Playlists

What are these playlists?

As we moved to remote classes, I thought it was a good idea to play some music during the two short 5-minute breaks we had in class. This was obviously not an original idea. In particular, I was inspired by Robert Moser and Pat McDonald at UT Austin who would run these huge and fantastic online classes on American Foreign Policy even before pandemic times and with whom I had to pleasure to work as a TA for several semesters during my PhD. The first time I implemented the "musical breaks" in my own class though was when I was teaching International Political Economy to sophomores in 2020-1. Back then, I mostly played songs I thought were clever (so, probably lame) puns, such as Abba's "Money, Money" or Brazilian's amazing soul singer Tim Maia "Não Quero Dinheiro" ("I Don't Want any Money", which is followed in the lyrics by "I just wanna love" - so much for nonmaterial drivers of individual preferences in the global economy). My personal favorite from the punny list is The Rolling Stones' "You Can't Always Get What You Want", which fits perfectly with the day we are covering the Unholy Trinity (this song contrasts with Adele's "Rolling into Deep", since she clearly doesn't understand the trilemma's tradeoffs, otherwise she wouldn't sing that "we could have had it all".)

Then, I taught Transnational Governance in 2020-2 and I thought it would be fun to ask students to recommend songs. I set up a Google form and they could ask for stuff anonymously and briefly explain why they were requesting a given song. The recommendations didn't have to be class-related, so if they wanted to ask for a song just because they liked it, that was allowed. Given that there were two classes of about 40 students each, the resulting playlist came to be extremely eclectic and I obviously threw a couple of songs myself in there:

This process made me get to know more of Brazilian rap, and new artists like Chloe x Halle. But students also knew their classics and so we listened to Simon and Garfunkel (because "The Boxer" was the favorite song of the requester's mom) and Bob Dylan (btw, we listened to "Tangled Up in Blue", which was a perfect match to the day we were discussing public-private partnerships in global politics and read Calvin Thrall's great IO piece on the United Nations Global Compact). Several songs also reflected the moment we were going through, such as "The Kids Aren't Alright" by Fall Out Boy and Royal Blood's "Figure it Out".

In 2021-1, I taught IPE again and felt very outdated as I was introduced to artists like Olivia Rodrigo, Khalid and Joji. Students didn't disappoint in terms of puns and in thinking of songs related to course content, though. Here are some of my favorites, along with their explanations:

Fabulous, by the High School Musical - "you must be asking, a Disney song? And the answer is: yes! This song brings us back to our childhood and happy moments, but it is also IPE because it talks about luxury imports!"

9 to 5, by Dolly Parton - "it makes me think about workers who follow the "American Dream". It has everything to do with what we are studying now (*we were studying the effects of FDI on labor in host countries) and the song is so cool."

Apologize by Timbaland ft. One RepublicApologize - "what an MNC would say to a host government after it is expropriated? That it's too late to apologize"

7 Rings by Ariana Grande - "The lyrics speak about the singer's spending habits. Maybe this had something to do with low interest rates in the U.S. by then? The part that says "They say, "Which one?" I say, "Nah, I want all of 'em" makes me think about people buying houses before the 2008 crisis."