Deep Talk About the Songwriting Process.
In-depth interviews with songwriters about their songwriting process. That's All. No talk of band drama, band names, or tour stories. Treating songwriters as writers, plain and simple. By Ben Opipari, English Lit Ph.D.
Recent Episodes
June 30, 2025
John Gourley (Portugal. The Man)
"I'm always chasing that ADHD thing: whatever it tells me to do, I just do it," John Gourley of Portugal. The Man told me. This episode hit hard. I used to be a middle school special education teacher. I taught kids with severe learning disabilities, and most also had severe ADHD. A big misconcepti…
June 23, 2025
Laura Stevenson
Laura Stevenson returns to the pod! This was an easy decision to have her on again ( the first time was 2011 ) because I love her music and she's one of the funniest songwriters I've ever interviewed. I don't know how Stevens...
June 17, 2025
Cautious Clay
Cautious Clay and I spent the first ten minutes of this episode talking about the role that painting plays in his creative process. Then a few minutes later, the topic turned to the through line between basketball and songwri...
June 12, 2025
Shura
This episode with Shura marks a first: we managed to draw a through line between Marcella Hazan's bolognese sauce and the songwriting process. We also talk about why peeing brings great ideas. (To be sure, Shura is not the fi...
June 2, 2025
Orla Gartland
"The more I do this, the less I want to understand where it comes from," Orla Gartland says on the pod. Like most songwriters, Gartland likes to walk as a part of her songwriting process. She'll usually listen to music on the...
May 26, 2025
Sunflower Bean
It's the return of Nick Kivlen and Julia Cumming of Sunflower Bean ! We had so much fun in 2022 that we had to do it again. Kivlen says, "One of things I'm realizing as Julia I talk is that our processes are totally different...
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