Suger-Coated Hits

In his book Vanilla Pop, Joseph Lanza attempts to rescue the whitest of the white music from the sneers and snickers of music critics and rock historians. He argues that vanilla, rather than being the absence of flavor, is a "unique, identifiable, and under-appreciated characteristic of pop music." Lanza joins us to reveal the studio tricks behind this music's extreme sweetness, and to touch on some of the genre's stars, from Frankie Avalon to ABBA. As it happens, the artists behind the sunny music weren't always so sunny themselves. Also, a talk with theater director Anne Bogart and actor Tom Nelis about "Score," a new one-man show at the New York Theater Workshop devoted to Leonard Bernstein.
Additional Resources:
» Vanilla Pop by Joseph Lanza
» More about Score