New Podcast Love: Song Exploder 

After listening to Hrishi Hirway (and Josh Malina) on The West Wing Weekly podcast (which is just getting up to one of the best episodes in the series, so catch up now!), I finally listened to Hrishi’s other podcast, Song Exploder.

Man, it’s good.

Right now, while we’re in Peak Podcast[1], I’m finding myself gravitating to podcasts that are either less than 30 minutes, or are in the 45 minute range done by people that I can reasonably understand when I play the podcast at 1.5x speed[2].

Song Exploder is a music podcast, is almost always between 12 and 20 minutes, and is about one song per episode. There’s no continuity to worry about, so if I don’t like the song, I just skip the episode.

Frequently, though, it’s a song or band I’m already a fan of, or at least curious about. And listening to how a song gets created—either the incredible work that goes into it, layer by layer; or the random ebbs and flows of the universe—is pretty fantastic listening.

On top of that, you often hear the stems and tracks of a song as it was created. It’s pretty remarkable at times. For example, the Solange episode, where you can hear her voice isolated or the CHVRCHES episode when you hear the initial jibberish track and then the real vocal track.

Anyway. I’m late to the game, but you can catch up on this podcast over the course of a few hours, and you get to listen to some great music while doing it.