From the Notorious B.I.G. to the Fresh Prince and LL Cool J, Slate’s music-history podcast is here to quiz you. Listen to Hit Parade via Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify, Stitcher, or Google Play. Think you know music? Hit Parade, the music-history podcast from Slate, is back with a new episode of the Bridge. Advertisement In [...] Read more

How did the Bee Gees survive the fall of disco? The falsettos? The white suits? It was the songs. Listen to Episode 16 of Slate’s Hit Parade: Listen to Hit Parade via Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify, Stitcher, or Google Play. Slate Plus members: Get your ad-free podcast feed. Those falsettos, those white suits, those toothy [...] Read more

The Queen of Soul is gone. How much do you know about her music, really? Listen to Hit Parade via Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify, Stitcher, or Google Play. Think you know music? Hit Parade, the pop-chart history podcast from Slate, is back with a new episode of The Bridge. In this monthly mini-episode of Hit [...] Read more

How did guest rappers change the way supporting performers are credited across popular music? Cardi B and Bruno Mars perform onstage during the 60th Annual Grammy Awards at Madison Square Garden on Jan. 28 in New York City. Theo Wargo/WireImage Listen to Hit Parade via Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify, Stitcher, or Google Play. Slate Plus [...] Read more

Listen to Hit Parade via Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify, Stitcher, or Google Play In the second part of our two-part episode about the B-52’s and R.E.M.—the bands that put Athens, Georgia, on the map and helped define new wave rock in the early ’80s—we trace how they transformed themselves from hipsters to hit-makers. One band waited [...] Read more

The story of how two very different bands came to define the boundaries of New Wave rock from the college town of Athens, Georgia. Listen to Episode 14 of Slate’s Hit Parade: Listen to Hit Parade via Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify, Stitcher, or Google Play. The B-52s and R.E.M. don’t sound all that much like each [...] Read more

Slate’s music history podcast is here to quiz you with some trivia. Think you know music? Hit Parade, the pop-chart history podcast from Slate, is back with a new episode of The Bridge. In this monthly mini-episode of Hit Parade, host Chris Molanphy answers some listener mail and invites one contestant onto the show to [...] Read more

Since the heyday of MTV, music videos have made hits bigger. Now, watching them even counts for the charts—which helped make Miley Cyrus’s career. Even before the launch of MTV, the music video has been making pop songs buzzworthy. And since the early ’80s, it has transformed also-rans into hit-makers—from the Buggles and Duran Duran [...] Read more

Think you know music? Hit Parade, the pop-chart history podcast from Slate, is back with a new episode of the Bridge.

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Over the objections of critics, Bon Jovi entered the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame this month. What is the band’s legacy? Listen to Episode 12 of Slate’s Hit Parade: Slate Plus members: Get your ad-free podcast feed. Bon Jovi is many things—platinum-selling, chart-topping, and now, Hall-of-Fame-inducted. That angers music critics, who have been slagging [...] Read more