Brittany Howard is the guitarist and lead singer of the four-time Grammy-winning band Alabama Shakes. This month, she’s releasing her first solo album, called Jaime. In this episode, Brittany breaks down the song “Stay High,” which was the album’s first single. She started working on it while staying at a house in Topanga Canyon, near LA.

You can buy or stream “Stay High” here. Watch the official music video below.

For a transcript of this episode, click here.

Illustration by Carlos Lerma.

footnotes
Topanga Canyon
Shawn Everett – Engineer
Nate Smith – Drummer
Zac Cockrell – Bass
Celesta
Robert Glasper

Robyn is a Swedish singer and songwriter. Her first album came out in 1995, when she was 16 years old. It went platinum in the US, double-platinum in Sweden. Since then, she’s been nominated for five Grammys and started her own record label. But there was an eight-year gap between Robyn’s album Body Talk, which came out in 2010, and her most recent album, Honey, which came out last October. Time, Rolling Stone, and Pitchfork all named it one of the best albums of the year.

For Song Exploder, Robyn breaks down the song “Honey,” the title track from that album. The first time the public heard the song was in a 2017 episode of the HBO show Girls, but that’s not the final version that was released on the album. In this episode, Robyn traces the long history of how she made “Honey,” a song that The New York Times called “her masterpiece.”

You can buy or stream “Honey” here.

For a transcript of this episode, click here.

Illustration by Carlos Lerma.

footnotes
Collaborators on “Honey” –
Markus Jägerstedt
Klas Åhlund
Joseph Mount of Metronomy
Phillipe Zdar of Cassius

Justin Vernon founded the band Bon Iver in 2006. Bon Iver’s released four albums and won two Grammys, including Best New Artist.

The most recent album i,i came out in August 2019, and in this episode, Justin breaks down a song from it called “Holyfields,.” He’s joined by producers Chris Messina and Brad Cook. We spoke to him in July, from his studio in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, where the song started. They finished it at Sonic Ranch studio in Tornillo, Texas, on the border between the US and Mexico.

You can buy or stream “Holyfields,” here.

For a transcript of this episode, click here.

Illustration by Carlos Lerma.

footnotes
EML Electrocomp 101
Yamaha Reface CS
The Messina
Rob Moose – Strings