Song Exploder

Alynda Segarra is a singer songwriter from the Bronx. They formed Hurray for the Riff Raff in 2007, and since then, they’ve released 8 albums. Their most recent is The Past Is Still Alive, which came out in 2024. It was named one of the best albums of the year in the New York Times, the Associated Press, Entertainment Weekly, and The Atlantic, and Pitchfork called it one of the best albums of the decade so far. For this episode, I spoke to Alynda about the first track on the album, “Alibi.”

You can buy or stream “Alibi” here.

Illustration by Carlos Lerma.

For a transcript of this episode, click here.

footnotes:
Brad Cook – producer
Yan Westerlund – drums
Phil Cook – guitar
Life on Earth – Hurray for the Riff Raff’s 7th album
Dolly Parton

The post Episode 312: Hurray for the Riff Raff appeared first on Song Exploder.

Jack Harlow is from Louisville, Kentucky, and started performing and releasing music in 2015, when he was in high school. In 2020, he released his first album, which went double platinum. He was nominated for a Grammy for Best Rap Performance. He’s had multiple number one hits across his first three albums. For his fourth album, Monica, which just came out in March 2026, he switched things up dramatically. I was curious how and why-how did someone who had so much success as a rapper approach a new way of making music? So for this episode, I spoke to Jack Harlow about the song “Say Hello,” which is the closing track on Monica.

You can buy or stream “Say Hello” here.

Illustration by Carlos Lerma.

For a transcript of this episode, click here.

footnotes:
Aksel Arvid – producer
Jermaine Paul – bass
Robert Glasper – piano
Stephane Clement – trumpet
Ravyn Lenae – backing vocals
Jackman. – album by Jack Harlow
Slum Village and Outkast

The post Episode 311: Jack Harlow appeared first on Song Exploder.

My guest today is Baz Luhrmann, the award-winning director whose films include Moulin Rouge!, Strictly Ballroom, The Great Gatsby, Elvis, and Romeo + Juliet. His newest film is EPiC: Elvis Presley in Concert, a critically acclaimed documentary about Elvis that’s playing right now in theaters and in IMAX. Before becoming a massively successful film director, Baz began his showbiz career as an actor, and as a ballroom dancer, in Australia. His first film was Strictly Ballroom, which came out in 1992, and became one of the highest-grossing Australian films of all time. It was originally a play, and there’s a song in the film that was part of the story all the way back when it was first performed on stage. And that’s what Baz and I talked about for this episode.

You can buy or stream “Time After Time” by Cyndi Lauper here.

footnotes:
“One” by John Farnham
National Institute of Dramatic Art (NIDA), Cate Blanchett, and Mel Gibson
Ted Albert
Tara Morice and Craig Pearce

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Thompson Twins originally formed in 1977 in Sheffield, in the UK. “Hold Me Now,” their iconic hit, came out as a single in November 1983, and eventually on their 1984 album, Into the Gap. That album went to number 1 in the UK and went platinum in the US. The song spent 21 weeks on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. So for this episode, I talked to the founding member of Thompson Twins, Tom Bailey, and he told me how he and his bandmates, Alannah Currie and Joe Leeway, made “Hold Me Now.”

You can buy or stream “Hold Me Now” here.

Illustration by Carlos Lerma.

For a transcript of this episode, click here.

footnotes:
Alex Sadkin – producer
Phil Thornalley – engineer
Boris Bransby Williams – drummer
RAK studios
Bob Marley
Oberheim synthesizers and Fairchild compressors
Bill Wyman and The Rolling Stones

The post Episode 310: Thompson Twins appeared first on Song Exploder.

Silvana Estrada is a singer, songwriter, and producer from Veracruz, Mexico. She won the Latin Grammy for Best New Artist in 2022, and she’s been nominated for three others, including for her song “Como Un Pájaro,” which is the song that we talked about for this episode. It’s from her second album, which came out in 2025, but she started writing the song several years before that. So we talked about all the different versions of this song, and a couple of versions of Silvana herself, that emerged throughout the process.

You can buy or stream “Como Un Pájaro” here.

Illustration by Carlos Lerma.

For a transcript of this episode, click here.

footnotes:
Daniel Bitrán – engineer
Roberto Verástegui – piano
Casa Estudio El Desierto
Hiyao Miyazaki, My Neighbor Totoro, and Spirited Away

The post Episode 309: Silvana Estrada appeared first on Song Exploder.

The Marías is a band from Los Angeles, made up of María Zardoya, Josh Conway, Jesse Perlman, and Edward James. They released their first EPs in 2017 and 2018, and their first album in 2021. But then, as you’ll hear, there was a period of a lot of uncertainty around the band’s future. Eventually, their second album, Submarine, came out in 2024, and it was incredibly successful. Stereogum called it one of the best albums of the year, and the band was nominated for a Grammy for Best New Artist. But all of that almost didn’t happen. I talked to María about the making of their hit song “No One Noticed.” The story’s beginning, middle, and end all took place during different eras of the band’s existence. In the middle section, when maybe they weren’t going to even be a band anymore, María enlisted the help of Grammy-nominated producer Gianluca Buccellati. And I spoke to Luca for this episode, as well.

You can buy or stream “No One Noticed” here.

For the Song Exploder episode with Arlo Parks about the song “Black Dog,” which was produced by Gianluca Buccellati, click here.

Illustration by Carlos Lerma.

For a transcript of this episode, click here.

footnotes:
Paris, Texas (film)
Arlo Parks and Biig Piig

The post Episode 308: The Marías appeared first on Song Exploder.

Leon Thomas is a singer, songwriter, producer, and actor. He’s nominated for six Grammys at this year’s Grammy Awards, including Best New Artist, Best R&B Album, and Album of the Year for Mutt. Mutt is his second album, and I talked to Leon about the title track, which was a breakout hit. He’d already won a Grammy for his work with SZA, but he reached a new level in his own career with this song and this album. I also spoke to David Phelps and Rob Gueringer, AKA D. Phelps and Freaky Rob, who produced the song.

You can buy or stream “Mutt” here.

Illustration by Carlos Lerma.

For a transcript of this episode, click here.

footnotes:
Bizzy Crook – co-writer
“Silly Love Song by Enchantment
“Snooze” by SZA
Electric Dusk – Leon Thomas
Led Zeppelin, Kendrick Lamar, Miles Davis, Pink Floyd, and
Parliament-Funkadelic
Art Tatum and John Coltrane
Bootsy Collins

The post Episode 307: Leon Thomas appeared first on Song Exploder.

My guest today is John Green. John is the award-winning, #1 bestselling author of books including Looking for Alaska, The Fault in Our Stars, Turtles All the Way Down, The Anthropocene Reviewed, and Everything is Tuberculosis. John and his brother Hank Green have co-created a lot of projects together, including their massive YouTube channel, ‘Vlogbrothers,’ and their podcast, Dear Hank and John. He also serves on the Board of Trustees for global health nonprofit Partners in Health. And when I asked John if there was a piece of music that changed his life, he knew the answer right away: “You’ll Never Walk Alone” by Gerry and the Pacemakers.

footnotes:
The musical Carousel
The Mountain Goats, Will Oldham, and Loretta Lynn

The post Key Change: John Green appeared first on Song Exploder.

Hit-Boy is an award-winning producer and rapper from LA. He’s one of my all-time favorite producers, from “Backseat Freestyle” by Kendrick Lamar, to “Sicko Mode” by Travis Scott, to tracks he’s made for Beyonce, Nas, and the Jay-Z & Kanye album Watch the Throne. So I was really excited to talk to him, and when I asked him which song from his incredible catalog he wanted to talk about, I was really moved by his choice. He picked “Racks in the Middle” by Nipsey Hussle, featuring Roddy Ricch. Nipsey Hussle was a rapper and community activist from LA whose career was cut short, tragically, when he was murdered in 2019. He’d released just one album, Victory Lap. “Racks in the Middle” was the last song released in Nipsey’s lifetime. It went platinum, and a year after his death, it won the Grammy for Best Rap Performance, in 2020. This episode features a few short clips from a video that Nipsey Hussle made for the website Genius, back in 2019. But here in the studio, to tell the story, I spoke to Hit-Boy about how “Racks in the Middle” came together.

You can buy or stream “Racks In the Middle” (feat. Roddy Ricch and Hit-Boy) here.

Illustration by Carlos Lerma.

For a transcript of this episode, click here.

footnotes:
Dustin James Corbett – co-writer
Greg Allen Davis – co-writer
“Die Young” – Roddy Ricch
Knowledge Smith, Future, and Chalice Recording Studio
Mailbox Money – mixtape by Nipsey Hussle
“A Hunnit a Show” (feat. Rick Ross) – Nipsey Hussle
“Alert” (feat. Hit-Boy & Nipsey Hussle) – HS87
“Thuggin” (feat. Lil Boosie & Lil Cali) – Nipsey Hussle

The post Episode 306: Hit-Boy and Nipsey Hussle appeared first on Song Exploder.

The band Air is a duo from Versailles, France. Their first EP came out in 1995, followed by their critically acclaimed debut album, Moon Safari, which was an international hit. Then they made the music for the film The Virgin Suicides, which was written and directed by Oscar-winner Sofia Coppola, based on the novel by Jeffrey Eugenides. The movie came out in 1999, and it was Sofia Coppola’s first film. An album version of Air’s score came out in 2000, and it was nominated for a Brit award. Pitchfork put it at number four on their list of the best film scores of all time. In addition to the instrumental music that appears in the movie, Air also wrote a song for the end credits, called “Playground Love.” That song featured Sofia Coppola’s future husband, Thomas Mars, from the French band Phoenix, on vocals. Phoenix was still a very new band, and he and Sofia hadn’t even met yet. Thomas appears on the song under the name Gordon Tracks. So for this episode, I spoke to all of them: Nicolas and JB from Air; Sofia Coppola; Thomas Mars; as well as Brian Reitzell, who was the music supervisor of the film.

You can buy The Virgin Suicides Redux album as a CD or vinyl, and you can buy or stream “Playground Love” here.

Illustration by Carlos Lerma.

For a transcript of this episode, click here.

footnotes:
The Chateau Marmont
Redd Kross (band)
Thomas Bangalter and Daft Punk
“Highschool Lover” – Air
‘Kick,’ an album by INXS
Ringo Starr, Beck, and 10cc
“Walk on the Wild Side” by Lou Reed
Bob Dylan
“Yoghurting”

The post Episode 305: Air appeared first on Song Exploder.