My guest today is Jia Tolentino. Jia is the author of the essay collection Trick Mirror, which was named one of the best books of 2019 by The New York Times Book Review, NPR, The Paris Review, and more. She won a National Magazine Award for her work at the New Yorker, where she’s been a staff writer since 2016. Her writing covers so many different topics, from Roe V. Wade to the internet to pop culture and music. And today, we’re going to talk about the 1996 pop hit “I Love You Always Forever” by Donna Lewis.

For more, visit songexploder.net/jia-tolentino.

Melina Duterte goes by the name Jay Som. She’s a singer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist. She’s released three albums as Jay Som, and has produced, engineered, and mixed each one.

Her third album, Anak Ko, came out in August 2019. And in this episode, Melina breaks down a song from it called “Tenderness.”

To learn more, visit songexploder.net/jay-som.

Fall Out Boy is a band from Chicago that formed in 2001. Their first album, Take This To Your Grave, was a hit, especially in the punk rock world. When they put out their second album, though, in 2005, that was on a whole other scale. That album is called From Under the Cork Tree, and it went double platinum, and they were nominated for a Grammy for Best New Artist. For this episode, I talked to the band’s singer, Patrick Stump, about how they made their breakout hit from that album, the song “Sugar, We’re Goin Down.”

For more info, visit songexploder.net/fall-out-boy.