Song Exploder Folgen

The xx formed in 2005, when they were still in high school. They signed to the UK label Young, and put out their first album in 2009. It won the prestigious Mercury Prize, and was named one of the best albums of the year by Rolling Stone, Pitchfork and more. Since then, the Guardian has named it one of the best albums of the 21st century. This year, the three band members, Romy Croft, Oliver Sim, and Jamie xx played together as The xx for the first time in 8 years. I spoke to them in between the weekends at Coachella, where they were opening their sets with the song “Crystalised.” It’s the first song they ever released, back in April 2009, when the lineup also included Baria Qureshi on guitar. I spoke to Romy, Jamie and Oliver, here at my studio, about how they first found each other, and how they made “Crystalised.”For more info, visit songexploder.net/the-xx.

The legendary singer/songwriter Yusuf / Cat Stevens released his first album in 1967. He’s a member of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, and his albums have sold millions. In 2020, he released Tea for the Tillerman², a re-imagining of his hit 1970 album Tea for the Tillerman. In the song “Father & Son,” he sings a duet between the two title characters, doing both voices. But in the 2020 version, he approached this song in a kind of astonishing way—he recorded the part of the father, but for the part of the son, he used a live recording of himself from 1970, taken from a show he played at The Troubadour in Los Angeles. So the two parts are still both sung in his voice, but 50 years apart. In this episode, the 200th episode of Song Exploder, Yusuf / Cat Stevens tells the story of how he created, and then re-created “Father & Son.”For more, visit songexploder.net/yusuf-cat-stevens.

Today, we're sharing an episode of Nate DiMeo's wonderful podcast, The Memory Palace, which helped inspire both Song Exploder, and a song on my upcoming album. So today, I want to present a kind of two-part story. The first part: "The Thundering Herd, The Vanishing American," from The Memory Palace. And in the second half of the episode, I’ll tell you how it ended up unexpectedly unlocking a song that I’d been trying to figure out. For more episodes of The Memory Palace, visit thememorypalace.us. To pre-order my album visit keeledscales.com. To get tickets to one of my shows on tour, visit hrishikesh.co.