Song Exploder

<p>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, <em>Monica</em>, 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

<p>My guest today is Baz Luhrmann, the award-winning director whose films include <em>Moulin Rouge!, Strictly Ballroom</em>, <em>The Great Gatsby, Elvis, </em>and<em> Romeo + Juliet.  </em>His newest film is  <em>EPiC: Elvis Presley in Concert</em>, 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 wa

<p>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, <em>Into the Gap</em>. 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.”</

<p>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 eme

<p>This week, I wanted to go back and revisit the episode that I made with Iron & Wine in the fall of 2022 about the song "Flightless Bird, American Mouth." And there are a couple of reasons. One, there’s a new Iron & Wine album that’s coming out this month, called <em>Hen’s Teeth</em>. And secondly, I actually have a song of my own that’s coming out today, the same day as this episode, and it features Iron & Wine on the track. It’s called “Stray Dogs,” and it’s the first song from an album that

<p>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, <em>Submarine</em>, 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

<p>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 <em>Mutt</em>. <em>Mutt</em> 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 an

<p>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.