Songwriters on Process

All you need to know about Maya Hawke's dedication to wordcraft is summed up in this memory: "The day I fell in love with my husband was the day we got into a fight about free verse poetry versus formal poetry." (Hawke's husband is singer/songwriter Christian Lee Hutson, whom I interviewed last year.) Hawke is of course an actor (Stranger Things, Inside Out 2, among others) and a visual artist, but she's really a poet, first and foremost. Rarely have I encountered a songwriter with such passi...

Donovan Woods is the master of the pull quote when it comes to the songwriting process. His words are wise counsel for any songwriter. To wit: "A good song asks questions rather than provides wisdom," and "When I have writer's block, it's because I'm not reading enough." I'll quibble slightly with the latter quote only because I cannot imagine Woods getting writer's block: the last three minutes of this episode are nothing but Woods listing all the authors who inspire him. And that includes t...

Morgan Nagler has co-written with HAIM, Phoebe Bridgers, Kim Deal, Madi Diaz, and Margo Price among others. And now comes her fantastic debut solo album I've Got Nothing to Lose, and I'm Losing It. We go deep into her songwriting process on the pod, including a discussion of why physical movement is so important to the creative process.

It's the return of Carl Newman of The New Pornographers! We were just kids back in 2015 when I first interviewed Newman and we discussed his love of the 10cc song "Dreadlock Holiday." We return to that song in this episode, and we span the entirety of Newman's songwriting process, including a great discussion of why writing badly is so important and why gibberish is a great way to jump start the process. The New Pornographers' latest album is The Former Site Of on Merge Records.

"I very much consider myself a writer," Lindsey Jordan (Snail Mail) says. And any good writer has a ritual. Part of Jordan's ritual involves the balance between keeping the writing process precious and recognizing that too much preciousness can create a rut. Regardless, Jordan's love of reading (and poetry!) makes her one hell of a lyricist. Snail Mail's latest album is Ricochet.

Procrastinators unite! Thank you, Tyler Ballgame, you are a kindred spirit. Finally someone who admits that procrastination is a great tool for writing. So much has been written on the evils of procrastination, yet some people achieve peak efficiency only when they're under pressure. But sleep works for Ballgame too: as you'll hear, some of his best songs started as dreams. And his ideal state of mind for songwriting is what he calls "mindlessness." Tyler Ballgame's debut album is For t...

Jade Long and Jessica Thompson of Athens, Georgia based Hotel Fiction have a simple routine for their songwriting sessions: make some brownies, pour some wine. And they like to be outside. It's not complicated. But while food, drink, and the outdoors are all common sources of inspiration for songwriters, one element of the Hotel Fiction writing process is unique. When they're outside, they often prefer the top of a parking deck on the University of Georgia's campus. (Long and Thompson a...

Patton Magee of The Nude Party has the best reason why reading makes you a better songwriter: it gives you a stronger and more wide-ranging vocabulary, which in turn gives you more ways to express yourself. "Words that you rarely use are a lot more fun to play around with," he says on the pod. This reminds me of one of my favorite lines in William Zinsser's book On Writing Well, when he says that if a word comes too easily to you, don't use it because it's probably overused. The Nude Par...

"To write about something sad and dark, I need to feel content, to feel a sense of well being. I can't write when I'm depressed," Lucinda Williams told me. Much of my discussion with Williams focused on how we prepare to write. By her own admission, she's obsessed with paper. "I could spend hours in an office supply store," says Williams. A comfortable chair is necessary too, but not too comfortable because, well, it's easy to fall asleep in a deep chair. And coffee is important, not ne...

Why do so many of us feel the need to clean our space before we create? Melody Prochet (aka Melody's Echo Chamber) and I discuss why it's important to our respective writing processes. When she's not writing in that nice and tiny space, she's walking along the water, another important element to her songwriting. The latest album by Melody's Echo Chamber is called Unclouded.

“I’m a ‘go in phases’ type of gal. It took me a year and a half to write this record, but it came in blocks,” Gatlin says. It’s how she manages her routine in those blocks that makes her songwriting process so fascinating. Gatlin is most effective between 3pm and 5pm, and thanks to a typing class she took as a child, she can type those lyrics at 95 words per minute. She finds walks to be particularly inspiring for lyrics, but when she’s with her guitar, Gatlin sits cross-legged and gently roc...

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 changed over the years: they still write most of their songs in Etta's bedroom. But as you'll hear, there are e...

"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 scrolled through all the freewriting and thoughts she's written over the past year. "Look at this," she says. "I haven't writte...