STEPHEN TO ANNE MARIE:

SB: What is your favorite song?

AM: Hitting us with the Tove Lo this month! You always make me jealous when you do that. It makes me want to run around and see how many pop stars we’ve unintentionally ignored all these years, just because we assumed they had already been featured. You ever heard of a guy named Sinatra???? Michael Jackson? U2??

The correct answer is Memory Box by Peter Cat Recording Co. Is this guy touring?

SB: Have you heard any of these tracks before?

AM: Tove Lo and MUNA tracks. But hey, we can’t be 16 for 16 every month. 14 for 16 ain’t bad, take your bow.

SB: Sampling has long been a controversial topic in the world of music. In my own personal opinion, the folks who do it best take small snippets of a song (the less-popular the better and bonus points if it’s not part of a chorus originally) and make it something completely new. Good example of this is what P. Diddy did by taking a small bass beat in Herb Alpert’s Rise (featured on my July playlist) 5 minutes and 38 seconds into the song and turning it into the now famous Hypnotize beat for Biggie. There are others who do it well like Mark Ronson and Pharrell. But where I start to get annoyed and see it as lazy is when producers today take entire hooks or beats and get credit for making a chart topper. They end up sounding more like a bad remake rather than creative expansion. So all that said, what is one of your favorite examples of sampling that sticks out?

AM: Paper Planes by M.I.A. comes to mind. I’ve always been impressed that they not only sampled that song but somehow narratively chose a song to sample that had a relevant homage to their new narrative. I can’t think of any others right now but I DO think it’s super interesting that some popular songs have been sampled over a hundred times. That’s wild to me. On the one hand it truly shows how penetrating the original track was, to stick in so many people’s heads and really take hold. On the other I find it interesting that the new generation of artists sees a song that has been sampled that many times and goes, oh yeah, I can do it better.

I’ve always *wanted* someone like Pharrell or Finneas to sample Part-Time Lover by Stevie Wonder for a new hip hop or pop jam because I think the opening to that song and baseline are so fun.

ANNE MARIE TO STEPHEN:

AM: What is your favorite song?

SB: I see you trying to hide HONEYMOON at the end thinking I’m not gonna find it. Distracting me with that FRANKIE OCTOBER at the front. Nice try.

AM: Have you heard any of these tracks before?

SB: Nomino and somehow that d.r.w.s jam that I had on loop at some point but most definitely forgot to include it in a playlist. 14 for 16 right back at ya!

AM: What is your song of the summer this summer?

SB: What a hard question to answer. Mostly because I love to wear out a song for a solid month and then just move on. Every once in a while there will be one that I’ll go back to, but it’s usually just for a second. Some of the jams that I’ve been are Pink Noise by Laura Mvula (came out last year, but for some reason it’s just really resonating this summer), just about anything on the new Calvin Harris album (but especially Potion and Stay with Me), Crazy What Love can Do by David Guetta and Let Love Go by Mabel. If I had to pick a single song, it would probably be Kavinsky’s Cameo. It’s the perfect vibe that works when you’re cruising and it’s 100 degrees outside but also has a little bit of a mysterious sound that makes it a great nighttime groove.