Charlie Harding is a music journalist, songwriter, and producer. He is the co-creator and co-host of the podcast Switched on Pop, which focuses on the making and meaning of popular music. Charlie’s work has reported stories featuring interviews with Jack Antonoff, James Blake, Disclosure, Finneas, Alison Krauss, Lizzo, Baz Luhrman, Caroline Polachek, Tayla Parx, Robert Plant, Mark Ronson, Rina Sawayama, Sylvan Esso, Take A Day Trip, Kali Uchis, Cory Wong and many others.
Switched On Pop, a co-production of New York Magazine & Vox Media, has been hailed by NPR, The New Yorker, Rolling Stone, and Entertainment Weekly for its unique musicological coverage. The show was listed as one of The Atlantic’s Top 50 podcasts of 2019 and one of Time Out's and Esquire's best podcasts of 2022. It was named The Webby's best Arts and Culture podcast for 2020, the Signal Awards best music podcast of 2022, and, for its "forensic musical analysis," The Guardian's best pop music podcast of 2023.
Charlie is the co-author of Switched On Pop: How Popular Music Works and Why it Matters (Oxford University Press), which won the 2021 PROSE Award in Music & the Performing Arts. Through close studies of sixteen modern classics, the book shifts pop from the background to the foreground, illuminating the essential musical concepts behind two decades of chart-topping songs.
Charlie has guest lectured at NYU Clive Davis Institute, USC Annenberg School on Sound Studies, UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music, Eastman School of Music, and OSU School of Music, University of Texas at Austin and Brown University. His writing has been featured in the The New York Times, LA Review of Books, Vulture, Vox, and Billboard, and he is a frequent contributor on WNYC.