Songwriter and guitarist Johnny Marr, loved by pop fans worldwide for his work with The Smiths, The The, Electronic, Modest Mouse and The Cribs, joins Simon and Brian for a conversation about the writing processes behind his fantastic new solo album The Messenger. Johnny also talks in detail about his musical influences, growing up in Manchester, his songwriting partnership with Morrissey, and his collaborations with artists like Kirsty MacColl (‘Walking Down Madison’) and Billy Bragg (‘Sexuality’).
Download this episode Subscribe in iTunes Listen to Spotify playlist© 2013 Sodajerker. Some rights reserved.
The Anfield Wrap is a hugely popular award-winning podcast, website and radio show based in Liverpool. They’ve just published the second issue of their lovely free iPad/iPhone magazine containing an interview with Simon and Brian of Sodajerker. In the article, entitled ‘Going for a Song’, the songwriting team and fellow Liverpool-based podcasters talk about the first year of their popular show Sodajerker On Songwriting, how they got started, and some of their prominent guests.
Thanks to John Gibbons for conducting the interview. Download the free app from iTunes and read the interview on your iPad or iPhone.
Influential New Orleans songwriter, producer, arranger and pianist Allen Toussaint sits down with Simon and Brian to discuss his long career including the writing of classic songs like ‘Mother in Law’ (Ernie K-Doe), ‘Whipped Cream’ (Herb Alpert), ‘Working in the Coal Mine’ (Lee Dorsey), ‘Here Come the Girls’ (Ernie K-Doe), ‘Southern Nights’ (Glen Campbell), ‘Happiness’ (The Pointer Sisters) and more. Allen talks in depth about his creative process and also gives advice for young songwriters.
Download this episode Subscribe in iTunes Listen to Spotify playlist© 2013 Sodajerker. Some rights reserved.
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.
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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.
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Episode 291 – Jim JamesJuly 1, 2025
Episode 290 – Pete DohertyJune 4, 2025
Episode 289 – Scissor SistersMay 13, 2025
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