Podcast: Still on the Road - "End of the Road" 30th Anniversary
Welcome to this special podcast edition of The Love Letter. I’m delighted that my dear friends—and bona fide pop culture experts—Dr. Clayton Childress, Dr. Neda Maghbouleh, and Dr. Bob Ngo, joined me to talk about the legacy of Boyz II Men’s “End of the Road” on its 30th anniversary.
The Panelists
Dr. Clayton Childress, Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Toronto, studies cultural production, specifically how decisions, taste, and meaning are created. His award-winning 2017 book, Under the Cover [https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691191874/under-the-cover] examined how a novel went from creation to production to reception. Clayton recently co-authored a fascinating article [https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/719937] on genre, popularity, and conventions in American popular music. Follow him @claytonchirping [https://twitter.com/claytonchirping].
Dr. Neda Maghbouleh is Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Toronto, where she also holds a Canada Research Chair in Migration, Race, and Identity. Among her many influential publications, she wrote an award-winning book in 2017, The Limits of Whiteness: Iranian Americans and the Everyday Politics of Race [https://www.sup.org/books/title/?id=24756]. Follow her @nedasoc [https://twitter.com/nedasoc].
Dr. Bob Ngo is a sociologist and the Executive Director of Institutional Research at the Kern Community College District in California. He is a former co-host of the legendary radio show "Pop Life" which aired on KCSB [https://www.kcsb.org/] community radio in the early 2000s. Bob's research on pop culture led to a paper on the television representation of Black coaches in March Madness broadcasts. Follow him @bobngo [https://twitter.com/bobngo].
The Show
In the show, we get into the production of “End of the Road,” and how this song gets overlooked today even though it was one of the biggest hit songs of the 1990s. Finally, we compare “End of the Road” with some of today’s music.
You’ll hear clips from several incredible cover versions of “End of the Road,” as well as a bunch of other songs that came up in the conversation. Please see a list of all the excerpted songs, in the order they appear in the podcast, below. I also make a lot of references to the 2021 Netflix music documentary series This is Pop [https://www.netflix.com/title/81050786]: the first episode is entitled “The Boyz II Men Effect.”
Let us know what you think in the comments! Thanks again to Clayton, Neda, and Bob for joining me for this celebration of my favorite song of all time.
List of song excerpts (in order of appearance)
End of the Road [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDKO6XYXioc] - Boyz II Men (1992)
Can U Get Wit It [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vQLlM-0fbco] - Usher (1994)
…Baby One More Time [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C-u5WLJ9Yk4] - Britney Spears (1998)
Creep [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XFkzRNyygfk] - Radiohead (1992)
End of the Road [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E5Tx9SUe-v8] - Gladys Knight (1993)
Al Final Del Camino [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kISgGSsSqyg] - Boyz II Men (1993)
(see also: Argentine superstar Marcela Morelo’s cover of Al Final Del Camino [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xsM5kfRue-I] from 2009)
End of the Road [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ifUsAUAah-Y] - Babyface f/ Marc Nelson and Sheila E. (1997)
End of the Road (A Cappella) [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UXsGA-airHs] - Boyz II Men f/ Brian McKnight (2007)
End of the Road (re-recorded) [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-jDQwYlzHYQ] - Boyz II Men (2011)
End of the Road [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h0W8tRdtTlM] - Bluejuice (2014)
End of the Show [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aTSpbXf27Ws] - James Corden f/ Boyz II Men (2016)
End of the Road [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-lCRFAFtj-A] - Home Free (2019)
End of the Road [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lN67FoKnstI] - Usher f/ Babyface and Wanya Morris (2022)
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