Song Exploder Folgen

Sam Smith is a Grammy and Oscar-winning singer and songwriter from London, England. Their first album, In the Lonely Hour, came out in 2014. It went quintuple platinum in the US, and the biggest hit from that album is the song “Stay With Me,” which has over 2 billion streams on Spotify alone. For this episode, in honor of the song’s 10th anniversary, I talked to Sam about how “Stay With Me” was made. I also talked to Sam’s frequent collaborator, Jimmy Napes, who is an award-winning producer and songwriter as well. The two of them tell the story of how the song began, and how it turned into the hit that it became. And then, years later, how it changed again.For more, visit songexploder.net/sam-smith.

Fenne Lily is a singer and songwriter from Dorset, England. She released her first album in 2018, but I didn’t find her music until 2023, when she put out her third album, Big Picture. The album she released in between those two was one that got a little lost in the lockdown, when all her touring plans around it got canceled. All of that plays into the story she tells in this episode, about making her song “Lights Light Up” from that third album. I spoke to Fenne in front of a live audience at WBUR CitySpace in Boston. Coming up, you’ll hear how the song evolved across different versions of demos and then in the studio, where she recorded it with Grammy-nominated producer Brad Cook.For more, visit songexploder.net/fenne-lily.

Last year, Vagabon released her third album, Sorry I Haven’t Called, which I’ve been listening to a lot. So I wanted to revisit an episode that I recorded with her back in 2020, about her breakout song "Water Me Down." The episode also features the voice of Eric Littmann, who co-produced the track. He passed away in June 2021, way too young. Vagabon’s new album is dedicated to him. If you haven’t heard this episode before, I hope you like it. When Laetitia Tamko started making the second Vagabon album, she really wanted to produce the entire thing on her own. It would be a new sound, and producing was still a relatively new skill to her, but she wanted to tackle it head on, and do it all herself. On this song, though, "Water Me Down," Laetitia actually has a co-producer, Eric Littmann. It’s the one exception to her otherwise entirely self-produced album. In this episode, she breaks down how she and Eric made the song, and why it was worth making that exception. For more, visit songexploder.net/vagabon.