Creativity and the creation of a work is sometimes elusive. It is sometimes unclear where the urge to make something comes from, how you come up with a certain idea and why you make choices to achieve the final result. That is something that is part of every creative expression, be it movies, paintings, music or anything else. Song Exploder is a podcast that has been interviewing musicians about a song they’ve created for years. The music itself is separated using the original files, sometimes per instrument. You will hear why certain choices have been made, what feeling is behind it or what message is being conveyed. They are relatively short episodes, often less than half an hour, in which you hear the final song in its entirety after the story and the music. With the Song Exploder series, podcaster Hrishikesh Hirway makes the step towards a visual medium with the same concept.
The four episodes feature the songs “3 Hour Drive” by Alicia Keys and Sampha, “Losing My Religion” by R.E.M., “Wait for it” from the musical Hamilton and “LA” by Ty Dolla $ ign. A nicely varied offer in various genres, in which it becomes clear with every episode how much the music means to these artists. Alicia Keys tells how being a mother and the fact that Sampha had just lost his mother during the making of “3 Hour Drive” was an important influence. You see Lin Manuel Miranda’s enthusiasm for certain parts of the song and discover that R.E.M. actually didn’t want “Losing My Religion” to be a hit. The enthusiasm is contagious and the story behind each song gives it an extra depth.
&nbnsp;While in some ways it is nice to see the reaction of artists to their own music in stripped-down form, this ultimately adds little to the original audio form. In fact, it is precisely this visual component that makes every episode feel much less information-dense compared to the podcast. 25 minutes of an episode of the Netflix series feels a lot more light-hearted, which in my opinion means that something is lost. Still, this series features artists who were not yet part of the podcast, and in that regard is the only way to hear the stories behind these artists’ songs. The series looks nice and the visualization during the songs themselves is also worth mentioning. The concept of the podcast is still there, but more (in this case the visual component) isn’t always better.
[score6]