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In-depth interviews with songwriters about their songwriting process. That's it. Nothing else. No talk of band drama, band names, or tour stories. Treating songwriters as writers, plain and...
All you need to know about Maya Hawke's dedication to wordcraft is summed up in this memory: "The day I fell in love with my husband wa...
As a bilingual artist, Lolo Zouaï uses both English and French on her new album Reverie . Sometimes it's because the meaning of a word...
Donovan Woods is the master of the pull quote when it comes to the songwriting process. His words are wise counsel for any songwriter. To wi...
I wasn't surprised when Sasha Spielberg--an actor, visual artist, and musician who records as Buzzy Lee --told me that she once cried l...
Morgan Nagler has co-written with HAIM, Phoebe Bridgers, Kim Deal, Madi Diaz, and Margo Price among others. And now comes her fantastic debu...
My New Band Believe is Cameron Picton's new band after his time as the bassist and sometimes frontman for black midi . We go deep into...
It's the return of Carl Newman of The New Pornographers ! We were just kids back in 2015 when I first interviewed Newman and we discuss...
"I'm a jacket man," King Tuff (aka Kyle Thomas) told me as we discussed why feeling good is important to the songwriting process. I had...
"I very much consider myself a writer," Lindsey Jordan ( Snail Mail ) says. And any good writer has a ritual. Part of Jordan's ritual i...
Nate Ruess's songwriting catalog includes his Grammy winning band Fun ; his co-write and co-performance with P!nk on "Just Give Me a Re...
Procrastinators unite! Thank you, Tyler Ballgame , you are a kindred spirit. Finally someone who admits that procrastination is a great tool...
“When I go to the grocery store, that’s part of the songwriting process. When I work on my truck, that’s part of my songwriting process. Eve...
Jade Long and Jessica Thompson of Athens, Georgia based Hotel Fiction have a simple routine for their songwriting sessions: make some browni...
Nat and Alex Wolff had me at Sam Shepard . The playwright/writer/actor was one of my dissertation topics and the brothers acted in his plays...
Patton Magee of The Nude Party has the best reason why reading makes you a better songwriter: it gives you a stronger and more wide-ranging...
"I am a taskmaster," Courtney Marie Andrews told me. When we talked back in 2018 , I marveled at Andrews' discipline. She calls it "chu...
"To write about something sad and dark, I need to feel content, to feel a sense of well being. I can't write when I'm depressed,"...
"I've been very happy lately, and that's worrying," KT Tunstall told me. "It's much easier to write sad songs than happy song...
Why do so many of us feel the need to clean our space before we create? Melody Prochet (aka Melody's Echo Chamber ) and I discuss why i...
"Pants delivery was my eureka moment," Julien Ehrlich of Whitney says on the pod, and with that we have my favorite out-of-context pull quot...
“I’m a ‘go in phases’ type of gal. It took me a year and a half to write this record, but it came in blocks,” Gatlin says. It’s how she mana...
"I made a conscious effort on this album to be more disciplined in my writing because my ideas were getting stale and I was writing from the...
Etta Friedman and Allegra Weingarten of Momma return! Momma is my favorite band and their new album Welcome to My Blue Sky is my favorite al...
"I'm a professional daydreamer," Conor Oberst of Bright Eyes told me. That's the catch-22: are you really daydreaming if you'...
"I get a physical tingling sensation. It's beyond my control, an impulsive feeling where I have to sit and wait for it," Billie Marten...
"I allow myself to miss the guitar. And the guitar comes calling when I start to feel bored," says William Prince . A multiple JUNO award-wi...
"It's important to separate my sense of self-worth from my creations. If I was so self-aware of my output, I don't think I'd...
It's the return of Hayes Carll ! I first interviewed him in 2013 and again in 2016 . A recurring theme of those early interviews was Ca...
"The decision has been made, and now it's time to f**k off," Mitch Rowland told me. To be clear, Rowland wasn't saying this to me;...
If you took a contemporary poetry class in college in the last 30 years, Paul Muldoon was probably on your syllabus. The New York Times has...
Patrick Hetherington of Parcels says that the urge to write usually strikes when he's had some kind of new input, but then he needs dis...
It's the return of Molly Tuttle ! (The first time I interviewed Tuttle was in 2021, when I interviewed her and Katie Pruitt.) Tuttle wo...
I cannot imagine a world where Scott McCaughey is not writing. But first, some background. He was an auxiliary member of R.E.M. from 1994 to...
Dev Hynes had me at the bookshelves. All those bookshelves behind him on our Zoom interview, rising to the ceiling and stuffed with books. S...
There's a difference between wanting to write and needing to write. For Will Taylor of Flyte , it's usually a need. Taylor says th...
"I write the most when I'm supposed to be doing something else because it tricks me into thinking that songwriting is rebellious," Meg...
The theme of today's podcast is nourishment. It dawned on me a few minutes into my conversation with Hannah Cohen that when she said pr...
Ed Note: Lzzy Hale has collaborated with Mark Morton (Lamb of God) in the past. I co-authored Mark's new book Desolation: A Heavy Metal...
You think you're busy? You're not busy. Sophie Payten (known professionally as Gordi ) is busy. She's a songwriter AND a phys...
"I see no point in being bored. I just don't understand the concept. So I'm always looking for things to occupy my time and get me...
Cody Jinks had me at "I could talk about books forever." He estimates that he reads 80-100 books a year. All that reading leads to a lot of...
"Songwriting is about being awake to something you've never thought of or a way of thinking about something you've never experienc...
I'm a huge Indigo De Souza fan, so I had a great time on this episode! We went deep into her songwriting process and discussed, among o...
"I'm realizing how neurotic my process is as I'm talking to you," Jade Bird said, laughing, during our conversation. Indeed, Bird...
At some point I told Megan James and Corin Roddick, who compose Purity Ring , that this was the bizarro episode: I'd mention something...
Glen Hansard and Markéta Irglová of The Swell Season feel no need to write every day. They both wait patiently for a spark. "I have no worri...
"I'm always chasing that ADHD thing: whatever it tells me to do, I just do it," John Gourley of Portugal. The Man told me. This episode...
Laura Stevenson returns to the pod! This was an easy decision to have her on again ( the first time was 2011 ) because I love her music and...
Cautious Clay and I spent the first ten minutes of this episode talking about the role that painting plays in his creative process. Then a f...
This episode with Shura marks a first: we managed to draw a through line between Marcella Hazan's bolognese sauce and the songwriting p...