Category: 3-MusicSometimeTalk

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 the main title sequence is incredible. I was so excited to get to talk to the composer, Theodore Shapiro, about how he made the main title theme music. In this episode, you’ll hear how that theme first came into existence in a totally different form, and then, how Teddy re-imagined it to become the final version. 

For more, visit songexploder.net/severance.

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 toying with the idea for this Key Change series, I was specifically excited about the idea that it could give me the chance to have Hanif on as a guest.

For more, visit songexploder.net/keychange. 

You can listen to "Lost in the Supermarket" by The Clash here. 

This week is Tracy Chapman week on the pod! We add her gorgeous and heartbreaking hit "Fast Car" to our Ultimate Country Playlist.

Unsure if it's country? Well, after it became a No. 1 country hit with minimal changes when covered by Luke Combs, Rolling Stone named it one of the 200 greatest country songs of all time. Plus, we think it rocks and its lyrics are country as all get out. So it's on the playlist! Listen for more of our pro-Chapman rationale in this week's episode.

Follow the link below to keep up with which songs are being added to our Ultimate Country Playlist on Spotify
https://tinyurl.com/takethispodplaylist
And on TIDAL!
https://t.co/MHEvOz2DOA

Check out our Patreon!
Check out our new merch store!
Instagram: @TakeThisPodandShoveIt
For everything else click HERE!

Want to create your own great podcast? Why not start today! We use BuzzSprout for hosting and have loved it. So we suggest you give them a try as well! Buzzsprout gets your show listed in every major podcast platform, and makes understanding your podcast data a breeze.
Follow this link to let Buzzsprout know we sent you—you'll get a $20 credit if you sign up for a paid plan, and it helps support our show.

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 episode. It’s called “In Love With A Memory,” and it features Clairo on vocals, and it was co-produced with Grammy-winning producer Rostam. The song is on Sasami’s third album, Blood on the Silver Screen, which is out March 2025. Coming up, you’ll hear the original voice memos that she recorded for this song back in the fall of 2022. You’ll also hear the demo she made in Garageband after that, and then how she and Rostam turned that demo into the final version, a duet with Clairo.

For more info, visit songexploder.net/sasami.

We've been waiting to do a Bob Dylan episode for years and the film A Complete Unknown is just the excuse we were looking for! This week Danny and Tyler discuss the late 60's era of Dylan's career where he became a country crooner. Post-electric and pre-religious, this is a beautiful time in Dylan's eclectic catalog.

"Country Pie" from Nashville Skyline has been added to our Ultimate Country Playlist! Follow the link below to keep up with which songs are being added to our Ultimate Country Playlist on Spotify
https://tinyurl.com/takethispodplaylist
And on TIDAL!
https://t.co/MHEvOz2DOA

Check out our Patreon!
Check out our new merch store!
Instagram: @TakeThisPodandShoveIt
For everything else click HERE!

Want to create your own great podcast? Why not start today! We use BuzzSprout for hosting and have loved it. So we suggest you give them a try as well! Buzzsprout gets your show listed in every major podcast platform, and makes understanding your podcast data a breeze.
Follow this link to let Buzzsprout know we sent you—you'll get a $20 credit if you sign up for a paid plan, and it helps support our show.

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 then, and what it means to them now. 

For more info, visit songexploder.net/of-montreal.

For those who haven’t heard the announcement I posted, songs from this point on will sometimes be split among multiple episodes, so this is the third part of a multi-episode look at the song “Never Learn Not to Love” by the Beach Boys, and the links between Charles Manson and the LA music scene, as well as the life of Huddie “Lead Belly” Ledbetter. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode.

Patreon backers also have a forty-eight-minute bonus episode available, on “Fruit Tree” by Nick Drake.

I’ve also started up an email newsletter at https://it-was-ninety-years-ago-today.ghost.io/

Tilt Araiza has assisted invaluably by doing a first-pass edit, and will hopefully be doing so from now on. Check out Tilt’s irregular podcasts at http://www.podnose.com/jaffa-cakes-for-proust and http://sitcomclub.com/

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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 I wrote. For this episode, we discussed how "Waltz #1" by Elliott Smith shaped Sophie's tastes and work. 

For more, visit songexploder.net/keychange. 

You can listen to "Waltz #1" by Elliott Smith here. 

Last week was the 2025 Inauguration, and of all the terrible things that happened, the most light-hearted had to be the musical performances. These performances included a number of—you guessed it—country acts, including Carrie Underwood, Jason Aldean, Lee Greenwood, and what's left of Billy Ray Cyrus.

This week Tyler and Danny are joined by comedy writer and pop culture expert Danii Gallegos to take a look at what happened and why so many things went wrong.

Check out our Patreon!
Check out our new merch store!
Instagram: @TakeThisPodandShoveIt
For everything else click HERE!

Want to create your own great podcast? Why not start today! We use BuzzSprout for hosting and have loved it. So we suggest you give them a try as well! Buzzsprout gets your show listed in every major podcast platform, and makes understanding your podcast data a breeze.
Follow this link to let Buzzsprout know we sent you—you'll get a $20 credit if you sign up for a paid plan, and it helps support our show.

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 recording tracks for DJs and electronic music producers. In January 2025, Yola put out an EP called My Way. And as you’ll hear her explain in this episode, a lot of her new music is motivated by wanting to assert her identity beyond the Americana and country music boundaries. In addition to her music, she’s also acting – she played Sister Rosetta Tharpe in the 2022 film Elvis, and she starred on Broadway in the musical Hadestown. For this episode, I talked to Yola about her song “Symphony,” along with co-writer and co-producer Sean Douglas. Yola and Sean trace the journey of the song “Symphony,” and, along with it, Yola traces her own journey, too.

For more info, visit songexploder.net/yola.