Song Exploder

Little Simz is a rapper from England who put out her first album in 2015. She’s won the Mercury Prize, a Brit Award, and three MOBO awards. She also starred in the Netflix series Top Boy. Her most recent album is called Lotus. It came out in June 2025, and it followed a pretty tumultuous time in her career. For this episode, I got to talk to Little Simz about one of the songs from that album, called "Free," along with Miles Clinton James, who produced the track.  Thanks to Sonos for their support of the podcast. Check out sonos.com [https://sonos.com/]. For more, visit songexploder.net/little-simz. [https://songexploder.net/little-simz]

My guest today is Shirley Manson. Since 1994, she’s been the lead singer of the band Garbage, and she is a bona fide rock icon. The two of us worked together on a different podcast called The Jump, which Shirley hosted and I helped produce. It was a dream of mine to get Shirley as the host of that podcast, partly because, as you’re about to hear, she has one of the greatest voices, and I could listen to her talk about anything. And so I’m especially excited to listen to her today tell me about a song that changed her life.  Thanks to Sonos for their support of the podcast. Check out sonos.com. [https://www.sonos.com/] For more, visit songexploder.net/keychange. [https://songexploder.net/keychange] And check out the Song Exploder episode with Garbage from 2014, [https://songexploder.net/garbage]featuring Shirley and her bandmate Butch Vig talking about how they made their song “Felt.”

Anohni is a singer and songwriter originally from England, who started putting out music in 2000. She’s released 6 albums, and won the Mercury Prize. She’s also been nominated for two Brit Awards, and an Oscar. For this episode, I talked to her about the song "4 Degrees," from her 2016 album Hopelessness. It might be strange to describe a song about climate change as an anthem, but that’s what I think it is, and it feels more urgent with every passing year. It’s also one of my most listened-to songs. It was produced by two of my favorite electronic musicians: Daniel Lopatin, aka Oneohtrix Point Never, and Ross Birchard, aka Hudson Mohawke. I got to speak to Ross about how he started the track on his own, before it became a collaboration between the three of them. This is an episode that I’ve been trying to make happen since 2016. Here it is. For more info, visit songexploder.net/anohni. [https://songexploder.net/anohni] Thanks to Sonos for their support of the podcast. Check out sonos.com. [https://www.sonos.com/]

In June 2024, I got to go to the Solid Sound Festival in North Adams, Massachusetts, which is organized by the band Wilco. I performed some of my new songs, and I got to interview Jeff Tweedy, the lead singer of Wilco, on stage as part of the festival. Jeff, in addition to being in Wilco and the band Tweedy, and putting out his solo albums, has also written three books. And this conversation was focused on his second book, which is called How to Write One Song. And even though it’s called How to Write One Song, I think it actually contains a lot of insight about creativity in general, and life in general. I’ve recommended it to friends of mine who aren’t songwriters. And, as you’ll hear, the conversation gets pretty personal for me, because I got so much out of the book personally. It helped me with some of the blocks that I’d been facing in my own songwriting, at a pretty profound level. And when I was listening back to this recording, I’d kind of forgotten about how much I put out there in front of Jeff and the thousands of people who were there watching. But I’m glad the conversation was recorded, partly just so I could revisit it, but also so that I could share it here on Song Exploder. I hope you’ll enjoy it, too. You can buy How to Write One Song by Jeff Tweedy here (via Bookshop.org) [https://bookshop.org/a/88375/9780593183526] or here (via Amazon) [https://amzn.to/43PtqrM] or on Wilco's website [https://wilcostore.com/products/jeff-tweedy-how-to-write-one-song-book]. You can listen to the Wilco episode of Song Exploder here. [https://songexploder.net/wilco]I also interviewed Jeff along with his son Spencer, who is also his bandmate in Tweedy, about their relationship and musical partnership, for an episode of my podcast Partners. You can listen to that here [https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/jeff-tweedy-spencer-tweedy/id1494790308?i=1000474486797]. Thanks to Sonos for their support of the podcast. Check out sonos.com. [https://www.sonos.com/] For more, visit songexploder.net/jeff-tweedy. [https://songexploder.net/jeff-tweedy]

Lorde is a Grammy Award-winning singer, songwriter, and producer. Her second album, Melodrama, debuted at number one on the charts in June 2017 – five months before her 21st birthday. In this episode, Ella breaks down her song “Sober.” You’ll hear how it started, with the original demos she made with her co-producer Jack Antonoff, and how the song changed over the course of working on it for months and months. Thanks to Sonos for their support of the podcast. Check out sonos.com. [https://www.sonos.com/] For more, visit songexploder.net/lorde. [https://songexploder.net/lorde]