Stereothematica
Welcome to Stereothematica, a podcast where two women geek out over music.
When Christina moved from LA to Texas, Christine suggested a weekly challenge to stay in touch: pick a song that fits a chosen theme. This game opened them to new perspectives on each other while deepening their own understanding of the music that shapes their lives. Each week Christina and Christine recreate the magic of their song exchange on a broader scale, deconstructing their thematic picks, providing personal anecdotes and historical insights, and sharing transformative tracks rarely spotlighted on the Billboard Hot 100.
Stereothematica
Shorties
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Shortest songs don't always yield the shortest episodes, but they do pack a punch! And while this isn't technically our shortest episode, it does come in second, after our SECOND episode Pump Up Songs. Enjoy the brevity and levity, and please share your favorite shorties on Instagram.
SONGS:
¡Ay, Paquita! (Performed by Rosalía) - Paquita Salas (2018)
RESOURCES AND REFERENCES:
Paquita Salas Soundtrack Seasons 1-3
Season One Opening Credits - Sung by Alberto Jiménez y Miss Caffeina
Season Two Opening Credits - Sung by Rosalía
Season Three Opening Credits - Sung by Isabel Pantoja
Rosalía Canta la Nueva Cabecera de Paquita Salas
Vanity Fair piece (en español) on the Season Three Theme Sung by Isabel Pantoja
Rosalia’s acting debut in Euphoria
La Bola Negra 20-Minute from Overjoyed Audience at Cannes (Deadline)
60 Years Ago: Roger Miller Revolutionizes Country with 1:42 Song
Roger Miller: Country Music Hall of Fame
Roger Miller performing Dang Me on American Bandstand. July 11, 1964
THEATER; Roger Miller: King of the Rhyme (NYT)
UNSOLICITED ADVICE:
Connect with us on Instagram (to share your song picks or troll us), Spotify (for our ever-growing playlist), and Stereothematica.com (for extra fun)!
If you like what you’re hearing, please subscribe, and if you love it, a five-star rating and review would send us into the exosphere of excitement.
And email us at stereothematica@gmail.com! We will write back!
I'm Christine. And I'm Christina. In 2024, I moved to Texas from LA. And to keep in touch, Christine and I started a weekly game where we each pick a song that fits a chosen theme.
SPEAKER_02This game deepened our understanding of each other and the songs that shape us, inspiring the podcast you're listening to now. Each week we share our pics, swap stories, and dig into tracks you might love and a lot of the time have never heard of.
SPEAKER_03Welcome to Stereothematica, your favorite atypical music podcast.
SPEAKER_02Hey Christina. Oh hi, Christine. So due to the short turnaround time from recording to release, we only got a couple of days. I thought it would be fun and maybe prudent to make this our shortest episode ever.
SPEAKER_03What do you think? I'm so committed to the bit that I started the timer app on our Zoom meeting. So let's do it.
SPEAKER_02Okay, I'm ready. So the theme is Shorties. That is the shortest song in your music library that you actually enjoy listening to. Not as a part of an intro, interlude, or outro. Did you remember when I proposed this and set those parameters?
SPEAKER_03I do remember. And I don't think you gave me all of that context because Oh, well, I do remember looking at trying to find, you know, in Spotify, I was like, how do you sort your likes from shortest to longest? And you can't do it. You have to like create a playlist or something. So I would have had to add all of my like songs to a new playlist and sort it by length. And I didn't feel like doing that.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. Okay.
SPEAKER_03But I also felt like I can pick a short song, Christine.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. No, I know. And you had that one already, the T for the Tillerman.
SPEAKER_03Remember that was your so short. It's gotta be like 30 seconds long or something.
SPEAKER_02No, and that was that was no, you did. That was your no skip skip album. Perfect album.
SPEAKER_03Controversial.
SPEAKER_02Very. But do you remember the challenge I posed to you? Or actually maybe I even posed the challenge to myself. I'm not sure. But I I said something like, I have a feeling I know what you're going to pick.
SPEAKER_03Do you remember that? I do remember because you wanted to know if I could pick a song under a minute, right?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, but I thought for sure you would pick a specific song.
SPEAKER_03I know, and that's so wild because what was the song you thought?
SPEAKER_02It was The Beach Boys Meant for You.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_0238 Seconds.
SPEAKER_03And I I don't even know what album that's on. It's not on Pet Songs, is it? No, it's on Friends.
SPEAKER_02It's a really good album. I actually I have the album. I don't, and I I know the song, so technically I could have chosen it, but I'm not a fan of the song.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, if it's not your fave, don't be no and me over here, I wasn't even familiar with that one.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. No, that's funny. I thought for sure you would. But anyway, check out the album. What I like about it is that it's less speech-y, more hippie. More boys, less speach. Yeah, yeah. I mean, kinda. Okay. So now when I shared the theme, I did have a song in mind, but like you, I went through my iTunes to find like the actual shortest length songs. And I had a ton of interludes, intros, outros, lots of sound effects too. I don't know how they got there. Sound effects. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03That's gotta be Thomas.
SPEAKER_02I think so. Somehow, like our iTunes cross paths. There's all of that shit.
SPEAKER_03And you know, and he knows that I want one of those things where you press the different buttons and it'll play the sound effects. So we can do it live during the show.
SPEAKER_02No, we need to invest maybe our our third third year in, maybe. Yeah. Good idea. Okay. Okay. Okay. Now, technically, Christina, if you wanted to be a game Nazi, which I don't could argue. Okay, thank God. Um, because if you wanted to, you could argue that my pick is an intro because I guess it is to a TV show. But it's also a perfect standalone with a beginning, a middle, and an end. And it runs just about 50 seconds. And I absolutely just I love listening to it as its own thing. So you ready for it? The song is Rosalia singing Ay Paquita in the season two opening theme for the Spanish mockumentary, which I've talked about many times, the Netflix series Paquita Solace.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, the show. Yeah. But to me, it is very much like a TV, I mean, it strikes me as like a TV comedy intro. Uh-huh. And it's a good song. It's super fun. And it's like one of those ones that I like doing the little hand claps to myself. But it's like if you had the choice of being like, oh, somebody write an intro song for me, of course, like I'd pick Grosselia or Yeah.
SPEAKER_02No, for sure. Well, I think it is a complete song, works on its own. It's it has a complete lyrical and musical art. We start with the flamenco guitars, the jaleos, the palmas. We've talked about those all flamenco, very flamenco tradition. And then also in flamenco tradition, Paquita is introduced as this tragic, sad figure. She's wanting more, but she's also running the city. And then her name turns into this emotional refrain. And I actually, I dude, I listen to the song regularly. Like it just makes me feel so good, partly because it makes me think of the show, but mostly because it's a burst of this old school Rosalia flamenco energy that, you know, since then we haven't really seen much of that. I've talked about the show, I think, more than a few times here.
SPEAKER_03I'm guessing you still have not watched it.
SPEAKER_02Is that true?
SPEAKER_03If it makes you feel any better, because I have not watched it, I do not remember you ever talking about it. And I that could just be because I have such a bad memory. That makes me feel worse. Okay. Well, blame it on me because my memory is bad. But uh it's not that I don't want to take your advice or recommendations. I regularly do. But this one for whatever reason. Maybe it's because it's in Spanish and I feel intimidated.
SPEAKER_02But it's so fun. It's anyway, okay. For you and for those who are not familiar with it, it's it's about a once successful 90s talent agent who, after losing her biggest client, and the biggest client is Macarena Garcia, who's a real Spanish actress. Anyway, she desperately searches for new actors to represent, but Popricita keeps getting burned like after one after another. She's so close to like getting back that energy she had in the 90s. But like, truly, what's so delightful about the show is her interactions with her friends, her assistant, and the actual Spanish actors playing these extreme versions of themselves, which is hilarious. It's it's just so silly, and the mockumentary aspect of it is is always fun. So I do think you would really enjoy it.
SPEAKER_03It does sound really fun. Yeah, I like that. It sounds almost like uh a different version of like hacks in Spanish.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I know I think so. I mean, I think this is better than I like hacks, but I I enjoy this more. This is like a comfort show. Yeah, I'll like just return to an episode randomly sometimes if I want to feel good.
SPEAKER_03Love that, yeah.
SPEAKER_02So the show started as a web series and quickly became this cult hit in Spain. Like, if you talk to a Spanish person, they will have likely heard of the show. In 2017, Netflix picked it up, and the show's big comic device is that Bryce F. A gay male actor, plays Paquita. And so the character is like written and acted with such flaws and affection. She's delusional, she's over the top, she's loyal, wounded, and like sweetly heroic. And her lovability really is a testament to the brilliance of the creators, Javiera Calvo and Javier Ambrosi, better known as Los Javis in Spain.
SPEAKER_03Have you heard of Los Javis? No, but when you started to say, I'm like, in my head, I'm like, the Javes.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, no, exactly. Like they are such a thing. And that they're another duo that like everyone, like in Spain, people are very familiar with them on the podcast circuits all the time. Very, very, very fun. They were a couple. I think they recently broke up, but they still continue their creative partnership. But Paquita Solace was their breakthrough show. The series Veneno, are you familiar with that? Not at all. It came out. Okay. So that came out in 2020 on HBO, and that might be a little more well well known to American audience. It was the true story of the Spanish transgender singer and TV icon, Christina Ortiz Rodriguez, and she was known as La Veneno. Who plays that? Oh man, I I forget. Okay, I'll look it up later. Yeah. But yeah, that's that's another great show. I I really recommend it. Their new film is La Bola Negra, and that recently premiered at Conn and received a 20-minute standing ovation, which I guess is not that like rare. They get those things all the time. But it's inspired by Federico Garcia Lorca's unfinished work of the same name. And it explores the interconnected lives of three gay men and it stars Penelope Cruz and Glenn Close. But don't worry, they're not playing gay men. So um back to the song. According to Europa FAMA, Los Javis wanted the season two theme of Paquita Solis to feel reborn for its Netflix era. So they asked the musician producer Manu Guiche to give the opening theme a twist. And that's when he went to Rosalia, who was blowing up with her song at the time, Malamente.
SPEAKER_03Oh, I love that song.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah. So that was like right around the same time, 20, like 2018. Ipaquita was already the series' theme song. And it was composed by Alberto Jimenez and Antonio Poza of the Spanish pop group Miss Cafeina. They were new to me. And the season three song, also Ipaquita, was sung by Copla Queen, Isabel Pantoja. And all three versions are so gloriously Spanish, like in their own way. And of course, I'll be sharing those in the show notes, and they're all worth a listen. Okay, but I'm gonna turn it over to you. I hope we're we're doing well. Okay.
SPEAKER_03I'm so impressed.
SPEAKER_02Good, good, good. Before I turn it over, I want, I feel like I need to mention Rosalia's acting debut in the latest season of Euphoria or Euphornia, as Thomas calls it. But anyway, so Rosalia plays a stripper with a neck brace. And her thing is that she just rants in Spanish all the time, but no one understands her. It's very cute. And and she does some stripping too. Well, so I yeah.
SPEAKER_03I I have to say, Euphoria is too stressful for me to watch, but I did want to see what she looked like. So I watched a clip of her performance. And yeah, yeah, it's intriguing, I will say. It's intriguing, but not her real acting debut. You said she's been in some like Alma Lovar movies.
SPEAKER_02Oh, you know what? Okay, you're right about that. Although I feel like that was less acting, it was more like a cameo role, and she's actually singing in it. It was at the very beginning. Yeah, good good call, though. Good, good call.
SPEAKER_03I remember some things.
SPEAKER_02Yes, just not everything. No. Anyway.
SPEAKER_03Christina. Before I make you ponder for too long, congratulations. That was under 13 minutes. That might be a new record for us. Okay. I'll try to make it as brief, considering I match your energy. Let's get to it. Um, I actually like a lot of short songs. And even though when I sent my song to you, you roasted me for it being too long. I still, yeah, you did a little bit. You were like, I feel like you could have done better than this.
SPEAKER_02That sounds like me.
SPEAKER_03I enjoy listening to this short song in all of its glory. And if I'm being honest, I do feel like any song under two minutes is short, at least in my book. Without further ado, my pick is Dang Me by Roger Miller from his 1964 debut album Roger and Out.
SPEAKER_00Running wild. Woman sitting home with a mother child. Dang me. Dang me.
SPEAKER_03I can't remember, Christine. Are you familiar with Roger Miller?
SPEAKER_02I wasn't, but somehow this song felt so familiar and it's so fun. And I'm just thinking about it right now. I'm like, you're bouncing up and down.
SPEAKER_03It's so silly. And you know, I think what's fun about it, and we'll talk a little bit, but like Roger is one of my favorite classic country singers, and he does lean toward the novelty song genre, as you might have gathered from this song. And some of his songs are quite silly, and I think he can get away with that because they're so short that you're not drawing it out and like kind of overdoing it. But I could have picked one of his classics for our funny songs episode. However, we haven't gotten there yet, so I'll hold off. But of course, he's also very well known for writing and performing King of the Road, which is one of his hits, as well as writing several songs for the animated version of Robin Hood. You remember like Robin Hood and Little John? Okay, yeah. That's Roger.
SPEAKER_02I feel like he's definitely a part of the culture. Yeah, like I think he's part of the Americana.
SPEAKER_03Like, yeah, he's he's very classic. Yep. But that's what's kind of fun about him. He's got this range with his lyric. One minute he might be making you laugh, and the next minute making you dry your tears. Maybe not that drastic, but you catch my drift. He's a country singer. I think just like you, just like me. And back in the 60s, I feel like there was just a lot more maybe humor. I think about like Buck Owens and some of those other performers who who sang silly songs, and it was still popular with all audiences, not just kids. So popular Roger was that Dang Me won the Grammy for Best Country Song in 1964, the same year that Roger won the Grammy for Best New Country and Western artist. And his debut solo album, Roger and Out, even with 12 tracks, it was only 23 minutes and 42 seconds long. Is that a record? Yeah, I mean, I don't know if it's a record, but it's a pretty short album, I would say. Yeah. So short that a critic at the time complained about the brevity of the album, saying it was like trying to drive to Nashville on half a tank of gas. That's kind of a corny takedown, if you ask me. Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_02I'm trying to think how that works.
SPEAKER_03It doesn't it actually does not make any sense. So I think short is fine as long as you can get the point across.
SPEAKER_02No, for sure.
SPEAKER_03I could stop here, Christine, and be half as brief as you were in this episode just to really try to one-up you. But I'll tell you a little bit more about this short song, just to draw it out. On the Saving Country Music website, Kyle Trigger Coroneos writes the genius of Dang Me was its wit and humor that massed a fresh and forward-thinking way to approach country songwriting, which had grown somewhat stale and cliche at the time. He mentions how in 1964 the Beatles were all the rage, and country music couldn't compete with rock and roll. But somehow Dang Me transcended the country charts and made it to number seven on the Billboard Hot 100, as did Chug a lug, another single from Roger and Out. Do you know that one? No, do you? Oh my god, I love it. Yes, such a good song. Yeah, not every album. Like, if you listen to his greatest hits, you'll probably really enjoy it. Like he's got this fun song, England Swings, or um, what is my favorite one? Like, there's one that's about reincarnation, and it's probably like not very, I don't know, it probably didn't age well, but it is very fun. Okay. You know, I'll listen. I I do recommend our listeners, you everybody check him out. He's very fun, and you know I love silliness, so I think that's why I like Roger Miller so much. He scats, he makes silly songs, and he pens some of the funniest lyrics, which I regularly quote here.
SPEAKER_00They say rose is red and violets are purple. Sugar sweet, so is maple surple. I'm the seventh out of the seven sons. A baby was a pistol. I'm a son of a gum, I said dang me.
SPEAKER_03Dang me. So he says, Roses are red and violets are purple. Sugar sweet so is maple surple, which I don't know why surple is so funny to me, but I never want to say syrup anymore. I only say surple. I'm gonna do that now too, because it is it it tickled me. It's so silly. And yeah, I was curious if it uh amused others as much as me. And when Googling Surple, I actually found a great New York Times article from 2003 by Broadway theater producer Rocco Landesman, who was celebrating Roger's rhyming style and creativity in his article. Uh, apparently the two worked together on the play Big River, which Roger wrote the score to. Do you know that play? No. Me neither. It must not have gotten terribly famous because I haven't seen it. But now that I know Roger was involved, I may have to try to find it somewhere.
SPEAKER_02Okay.
SPEAKER_03Well, let me know how it is. Absolutely. Wow. That's it. I tried to keep it really short and sweet. How'd we do?
SPEAKER_02Nice. I think we're at 19 minutes, and we'll see what Thomas brings us down to. I can't wait. I think so far our shortest episode has was like was one of our earlier episodes, and that was maybe 18 minutes. Maybe. So I don't know if we're gonna beat that new record. All right. Okay, so now I'd like to give our listeners and you some unsolicited advice. Please look up and behold the art in our midst. If you look up into the sky, you will almost immediately feel better because you will feel smaller, shorter, if you will. And we all need more of that. And what I really want to emphasize is looking up at the clouds. And can I give you some bonus advice? I have a feeling you will, even if I say no. Download the free cloud spotter app. It might just turn you into an official cloud appreciator. No pressure. But Christina and friends, I worry that we are taking this natural wonder for granted. All you have to do is look up and behold the majesty. Cumulus, nimbus, stratus, cirrus. I remember those from fifth grade science. And these are just four of the 10 main cloud types. Wait until you learn about all the species, and a Castellanus, fluctus, or a spiritus stops you in your tracks one day. There's even, I have to say, a cloud of the day. And you can take pictures of the clouds, upload them, and the app will tell you what they are. Now, I'm not saying you should all join the cloud appreciation society just yet, but the more you look up, the more you'll want to look up. And then your phone won't be as appealing, except of course for taking pictures of clouds.
SPEAKER_03And identifying birds with Merlin.
SPEAKER_02Yes, that too. Okay, advice over. Christina, any hints for next week? Next week we're celebrating Pride Month. Thanks for listening to Stereothematica. If you like what you're hearing, please consider a review, a rating, or sharing with a friend.
SPEAKER_03And follow us on Instagram at Stereothematica, where you can share your favorite short songs. We've also got our infinite Spotify playlist linked in our show notes.
SPEAKER_02And visit stereothematica.com for more fun.