What we’re into: ‘I’m In Love With That Song’ podcast

Published 3:00 am Monday, March 21, 2022

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You might not be able to tell a bar chord from a bar of soap, but I’ll wager that you have a favorite song.

Probably you have dozens, since the concept of settling on a singular favorite is about as appropriate for music as it is for, say, children.

I’ll bet too that while listening to a song you particularly enjoy, you’ve wondered how the artist assembled the disparate sounds of the instruments and voices into a coherent whole, one which you haven’t tired of even after hearing it hundreds of times.

Brad Page shares your interest in the creative process of recording music.

Better still, he has performed the sonic dissection that reveals nuances largely hidden within the finished product.

Page hosts a podcast called “I’m In Love With That Song.”

The show, available on all the major podcast platforms and on his website — www.lovethatsongpodcast.com — focuses on one song per episode and, as Page puts it, endeavors to isolate the elements that “make it a great song.”

He does this in part by employing digital technology to extract individual tracks from a recording, playing excerpts from them and then describing the sounds and explaining, when possible, how they were produced.

In examining Rush’s “Subdivisions,” for instance, Page pulls out a few of Geddy Lee’s frenetic bass parts. This is a revelation. Although any Rush fan understands that Lee and his bandmates, guitarist Alex Lifeson and the late Neil Peart on drums, are all virtuosos, hearing Lee’s playing on its own reveals a level of proficiency that’s not quite so apparent when it’s combined with Peart’s inimitable fills and Lifeson’s deft leads.

All of Page’s episodes — he recently released his 100th — have similarly compelling moments. Just as a fine art aficionado would be fascinated to watch a painting or a sculpture in progress, probing the construction of a rock song can lavish a fresh appreciation on some of our most beloved tunes.

— jayson jacoby, editor, baker city herald

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