"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 long drives from Calgary to Vancouver or Winnipeg to Calgary. I’m always trying to recreate the language then."William Prince's latest album is Further From the Country
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Jay Som
"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 says. And there's no better place for Duterte's introspection than at her kitchen sink, doing the dishes. Jay Som's latest album is Belong on Polyvinyl Records.
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Hayes Carll
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 away from the knock at the door, even when it's inconvenient," he says now. Carll's latest album is We're Only Human.
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Mitch Rowland
"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 Sugar" and "Golden." (Rowland's wife Sarah Jones is the drummer in the band.) His songwriting has appeared on all three of Styles's albums. Rowland's songwriting process involves finding time for the eureka moments. He likes to mow the lawn, for example. Walking is an also big part of Rowland's process, so he never listens to music when he walks. And as he told me, "A tremendous amount of water has landed on my phone in the shower."Rowland's latest album is Whistling Pie.
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Paul Muldoon
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.” He's a Pulitzer Prize winner, a former poetry editor at The New Yorker, and currently a professor at Princeton University. But Muldoon has a side gig as a songwriter, which is why he’s here. So if you’re a writer in any capacity, songwriter or not, listen to this episode as we go deep into the writing process of one of the most significant poets of the past hundred years. The latest album by Paul Muldoon & Rogue Elephant is Visible From Space.
In-depth interviews with songwriters about their songwriting process. Nothing else. No talk of band drama, band names, or tour stories. Treating songwriters as writers, plain and simple. By Ben Opipari, English Lit Ph.D.
Canada - english