Songwriters on Process

"I made a conscious effort on this album to be more disciplined in my writing because my ideas were getting stale and I was writing from the same place," Mariel Buckley told me. "I realized that my material was becoming repetitive when I was waiting for inspiration to strike."  Buckley's new process involved writing every day and writing from a more joyful place. The resul...

Etta Friedman and Allegra Weingarten of Momma return! Momma is my favorite band and their new album Welcome to My Blue Sky is my favorite album of 2025. At least I'm consistent since I said the same thing about them when they were on the pod in 2023. (Their live show is absolutely killer too.) Friedman and Weingarten have been writing together since their teens, and one thing hasn't chan...

"I'm a professional daydreamer," Conor Oberst of Bright Eyes told me. That's the catch-22: are you really daydreaming if you're aware that you're doing it? Daydreaming leads to eureka moments, but only when you don't sit down and say, "I'm going to daydream." As with most people, the eureka moments for Oberst involve mundane activities for a practi...

"I get a physical tingling sensation. It's beyond my control, an impulsive feeling where I have to sit and wait for it," Billie Marten says about that moment before a wave of inspiration strikes. The problem, Marten told me, is that it's been a while since she's written anything. But as we soon realized, Marten has been writing a lot: she pulled out her Notes app and scrol...

"I allow myself to miss the guitar. And the guitar comes calling when I start to feel bored," says William Prince . A multiple JUNO award-winner, Prince is also a member of Peguis First Nation in Manitoba, Canada, writing often about his experience as a member. Prince finds long drives to be productive--and those long drives in Canada are common. "So many voice memos happen on those...

"It's important to separate my sense of self-worth from my creations. If I was so self-aware of my output, I don't think I'd be having fun," Melina Duterte, who goes by the performing name Jay Som, told me. She says that output is proportional to her introspection: "How much I express through music depends on how much work I've been doing on myself," she say...

It's the return of Hayes Carll ! I first interviewed him in 2013 and again in 2016 . A recurring theme of those early interviews was Carll's admitted lack of discipline in the writing process. "I'm always looking for something else to do other than write," Carll told me in 2013. But 2025 brings a new Hayes Carll, one who sees discipline as an ally. "I don't turn...

"The decision has been made, and now it's time to f**k off," Mitch Rowland told me. To be clear, Rowland wasn't saying this to me; instead, it's Rowland ruthlessly killing his darlings in the editing process.  Rowland is a solo artist, but he's also the guitarist in Harry Styles's solo band and has co-written many songs with Styles, including "Watermelon Sug...

If you took a contemporary poetry class in college in the last 30 years, Paul Muldoon was probably on your syllabus. The New York Times has called him “one of the great poets of the past hundred years. . . . Only Yeats before him could write with such measured fury.” The Times Literary Supplement referred to Muldoon as “the most significant English-language poet born since the Second World War.” H...

Patrick Hetherington of Parcels says that the urge to write usually strikes when he's had some kind of new input, but then he needs distance from that input to be able to process it and write about it. And a good sunset is mandatory. "I need to touch base with the sunset every day. I take a walk at sunset to feel that change, that shift in the day." The latest album by Parcels is Lo...

It's the return of Molly Tuttle ! (The first time I interviewed Tuttle was in 2021, when I interviewed her and Katie Pruitt.) Tuttle won the GRAMMY for Best Bluegrass Album in both 2023 and 2024. And you don't become great without rigorous discipline. As you'll hear, Tuttle kept a flip phone as a student at Berklee because she wanted to maintain her focus on music, not a phone scree...

I cannot imagine a world where Scott McCaughey is not writing. But first, some background. He was an auxiliary member of R.E.M. from 1994 to 2011, working with them in the studio and playing with them live. He founded The Baseball Project and The Minus Five, among other bands, both with members of R.E.M. He also founded The Young Fresh Fellows.  McCaughey doesn't feel pressure to create every...

Dev Hynes had me at the bookshelves. All those bookshelves behind him on our Zoom interview, rising to the ceiling and stuffed with books. Small wonder, then, that Hynes works best in daily consumption mode rather than creation mode. He's adamant about not writing every day. The creative process is all about keeping it fun for Hynes. He likes to write in the afternoon for the simple reason th...

There's a difference between wanting to write and needing to write. For Will Taylor of Flyte , it's usually a need. Taylor says that he doesn't write every day, but instead writes after an accumulation of experiences. "I know it's time because a sadness comes over me. It's a quite noticeable funk, and the clouds need to break," says Taylor.  But for Taylor and hi...

"I write the most when I'm supposed to be doing something else because it tricks me into thinking that songwriting is rebellious," Meg Duffy (aka Hand Habits ) told me. "It feels like I get to choose to do it." I love this quote so much. It illustrates how we sometimes have to trick ourselves into being creative.  Duffy used the word "summon" a few times in our c...

The theme of today's podcast is nourishment. It dawned on me a few minutes into my conversation with Hannah Cohen that when she said proper nourishment was critical to her writing process, she was being literal.  It was no metaphor. If Cohen's not hydrated and fed, the creative process becomes much more arduous. She's the first songwriter to ever tell me that.  But when Cohen also t...

Ed Note: Lzzy Hale has collaborated with Mark Morton (Lamb of God) in the past. I co-authored Mark's new book Desolation: A Heavy Metal Memoir , hence the occasional reference to Mark and our book in this episode. Many songwriters I interview have a journal. Very few have two. Lzzy Hale of Halestorm is the only one who has three. She has a five-year journal, a freewrite journal, and a pocket...

You think you're busy? You're not busy. Sophie Payten (known professionally as Gordi ) is busy. She's a songwriter AND a physician. On this episode, we discuss how she finds time to do anything. We also explore how she so beautifully weaves themes from the world of patient care into her songwriting. Gordi's latest album, Like Plasticine , is out now. 

"I see no point in being bored. I just don't understand the concept.  So I'm always looking for things to occupy my time and get me excited," Peter Berkman of Anamanaguchi told me. Berkman actually told me this in 2011, when he was one of my first interviews for this site. And let me tell you: he hasn't changed one bit.  Talking to Berkman and Ary Warnaar, it's obviou...

Cody Jinks had me at "I could talk about books forever." He estimates that he reads 80-100 books a year. All that reading leads to a lot of writing: songs, poetry, a journal, and an almost completed memoir. Oh and he paints. That's a great example of the through line between reading and writing: if you want to write well, you have to read.  (Shameless plug: one of the books he read...

"Songwriting is about being awake to something you've never thought of or a way of thinking about something you've never experienced before," Mary Chapin Carpenter says on the pod. The five-time GRAMMY winner has a poet's way of thinking about songwriting. And on those rare occasions when she's stuck, she goes songwalking. I've always been a fan of Carpenter&apos...

I'm a huge Indigo De Souza fan, so I had a great time on this episode! We went deep into her songwriting process and discussed, among other things, how moving from western North Carolina to Los Angeles changed her songwriting process, how television plays a role in her writing routine, and what part of the day she's most effective as a writer. De Souza's latest album is Precipice . 

"I'm realizing how neurotic my process is as I'm talking to you," Jade Bird said, laughing, during our conversation. Indeed, Bird is pretty specific about her writing ritual, which can be intense: she usually takes a walk after writing to relieve back stiffness that comes from hunching over her notebook. And while many songwriters boost their creativity through movement, Bird s...

At some point I told Megan James and Corin Roddick, who compose Purity Ring , that this was the bizarro episode: I'd mention something that a lot of songwriters do, and they told me that they actually did the opposite. But that's why I love this band because the music they create is so incredibly unique. Their latest album is the self-titled  Purity Ring.

Glen Hansard and Markéta Irglová of The Swell Season  feel no need to write every day. They both wait patiently for a spark. "I have no worries if I don't write anything. I'm available 24/7," Hansard says. "I never noodle, never rehearse, never just play around." For Irglová, she feels a current. "There's something calling me to the piano. There's a fee...