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Mumford & Sons are a Grammy-winning band that formed in London in 2007. They’ve put out four albums, and sold millions of copies. Their last three albums have all debuted at number one on the Billboard charts. The most recent of those albums is Delta, which came out in November 2018. The band is made up of Marcus Mumford, Ben Lovett, Winston Marshall, and Ted Dwane, and in this episode, Marcus and Ben break down a song from Delta called “Beloved.” You’ll how the song went from Marcus’s original raw voice memo to the intricate finished track.

You can buy or stream “Beloved” here, and buy Delta on vinyl here.

For a transcript of this episode, click here.

Illustration by Carlos Lerma.

footnotes
Hammond Organ
Paul Epworth
“Six Pianos” – Steve Reich
Yamaha DX
Voicelive Harmonizer
Yebba

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A post shared by Song Exploder (@songexploder) on Feb 20, 2019 at 1:50pm PST

Phoebe Bridgers is a singer-songwriter from Los Angeles. In September 2017, she released her debut album, Stranger in the Alps. One of the breakout songs from that album was “Scott Street,” a song Phoebe co-wrote with her drummer, Marshall Vore. In this episode, Phoebe and Marshall break down how the song went from an unfinished cassette demo, to the finished album version.

After the full song plays, there’s a bonus segment where Phoebe and I talk about dealing with writer’s block. In the time since Stranger in the Alps came out, Phoebe has released another album, “Punisher,” which came out in June 2020. Plus, she’s part of the bands boygenius and Better Oblivion Community Center. So between all of that, she’s made a lot of music. I feel like I’m constantly plagued by writer’s block, and so partly for my own benefit, I wanted to find out how she manages to be so prolific. You can hear our converstation in this episode, too.

You can buy or stream “Scott Street” here. You can buy the album Strangers in the Alps on vinyl here.

For a transcript of this episode, click here.

Illustration by Carlos Lerma.

footnotes
Tony Berg – Producer
Optigan
Rob Moose – String player

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A post shared by Song Exploder (@songexploder) on Feb 6, 2019 at 10:04am PST

The Daily is the New York Times’ daily news podcast, hosted by Michael Barbaro. Every day, over 1.7 million people download the show. It launched in February 2017, and in honor of its two-year anniversary, we’re publishing a bonus episode about the show’s theme song, which was composed by Jim Brunberg and Ben Landsverk of Wonderly. This episode was originally published on the New York Times website, in 2018.

For a transcript of this episode, click here.

footnotes
Theme to HBO’s Westworld, by composer Ramin Djawadi (hear his Song Exploder episode on Game of Thrones’ theme song here)

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