Before Sam Sanders became an American culture guru, pop music was ‘forbidden fruit’

Raised Pentecostal in Texas, Sam Sanders wasn’t allowed pop music. He smuggled CDs home in his underwear and tells the story on The Standard’s music podcast.

A smiling man with a bald head and mustache wears a patterned shirt against a maroon background with red and light blue curved lines. — Source: Show art by Jess Hutchison

By Sophie BearmanProduced by Tessa Kramer and Jasmyn MorrisEngineered by Michelle LanzPublished Oct. 14, 2025 • 6:00am

As the host and creator of numerous hit culture podcasts, Sam Sanders is known for having a finger on the pulse of pop culture. But growing up strictly Pentecostal in Texas, non-religious music was forbidden—so Sanders got resourceful, smuggling CDs into the house in his underwear. Sanders was also quietly reckoning with another hidden part of himself: being gay.

“I was living two kinds of secret lives. Like I was consuming this popular culture that I wasn’t supposed to have secretly. I also was gay, you know? And I hadn’t put words on it yet, but I knew,” says Sanders.

Listening to artists like Janet Jackson as a kid helped him imagine a freer future.

“The way she was living and breathing and moving in those music videos and in her music was almost a kind of possibility model,” he says. “I think that everything that Janet represented in those videos was what I was secretly running towards.”

Then, at 18 years old, just as he was getting ready to leave for Stanford University, Sanders’ life was turned upside down. Both of his parents suffered major health crises in the span of a few months, resulting in Sanders becoming their primary caregiver. Years later, Sanders faced another devastating double-whammy with the death of his mother followed a month later by a crushing breakup.

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Before Sam Sanders became an American culture guru, pop music was ‘forbidden fruit’

In this episode of “Life in Seven Songs,” Sanders opens up about the songs that carried him through life’s hardest moments and why he’s finally able to savor the freedom he’s been chasing his whole life.

Here’s his playlist.