John Flansburgh and John Linnell of They Might Be Giants take an hour out of their busy tour schedule to talk with Simon and Brian about their new album Nanobots; their approach to songwriting; the Dial-A-Song service; writing music for children; their collaborations with production team Clive Langer and Alan Winstanley on songs like ‘Birdhouse in Your Soul’, and more.
Download this episode Subscribe in iTunes Listen to Spotify playlist© 2013 Sodajerker. Some rights reserved.
Our interview with Richard M. Sherman has made the virtual pages of Songwriting Magazine, the brilliant and comprehensive UK based website dedicated to the art and craft. Thanks to the kind people at Songwriting for featuring our podcast and our interviews so prominently. You may remember that our Ben Folds Five interview also made the cut a few months ago.
Episode 40 of Sodajerker On Songwriting is due for release tomorrow and features an hour with the seminal alternative American band They Might Be Giants. So look out for that! In the meantime, head over to Songwriting to read the Richard M. Sherman piece in full.
We recently partnered with Audioboo to create a channel on their platform devoted to the Sodajerker On Songwriting podcast. You can now hear all of our interviews in full on this page with their lovely and easy to use audio player.
That’s not all though! Audioboo have featured our channel alongside the BBC and other organisations on their homepages and have plucked our Richard M. Sherman episode for inclusion among featured episodes.
Read more
Singer-songwriter P. F. Sloan, known the world over as the author of political anthems such as ‘Eve of Destruction’ (Barry McGuire) and popular hits like ‘Secret Agent Man’ (Johnny Rivers), ‘A Must to Avoid’ (Herman’s Hermits) and ‘Summer Means Fun’ (Jan & Dean), joins Sodajerker to talk about starting in music as a teenager, his songwriting partnership with Steve Barri, the heady successes of the 1960s, and the many struggles that pushed him away from music for more than 30 years.
Download this episode Subscribe in iTunes Listen to Spotify playlist© 2013 Sodajerker. Some rights reserved.
Our interview with Ben Folds Five has recently been featured in Songwriting Magazine, a fantastic website dedicated to the art and craft of making original music. Thanks to everyone at Songwriting for for their excellent transcription and for the nice mention of our show.
We’re currently on a production hiatus with the podcast but we’ll be back soon for the run up to episode 50. In the meantime, head over to Songwriting to read the piece in full.
Having had two great podcast interviews postponed in the space of a fortnight, we were more than a little pleased to see some love for our Sherman Brothers episode in the form of this blog post by the great Cory Doctorow over at Boing Boing.
This single blog post has meant that, overnight, our interview with Richard M. Sherman has become our most downloaded episode ever, with thousands upon thousands of new listeners grabbing the file and many of you sharing the link on Twitter too. Thanks to Cory for pointing the traffic hose at us and cheers to all of the other blogs that ran with the story. You can follow Cory Doctorow on Twitter, here.
If you haven’t yet heard the episode in question, it’s here.
As one half of The Sherman Brothers, Richard M. Sherman is responsible for co-writing the most memorable Disney songs of all time. In this hour of conversation, Mr Sherman joins Simon and Brian to talk through landmark works like his Academy Award-winning compositions for Mary Poppins, and so much more.
Download this episode Subscribe in iTunes Listen to Spotify playlist© 2013 Sodajerker. Some rights reserved.
Martyn Ware and Glenn Gregory of Heaven 17 chat with Simon and Brian about the creative processes behind songs like ‘(We Don’t Need This) Fascist Groove Thang’, ‘Let’s All Make a Bomb’ (Penthouse and Pavement), and gems from The Luxury Gap. Martyn and Glenn also talk in detail about their early lives in Sheffield, their approach to synthesisers and recording technology, and early songs for The Human League such as ‘Almost Medieval’ and ‘Being Boiled’.
Download this episode Subscribe in iTunes Listen to Spotify playlist© 2013 Sodajerker. Some rights reserved.
Just a quick update from us on what’s happening with the On Songwriting podcast. You might be pleased to know that we are currently being featured by Apple on the front of the iTunes podcasts homepage in the UK and Europe for our interview with Oscar, Grammy and Golden Globe winning Hall of Fame songwriter Paul Williams (The Carpenters, Bugsy Malone, The Muppets).
Thanks to Paul for such a fun conversation. We hope you’ll take a listen. You can subscribe to the podcast in iTunes, or just listen to it on our website.
Read more
Just wanted to alert our podcast listeners to this nice mention for the show in the Best of Liverpool section of the Liverpool Echo, March 7, 2013. Thanks to Merseyside’s foremost newspaper for the hat tip, it’s great to be named ‘Ones to Watch’ – or ‘Ones to Listen To’ if you will…
Lots of great guests coming up. Subscribe for free in iTunes so that you don’t miss them!
Oscar, Grammy and Golden Globe-winning Hall of Fame songwriter Paul Williams sits down with Sodajerker to talk about his approach to the art and craft. Paul describes the creative process behind hits like ‘We’ve Only Just Begun’ and ‘Rainy Days and Mondays’ for The Carpenters, as well as songs for films such as ‘The Rainbow Connection’ (The Muppet Movie), ‘Evergreen’ (A Star is Born), Phantom of the Paradise, Ishtar, and Bugsy Malone.
Download this episode Subscribe in iTunes Listen to Spotify playlist© 2013 Sodajerker. Some rights reserved.
Harry Shearer, the actor, writer and musician known for his work on Spinal Tap and The Simpsons, talks with Simon and Brian about writing the songs for his latest album Can’t Take A Hint. In addition to describing his process on songs like ‘Celebrity Booze Endorser’, ‘Deaf Boys’ and ‘Autumn in New Orleans’, Harry talks in detail about his work with Michael McKean and Christopher Guest on Spinal Tap classics like ‘Big Bottom’, and songs from A Mighty Wind, such as ‘Old Joe’s Place’ and ‘The Good Book Song’.
Download this episode Subscribe in iTunes Listen to Spotify playlist© 2013 Sodajerker. Some rights reserved.
To support the podcast and help us keep it free from adverts, click the button below:
Episode 288 – Bonnie “Prince” BillyMay 2, 2025
Episode 287 – Gary BarlowApril 20, 2025
Episode 286 – Brandi CarlileApril 11, 2025
RSS (ALL POSTS) 
