Radiolab - 27: The Most Perfect Album

More Perfect is back with something totally new and exciting. They just dropped an ALBUM. 27: The Most Perfect Album is like a Constitutional mix-tape, a Schoolhouse Rock for the 21st century. The album features original tracks by artists like Dolly Parton, Kash Doll, and Devendra Banhart: 27+ songs inspired by the 27 Amendments. Alongside the album they'll be releasing short stories deep-diving into each amendment's history and resonance. In this episode, we preview a few songs and dive into the poetic dream behind the First Amendment. The whole album, plus the first episode of More Perfect Season 3 is out now. Support Radiolab today at Radiolab.org/donate.

Duration: 22m
Broadcast on: 19 Sep 2018
Audio Format: other

Support Radiolab today at Radiolab.org/donate.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

No, wait, you're listening to Radio Lab from WNYC. Jad Robert, Radio Lab. These all 24 amendments, you have songs? Oh, my friend. Did you say 24 amendments? Well, they're 26, I don't know how many they were. They're 27. They're 27, okay. You, of all people, I thought we'd know that. I know they add one every so often. So, okay, let me explain this project for you. Okay. Okay, so, more perfect now is entering its third season. Right? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, the first two seasons. What were they? They were extended, investigative, highly reported, and researched, and elaborated stories about the Supreme Court, cases in front of the Supreme Court. But the idea was, of more perfect, was always broader than just the court. I mean, the idea was to look at the argument that just so happens to happen at the court and the process of America sort of trying to claw its way out of the muck to get to its higher ideals. Now, those ideals, of course, are outlined in the Constitution, which has been amended 27 times in ways that are crucially important, especially right now. And most Americans can't name more than one or two of them. I was one of those people before more perfect. And so, when I was on my break, I had this idea, crazy idea, which was, could we make an album? Could we make a schoolhouse rock for the 21st century that reanimated these amendments? Oh, a lot of aspiration. Well, it's like you got to go big, right? That's a very didactic thing. In those songs, you actually are told exactly how to feel about the Constitution. I'm just a bill, yes, I'm only a bill, and I'm sitting here on Capitol Hill. Yes, but the idea was, could we take the spirit of it? But not like didactic in the way the old stuff was, but like taking these things that we had been covering for two seasons, the amendments to the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, one through 10, the other ones from 11 to 27, taking them and because they're so stodgy and musty, like the language. Well, some of them are really opaque. Yeah. I mean, and so the idea was, could we take these stuffy, stodgy, sometimes opaque, deeply important words and bring them to life. So we reached out to a ton of different musicians and asked them, like, would you interpret these amendments? You can talk explicitly about the amendments if you want, or you can turn it into something very personal to you. Well, could they do it though? I don't know. Let me just play you a couple.

Transcription truncated.