In 1999 filmmaker Baz Luhrmann released the song “Everybody’s Free To Wear Sunscreen,” a 7-minute-long graduation speech set to downtempo electronic music. It was a highly unlikely hit that made its way across continents and eventually into the ears of a young Avery Trufelman via the album NOW That’s What I Call Music Volume 2. For over 20 years, Trufelman h ... Show More
Yesterday
Hrishikesh Hirway made an album “the old-fashioned way.” He nearly exploded.
Hrishikesh Hirway, host of Song Exploder, returns with his first album in fifteen years, In the Last Hour of Light, made under a premise that's almost contradictory for a podcaster built around isolated stems: session players who had never heard the songs, vocals tracked live in ... Show More
43m 12s
Apr 17
Maggie Rogers: going viral is a trap
Ten years ago, Maggie Rogers was a senior at NYU, scrambling to finish a song for a music production class she was close to failing. The guest critic that week happened to be Pharrell Williams. She played him "Alaska," a track she'd written in about fifteen minutes. It is a bit o ... Show More
37m 36s
Aug 2022
“Hey Ya” by Outkast: Everything You Didn't Know
Alex and Jordan go deep on the idiosyncratic hip hop mainstay, often cited as one of the best songs of the 21st century. They get into the deceptively heartbreaking lyrics, the unexpected musical inspirations, the brain-crushingly complex music video, and the science of why it’s ... Show More
1h 5m
Jan 2018
'Whenever, Wherever' by Shakira (w/ Solomon Georgio)
This week, Solomon Georgio (@solomongeorgio – Comedy Central, his album ‘Homonegro Superior’) joins the show to talk about Seattle, the movie Saving Silverman, the glory of early 2000s music videos & cell phones, and eventually, Shakira’s 2001 classic “Whenever, Wherever,”– a son ... Show More
1h 7m