• Danny King
• On January 19, 2016

I can’t believe that I am admitting to this, but I am OBsessed with Miley Cyrus’ song “BB Talk“. It’s freaking genius and I spent basically 50% of December listening to it on repeat while studying for finals. Her rambling description of whether or not she wants to get over an old boyfriend is so open it veers on comedy. She definitely knows how uncomfortable you’ll feel listening to it and made a bizzaro video to accompany it. She’s extremely convincing that this song is just a page from her journal she decided to talk over a beat. Not only is it an amazing song, but I love that she had the guts to release a spoken pop single. Surrendering a major portion of a song to talking is ballsy as hell and the few people who have tried it have had varying degrees of success. It is a Talky Treasure.

Once I recognized the genius of Destiny Hope (Google it) I was thrown back to one of my dad’s favorite Lyle Lovett songs, the equally earnest and absolutely absurd “Here I Am”. I had to dive deep into my music collection but emerged with a playlist of other amazing songs whose dedication to highlighting the spoken word portion created great music. I’m hoping this little collection will make other people appreciate the genius of the talking technique. Either to hype the crowd like P-funk or Disco Tex and the Sex-o-Lettes, Make strong political messages like “The Revolution will not be televised”, or just to overshare to the point the listener kinda wished you stopped (“Kim”… obviously).