Songwriting Podcasts

My guest today is Ahmir Thompson, aka Questlove, the drummer and founding member of The Roots, as well as an author, a DJ, and an Oscar-winning film director.A song that changed my life is “Double Trouble” by The Roots, and the liner notes that Questlove wrote to go with the song. There’s a change in the drum sound in that song that blew my mind, and Questlove wrote a little bit about the effort that went into getting that drum sound. And as a drummer myself, I wanted to know everything about that. And that moment 26 years ago was maybe when the first seed for Song Exploder got planted in my brain. So, getting to talk to him for this is really special for me. Questlove has an encyclopedic knowledge of music. It’s really astounding. He knows so much about so many artists, and he’s just directed a new documentary about Earth, Wind & Fire, which is out now. But one of the artists he knows best is Prince. He was recently asked by Rolling Stone to rank the top 100 Prince songs. For this episode, we talked about the song that he put at #1 on that list.For more info, visit songexploder.net/questlove.

Metric is a band from Canada that was formed in 1998. They’ve won four Juno Awards, including Group of the Year. Rolling Stone included them in their list of the 50 Greatest Canadian Artists of All Time. In April 2026, Metric released their 10th album, Romanticize the Dive. And for this episode, I spoke to Emily Haines and Jimmy Shaw about how they made the opening song on that album, “Victim of Luck.”For more info, visit songexploder.net/metric.

Hayley Kiyoko is a singer, songwriter, author, and director from Los Angeles. She was a child actor on Disney and Nickelodeon, and briefly in a girl group called The Stunners. But then, she started her career as a solo artist. In 2015, she put out the EP This Side of Paradise, and one of the songs on it was “Girls Like Girls.” She co-wrote it with Lily May-Young and Owen Thomas, and it was produced by James Flannigan. Hayley co-directed the music video for it, and when the song and the video came out, it was an absolute phenomenon. It became a lesbian anthem; Rolling Stone named it one of the most inspiring LGBTQ songs of all time. Hayley’s legion of fans gave her the nickname “Lesbian Jesus.” In 2023, Hayley adapted the song into a bestselling coming-of-age novel. And in June 2026, she made her feature film directorial debut, with the movie adaptation of “Girls Like Girls.” For this episode, Hayley and I talked about how it all started with the making of that song. For more info, visit songexploder.net/hayley-kiyoko.

My guest today is the actor Tatiana Maslany. One of the things I find so compelling about Tatiana and her career is that the roles that she plays often contain multitudes—literally. She played over 10 different characters–clones, but with distinct personalities–in the TV show Orphan Black. And in the Marvel Universe, she played She-Hulk, who also had the very different alter ego of Jennifer Walters, a lawyer. And right now, she’s starring in the show Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed on AppleTV. When Tatiana prepares for her roles—and the roles within the roles—she often uses music to inspire and motivate her. Today, I got to talk to Tatiana about a song that’s been really important to her and her process. And that song is “Faceshopping” by Sophie. If you’re not aware of Sophie’s music, she was an incredible, groundbreaking electronic artist from the UK. She was trans, and she passed away far too young, in 2021. But even in a short time, she made a big impact. In addition to her own music, she also produced tracks for Charli XCX, and Madonna, and more. In 2018, she released her breakthrough Grammy-nominated album, Oil of Every Pearl’s Un-Insides, which dealt a lot with her trans identity. And that’s the album that has the song “Faceshopping.” For more info, visit songexploder.net/tatiana-maslany.

Paul McCartney is a singer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, and producer whose career spans more than six decades. As a member of The Beatles and later Wings and then with his own solo albums, he’s simply one of the most influential artists of all time. He has more accolades than I have time to list in this intro. But if you’re listening to this, you already know all that. In May 2026, he released his twentieth solo album, The Boys of Dungeon Lane. He co-produced it with Andrew Watt, who won the 2021 Grammy for Producer of the Year, and whose credits include working with Lady Gaga, The Rolling Stones, Justin Bieber, and Elton John. For this episode, I spoke to Paul McCartney about how he wrote and recorded his song “Ripples in a Pond.” For more info, visit songexploder.net/paul-mccartney.