Song Exploder

In 1968, singer and songwriter Graham Nash joined David Crosby and Stephen Stills to form the supergroup Crosby, Stills & Nash. All of them had already been in successful bands: Graham Nash had been in The Hollies; David Crosby was in The Byrds; and Stephen Stills was in Buffalo Springfield. The next year, Neil Young joined them, to make Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young. The four of them released Deja Vu in 1970, and that album was a huge success. It sold over 8 million copies. It includes the song “Our House,” and for this episode, I spoke to Graham Nash about the making of that song, and the relationship that led to the song.For more, visit songexploder.net/crosby-stills-nash-and-young.

Pharrell Williams is—well, let me just say, he’s a big reason why Song Exploder exists. He’s a singer, songwriter and producer, and in the 90s, when I first heard the work that he was doing with the Neptunes, which was his production duo with Chad Hugo, it blew my mind. It made me want to know where those sounds came from and where those ideas came from. Pharrell has won 13 Grammys. He’s been nominated for two Oscars. He’s produced iconic songs for Kendrick Lamar, Britney Spears, Clipse, Gwen Stefani, and so many others. And on his own, he’s made songs like “Happy,” the giant hit for Despicable Me that was the best-selling song of 2014. And now, there’s a movie about his life called Piece by Piece. But it’s an animated Lego film. For this episode, I talked to Pharrell about the title song from Piece By Piece. So, coming up, you'll hear how Pharrell built that song, including a first draft that never saw the light of day. You’ll hear how he built “Piece by Piece” by programming it, on his own, with MIDI instruments, and then adding and replacing those parts with other musicians, including the high school marching band that he used to play in. For more, visit songexploder.net/pharrell.

For the last couple weeks, I’ve been getting ready for a trip I’m going to make to Connecticut, to moderate a conversation between Jon Batiste and his wife, the author Suleika Jaouad. So I’ve been deep in my prep and research, and I thought about the first time I ever spoke to Jon Batiste, which was for a Song Exploder episode that came out back in March 2021. A lot has happened for Jon since then. At the time, his album We Are was brand new. The next year, he ended up getting 11 Grammy nominations, and winning 5 of them, including Album of the Year. Jon and Suleika were also the subjects of the award-winning documentary American Symphony. I really enjoyed our conversation, and I wanted to revisit it. So here it is:Jon Batiste is a pianist, songwriter, and composer from New Orleans. He’s been nominated for multiple Grammys, and just won the Golden Globe and got an Oscar nomination for the soundtrack to the Pixar film Soul, which he composed along with Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross. Jon is also a recipient of the American Jazz Museum’s Lifetime Achievement Award, and on weeknights, you can see him as the bandleader on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. In March 2021, he put out his new album, We Are. But the title track from it actually came out much earlier, in June 2020. In this episode, Jon talks about how he drew from his roots, both at a personal level and at a cultural level, and wove all of it into the song.For more, visit songexploder.net/jon-batiste.

Troye Sivan is a singer and songwriter from Australia. He’s been nominated for a Golden Globe, two Grammys, and he’s won four of Australia’s ARIA awards. His song “My My My!” was a #1 hit on the Billboard Dance Chart, and his third album, Something to Give Each Other, was one of Billboard’s picks for the best albums of 2023. Troye’s also an actor; he was in the HBO series The Idol, which figures into the story that he tells about this song. Troye came to the studio and we talked about how he made one of his big hits, the song “One of Your Girls.” For that song, he worked with two of his longtime collaborators: his frequent songwriting partner, Leland, and producer Oscar Görres. For more, visit songexploder.net/troye-sivan.

Beabadoobee is an award-winning singer and songwriter from England who’s been releasing music since 2017. Her third album is called This Is How Tomorrow Moves. It came out in August 2024 and went to #1 on the UK charts. She made the album with her bandmate Jacob Bugden and with producer Rick Rubin at his studio, Shangri-La, in Malibu. And for this episode, I talked to Bea about a song from that album called “Coming Home.”For more, visit songexploder.net/beabadoobee. 

Remi Wolf is a singer and songwriter originally from Palo Alto, California. She’s been releasing music since 2019. She performed at Coachella in 2023, and has toured with Olivia Rodrigo, Lorde, and Paramore. Her second album, Big Ideas, came out in July 2024. I talked to Remi about how she and her collaborators wrote and produced the song “Soup.” How they used 80s gear to make 80s sounds, and how a fun anthem quickly turned into something pretty vulnerable.For more, visit songexploder.net/remi-wolf. 

Sam Smith is a Grammy and Oscar-winning singer and songwriter from London, England. Their first album, In the Lonely Hour, came out in 2014. It went quintuple platinum in the US, and the biggest hit from that album is the song “Stay With Me,” which has over 2 billion streams on Spotify alone. For this episode, in honor of the song’s 10th anniversary, I talked to Sam about how “Stay With Me” was made. I also talked to Sam’s frequent collaborator, Jimmy Napes, who is an award-winning producer and songwriter as well. The two of them tell the story of how the song began, and how it turned into the hit that it became. And then, years later, how it changed again.For more, visit songexploder.net/sam-smith.

Fenne Lily is a singer and songwriter from Dorset, England. She released her first album in 2018, but I didn’t find her music until 2023, when she put out her third album, Big Picture. The album she released in between those two was one that got a little lost in the lockdown, when all her touring plans around it got canceled. All of that plays into the story she tells in this episode, about making her song “Lights Light Up” from that third album. I spoke to Fenne in front of a live audience at WBUR CitySpace in Boston. Coming up, you’ll hear how the song evolved across different versions of demos and then in the studio, where she recorded it with Grammy-nominated producer Brad Cook.For more, visit songexploder.net/fenne-lily.

Last year, Vagabon released her third album, Sorry I Haven’t Called, which I’ve been listening to a lot. So I wanted to revisit an episode that I recorded with her back in 2020, about her breakout song "Water Me Down." The episode also features the voice of Eric Littmann, who co-produced the track. He passed away in June 2021, way too young. Vagabon’s new album is dedicated to him. If you haven’t heard this episode before, I hope you like it. When Laetitia Tamko started making the second Vagabon album, she really wanted to produce the entire thing on her own. It would be a new sound, and producing was still a relatively new skill to her, but she wanted to tackle it head on, and do it all herself. On this song, though, "Water Me Down," Laetitia actually has a co-producer, Eric Littmann. It’s the one exception to her otherwise entirely self-produced album. In this episode, she breaks down how she and Eric made the song, and why it was worth making that exception. For more, visit songexploder.net/vagabon.

Crowded House formed in 1985 in Melbourne, Australia. They’ve released eight albums, including their most recent one, Gravity Stairs, which came out last month. But on their very first album, they had a big hit with "Don’t Dream It’s Over."Crowded House made “Don’t Dream It’s Over” with Grammy-nominated producer Mitchell Froom, who they went on to work with multiple times. For this episode, I talked to frontman Neil Finn about how the song was first written, and how it developed with his bandmates and collaborators in the studio. And we talked about the profound connection people have had with the song over the years.For more, visit songexploder.net/crowded-house.

Lizzy McAlpine released her first album in 2020, and her second album in 2022. And between the two, she’s had a lot of success. One of her songs, "Ceilings," was a viral TikTok hit, and has been streamed over half a billion times. So you might think, with all that success, you’d want to keep working in way that’s been working. But while Lizzy was making her third album, Older, after almost a year into the process of recording, she threw the whole thing out. She brought in a new band, and started over with a totally different approach. I talked to her about the song "Staying," from her new album. You’ll hear her original voice memos, as well as the first version she made in the studio, and then how it really came to life once she reimagined it.For more, visit songexploder.net/lizzy-mcalpine.

The Flaming Lips formed in Oklahoma City in 1983. Over the last four decades, they’ve put out 16 albums. In 1999, they put out their album The Soft Bulletin, and that brought them a new level of success. And then, in 2002, they followed it up with Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots, which was their biggest album to date. Pitchfork named it one of the top 5 albums of the year, Stereogum called it one of the best albums of the decade, and they won a Grammy. And the biggest song from the album was "Do You Realize??" So, for this episode, I talked to Wayne Coyne and Steven Drozd about how that song was first imagined. You’ll hear the very first demo Wayne recorded for the song, and the demo he and Steven put together later, on their way to making the final version with producer Dave Fridmann. For more, visit songexploder.net/the-flaming-lips.

One of the songs I keep coming back to is “Mohabbat” by Arooj Aftab. It’s really special to me. I listen to it all the time. I’ve been listening to it so often that I wanted to revisit Arooj's episode about it. In the time since the episode has come out, she has released a collaborative album with Vijay Iyer and Shahzad Ismaily called Love In Exile, which got two Grammy nominations. And she has a new album that’s about to come out on May 31st, called Night Reign. Here’s her episode: Arooj Aftab is a singer and composer based in Brooklyn. She grew up in Saudi Arabia, but her family is from Pakistan. And earlier this year, she made history by becoming the first Pakistani artist to win a Grammy. Her song, “Mohabbat" won the Best Global Music Performance Grammy, and she was nominated for Best New Artist. "Mohabbat" was first released on her 2021 album, Vulture Prince, but it’s been a part of Arooj’s life for a long time . In this episode, she tells the story of how the song was first born, and how it lived with her and evolved over the years before she finally recorded it.For more, visit songexploder.net/arooj-aftab.

The band War formed in 1969, in Long Beach, California. “Low Rider” is from their 1975 album Why Can’t We Be Friends? The song was a hit as soon as it came out. It went to #1 on the Billboard R&B charts. And it’s just had tremendous lasting power ever since. Besides being in Dazed and Confused, where I heard it, it’s been sampled by The Beastie Boys, it was covered by Korn, and it was the theme song for all six seasons of The George Lopez Show.For this episode, I talked to War’s bandleader Lonnie Jordan, and their producer Jerry Goldstein. The two of them told me how “Low Rider” was made in the studio, through a combination of improvisation and meticulous editing.For more, visit songexploder.net/war.

Shania Twain is a singer and songwriter from Ontario, Canada. She’s the only female artist to have had three consecutive Diamond albums — albums that have sold over ten million copies. Actually, her 1997 album Come On Over is the best-selling album by a female solo artist of all time. One of the most iconic songs from that iconic album is "You’re Still The One." It was co-written and produced by Mutt Lange, who had previously produced some other classic albums, like Back in Black by AC/DC and Pyromania by Def Leppard. He had also produced Shania Twain’s previous album, The Woman in Me.  For this episode, Shania told me the story of writing “You’re Still The One.” She told me about what the song meant to her when she was making it, over 25 years ago, and what it means to her now.For more, visit songexploder.net/shania-twain.

Danny Brown started his career in 2007 by handing out mixtapes in Detroit, where he’s from. In 2011, he put out his acclaimed second album, XXX. Since then, he’s collaborated with rappers like Kendrick Lamar, A$AP Rocky and JPEGMafia, but he’s also worked with electronic bands like Purity Ring and The Avalanches, and he did a verse on a remix for Korn. When I first heard him, around when XXX came out, I was really drawn to his voice. And I also appreciated that, given how young so many artists are now when they get really famous, Danny Brown’s career really started taking off in his 30s. He put out his sixth album, Quaranta, in 2023. And for this episode, I talked to him about one of the songs from that album, called “Y.B.P.," which features guest vocals from Bruiser Wolf. For more, visit songexploder.net/danny-brown.

Rhiannon Giddens has released five solo albums since 2015. Before that, she was a member of the Grammy-winning band, the Carolina Chocolate Drops. She is now also the artistic director of the Silkroad Ensemble, the musical supergroup that Yo-Yo Ma founded. Rhiannon Giddens is one of those people where I feel like they have to start inventing new awards, because she’s already won all of them. She’s got multiple Grammys, she won the Pulitzer Prize for an opera she co-wrote called Omar, she’s a MacArthur Genius, and the new Beyonce song “Texas Hold ‘Em,” the one that features the banjo? That’s Rhiannon Giddens playing the banjo. (I guess that’s not technically an award, but it feels like one to me.) In 2023, Rhiannon released an album called You’re The One, and I talked to her about the song she wrote called "You Louisiana Man," which was nominated for a Grammy for Best American Roots Performance. For more, visit songexploder.net/rhiannon-giddens.

I wanted to revisit an episode about one of my favorite songs from 2021, “Black Dog” by Arlo Parks. A few months after this episode originally came out, Arlo Parks won the Mercury Prize for Album of the Year. She was also nominated for two Grammys: Best New Artist and Best Alternative Album. Since then, she released a new album called My Soft Machine, and she’s going to be on tour this spring. Arlo Parks is a singer and songwriter from London. In January 2021, she released her debut album, Collapsed in Sunbeams. It hit number three on the UK charts, and she won this year’s BRIT award for Breakthrough Artist. Last year, NME called her song "Black Dog" the year’s "most devastating song." In this episode, Anaïs breaks down “Black Dog," which she made with producer Gianluca Buccellati. For more, visit songexploder.net/arlo-parks.

Green Day is a punk band from the East Bay in California. Billie Joe Armstrong, Mike Dirnt and Tré Cool have been playing music together since 1987. They’ve sold over 90 million records. They’ve won four Grammys, including twice for Best Rock Album. They put out their first album in 1990, and their second album, Kerplunk!, in 1991. And then, they moved to a major label and in 1994 they put out their third album, Dookie, which was huge. It helped bring punk into the mainstream. And this month is its 30th anniversary. So for this episode, I talked to Billie Joe Armstrong about the making of one of Green Day’s biggest hits of all time: “Basket Case." Coming up, you’ll also hear from Rob Cavallo, who produced the album. Plus, you’ll hear two different demo versions of “Basket Case,” the first of which is basically a totally different song. Billie Joe Amstrong traces the history of “Basket Case,” from its origins as a cassette recording in a punk basement, all the way to becoming a song that helped define an era of music. For more, visit songexploder.net/green-day.

The first episode of Song Exploder, about The Postal Service song "The District Sleeps Alone Tonight," came out 10 years ago, in January 2014. To celebrate the 10th anniversary of the podcast, we're doing what bands do, and putting out a deluxe, expanded edition of our very first release: this version features a new interview, new insights, and new pieces of the song and demo. The Postal Service formed in 2001. Their debut album came out in 2003, and it was a game changer. Their combination of electronic music and indie rock not only sold over a million copies; their songs were everywhere on TV and in film, and influenced a generation of artists. Last year, they played sold-out concerts across the US in celebration of the 20th anniversary of the album, and there are more shows to come in 2024. A few weeks ago, I spoke to Ben Gibbard, and I combined that with my original interview from 2013 with Jimmy Tamborello. And here, together, the two of them tell the story of how they made their song “The District Sleeps Alone Tonight.” For more, visit songexploder.net/postal-service-deluxe.