Mark and Sarah Talk About Songs is one of my new favorite podcasts. As you may have guessed it is in fact a podcast where hosts Mark Blankenship and Sarah D. Bunting talk about songs. It differs from the other music podcasts I listen to like Pitch (come back Pitch you’ve been gone too long), Switched on Pop, and Song Exploder because those podcasts tend to focus on the mechanics of the music or things having to do with music production and the music industry. Instead Mark and Sarah tend talk about what they think about a song and the use whatever the song they’re talking about is as a jumping off point for what it reminds them of. Sometimes it’s other songs or artists, but also where they were in their lives when they first listened to the song a lot and what was going on the culture at large at that point. I fall into their same general age range, so their cultural touchstones and age milestones tend to gel with mine.

The episodes post on Fridays, and their seventh episode went up this past week. I’ve been meaning to write about the podcast for several weeks now, but I hadn’t gotten around to it. Since they talked about a song I requested in the most recent episode I decided I should make time to throw them some love.

My request was for them to talk about Mazzy Star’s “Fade Into You”. I apparently wasn’t the only one who wanted to hear what they had to say because two other people also requested it. I think I still have a love for the song a little more than they do. Even though I’m 37 I still like to indulge my inner angsty 90s teen from time to time, and as they point out this song is pretty much nothing but that. I had fun listening to them talk about it though as well as the discussion that springboarded from it.

I used to love Mark Blankenship’s writing about music, but he hasn’t really been doing that in any consistent way for a long time now. I still miss it, but the podcast is sort of filling that hole. It’s not exactly the same, but I’m still super excited about it and happy to have it in my ears every Friday. Plus at about 20 minutes an episode it fits perfectly to fill up my hour at the gym when paired with Pop Culture Happy Hour which also posts on Fridays.

If you’re a music person like me I highly suggest checking it out.