Dissect Podcast: unpacking your favourite albums line by line

Dissect is a serialised podcast dedicated to breaking down classic well known albums. The format of Dissect is simple: each season, the host - Cole Cuchna - chooses an album in which he dedicates an entire episode to a song and unpacks it line by line, note by note.

Kanye West: My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, Image: Roc-A-Fella

Cuchna not only dissects the lyrics that accompany the music, but he also sheds light on the more technical aspects of the music, including digging deep into the samples used on some of the most iconic songs. He peels back the song layer by layer to uncover the deeper message under the surface. A great example of this is in season two, which examines Kanye West’s “My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy”. This album contains some absolute classics that we have all sung along to in the car or at the club, including ‘All of the Lights’ and ‘Power’. Cuchna dissects each song and evaluates the context of when the song was written and the potential mental state of Kanye at the time.

“Restraining order
Can't see my daughter
Her mother, brother, grandmother hate me in that order” – All of the Lights

“My childlike creativity, purity and honesty
Is honestly being crowded by these grown thoughts
Reality is catchin' up with me
Takin' my inner child, I'm fighting for custody” – Power

Now when listening to the lyrics on ‘All of the Lights’ and ‘Power’, it’s glaringly obvious that the “daughter” Kanye speaks of in ‘All of the Lights’ is a metaphor for his suppressed creativity. Cuchna explains that the album was written after Kanye publicly embarrassed Taylor Swift at the 2009 VMAs, which gives context to the lyrics making it clearer that the album is a plea for love from the public that Kanye thought he had lost.

The podcast dives deeper into the production of the songs, and emphasises that Kanye samples ‘21st Century Schizoid Man’ by King Crimson, on the track ‘Power’. After looking up the definition of schizoid, we discover that the song is not just about Kanye’s obsession with power and money, it’s actually about his deteriorating mental health at the time. 

Kendrick Lamar: To Pimp a Butterfly, Image: Universal

Season one of Dissect tackles the Grammy award-winning album “To Pimp a Butterfly” by Kendrick Lamar, which is riddled with political messages and discussions on race relations in the US. The album was initially criticised by Kendrick’s fans, as they believed he had turned “pop”, and they claimed that the album wasn’t as iconic as his debut album ‘good kid, M.A.A.D city’, but they couldn’t be more wrong. Cuchna discusses each tiny detail which proves that Kendrick was, and probably always will be a voice of the oppressed black community in the US.

Beyonce: Lemonade, Image: Parkwood Entertainment/Columbia

The most recent season is extremely relevant given the widespread support of the BLM movement this year. Cuchna, alongside guest co-host Titi Shodiya, examine the 2016 “Lemonade” album by Beyoncé. When the album was released, the main talking point on social media was “who is Becky with the good hair?”, with all the attention of this masterpiece album being on the alleged affair of Jay-Z with an unknown woman.

Thankfully, Dissect gives Beyoncé the credit she deserves on this album by getting under the surface of the lyrics, imagery and samples. By doing so we get to understand that the album is actually about the black experience, the impacts of slavery on black people in the US, as well as a black woman’s pain in the face of her cheating lover. Despite the album being four years old, it is still extremely relevant today, perhaps now more than ever.

You can listen to Dissect on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.

Words by Ayisha Paw