I haven’t written a “my favourite podcasts” post lately, but I need to write about a specific one ASAP or (as the Turkish saying goes) I will crack in two.

I found out about the 500 Songs podcast from Izi who sent me a link knowing I’d enjoy it. I had started to play the guitar, and I have always been a music geek. After a furtive glance at the website (with horror) I saw a backlog of 150+ episodes. My OCD traits would make me go through all that to understand it properly, therefore I thought better of getting started with the ordeal.

But that fortunate day, I decided to pick an episode of a song I knew to give it a chance. I selected Episode 148: Light My Fire by The Doors. It is a long episode, almost an hour and a half, so I decided to listen to it during one of my walks around the park. I thought I knew the song and the band well. I have watched the Oliver Stone film a few times. I have even read a book on the poetry of Jim Morrison, Baudelaire and Rimbaud while in college.

“Light My Fire” began with an explainer on how bias works in writing of history as a subject and continued with the Vietnam War, cool jazz, Ravi Shankar, transcendental meditation, Hinduism, Maharishi, psychedelics, and the LA youth culture of the time before even mentioning any of the members of The Doors. But somehow it all tied together, and I became a fan.

500 Songs is created, written, and narrated by Andrew Hickey a musician, music producer and writer from Manchester, UK. He is a self-professed music nerd: he reads (or read when he was 7) almost every book on the subject of each episode. He also reads the books that the people in the episodes read themselves. He watches documentaries on his subject and usually already owns the DVDs (he’s old school). On his website, for each episode, there are notes with his source material, full versions of the songs he uses in the episode, and the transcripts if you’d rather read (but you should listen, not read). He also has a good sense of humour.

To see how he prepares for the podcast and hopefully to support his work, you can be a Patreon backer as I am, or see his Amazon Wishlist, admire the man and buy one as a present to him. Patreon backers also subscribe to his other podcast which features songs not deemed important enough for the narrative but still are somewhat important. The backers also get more Q&A from him.

Andrew Hickey seems to prepare a chart for each episode with different storylines that feed into the narrative like an author writing a complicated work of fiction. In the end, all the various storylines merge, just like a good episode of Seinfeld.

If you’re looking for explainers on songs or want to know the history of the bands, this is not your podcast. In 500 Songs, each episode is like a short (sometimes medium) book. And if you do not enjoy random trivia about everything and have no patience for rabbit holes, stay away.

In the episode for Good Vibrations by the Beach Boys, he begins with Greek mythology to explain where the word “rhapsody” comes from because the song is a rhapsody. He goes on to talk about Lev Sergeyevich Termen (or Theremin). Termen is a fascinating character and the inventor many things, including a weird instrument called a theremin¹. This is all because a theremin is played in the song.

In the episode about My Generation by The Who, we learn about mod culture and how it relates to punk culture of the 60s London. I realised that my mum who always wears those mini dresses in her black and white university pictures in Ankara of the time was a part of it oblivious to mod culture’s backstory.

Sometimes Andrew Hickey tends to explain where certain artists get their inspiration from observing the tiniest of clues and explains it so well that I wonder if the actual people in the story realised it themselves.

As I listened to more podcasts from the backlog, I learned a great deal about everything from music theory to history, from the zeitgeist to youth culture to religion, from the politics of the time to the chemistry of LSD to capacitors… I could go on.

After I was sure of my fascination with the podcast my OCD traits stepped in:

• I ended up going back, first to listen to every episode where I knew the song.
• In the second pass, I listened to every artist I already knew even if I did not know the song in the title.
• As I listened to more episodes I learned about new artists and went back to listen to those episodes as well, as a third pass.
• Finally, I said fuck it and downloaded every episode even if I did not know the artist or the song, to work my way back to the present.

As I write this post, I’m in episode 150 (towards the end of the 60s) with only 30 or so to go before I catch up with the rest of the world.

Listening to the podcast influences my music choices as well. All these years, I was a proud Elvis > The Beatles man. I still do not like “Yesterday”, “Hey Jude” or “Yellow Submarine”. I did not understand the fascination with The Beatles.

After I listened to various episodes on them, I realised what incredible creative geniuses they were, and how they experimented with form and used the tech of the time. I started admiring their constant improvement and hard work and why they matter for the rest of the world.

I also ended up loving Elvis more as I learned about his work ethic, good character and respect for everyone regardless of the time or place he lived in. Oh, and I’m deleting James Brown and The Doors from my playlists: James Brown is an a..hole and Jim Morrison is a fake.

Andrew plans to release roughly 100 episodes per decade, 50 every year² until he reaches the 500th song from the year 1999 when he would complete his herculean task. Looks like his timeline is slipping but that is fine. The podcast will probably come to an end in 2030.

It will be an excellent ride as we slowly get to my teens (80s) where I will have a lot to add to what I know and I will reminisce about the songs, the times and the world that I grew up with. It will bring back many memories.

If Andrew asks me, the slower the better, and longer episodes are welcome. Bring it on.

1. I must confess I’ve used the name of the instrument (theremin) a few times to demonstrate how to pronounce my name properly, but (Dame) Tracey Emin works better in the UK. ↩︎
2. This New Yorker article about the podcast is excellent as a background if you want to know more. ↩︎