Song Exploder

My guest today is my friend Samin Nosrat, the author of the bestselling, award-winning cookbook Salt Fat Acid Heat, and the host and executive producer of the hit Netflix show that's based on it. Her second cookbook comes out this fall, and it's called Good Things: Recipes and Rituals to Share With People You Love. 

Back in March 2020, Samin and I started a podcast together called Home Cooking, where we answered people's an...

Jake Lenderman plays and records under the name MJ Lenderman. He put out his first album in 2019. In addition to his solo work, he’s been a member of the band Wednesday, and he’s also featured on the Waxahatchee hit song “Right Back to It." In September 2024, the fourth MJ Lenderman album came out. It’s called Manning Fireworks. The New Yorker named it the best album of the year, and Stereogum, Rolling Stone and Pitchfork ...

My guest today is James Acaster, a comedian, author, musician, and interviewer. He's filmed comedy specials for HBO and Netflix, which are hilarious and high concept. His musical project, Temps, has released an album and an EP. He’s written multiple books, including one about how the year 2016 was the greatest year for music. James also co-hosts the food podcast Off Menu, with comedian Ed Gamble. And I've listened to more ...

Lucy Dacus has a new album coming out on March 28th, called Forever Is A Feeling. So, in the week before it comes out, I thought it could be nice to revisit her Song Exploder episode from 2021. It’s about the beautiful and brutally heartbreaking song "Thumbs," which I love. And since recording that episode, Lucy's won three Grammy awards as part of her band Boygenius, including Album of the Year. But back in 2021, I had a ...

The TV show Severance debuted on Apple TV+ in February 2022. It was created by writer Dan Erickson, and developed into a series by director and executive producer Ben Stiller. He directed the pilot and most of the episodes. After the first season came out, Severance was nominated for 14 Emmys, including Outstanding Drama Series, and it won two Emmys: for Main Title Design and for Musical Composition. I love this show, and ...

My guest today is Hanif Abdurraqib, a poet, cultural critic, and New York Times bestselling author of books like They Can't Kill us Until They Kill Us, Go Ahead in the Rain: Notes to A Tribe Called Quest, and A Little Devil in America, which won the Andrew Carnegie medal for nonfiction. I've been a guest on Hanif's podcast, Object of Sound, and I just love reading and hearing his thoughts about music. When I first started ...

Sasami is a singer, songwriter and producer who grew up in Los Angeles. But now she’s based in Northern California, and as you’ll hear in this episode, that’s significant. Sasami went to school for classical French horn. She was in the band Cherry Glazerr, and she’s had a lot of collaborations with other artists on their projects and her own. Collaboration is at the heart of the song that I talked to her about for this epi...

Kevin Barnes started of Montreal in 1996 in Athens, Georgia. The Sunlandic Twins came out in 2005; it was their seventh album. And I remember when that album came out, how it felt like they were suddenly everywhere. And the breakout song from that breakout album was “Wraith Pinned to the Mist and Other Games.” And so, for this episode, I spoke to Kevin Barnes about how that song came together, and what it meant to them the...

Key Change is a new conversation series within Song Exploder, where I talk to fascinating people about the music that's transformed them.

My first guest is Sophie Thatcher, an actor and musician whose credits include starring in the TV show Yellowjackets, the film Heretic, and the new movie Companion. I met Sophie through Companion, because I composed the score to the film, and she contributes vocals to a few of the tracks ...

Yola is a singer/songwriter and actress. She released her solo debut album in 2019, which was nominated for 4 Grammys, including Best New Artist and Best Americana Album, and Rolling Stone named it one of the best country albums of the year. But the thing is, Yola’s music career wasn’t new, and her background wasn’t in country music. She’s from Bristol in the UK, and starting back in the early 2000s, she was a vocalist rec...

Adrianne Lenker is a singer and songwriter. She’s the lead singer of the critically acclaimed and beloved band Big Thief, and her work as a solo artist is also critically acclaimed and beloved. Her most recent solo album, Bright Future, was named one of the best albums of 2024 by the New Yorker, Stereogum, and more, and it was nominated for a Grammy for Best Folk Album. It was co-produced by Adrianne and longtime collabora...

Sabrina Carpenter is a singer, songwriter, and actress. She had a huge year with her album Short N Sweet, which came out in August 2024. It debuted at #1, and went platinum within a month. At the upcoming Grammys, she’s nominated for Song of the Year, Record of the Year, Album of the Year, and more. One of her big hits is “Please Please Please,” which she wrote with Amy Allen and producer Jack Antonoff. He’s won Producer o...

Gracie Abrams is a singer and songwriter from Los Angeles. She started putting out music in 2020, and in June 2024, she put out her second album, The Secret of Us. She was nominated for a Grammy for Best New Artist, and this year she’s up for another Grammy, for Best Duo Performance, for her collaboration with Taylor Swift. But for this episode, I talked to Gracie about her song “I Love You, I’m Sorry.” It was produced by ...

The Grammy nominations came out recently and I was really happy to see that Waxahatchee was on the list. Her album Tigers Blood, which I’ve listened to a bunch this year, was nominated for best Americana album. It’s her first Grammy nomination, and the news made me want to go back and listen to the episode I recorded with her back in 2020. It’s about the song "Fire," from her previous album. So here it is, and I’ll be back...

Le Tigre originally formed in 1998. They released their self-titled debut album in October 1999. Spin Magazine called it one of the best albums of the past 30 years, and Pitchfork called it one of the best albums of the 90s. I listened to that album a lot when it came out, and 25 years later, I still hear songs from it everywhere, on TV and in movies, and just out in the world – especially the song “Deceptacon.” For this e...

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 t...

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...

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 W...

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 tell...