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Hrishikesh Hirway


Song Exploder is a podcast where musicians take apart their songs, and piece by piece, tell the story of how they were made. Each episode features an artist discussing a song of theirs, breaking down the sounds and ideas that went into the writing and recording. Hosted and produced by Hrishikesh Hirway.


Song Exploder

My guest today is director Rian Johnson, which is exciting for me, because I’ve been a huge fan of his ever since seeing his first feature film, ‘Brick,' in 2006. Since then, he’s made six more feature films, including ‘Looper‘ in 2012; ‘Star Wars: The Last Jedi‘ in 2017; the murder mystery ‘Knives Out‘ in 2019; and his most recent movie, another in the 'Knives Out' series, ‘Wake Up Dead Man,‘ which is already out in theaters, and comes to Netflix on December 12. I talked to Rian about a piece of music that had a profound impact on him, which was the overture to ‘Das Rheingold‘ by Richard Wagner. 

For more info, visit songexploder.net/rian-johnson.

Key Change: Rian Johnson on Wagner's 'Das Rheingold'

Jessie Reyez is a singer and songwriter originally from Toronto. She's won two of Canada's Juno awards, and she's been nominated for a Grammy. In addition to writing her own music, Jessie's been a songwriter on tracks by Calvin Harris, Dua Lipa, Sam Smith, Eminem, and many others. You're probably aware that there are songwriters and producers whose names you'll find over and over again in the credits for big hits; Jessie is one of them. 

But for this episode, I talked to her about her own song "Goliath." And the day that she wrote that song, she happened to be in the studio with a bunch of other songwriters and producers. So I also talked to Jordan and Stefan Johnson, from the production team Monsters & Strangerz, and Jeff Gitelman, AKA Gitty. Between the three of them, their credits also include songs by Selena Gomez, Maroon 5, Alicia Keys, Mac Miller, and again, tons more.

When a group like this gets together to write music, they don't always know if they're going to be making a song that's going to get recorded and released by an artist somewhere down the line, or if the song's going to get recorded at all. But in the case of "Goliath," what came out was a song that was very personal to Jessie Reyez.

For more info, visit songexploder.net/jessie-reyez.

Jessie Reyez - Goliath

My guest today is Demi Adejuyigbe. One of the things that makes Demi so special is how hard it is to summarize him in an intro like this, because he has so many talents and applies them in so many different ways. He is a standup comedian, with a brand new one-hour special out on Dropout TV. He co-hosted the podcasts Gilmore Guys and Punch Up the Jam. He’s a screenwriter, who wrote on TV shows like The Good Place. He’s famous on the internet for his parody songs, spoofing artists like Will Smith and Lana Del Rey; and for his September videos, where, for years, he made increasingly elaborate videos of himself, dancing to the Earth, Wind & Fire song. And he used the popularity of those videos to raise over a million dollars for charity. He’s also directed several music videos, including one that he made for one of my songs, back in 2022. And for this episode, we’re talking as much about a music video as the song within it. And that song is "You Only Live Once" by The Strokes.

Demi's new special, Demi Adejuyigbe is Going to do One (1) Backflip, is on Dropout TV. 

For more info, visit songexploder.net/demi-adejuyigbe.

Key Change: Demi Adejuyigbe on The Strokes

Clipse was formed in 1994 by two brothers: Gene Thornton Jr, aka Malice, and his younger brother Terrence Thornton, aka Pusha T. From the beginning, they’ve worked with producer Pharrell Williams, originally as part of the acclaimed production duo, The Neptunes. But then, there was a 16 year gap between the third Clipse album, which came out in 2009, and their most recent album, Let God Sort Em Out, which came out in July 2025. This November, they were nominated for 5 Grammys, including Album of the Year. They were also nominated for Best Rap Song, for “The Birds Don’t Sing.” It’s a song that they made after the death of both of their parents in the span of just a few months. For this episode, I asked Pusha T, Malice, and Pharrell about the making of that song, which also features contributions from John Legend and Stevie Wonder. 

For more info, visit songexploder.net/clipse.

Clipse - The Birds Don't Sing

On September 5, 1973, the first and only Buckingham Nicks album was released. It wasn’t a huge hit, but it was how the world was first introduced to the music of Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham, before they went on to become members of Fleetwood Mac. Their time together in Fleetwood Mac led to some of the best-selling, most critically acclaimed, and most influential albums of all time. Their individual talents, their musical chemistry together, and the ups and downs of their romantic relationship all eventually became legendary. 

And yet, despite all that, the Buckingham Nicks album went out of print not long after it came out. For over 50 years, it wasn’t available, until it finally got re-mastered and re-released in September 2025. So for this episode, I spoke to both Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham about the making of one of the songs from that album, called “Frozen Love.” It’s the only song on the album where they’re credited as co-writers, and it’s the song that led Mick Fleetwood to invite Lindsey Buckingham to join Fleetwood Mac. But Lindsey would only join if Stevie could, too, and that’s how that story began. So this episode is about a beginning and an ending. It’s the story of how Stevie and Lindsey first met, and how they made "Frozen Love," and how that song really led to the end of their band. 

I also want to mention that not only was Buckingham Nicks out of print for all those decades, no one has heard the isolated tracks that you’re about to hear. To make this episode, there was an epic search for the original master tape from Sound City, the studio where they recorded the album with producer Keith Olsen. It took months, but the tape was finally tracked down and digitized, and it feels very special to be able to present this for the first time here, along with the memories and stories from Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks. 

For more info, visit songexploder.net/buckingham-nicks.

Buckingham Nicks - Frozen Love

Next week, I’m going to be publishing an episode with Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham about the making of the song “Frozen Love,” from their only album as the duo Buckingham Nicks. That song is what eventually led to them joining Fleetwood Mac. So in anticipation of next week’s episode, I thought it would be great to go back seven years and revisit this Fleetwood Mac episode from 2018, about the making of “Go Your Own Way.” I hope you enjoy it, and I hope you’ll come back to hear the Buckingham Nicks episode.

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Lindsey Buckingham is a singer-songwriter, a guitarist, and a producer. In 1974, he joined the band Fleetwood Mac, along with Stevie Nicks, his girlfriend at the time. A few year later, in 1977, Fleetwood Mac released the album Rumours, which would go on to sell over 40 million copies and become the eighth highest-selling album in history. In this episode, Lindsey Buckingham breaks down “Go Your Own Way," a song he wrote for that album about his relationship with Stevie Nicks.

For more, visit songexploder.net/fleetwood-mac.

Fleetwood Mac - Go Your Own Way

"Take On Me" by A-ha is an iconic hit of the 1980s. It came out in October 1985 with an equally iconic music video that helped define the age of MTV. It hit #1 in the US and in countries all over the world. And it's still massively popular today. It currently has over two and a half billion streams on Spotify. So, with all of that, it's easy to imagine that this was all inevitable. But actually, the song took so many steps and missteps before it became the hit that everybody knows. I talked to Paul Waaktaar-Savoy from A-ha, who wrote the original bones of the song back when he was a teenager in Norway, years before it came out. The song actually came out and flopped TWICE in the UK, before it found a foothold in the US. So for this episode, Paul took me through the whole history of the song, and all the different versions that existed. And he told me how he and his bandmates, Magne Furuholmen and Morten Harket, pushed and pushed and persevered. "Take On Me" was their first single as a band, and it made them the most successful Norwegian pop group of all time.

For more info, visit songexploder.net/a-ha.

A-ha - Take On Me

Lady Gaga is a singer, songwriter, producer, and actress from New York. She’s one of the biggest artists in the world. She’s also won 14 Grammys, 2 Golden Globes, and an Oscar. And in March 2025, she released her sixth album, Mayhem. For this episode, I talked to her about a song from that album called “Abracadabra.” She co-wrote it and co-produced it with Andrew Watt and Cirkut, and they recorded it in Rick Rubin’s studio, Shangri-La. That’s also where we recorded the interview for this episode.

For more info, visit songexploder.net/lady-gaga.

Lady Gaga - Abracadabra

My guest today is Chef David Chang. He founded Momofuku Noodle Bar in 2004. That was just the start of his incredible career – he’s opened several restaurants, winning awards and Michelin stars along the way, and becoming a fixture in the upper echelon of food. He’s the host of the Netflix shows Ugly Delicious and Dinner Time Live, as well as his own podcast, The Dave Chang Show. For this episode, I talked to Dave about the song “I See a Darkness.” It's the title track on the album by Bonnie “Prince” Billy, aka Will Oldham, which came out in 1999. Later, Johnny Cash would cover “I See a Darkness” in 2000, as a duet with Will Oldham, as part of Johnny Cash’s acclaimed American series.

You can get Bonnie "Prince" Billy’s "I See a Darkness" on vinyl or digital here.

For more info, visit songexploder.net/david-chang.

Key Change: David Chang on "I See a Darkness"

Hayden Anhedönia has been making music under the name Ethel Cain since 2019. But it’s not just a band name or a moniker; Ethel Cain is a fictional character, a sort of alter ego that Hayden’s been creating and world building around throughout her albums. The first Ethel Cain album, Preacher’s Daughter, came out in 2022. It ended up blowing up, and it made Hayden the first openly trans artist with an album in the top ten on the Billboard chart. In 2025, she put out the second Ethel Cain album, called Willoughby Tucker, I’ll Always Love You. For this episode, I talked to Hayden about how she made the song “Nettles.” As you’re about to hear, it took on a lot of different forms, over several years, before she got to the final version. 

For more info, visit songexploder.net/ethel-cain.

Ethel Cain - Nettles

Drummer Ahmir Thompson, also known as Questlove, and rapper Tariq Trotter, aka Black Thought, started The Roots when they were in high school in Philadelphia in 1987. Over the last thirty years, the band has released 17 albums. They’ve received a bunch Grammy nominations including three wins. They’re also the house band for The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon. In this episode, Questlove tells the story of how they made the song "It Ain’t Fair." It was created for the film Detroit, directed by oscar-winner Kathryn Bigelow, who also made the films The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty. Detroit is about the 1967 Detroit riots, centered around the events at the Algiers Motel, where police killed three young black men and beat and tortured nine others. The Roots recruited the singer Bilal to contribute vocals to the song, and they worked with The Dap-Kings, the backing band for the late soul singer Sharon Jones, to create a sound that evoked the music of 1967.

songexploder.net/the-roots

The Roots - It Ain't Fair (feat. Bilal)

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