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
April 30, 2025
Stefan Babcock (PUP)
"I assign too much personal value to my creative output. Too much of my self-worth is wrapped up in that process in a way that is unhealthy," Stefan Babcock of PUP told me. It's natural for an artist to attach self-worth to w...
April 27, 2025
Uwade
It's not easy being a songwriter. It's also not easy being a PhD student. I don't know how Uwade is able to do both simultaneously. Uwade is in the first year of her PhD program in Classics at Stanford University, and in this...
April 24, 2025
Tennis
Ed note: my new permanent intro and outro music is the Tennis song "Need Your Love." Alaina Moore and Pat Riley of Tennis are good friends of mine, which means this episode is more of a conversation than an interview as we go...
April 21, 2025
Lili Trifilio (Beach Bunny)
“Scribbling into oblivion” is how Lili Trifilio of Beach Bunny describes her editing process. (It's also an amazing song title.) She used this phrase in response to a question I like to ask songwriters: when you’re editing so...
April 13, 2025
Mike Campbell (Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, The Dirty Knobs)
Mike Campbell doesn't have songwriting rules. He hates them. But he doesn't need any because he's always creating. "I'm probably writing as I'm talking to you," he told me. In fact, Campbell's problem is that he can't stop co...
April 6, 2025
Derek Miller (Sleigh Bells)
I always love having my buddy Derek Miller of Sleigh Bells on the pod! This is Miller's third time as a guest. I don't know how he ever has time to do interviews because the man is either writing music, about to write music, ...
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