by Tiger Biskup

Key Change: Baz Luhrmann

“Time After Time” by Cyndi Lauper

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My guest today is Baz Luhrmann, the award-winning director whose films include Moulin Rouge!, Strictly Ballroom, The Great Gatsby, Elvis, and Romeo + Juliet. His newest film is EPiC: Elvis Presley in Concert, a critically acclaimed documentary about Elvis that’s playing right now in theaters and in IMAX. Before becoming a massively successful film director, Baz began his showbiz career as an actor, and as a ballroom dancer, in Australia. His first film was Strictly Ballroom, which came out in 1992, and became one of the highest-grossing Australian films of all time. It was originally a play, and there’s a song in the film that was part of the story all the way back when it was first performed on stage. And that’s what Baz and I talked about for this episode.

You can buy or stream “Time After Time” by Cyndi Lauper here.

footnotes:
“One” by John Farnham
National Institute of Dramatic Art (NIDA), Cate Blanchett, and Mel Gibson
Ted Albert
Tara Morice and Craig Pearce

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by Tiger Biskup

Episode 310: Thompson Twins

“Hold Me Now”

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Thompson Twins originally formed in 1977 in Sheffield, in the UK. “Hold Me Now,” their iconic hit, came out as a single in November 1983, and eventually on their 1984 album, Into the Gap. That album went to number 1 in the UK and went platinum in the US. The song spent 21 weeks on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. So for this episode, I talked to the founding member of Thompson Twins, Tom Bailey, and he told me how he and his bandmates, Alannah Currie and Joe Leeway, made “Hold Me Now.”

You can buy or stream “Hold Me Now” here.

Illustration by Carlos Lerma.

footnotes:
Alex Sadkin – producer
Phil Thornalley – engineer
Boris Bransby Williams – drummer
RAK studios
Bob Marley
Oberheim synthesizers and Fairchild compressors
Bill Wyman and The Rolling Stones

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by Tiger Biskup

Episode 309: Silvana Estrada

“Como Un Pájaro”

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Silvana Estrada is a singer, songwriter, and producer from Veracruz, Mexico. She won the Latin Grammy for Best New Artist in 2022, and she’s been nominated for three others, including for her song “Como Un Pájaro,” which is the song that we talked about for this episode. It’s from her second album, which came out in 2025, but she started writing the song several years before that. So we talked about all the different versions of this song, and a couple of versions of Silvana herself, that emerged throughout the process.

You can buy or stream “Como Un Pájaro” here.

Illustration by Carlos Lerma.

For a transcript of this episode, click here.

footnotes:
Daniel Bitrán – engineer
Roberto Verástegui – piano
Casa Estudio El Desierto
Hiyao Miyazaki, My Neighbor Totoro, and Spirited Away

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