honest, I also think that sad songs might make the best love songs. But the real reason I wanted to talk to Ben is because I learned at our holiday party that he also has a second life as a musician and as a songwriter with the band Ruken.
Yes, and this is part of my long con to get interviewed on Broken Record for my music.
Well you're class.
Yeah, exactly.
So this is our Valentine's Day special. And I was tipped off by our producer Izzy about a love song that you wrote a couple of years ago, and it actually ended up having sort of like a big impact on your life. So I wanted to ask you about this song if I didn't know you by now, so set the stage for us. How did this song come to be?
Well?
I wrote this song about like a year after I first moved to Brooklyn. So I was like just out of college and I had moved to Brooklyn and I was living with a bunch of friends in what was, you know, actually quite a nice apartment. I had not made my corner of the apartment particularly nice. I was not having the best time that year, and I had, I think, as an expression of vague despair, just like not really done anything to set it up. I don't remember why this is, but I remember I had like a tarp in the corner of the room. I had a tarp in the corner of the room like a mattress, and then a saw on the wall. Oh my god, I thought it would be like fun to put on my wall, but it looked terrifying, And that was like pretty much it. And I remember distinctly walking into the apartment one time with a good friend of mine from high school, and I had like in my pocket and I like took the change out of my pocket and I threw it in the corner and she was like, why did you just throw your change in the corner? I was like that that is the corner of the apartment where I keep my change. And it was like it was indeed like next to the tarp, like a pile of change. So there were no shades on the window. This is like a crucial thing. I just was like not super taking care of myself, Like everything was totally fine, but my life was not in order. And then I started dating a friend of mine from college. Her name was Julia, and she was living in Nashville at the time, and we sort of like picked back up talking to each other at a distance, and then when she came to New York, we would hang out. And I noticed that, like, as Julie and I had been talking more and started seeing each other in Nashville and also in New York, that slowly I had begun to set up my room. I got shades through the window. I put like they didn't actually fit, but I got like handkerchiefs that extended them to the bottom. I got rid of the tarp. I did, in fact leave the saw on the wall because that was by then a crucial part of the decor and my identity and remains. So I don't remember what I did with the change corner. There's a good chance to change corner sort of remained.
The growing up process is a slow one.
The growing up process is a slow one, but it began. It began with fixing up that first room. There was a moment I remember where she came and visited. It was early spring, and we had this really wonderful weekend together exploring the city, and she'd grown up in New York and I was kind of new there, and she was shown me around and we went to like a Lebanese church, and I'm Lebanese and it was kind of like a so they just wandered in because they were having like a food festival kind of thing.
Like.
There were a lot of wonderful, serendipitous things. Yeah, And I remember it was after that visit, I think on the day that she had left, but I was hanging out in my room and I was playing guitar and I started writing this song. Like a lot of hack guitar players, I use a lot of open tunings, and around that time I had been playing the Rain Song by led Zeppelin, which is a version of open C tuning, and so I just would like keep my guitar in that, and I remember figuring out the sort of main guitar line and then messing around with the words over it. If I didn't know.
You ran.
Whatever the plans upon the window falling away, back up my clean clothes with complain you know.
When I'm not a professional songwriter. This was a song that like definitely did not come easily to me, but it felt sort of like inspired by that moment and that feeling. It was kind of like a reflection of the fact that I was noticing that my life was changing, and an expression of gratitude to her for bringing me to the place where I wanted to do that.
At what point did you realize I'm writing a love song for Julia.
I think that that is just what it was. I think it's just because that was sort of where it came from, So I don't think it was a realization ever. It was just kind of that was the feeling it started from.
I didn't know you.
I didn't know, so yeah, I was in a long distance relationship, both then with Julia because she was living in Nashville, but then also with the lead singer of my band, Adam, who he was in like the UK getting a masters in medieval literature or something, And we were always working on an album in the background, usually as like an escape patch from like one or another job that we didn't want to do, So we were always like kind of trading versions of things. We spent a lot of time basically on every song, just like trying to get it right, recording and rerecording that kind of thing. And I would always share those things with Julia, and she like a joke evolved where she sort of teasingly would be like, is this song about me a thing that I would always like flatly deny. Did she come to shows? And she would like We would always have these long introductions to our songs about Often we wrote historical songs like Mark Twain's brother died in a steamship accident, and like there would be a long preamble to the the song about you know, Samuel Clemens's brother who dies in this horrible way, but there would notably be no no preamble or introduction to this song. And so this was the thing I was often mocked about. And it kind of reached ahead when we were like crowdfunding an album that we were doing, which is a fancy way of saying like asking our friends for money, and there was a thing that we offered that was like a handwritten lyrics sheet with the story behind the song. And so Julia bought that it requested a lyric sheet with the story behind the song for this song, which as a way of like cornering me into having to admit the provenance of the song. And I did not fulfill that lyric sheet for like quite a while, and it wasn't until again sort of as like a joke in return, But it wasn't until we got engaged that I then did actually deliver the lyrics sheet with the story as a kind of like, you know, obviously this is a song about you.
In the way I feel about you, seen.
How you have fats it out.
If I don't know you, do you have a favorite part of the song.
I always love everything. Adam writes, he like wrote the last verse that I think kind of like takes it to a totally different place. It gets like a lot darker right at the end, in a way that I wouldn't have done, but think it gives a lot of hafts.
Put back in, Alix.
And want to have.
With you.
Still you haven't closed.
All the dogs to the night still feels good, and lean mind into your side.
Come to me the first snow.
Then when that sound, Yeah, that was so Na you said, all right, canv me back?
Well?
Thank you so much, Ben, thanks for having me.
This was fun, Happy Valentine's Day.
Such a beautiful song. Again, that's if I didn't know you by now by Ruken. I'm not sure if Ben's going to convince Justin that folk is the best genre for love songs. But in a minute, Malcolm Gladwell wais in and he gets us thinking about this question in an entirely different way.
Yeah, I don't think country music does good love songs. I think it does good breakup songs, heartbreak songs. It does the reverse.
Malcolm Gladwell is a best selling author, the host of Revisionist History, and Pushkin's resident country music aficionado. When I heard we were doing a Valentine's Day music episode, I knew we were going to have to get his take.
So country music, it's true, which is consistent with its role in American popular culture. It is the downer to rock music's upper right. Rock music and I did a whole Revision's History episode on this. It was, you know, the striking thing about rock music is the inability of rock musicians to write effective sad songs. The sad songs are terrible. They're just not sad, right, They're not believably sad. They're rock and roll songs that are kind of you know, try to pretend to.
Like.
I gave the example of Wild Horses, which is supposed to be a sad song. It's not sad. What's sad about it?
And also it's like total.
It's also banal and like wild wild Horses, Like what is going on? I mean, it's just like it doesn't work. Country, though, is totally comfortable in that kind of emotional morass. That's the whole It's depressive music, that's the whole point. It's the South. It's like white guys who lost the Civil War never got over it. That's what it is.
You know.
I was talking to some guy yesterday about the Church of Christ, which is an almost overwhelmingly Southern denomination of Christian denomination, and Nashville is the heart of Church of Christ. The music in the Church of Christ churches is insane. The Church of Christ is famously has no orchestral music. They God, No, it's all a cappella, which is way more demanding. The Church of Christ. It is not a happy denomination. It's not Pentecostals jumping up and down and welcoming the risen Lord. No, it's like it's like white Southerators bemoaning the laws of their status and like be bowing their head in the face of avengeful God, and no piano to no piano to lift their spirits. No organ, no piano, no nothing. Use your own voice, dammit. Which is why, by the way, so many country singers come for the Church of Christ. Amy Grant is Church of Christ. Merle Haggard is Church of Christ. I could go on and on. Listen if you look it up. Is insane.
Yeah, I'm looking at this church. I'm like, this isn't Roy Orbison.
They're all Church of Christ.
They're all Church of Christ, Loretta Lynn Woody Guthrie.
So, like, is it any surprise the country music which comes from Nashville, the epicenter of the Church of Christ is like the least happy music known to man. No, it's like it's like depressive.
So stands the reason then that, like in the in the continuum of you know, when it comes to love songs and the continuum of of sort of emotions that go along with love, country music would fall more on the side of sad over a breakup, sad over a unrequited love, sad because I'm in a marriage I don't want to be in but I'm still in love with my high school sweetheart, or whatever, you know, whatever those songs are that these sad kind of love's not going right or breaking up.
One of my favorite country songs about heartbreak is I think it's George Straight does fort Worth Ever Cross Your Mind? Which is a classic. I mean, you can't if we're going to talk about country music and sad songs, we're starting with George Strait now, okay, So I'm gonna read to you some lyrics to does Fortworth Ever Cross Your Mind? This is the opening Stanza Cold fort Worth Beer is how it begins. Just ain't no good for jealous. I've tried it night after night you're in someone else's arms in Dallas. Does fort Worth ever cross mind?
Darling?
While you're busy burning bridges, burn one for me if you get time.
If you get time, there's no orange. Don't fake so weasy word rausm.
What's hilarious about this is this song is all about parsing the cultural distinction between fort Worth and Dallas, which looms large in the in the minds of people from Texas and the rest of us are like what this song makes no sense to anyone who's not from Texas. I want to give you a You left me here to be with him in Dallas, and I know it hurts you at the time. Well, I wonder now if it makes a difference. That's for worth across your minds. It's twenty miles away. It's a whole song. It's a whole song about a stretch of interstate. It's just so fantastic. This is what's so hilarious about it.
It is like so petty, it's.
So petty and so but like, this is why rock and roll can't do a breakup song, Because a breakup song requires a certain level of emotional and narrative specificity, and rock and roll is too obsessed with being universal.
Yeah, not enough in the details.
No details.
Did Prince ever write a song about? Did Saint Paul ever cross your mind?
No?
No, no, because that's not the business he's in. He's not in the business of mode of evoking this kind of strong emotion. He was aware of the distinction between Minneapolis and Saint Paul, but chose chose to overlook it in his songwriting. That's why he's a rock musician or a R and B musician. I'm not a country musician.
So so he's saying that you left me to be with him, and he's saying Dallas with the level of this, I mean, that's.
A you want to have to understand a song. Here the reason why it's not Does Dallas ever crossed your mind? That's a wholly different song.
Yeah.
Yeah, that fort Worth is the is the ugly stepsister. Fort Worth is one step down the wrung. So she left him to upgrade and move up. Yeah, that's why it hurts. She left him for for a dude in fort Worth. He's fine, he's moved on. He's not a girl in Dallas. No, no, no, no, no, no. He's at fort Worth and what does she do? Got up one morning, drove down the interstate and upgraded her situation, Lee, leaving him in a pile of tears in fort Worth.
But you see, this is why, and you know I want to talking to Leah. This is why I think R and B is the greatest genre for loves on. I don't ever want to be the guy in Fort Worth finding about the woman who left me to upgrade to go to Dallas.
Like that's why.
Like like Whitney Houston, like you know, in her song she catches like the guide cheating and she says it's not right, but it's okay.
I'm gonna make it anyway, like I.
Want, I wanna you left me fine, I'm not gonna wallow. I'm just gonna move on with my life, bigger, better things, like that's what I want to live.
No, No, it's you're just what you're just identifying is that she's made stronger stuff. That's what that's about. And some of this is like, is bethos somebody pronouncing that right? Bethosathos pathos, pathos are pathos. I think bethos is the word I want.
Bethos b A T H.
Bethos definition. Yeah, anti climax created by an unintentional lapse in mood from the sublime to the trivial or ridiculous. Like, that's what does foot worth across your mind?
Is?
Is Bethos right?
That's what that is?
Right, that's the that's the appeal, that's the appeal of the of the song.
Is it is?
So?
I mean, is there a hope for the country music family? Like you know, I guess there are country music songs explicitly about love. They is not as good. They're just not They're not the A tier country music songs, right. I mean there's like Forever and Ever aighty man Randy Travis people played at their wedding and there.
But that's a song. But think about that song the way he sings it. He sings it like it's a sad song. I'm going to love you forever and ever.
It's very wistful.
Forever and Ever. It sounds like he's committing to a prison sense. Ah man, Like.
What does it say about you, Malcolm that when you're asked to think what genre might be the greatest for love songs?
The breakup song.
I Want some I had a friend named Mike and he didn't know me very well, and we decided to go to a ballgame together. This is in the eighties, and we drove from Washington See to Baltimore to see the Orioles and I played some mixtapes in a car and end he turned to me and he said, I had no idea how depressed you are, because every single song on the mixtape was a song about some kind of broken heart, suffering, sadness, death. I don't know that's what I wanted a song.
But there is no part of being around you that feelsmird in sadness, depressed.
No, but I don't.
I don't want to. I don't like upbeat song So why it's my problem with rock and roll is just like just calm down already, like just this, Can we wallow in our emotions for a moment here and not just beating your head against the wall in necstasy. It just it strikes me as unseemly.
Leah, I mean several points well taken from Malcolm.
You know, I love country music dearly.
I think songwriting is impeccable, and they certainly do a love song in a setnd song incredibly well. But you know, I just I guess I just I just like a more happy song. I like a mom Just no, No, I don't know if I can live like in that kind of misery.
I think it's so funny. I mean, you know that I love a sad song over a happy song, and I'll take a depressed, unrequited love song over a happy over the moon love song any day.
Well, Leah, you know, I feel like we're back to where we started, which is you know, I mean, You're probably right. Look, the whole idea of genre is and it's a it's a man made creation, and there's probably no way to categorize what sort of genre and what culture does the love song the best.
It's just so subjective.
It's so totally subjective, and you know it's for me based on my personal experiences still R and B. I mean, I think I'm even further to entrenched in my position now at this point. But you know, I love that Malcolm and Ben both have their strong feelings, and I love that your ever sort of noncommittalness around any of that.
Yes, I know, I'm just going to keep it open. I'm keeping it open for new experiences, and I'm going to sit here and I'm going to celebrate Valentine's Day by listening to songs that make me cry.
Well you know, no, no, no, celebrate Valentine's Day. I made a great playlist love songs. Listen to that.
We'll put that in the show notes, and listen to that, not the sad songs.
Please.
Wait.
I just saved a playlist, and this is real. I just saved a playlist from Spotify called Classics for Crying, So I'm getting that cute up.
This episode was produced by Isabelle Carter and edited by Sarah Nix.
Our mix engineer is Sarah Bruguier.
Special thanks to ben Atahoffrey, Malcolm Gladwell, Costanza, Guyardo, Owen Miller, and Eric Sandler.
I'm your host, Justin Richmond, and I'm Leah Rose.
Happy Valentine's Day.
Eh Yeah
