Tuesday, Feb 1, 2022 • 26min
We *do* talk about Bruno
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The number one song on the charts is a bit of a mystery. “We Don’t Talk About Bruno” is the unlikely hit from Disney’s sleeper animated musical Encanto. Set in a mountainous village in Colombia, the film was a middling commercial success when it was released in Nov 2021. But in recent months it has become a pop culture phenomenon for a confluence of reasons: an expansive discourse on Colombian representation in media, fan videos on TikTok, and of course it's ear-wormy hits.
The musical is yet another notch in the belt for Lin Manuel Miranda (the auteur behind Hamilton and In The Heights) who wrote the now chart-topping song book. While Disney certainly commands vast commercial success, its musicals rarely see such crossover attention. The last #1 Disney musical number was “A Whole New World” from the animated Aladdin back in 1993. Where that song was literally uplifting, “We Don’t Talk About Bruno” is quite the opposite.
Bruno is the uncle of the Madrigal family, whose skill for seeing the future portends gloom and sends him into exile. In his namesake song “We Don’t Talk About Bruno,” an ensemble cast trade verses about his ghostly presence (Bruno haunts the family home, living inside its walls). It is an odd ball song, with dark and bizarre lyrics. Sure it starts with a story about rain on a wedding day (which is not ironic), but then it takes a hard left into tales of dead fish, middle aged weight gain, and creeping rats. So then what makes it a hit? A distinctive concoction of salsa piano rhythms, familiar Lin Manuel Miranda-isms, and contemporary pop connections to Camila Cabello, Britney Spears, J Balvin, Bad Bunny and Cardi B.
Listen to Switched On Pop to solve the mystery of what makes “We Don’t Talk About Bruno” a hit.
Songs Discussed
Lin Manuel Miranda - We Don’t Talk About Bruno, In The Heights, Helpless, Satisfied, My Shot, Wait For It, Say No To This
Cardi B, J Balvin, I Like It
Luis Fonsi, Daddy Yankee - Despacito
Camila Cabello, Young Thug - Havana
Britney Spears - Baby One More Time
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Talking about
Speakers
(2)
Charlie Harding
Nate Sloan
Transcript
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Charlie Harding
00:12
Welcome to
Switched On Pop
. I'm songwriter Charlie Harding.Share
Nate Sloan
00:15
And I'm musicologist Nate Sloan.
Share
Charlie Harding
00:17
So Nate, this week we have a musical mystery.
Share
00:21
Hey, Charlie and Nate. It's Sarah from
Berkeley
here, what is going on with? We Don't Talk About Bruno
. The song has obviously completely taken over the world, and I want your musical take on what makes it tick.Share
Nate Sloan
00:38
Yes,
We Don't Talk About Bruno
smash hit off the soundtrack for the Disney
film Encanto
, which came out late last year. It's time to talk about, We Don't Talk About Bruno.
Share
Charlie Harding
00:49
And this one is a bit of a mystery because it's rare that a
Disney
song makes it onto the Hot 100. And Bruno is currently at number one, having unseeded Adele
. And it could potentially be the biggest Disney
song since the 1990s, when a whole new world was charting.Share
Nate Sloan
01:08
I mean, that kind of surprised me because what I've heard of this song, it's pretty unusual for a chart topper, like where did it come from, and how did it get to be so popular?
Share
Charlie Harding
01:16
Right, so the essential details here are
Encanto
is the latest Disney
animated film taking place in a fictionalized Colombia
, it follows the Madrigal Family. They each have special powers, except for the protagonist, Mirabelle. They have a forgotten Uncle Bruno, he's got a two-sided gift for seeing the future, not everyone likes the future that he sees, so he goes into exile.Share
01:42
The extended Madrigal family are gossiping in this ensemble song featuring multiple characters, cousins, aunts, uncles, figuring out what's up with this exiled uncle Bruno.
Share
Nate Sloan
02:01
Nice summary, Charles, do The Little Mermaid dance.
Share
Charlie Harding
02:07
Songwriter, Charlie Harding, explains
Disney
songs and blesses the yeah, exactly.Share
02:13
You asked why is it a hit? I think that's why we're here, I have my theories, I imagine you have your theories. What are you hearing?
Share
Nate Sloan
02:20
The very first thing I hear when I listen to,
We Don't Talk About Bruno,
is the musical accompaniment. Let's zoom in on the piano part.Share
02:33
When I hear this piano part, I'm instantly transported to the world of Afro Latin music and particularly a style that originated in Cuba called "Montuno", we've actually talked about this on the podcast before, way back when we dug into
Camila Cabello
, Havana
.Share
Charlie Harding
02:58
Right?
Share
Nate Sloan
02:59
So this piano motive is very characteristic of the style, the way it features these kind of syncopated notes in the left hand bass.
Share
Charlie Harding
03:07
Yeah, played alone. It's almost not enough information to even tell where the beat is.
Share
Nate Sloan
03:20
Yeah, it's very disorienting, the right-hand kind of grounds you in these arpeggiated melodies. Actually, now that I'm playing, it's also pretty syncopated as well. It makes you want to dance. I mean, that's the point of this.
Share
Charlie Harding
03:41
Yeah.
Share
Nate Sloan
03:42
And then, so this belongs to this larger genre of "Montuno", but the sound of this particular one. The way it's in this C minor key, the way it's kind of at a slower tempo. This is a particular tradition called "Guajira" known for its kind of laid back, sultry and maybe kind of slightly mysterious sound, which is appropriate to the text of
We Don't Talk About Bruno
.Share
Charlie Harding
04:07
Yeah, you're right. In fact,
Lin-Manuel Miranda
, the musical tour from Hamilton,
In The Heights,
Moana
, who wrote this song, Bruno.Share
04:15
He supposedly wrote this song on the spot when the screenwriters were like, we've got this spooky character, kind of a mystery, and he was like, "okay, this is definitely a dark, slow piano montuno".
Share
Nate Sloan
04:27
Interesting. I mean, you can hear it even from the very first notes, that's kind of the two piano notes that lead into the first chord. It's like there's something a little.
Share
Charlie Harding
04:38
It's dark.
Share
Nate Sloan
04:39
Little dark about it.
Share
Charlie Harding
04:40
This man is saying "you were in a minor key".
Share
Nate Sloan
04:42
And then this tense seventh chord that ends each chorus, it is spooky. There's a lot of, a lot of suspense here.
Share
04:52
So, for me, what brought me into this song, even before I'd seen the movie and really knew what it was about at all, was the sonic references to Afro Latin music and the kind of sinister, slightly McComb harmonic choices that are being made here. So, that's like, that's what first got me into this song, but I feel like that's just one part of the picture of this song, like what are you hearing?
Share
Charlie Harding
05:17
The most curious thing about this song? Especially being now a pop hit, not just a
Disney
animated musical song, is that it's a piece with many characters. Like, each verse is a different person singing in a totally different style.Share
05:37
Take a listen to the first verse, Pepa Madrigal and her husband Felix. This was the first verse, so we're very much in a dramatic salsa guajira sound, right? When we get to the second verse, the next Madrigal Dolores, she takes us into the world of hip hop.
Share
Nate Sloan
06:14
Maybe even like Latin trap.
Share
Charlie Harding
06:16
Definitely, yeah, I like the sort of SMR whispered rapping that she's doing here.
Share
Nate Sloan
06:20
Like, the base kind of becomes an 808 at that moment.
Share
Charlie Harding
06:24
Yeah, exactly.
Share
Nate Sloan
06:25
That's cool. I didn't really pick up on that.
Share
Charlie Harding
06:27
There's more characters, there's more characters. We go to verse four and Isabella sings basically a ballad.
Share
06:46
But the most rewarding thing about this song is when you get to the final verse, you realize that all of these characters who have all been saying, "don't talk about Bruno, it's gossip". It turns out they're all talking about the same thing, and all of their parts have been written so that they collide together into a metaverse, everyone sings together.
Share
Nate Sloan
07:20
Cool.
Share
Charlie Harding
07:21
So there's kind of a genre and sound for everyone. My first reaction was like, well, this isn't very much like a pop song, it does too many things at once, and then I realized like I feel like one of the biggest trends that we've spoken about on the show over the years has been the way in which song form has been upended, which genre has been upended.
Share
07:43
Artists like
Drake
and Future
on their song, "Life is good", have two completely different songs matched together.Share
08:04
And artists like
J. Balvin
decided to play with traditional verse chorus structure and just make hook, after hook, after hook.Share
08:26
So maybe we're kind of primed to hear a song like Bruno which jumps from place to place because it's narratively compelling, and it doesn't really matter if it follows a particularly set form.
Share
Nate Sloan
08:38
Interesting. So as mainstream pop becomes more formally adventurous and experimental, there's actually more room in our kind of mainstream taste for the kaleidoscopic styles of a song, like
We Don't Talk About Bruno
.Share
Charlie Harding
08:57
Exactly.
Share
Nate Sloan
08:58
I find that very persuasive, but I'm still pretty surprised at the success of this song. I feel like there are other tracks from the
Encanto
soundtrack that are even more plausible as pop hits, like "Surface Pressure"
.Share
09:19
Like that is a pop chorus, to me, it's got a beat, it's gotta a repeating chord progression, it's got a melody that cycles around and round. I hear that I think, oh yeah, that works as a pop song.
Share
Charlie Harding
09:37
Actually, no surprise,
"Surface Pressure"
is currently in the top 10 as well. Who knows, maybe it could reach as high as Bruno.Share
Nate Sloan
09:43
Okay, so I wasn't wrong in my diagnosis of the pop predilections of that song.
Share
Charlie Harding
09:49
Yes, you are a pop oracle.
Share
Nate Sloan
09:50
Bruno is still, it's weird, it's different, it doesn't correspond to most of what's on the charts, so I'm gonna need you to unleash your most esoteric theories as to why this song has become so successfu, so I can truly appreciate.
Share
Charlie Harding
10:08
You know, I will, and I'm going to do so in the second half of the episode.
Share
Break
Charlie Harding
11:04
All right, Nate. I've got two remaining potentially far-reaching theories as to why Bruno has got to be the hit of
Encanto
.Share
Nate Sloan
11:13
Give it to me, Chuck.
Share
Charlie Harding
11:14
Well, the first is that no matter what we do, we cannot escape
Lin-Manuel Miranda
.Share
Nate Sloan
11:19
Okay, I've I think I can see that.
Share
Charlie Harding
11:23
Yeah. And he's been working this sound of putting together contemporary popular music and blending it with the world of Latin pop. He's been doing this for a while, right? His first Broadway musical,
In The Heights
, does just this.Share
11:43
There we go, you got your piano man to know you've got the rapping mashed together, we've heard this sound, but it's more than just the genre connections, there's a certain way that he writes. There's a lot of sort of like musical genre tropes and things that he does over and over again, that feel familiar. And if you've been exposed to his work, which is really hard not to have been, you're going to be more primed to enjoy Bruno.
Share
Nate Sloan
12:16
Okay. I'm intrigued, what are some of the tricks in the
Lin Manuel
musical playbook that we might encounter here?Share
Charlie Harding
12:23
To be honest, while I enjoy his work. I'm not enmeshed in it, in the same way that my wife is, and so I had to call on thats to answer this question.
Share
Nate Sloan
12:33
Nice, okay, wow, bringing the big guns. I love it.
Share
Charlie Harding
12:37
A
Lin Manuel Miranda
whisperer.Share
12:39
Do you know we're gonna be listening to?
Share
12:41
Lin-Manuel
Miranda.Share
Charlie Harding
12:42
Do you know where is he from?
Share
12:44
Hamilton
?Share
Charlie Harding
12:44
She haven't seen
Encanto
.Share
12:46
What?
Share
Charlie Harding
12:47
And this is the song from the movie
Encanto
.Share
12:50
Okay.
Share
Charlie Harding
12:51
She's never heard this song.
Share
12:54
Good, this sounds just like the Maria Reynolds song.
Share
Charlie Harding
12:57
She's referencing a song from
Hamilton.
Share
12:59
"And I said no sir, please, sir". That's what it reminds me of, it's the bodice ripping song.
Share
13:08
This is it, I did it! Did I solve your well, mistery.
Share
13:31
That's the best I've got.
Share
Charlie Harding
13:31
That was awesome.
Share
13:35
Right? So the song "Say No To This" from
Hamilton
has this very similar no, no, no quality as the Bruno song. In fact, Lin-Manuel
named the character Bruno because he liked how no, no, no, no, no worked. So he relies on some common tricks.Share
Nate Sloan
13:55
That's amazing, that's, you're on the payroll.
Share
Charlie Harding
13:59
I'll let her know.
Share
Nate Sloan
14:00
For me, there was one moment that brought me right back to
Hamilton
, and it's in that ballad section sung by Isabella that you referenced earlier. And it's when she does this particular kind of vocal embellishment. It's when she sings, "he told me that my power would grow", on the word grow, there's this specific kind of melisma like gro-ow.Share
14:30
It's a subtle thing, but it's exactly what happens in the song, "Satisfied" in
Hamilton
when the Skylar sisters are singing, and it's actually in the same exact key. They do the exact same melodic motive on the word Eliza.Share
Charlie Harding
14:58
Okay, that's wicked, subtle, but also wild to me because that was the other thing when I played this for best, he was like immediately singing satisfied.
Share
15:09
Okay, first of all, it's very satisfied. God, I hope you're satisfied.
Share
Charlie Harding
15:16
And you know, it's not the only thing that songs are borrowing because satisfied also does that like mash-upy the thing, this is whatBess told me.
Share
15:24
"Satisfied" as a companion song to "Helpless", it's a reaction to "Helpless" and their son on top of each other at a certain point and "Satisfied".
Share
Charlie Harding
15:32
Okay, so "Helpless" is the other Skylar sister song you hear, "Helpless".
Share
15:37
And then "Satisfied" that little melody comes in again, you have these characters colliding. So wild shares. Not only that, what are we gonna call that embellishment? We need to name it.
Share
Nate Sloan
16:06
Call it the
Lin
jump.Share
Charlie Harding
16:08
Not only does it share the
Lin
jump, it also shares that character's mashing up their different perspectives, colliding on each other., just like Bruno does.Share
Nate Sloan
16:16
I feel like Bruno and "Satisfied" are begging for a mashup, but maybe someone already has, but if not, there's an opportunity there, and we're offering it to you.
Share
Charlie Harding
16:25
Wait Nate, I've got one more
Lin-Manuel
thing that he does.Share
Nate Sloan
16:28
Miranda-ism?
Share
Charlie Harding
16:28
A Miranda-ism, this might be more of a musical cliché, but he loves to completely cut the lights, zoom in light spotlight on one character in the middle of a song at the peak drama. Right? So it happens in Bruno.
Share
16:58
You get the same thing in the song, "Wait For It", from
Hamilton
.Share
Nate Sloan
17:05
There it is.
Share
Charlie Harding
17:11
"It's In My Shot" from
Hamilton
.Share
Nate Sloan
17:14
Oh wait, this is so good. That's amazing Chuck, we need a name for this one to almost think of it. It's like running off a cliff, kind of like you're like get it, you're going higher and higher and higher than you just like are in free fall, it's very effective the way he does it.
Share
Charlie Harding
17:35
So that we have the Lin jump, which is a little melody thing, and then we have the free fall when you jump off the cliff and everything is gone, and you're just like floating there waiting to see what happens.
Share
Nate Sloan
17:44
Works for me, works for me.
Share
Charlie Harding
17:45
Okay. I'm sure there's like infinite more little clichés and things that he does. They work, they keep pulling me into the songs.
Share
Nate Sloan
17:54
I totally agree.
Share
Charlie Harding
17:55
He's been doing this stuff for years, the songs are wildly popular, and it just kind of makes sense to me that at this point that one of them or several of them would end up charting. But I think the reason why Bruno of all songs on the
Encanto
soundtrack is the one that's going up the charts is because it feels extremely connected to the language of contemporary popular music. I hear at least four references.Share
Nate Sloan
18:24
Okay, cool. I'm curious to hear like what the reasons are because again, I don't hear this as belonging to, you know, the typical Top Ten, this kind of dramatic, multi character Broadway style musical theater number. Like, what is it doing up at the, the highest reaches of the top 40?
Share
Charlie Harding
18:46
That's because the first reference I hear hasn't been on the charts for a minute now, you ready?
Share
Nate Sloan
18:49
Cautiously. I got nothing.
Share
Charlie Harding
18:53
Are you kidding me? One more time.
Share
Nate Sloan
18:57
One more time.
Share
Charlie Harding
18:57
Just the first two notes.
Share
Nate Sloan
18:59
No, no, you don't get this, that's not, that's that is patently different. The beginning of Bruno, which we already talked about on this episode, those opening notes, it's being mysterious, that is entirely different than
Britney Spears
. Those are not the same, I don't know.Share
Charlie Harding
19:21
This is the most diminutively silly connection I've ever drawn, maybe it's nothing.
Share
Nate Sloan
19:27
It's not a connection, just strike it from the record.
Share
Charlie Harding
19:31
Okay, I got another one for you.
Share
Nate Sloan
19:33
Okay. Yeah, wow, you're not off to a great start. So let's.
Share
Charlie Harding
19:36
God, I hope I can win you back.
Share
Nate Sloan
19:38
Alright.
Share
Charlie Harding
19:38
Alright, the verse and Bruno, where things go into the ballad world. Are these chords familiar to you?
Share
Nate Sloan
20:06
That is one of the most ubiquitous chord progressions in pop music.
Share
Charlie Harding
20:11
Okay, but what if you spin it around, and you play it like this.
"Despacito"
does it like this? Bruno, does it kind of the inverse.Share
Nate Sloan
20:41
Okay, you're warmer. You're warmer. You know, it's not the complete pratfall, that was your opening salvo here, this is your your your I'm giving you partial credit for this one.
Share
Charlie Harding
20:54
Thanks, yeah, you're right, this is one of the most common chord progressions of all time. It's just a popcorn progression, but the connection to Latin pop is significant, right? When we hear,
We Don't Talk About Bruno
. I think it's due to the overwhelming success of Latin music on the pop charts in the last handful of years. Right? Like it makes me immediately think of a song like Cardi B
, Bad Bunny
and J Balvin
, "I like it".Share
21:23
Right? It's got the same salsa style piano "Montuno", it's got the 808 heavy bass, and when we go to the whisper rap verse of Bruno, right? Dolores is first, yeah, we're in the land of hip hop drums, an upright bass, that sounds processed to be very contemporary.
Share
21:57
And if you'll bear with me, keep on listening. We get this verse with a bunch of different characters later on in Bruno. We haven't listened to yet, and it's got this particular drum sound. Those claps.
Share
22:19
This is a moment in the song where we're trading characters, trading characters, and underneath we have these claps, but it's not like a crowd clapping, those are electronic drum machine claps, that feel like they're coming from a song like
Camila Cabello
Havana
for example.Share
Nate Sloan
22:39
I mean, that last reference brings the most true to me. I mean, I mentioned even already, as you know, another appearance of our "Montuno", and like I hear a sound, so yeah, I feel like that's that's a, I'm comfortable with that as an anti CD and I like hearing those handclaps there.
Share
22:58
I'm less skeptical than I was when you started. I do, I do hear the modern references now in Bruno, even though they're kind of like buried under the surface. I do detect them.
Share
Charlie Harding
23:10
I'ts a smart production, like this isn't just a song in an old school musical tradition by any means, they're using contemporary hop language and moments as miniscule as the sound of a clap to make us feel like it fits more comfortably on the Hot 100.
Share
23:30
But to be honest, answering this question of why does any song work, man? It's a million extra musical reasons TikTok, blah, blah, blah, right? It's tons of kids watching a
Disney
film, loving it.Share
23:46
But then it's the song just working, and this is a weird song. Like, we haven't even talked about the fact that there's a lyric about a dead fish in the middle of a song. Like it is truly bizarre, and I think it is a mishmash of all of these things. The success of Latin pop, the empire of
Lin Manuel Miranda
, the way that a piano "Montuno" from salsa just makes you want to move a certain way. And of course, all of the subtle references to contemporary pop.Share
Nate Sloan
24:14
Charlie, that's enough for me. I mean, when I listen to Bruno now, I'm not going to be so mystified, I'm going to be thinking about all of those connections, and I'm just going to be enjoying having a wonderfully weird and different song at the top of the charts. I think that's awesome.
Share
Charlie Harding
24:33
Switched On Pop
is produced by Nate Sloan, me Charlie Harding were edited by Jolie Myers engineered by Brandon McFarland illustrations by iris Gottlieb and community management by Abby Barr, our executive producers Nishat Kurwa and Hanna Rosin. Remember the Vox Media
Podcast Network and a production of Vulture.Share
Nate Sloan
24:48
You can find more episodes of our show anywhere you listen to podcasts and our website,
Switchedonpop
. com. Also, we love hearing from you on the Twitter and the Instagram @SwitchedOnPop
. Tell us what you're hearing in Encanto
. What are the Lin-Manuel Miranda-isms
that we missed, and the other sonic references to pop that are layered in there, where we're eagerly awaiting your response.Share
Charlie Harding
25:14
We'll be back on Tuesday with a conversation with the electronic dance duo
Sylvan Esso
. It's gonna be really fun, and until then, thanks.Share
Nate Sloan
25:25
Thanks to listen.
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Charlie Harding
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