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Song Exploder
Hrishikesh Hirway · Music
Song Exploder
More from this show
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Allison Russell - The Returner
Allison Russell is a singer and songwriter originally from Montreal and now based in Nashville. She’s a Grammy-winner and an eight-time Grammy nominee. And she’s also won Canada’s Juno Award, an Americana award, and more. She starred in Hadestown on Broadway. She spent years in bands and collaborating with others…
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DJ Shadow - Mutual Slump
30 years ago, DJ Shadow released his debut album, Entroducing… and it changed my life. I listened to it so much. And when I first started Song Exploder, he was on my list of dream guests. And then 10 years ago, that dream came true, and I got to make an episode with him in honor of the 20th anniversary of the album.…
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Elvis Costello - Alison
Elvis Costello is a singer and songwriter whose career spans five decades and over 30 albums. He’s a member of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the Songwriter Hall of Fame. He’s won Grammy Awards, Ivor Novello Awards, a BAFTA, and he’s on Rolling Stone’s list of the greatest songwriters of all time. He put out his…
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Olivia Rodrigo - The Cure
Olivia Rodrigo is a Grammy-winning singer and songwriter. In June 2026, she released her third album, You Seem Pretty Sad for a Girl So in Love . The day it came out, it broke streaming records on Spotify and Amazon Music, and it debuted at number one on the Billboard Charts. I talked to Olivia Rodrigo here in my…
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Natalie Merchant - Sister Tilly
Donate to Dolly Parton's Imagination Library here: https://donate.imaginationlibrary.com/ Donate to Women's Media Center, co-founded by Gloria Steinem, here: https://act.womensmediacenter.com/a/support-wmc - When I heard the news of Dolly Parton’s death, and then a few days later, of Gloria Steinem’s death, I thought…
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Paula Cole - I Don't Want to Wait
Paula Cole is a singer, songwriter and producer from Massachusetts. She put out her first solo album, Harbinger , in 1994. Her second album, This Fire , came out in 1996 and was a real breakthrough; she was nominated for seven Grammys, and she won the Grammy for Best New Artist. In fact, that year she was the first…
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Charli XCX - Camera
Charli XCX is a Grammy-winning artist who has been making music since she was a teenager. In July 2026, she released her eighth album, Music, Fashion, Film . It debuted at number 1 on the UK charts—her 4th album in a row to hit number 1 there. In addition to her music career, for the last few years, she’s been acting…
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Mitski - Your Best American Girl
In 2016, Mitski did an episode of Song Exploder about her song “Your Best American Girl.” She had just released her second album, Puberty 2 . Later, Pitchfork named “Your Best American Girl” one of the top 10 best songs of the past decade, and Billboard named it as one of the songs that defined the decade. And in…
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Suki Waterhouse - Back in Love
Suki Waterhouse is a singer-songwriter, actress, and model from London. She released her first single in 2016, and her first album, I Can’t Let Go , in 2022, on Sub Pop. You might have seen her in the show Daisy Jones & The Six , which came out in 2023. Since then, she’s also had her first child, with her partner…
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Key Change: Questlove on Prince
My guest today is Ahmir Thompson, aka Questlove, the drummer and founding member of The Roots, as well as an author, a DJ, and an Oscar-winning film director. A song that changed my life is “Double Trouble” by The Roots, and the liner notes that Questlove wrote to go with the song. There’s a change in the drum sound…
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Metric - Victim of Luck
Metric is a band from Canada that was formed in 1998. They’ve won four Juno Awards, including Group of the Year. Rolling Stone included them in their list of the 50 Greatest Canadian Artists of All Time. In April 2026, Metric released their 10th album, Romanticize the Dive . And for this episode, I spoke to Emily…
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Hayley Kiyoko - Girls Like Girls
Hayley Kiyoko is a singer, songwriter, author, and director from Los Angeles. She was a child actor on Disney and Nickelodeon, and briefly in a girl group called The Stunners. But then, she started her career as a solo artist. In 2015, she put out the EP This Side of Paradise , and one of the songs on it was “Girls…
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Key Change: Tatiana Maslany on "Faceshopping" by Sophie
My guest today is the actor Tatiana Maslany. One of the things I find so compelling about Tatiana and her career is that the roles that she plays often contain multitudes—literally. She played over 10 different characters–clones, but with distinct personalities–in the TV show Orphan Black. And in the Marvel Universe…
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Paul McCartney - Ripples in a Pond
Paul McCartney is a singer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, and producer whose career spans more than six decades. As a member of The Beatles and later Wings and then with his own solo albums, he’s simply one of the most influential artists of all time. He has more accolades than I have time to list in this intro.…
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Hot Chip - Boy From School
Hot Chip is a band from London made up of Alexis Taylor, Joe Goddard, Al Doyle, Owen Clarke, and Felix Martin. Their second album, The Warning , came out in 2006. It was nominated for a Mercury Prize, and named one of the best albums of the year by NME and Pitchfork. And later, NME would include it in their list of…
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Key Change: Emma Straub on ‘69 Love Songs’ by The Magnetic Fields
My guest today is the bestselling author Emma Straub. Her books include 'This Time Tomorrow,' 'Modern Lovers,' 'The Vacationers,' and more. And with her husband, Michael Fusco, she co-owns the beautiful Brooklyn bookstore Books Are Magic. I'm so thrilled to have her on because, not only is she a wonderful writer, but…
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The xx - Crystalised
The xx formed in 2005, when they were still in high school. They signed to the UK label Young, and put out their first album in 2009. It won the prestigious Mercury Prize, and was named one of the best albums of the year by Rolling Stone, Pitchfork and more. Since then, the Guardian has named it one of the best albums…
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Yusuf / Cat Stevens - Father and Son
The legendary singer/songwriter Yusuf / Cat Stevens released his first album in 1967. He’s a member of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, and his albums have sold millions. In 2020, he released Tea for the Tillerman² , a re-imagining of his hit 1970 album Tea for the Tillerman . In the song “Father & Son,” he sings a duet…
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The Memory Palace: The Thundering Herd, The Vanishing American
Today, we're sharing an episode of Nate DiMeo's wonderful podcast, The Memory Palace, which helped inspire both Song Exploder, and a song on my upcoming album. So today, I want to present a kind of two-part story. The first part: "The Thundering Herd, The Vanishing American," from The Memory Palace. And in the second…
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Hurray for the Riff Raff - Alibi
Alynda Segarra is a singer songwriter from the Bronx. They formed Hurray for the Riff Raff in 2007, and since then, they’ve released 8 albums. Their most recent is The Past Is Still Alive, which came out in 2024. It was named one of the best albums of the year in the New York Times, the Associated Press, Entertainment…
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Jack Harlow - Say Hello
Jack Harlow is from Louisville, Kentucky, and started performing and releasing music in 2015, when he was in high school. In 2020, he released his first album, which went double platinum. He was nominated for a Grammy for Best Rap Performance. He’s had multiple number one hits across his first three albums. For his…
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Key Change: Baz Luhrmann on "Time After Time"
My guest today is Baz Luhrmann, the award-winning director whose films include Moulin Rouge!, Strictly Ballroom , The Great Gatsby, Elvis, and Romeo + Juliet. His newest film is EPiC: Elvis Presley in Concert , a critically acclaimed documentary about Elvis that’s playing right now in theaters and in IMAX. Before…
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Thompson Twins - Hold Me Now
Thompson Twins originally formed in 1977 in Sheffield, in the UK. “Hold Me Now,” their iconic hit, came out as a single in November 1983, and eventually on their 1984 album, Into the Gap . That album went to number 1 in the UK and went platinum in the US. The song spent 21 weeks on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. So for…
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Silvana Estrada - Como Un Pájaro
Silvana Estrada is a singer, songwriter, and producer from Veracruz, Mexico. She won the Latin Grammy for Best New Artist in 2022, and she’s been nominated for three others, including for her song “Como Un Pájaro,” which is the song that we talked about for this episode. It’s from her second album, which came out in…
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Iron & Wine - Flightless Bird, American Mouth
This week, I wanted to go back and revisit the episode that I made with Iron & Wine in the fall of 2022 about the song "Flightless Bird, American Mouth." And there are a couple of reasons. One, there’s a new Iron & Wine album that’s coming out this month, called Hen’s Teeth . And secondly, I actually have a song of my…
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The Marías - No One Noticed
The Marías is a band from Los Angeles, made up of María Zardoya, Josh Conway, Jesse Perlman, and Edward James. They released their first EPs in 2017 and 2018, and their first album in 2021. But then, as you’ll hear, there was a period of a lot of uncertainty around the band’s future. Eventually, their second album…
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Leon Thomas - Mutt
Leon Thomas is a singer, songwriter, producer, and actor. He’s nominated for six Grammys at this year’s Grammy Awards, including Best New Artist, Best R&B Album, and Album of the Year for Mutt . Mutt is his second album, and I talked to Leon about the title track, which was a breakout hit. He’d already won a Grammy…
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Key Change: John Green on "You'll Never Walk Alone"
My guest today is John Green. John is the award-winning, #1 bestselling author of books including 'Looking for Alaska,' 'The Fault in Our Stars,' 'Turtles All the Way Down,' 'The Anthropocene Reviewed,' and 'Everything is Tuberculosis.' John and his brother Hank Green have co-created a lot of projects together…
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Hit-Boy and Nipsey Hussle - Racks In the Middle (feat. Roddy Ricch and Hit-Boy)
Hit-Boy is an award-winning producer and rapper from LA. He’s one of my all-time favorite producers, from “Backseat Freestyle” by Kendrick Lamar, to “Sicko Mode” by Travis Scott, to tracks he’s made for Beyonce, Nas, and the Jay-Z & Kanye album Watch the Throne . So I was really excited to talk to him, and when I…
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Air - Playground Love (feat. Gordon Tracks)
The band Air is a duo from Versailles, France. Their first EP came out in 1995, followed by their critically acclaimed debut album, ‘Moon Safari,' which was an international hit. Then they made the music for the film ‘The Virgin Suicides,‘ which was written and directed by Oscar-winner Sofia Coppola, based on the…
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