Consistently first-rate podcast Song Exploder (iTunes) has been cornering artists to explain the story behind their music for three years and the great guests keep on coming.
Recently, Metallica’s James Hetfield and Lars Ulrich confessed to working in a most un-rock’n’roll way – in between school runs – when they recorded Moth Into Flame. In another episode, La La Land composer Justin Hurwitz revealed how he got Emma Stone to learn The Fools Who Dream inside out so she could sing it in one take in the film.
The story behind each song is told in about 15 minutes, so artists are forced to be succinct rather than noodling on. Host Hrishikesh Hirway edits himself out, leaving his eclectic lineup of guests (from DJ Shadow to Iggy Pop and Carly Rae Jepsen) to open up in their own words. In doing so, the subjects reveal as much about themselves as they do about their music.
The latest guest is Solange Knowles, who dissects Cranes in the Sky. Her laidback drawl tips the podcast over the 25-minute mark, but it’s worth the extra time. She talks about how the song came about after she decamped to Miami to write songs for herself and “my sister”. (Ever the cool one, she doesn’t mention Beyoncé by name.) “Although it’s known to be, like, this super-party fast-pace city, it was really like a refuge of peace for me,” she says. When she returned a couple of years later, she was surrounded by building sites, hence the cranes in the sky. “The heaviness, the weightiness and the eyesoreness” in the place where she had found peace was something she related to – and out came the breakup song. Its “Don’t you cry” backing vocals are Knowles’s version of her mum and aunts telling her to get back out there after heartbreak.
“She’s always, since we were kids, allowed us two days to mope and stay in bed, have our little pity party,” she says of her mum’s technique. “On the third day, you get dressed up.” With a Toys R Us harp playing out the final chords, Solange’s song takes on a new meaning once you have heard her story.
That’s the thing about Song Exploder: if it’s not helping you discover something new, it makes you want to listen to your favourite music all over again.
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