Jake Blount, a banjo scholar, explains.

It’s no secret that TikTok is a virality machine. But we wanted to know exactly what happens between a song going viral and an artist becoming a bonafide success. So in the fall of 2021, we partnered with data analysis website The Pudding figure it out.

Long-haul truckers were once country music’s heroes.

Quiet Storm is a staple of late-night Black radio.

The fisheye album cover is a modern music staple.

Backstage at the Metropolitan Opera.

Men singing high is so ubiquitous in modern pop that we might take it granted, never pausing to ask: has it always been this way? Estelle Caswell, who makes the Emmy-winning series for Vox, decided to find out, and she stops by to share results from her painstaking study of male falsetto in pop music from 1958 to today.

A lot of celebrity butts sat in this chair.

Tracing the origins of Jamaican dub music.

From Justin Timberlake to the Bee Gees, we charted the popularity of men singing high.

With a disco sample and drum machine house music took over the globe.

Stevie Wonder's irresistible ode to jazz, explained.

Every notice that wobbly, drunken and underwater sound common in so many contemporary pop songs? In an era of pristine recording quality, music producers are referencing old and impure technologies to add character to their recordings.

Heavy metal versus the USA.

Disco, DJs, and the impact of the 12-inch single.

Heavy metal and Satan played a role in the introduction of the explicit lyrics sticker.

If you listen to the first few seconds of Bruno Mars’ “Finesse” (hint: listen to the Cardi B remix) you’ll hear a sound that immediately creates a sense of 80s hip-hop nostalgia. Yes, Cardi B’s flow is very Roxanne Shante, but the sound that drives that nostalgia home isn’t actually from the 1980s.

You should give smooth jazz a chance.

Blue Note captured the refined sophistication of jazz during the early 60s, giving it its signature look in the process.

"Giant Steps” is known across the jazz world as one of the most challenging compositions to improvise over for two reasons - it’s fast and it’s in three keys. Braxton Cook and Adam Neely give me a crash course in music theory to help me understand this notoriously difficult song.

Two songs that show off Aretha Franklin's gospel roots.

Vox.com’s senior video producer Estelle Caswell explains it all.

Big Freedia explains where "Lemon" got its bounce from.

J Dilla made his MPC3000 musical.

Brace yourselves, this video is about Trout Mask Replica.

It slays, okay?

In 2013, Migos made it to the Billboard Charts with "Versace." It was a viral hit and it put the spot light on a very unique rap flow -- the triplet. The triplet, often now called the "Migos flow" happens when three syllables are rapped over one beat. It's now so popular that nearly every mainstream rap artists these days has used it, often to great effect.

An unapologetic ode to gated reverb drums.

"Radiohead are purposefully hiding something in plain sight."

Kanye West's music orbits around the power and flexibility of the human voice.

Rappers have mentioned Grey Poupon in songs almost every single year since 1992.

Here's how some of the greatest rappers make rhymes.

On June 1, 2011 seapunk was immortalized on the internet via a Twitter hashtag, and a small band of web artists and electronic musicians began developing a look, sound, and ideology that they believed encapsulated the seapunk aesthetic. Inspired by the colors and sounds of the ocean and computer graphics of the late 1980s and '90s, seapunk took shape.