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Music: it's good. On each episode of Strong Songs, host Kirk Hamilton takes listeners inside a piece of music, breaking it down and figuring out what makes it work.
Kirk surfs an avalanche straight into Thrash Valley, where he delves into the depths of Megadeth's 1990 opus "Holy Wars... The Punishment Du...
Kirk returns to the world of Joni Mitchell for a look at the many sides of her masterpiece "Both Sides, Now." From her initial 1960s live pe...
Kirk heaps on a second helping of TWO previous Strong Songs artists: Queen and David Bowie, whose 1981 collaboration "Under Pressure" topped...
Kirk kicks off Strong Songs Season Eight with a second helping of Toto, whose song "Africa" got the very first episode of Strong Songs he ev...
Strong Songs Season Eight will kick off on Friday, January 16! If you want to listen a week early, get monthly "Inside the Episode" bonuses,...
Kirk sits down with jazz piano legend Peter Martin to talk about Peter's musical background, his momentous early encounters with Wynton Mars...
Writer, composer, and Peabody Award-winning podcaster Jad Abumrad joins Kirk to talk about Fela Kuti: Fear No Man , his new 12-part series o...
This episode of Twenty Thousand Hertz originally ran in August 2025. Kirk's 2020 episode of Strong Songs about the music of Super Mario TWEN...
It's fun to talk about TV theme songs, so that's what Kirk and special guest Leigh Sales did. Does this episode need any more introduction t...
Originally Aired October 20, 2020 The Wildlings are south of the wall, the robots are rising up, Seventh Kavalry's on the move, and two perc...
With so many dozens of albums over so many wildly disparate eras, it can take a lifetime to truly get your arms around Bob Dylan. On this ep...
The Wailin' Jennys have been singing together for more than two decades - recording albums, touring the world, and filling venues large and...
Back in May, Kirk joined pianists Adam Maness and Peter Martin of the You'll Hear It podcast to talk about what makes Tower of Power great....
THE APOCALYPSE WERE: Tony Capuano - Guitar, Lead Vocals John Shorb - Alto Sax Gene Meros - Tenor Sax Greg Novik - Bass, Backing Vocals (guit...
For the Season Seven finale, Kirk takes a look at Bill Withers' enduring hit "Lean On Me." In the process, he takes a broader look at a bunc...
Kirk answers a bunch of listener questions on topics like bluegrass guitar, the music of Blue Prince, good apps for training theory skills,...
In 1981, Sting brought a demo of a song he'd been working on down to AIR Studios in Montserrat to see what his bandmates thought of it... an...
The jazz standard "All The Things You Are" has been performed countless times by master jazz vocalists, 30s big bands, bebop small groups, h...
Turn around... every now and then I get a little lonely and the snare is sounding small Turn around... every now and then I get a little bit...
How should you count The Police's "Bed's Too Big Without You?" Why do so many people revere Marty Friedman's solo on Megadeth's "Tornado of...
Kirk pays a visit the musical world of The Muppets, from their Sesame Street origins in the 60s to the globe-hopping, cinematic heights of t...
Kirk digs into one of the most dense and challenging records in his collection, with an analysis of "Roulette Dares (The Haunt Of)" from The...
Kirk digs into Fiona Apple's breakneck 1999 single "Fast As You Can," a cornerstone in her late 90s collaborations with Jon Brion, as well a...
Strong Songs Season Seven kicks off with two of the most famous songs ever recorded, from one of the biggest bands in the world. U2's "Where...
In between seasons, Kirk re-ran a bunch of old episodes and prefaced each one with a new music recommendation. He's taking those down recast...
In light of Janis Stockhouse's unexpected death at the tail end of 2024, we're re-posting Kirk's 2019 interview with her for anyone who migh...
Kirk talks with Wesley Morris and Josh Gwynn about the endless world of Stevie Wonder. Morris and Gwynn are host and producer, respectively,...
A cross-post of the first episode of "The Wonder of Stevie," a new six-part podcast series from Higher Ground and Pineapple Street Studios....
Back in August, Kirk went on Dave Hamilton's music podcast "Gig Gab" to talk about music, Strong Songs, podcasting, and life. It was a fun c...
An update on what's next now that Season Six is complete, along with some book and music recommendations! BOOK RECOMMENDATIONS The History o...
In the season six finale, Kirk takes a deep dive into Bruce Springsteen's signature song, 1975's "Born to Run." It's all here: tremolo guita...
As Season Six draws to a close, Kirk opens up the Strong Songs mailbag to answer a bunch of listener questions on topics ranging from Diablo...
Stage left! It's time for Strong Songs to talk about XTC. Stage right! Now the song is picked, analysis can begin. Stand up! If we listen cl...
Phish may be known for their 30-minute live jams, but turns out you can distill their best qualities into a song one-tenth that length. To t...
You came, you saw, you voted, and you picked Blondie as Strong Songs' first listener-selected artist! After weighing a number of possible so...
Meshell Ndegeocello is: a fearless songwriter, an outrageously funky bassist, and a groundbreaking producer who knows just how to get the mo...
For the third edition of Strong Covers, Kirk takes on two famous covers of two equally famous songs: Jimi Hendrix's 1968 cover of Bob Dylan'...
Kirk digs into the work of master composer Antônio Carlos Jobim via his timeless 1974 duet with Elis Regina on his song "Águas de Marçco," k...
Turns out some songs stand on their own, however memorable-slash-horrifying their music video might have been. Written by: Chris Cornell Pro...
Strong Songs Season Six kicks off with a widely requested classic: Peter Gabriel's 1986 yearner "In Your Eyes." Because why hire one rhythm...
On this bonus episode from May 2022, Kirk goes through a handful of other covers of the three Beatles songs he recently discussed on the sho...
(Originally recorded in May 2022) There's always more to say about Sonny Rollins, so Kirk shares a few of his other favorite Sonny moments,...
Weird Al has been writing songs and recording parodies for four decades, and his musical footprint is unfathomably wide. In this minisode, o...
Recorded in August 2022 as an addendum to the main feed episode "Strong Grooves, Volume 1," special guest Russ Kleiner takes Kirk through th...
For the Season Five finale, Kirk takes a look at The Band and Martin Scorsese's beloved 1978 concert film The Last Waltz - "The beginning of...
It's time for another mailbag episode, as Kirk takes on questions about Evanescence piano, Kelis bells, and counting in songs by Phish, Vess...
The electric guitar is a beautiful, maddening instrument, and man does it sound good in the right hands. On this episode, Kirk takes a deep...
Kirk wasn't expecting to make a full-length episode about the music of The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom , but then he played the ga...
On this bonus episode, originally recorded as a Patreon bonus in 2022, Kirk goes through a few great Legend of Zelda pieces that he didn't m...
Kirk takes a tour through the cycling, modulating chord sequence in Belle & Sebastian's buoyant 2017 song "The Girl Doesn't Get It." Variati...