Key Change: Jason Schwartzman on the ‘Rushmore’ soundtrack

Jason Schwartzman, actor, songwriter, and musician, talks about how the soundtrack to 'Rushmore'—his first film—changed his life. I met Jason briefly in 2017, as he was leaving the room where I was supposed to interview the band Phoenix. I was shocked when he stopped on his way out to tell me he loved Song Exploder. Eight years later, I reached out to him to see if he’d want to be a guest on Key Change, and we ended up talking for almost two hours, just on the phone. By the time he came over to record, I felt like I’d met a kindred spirit who’d also been cataloguing his whole life through the songs he’d encountered along the way. The fact that we got to talk about one of my favorite movies, 'Rushmore,' made the experience even more meaningful and thrilling for me. For more, visit songexploder.net/jason-schwartzman. https://songexploder.net/jason-schwartzman

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Hrishikesh Hirway?

  You're listening to Song Exploder, where musicians take apart their songs and, piece by piece, tell the story of how they were made. I'm Rishi Kesh Hirway.

• 0:11Hrishikesh Hirway?

  I'm going to be on tour, playing some shows this fall. I'm going to be in London on Wednesday, November 18th. I'm going to be performing solo at Rough Trade Records on Denmark Street, and I'm going to be in conversation about my music moderated by one of my favorite actors and writers, Matthew Bainton. And a ticket to the show also gets you a copy of my album on vinyl or CD. And in December, I'm going to be on tour supporting S. Carrie. We're going to be playing a bunch of shows in the Northeast US. So I hope to see you in one of those places. You can find all the details and get links to tickets at songexploder.net/live. That's songexploder.net/live.

• 0:55Hrishikesh Hirway?

  This episode is sponsored by Tidal. If you're an artist or if you know somebody making music, you should know about Tidal Upload. It's a way to share and sell music without the usual barriers. You can upload your music directly to Tidal at no cost. You decide how you want to release it. You can share it publicly with Tidal listeners, or you can keep it private until you're ready. Or you can sell your music directly through Tidal Upload. Your music will also be considered by Tidal's editorial team for their playlists. And if your track is selected for their spotlight program, you'll get $1,000 bonus and you'll be on one of their marquee playlists. And now, Tidal has dropped its platform fee to 0%, which means you keep more of your earnings there than on any other platform.

• 1:39Hrishikesh Hirway?

  Visit tidal.com/songexploder to create an account and start uploading your music for free. That's tidal.com/songexploder for zero platform fees on every sale. Your music, your earnings.

• 1:56Hrishikesh Hirway?

  This episode is sponsored by LinkedIn. Anyone who's ever had to spend money on marketing knows how tricky it can be to feel like you've spent that money wisely. Well, with LinkedIn Ads, you can be sure that you'll get a great return on your investment. You can target your campaigns by company, industry, job title, and more. Spend $250 on your first campaign on LinkedIn Ads and get a $250 credit for the next one. Just go to LinkedIn.com/songexploder. That's LinkedIn.com/songexploder. Terms and conditions apply. This episode contains explicit language.

• 2:34Speaker 01

  I think the people you love are the people that you want to show things to. That's the kind of what it comes down to at the end of the day. It's like, it's like you can't wait to see their face when they like experience something. That's like, to me, like what I think like love is.

• 2:51Hrishikesh Hirway?

  This is Key Change, where I talk to fascinating people about the music that changed their lives. And I'm very excited to be joined today by Jason Schwartzman, who's been in so many incredible films and shows, including Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, The Darjeeling Limited, Across the Spider-Verse, the new movie Mountain Head, and so much more. In addition to being an actor, he's also a writer and musician. He makes music under the moniker Coconut Records, and he was also the drummer in the band Phantom Planet. I was first introduced to Jason's work in one of my all-time favorite films, Rushmore, which came out in 1998 and began his long history of working with director Wes Anderson. And we're going to talk about some of the music from that time in his life. Jason, thanks so much for being here.

• 3:34Speaker 01

  Amazing. I feel like I'm just listening to your, to the show. So forgive me, I was, I forgot that I was talking. I was listening to it. Well, thank you for having me. An honor. Definitely my favorite show.

• 3:48Hrishikesh Hirway?

  That's so nice. Thank you so much. Well, I want to start by asking you, when you started your acting career, first of all, how old were you? And had you been thinking about acting for a while? Was it something you'd wanted to do?

• 4:02Speaker 01

  No, not at all. So I was 17. This was 1997. I grew up going to the movies on the weekends and loved all kinds of films, but I never once thought that it was something that I would. Do or could do. But when I heard music, it did have a different effect on me. And I, maybe it's because you could listen to it at home. It was just a much more personal experience. And from a young age, I just sort of was like, I want to be in a band. And I want to make music and I want to make albums. I really was just interested in that. So that was my focus when we started Phantom Planet, which would have been the summer before ninth grade.

• 4:46Hrishikesh Hirway?

  Wow.

• 4:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, that was really, I mean, that was the super focus. You know, I didn't really partake in much other extracurricular activity outside of school. It was just like school and trying to make music with our band.

• 4:59Hrishikesh Hirway?

  Yeah.

• 4:59Speaker 01

  So no, to answer your question, no. But I will say that I loved plays and seeing plays and I liked writing. Just to go back a little bit, the summer before that, I had written a play and directed a play.

• 5:13Hrishikesh Hirway?

  Where did that production take place?

• 5:14Speaker 01

  So there was a camp that my uncle Francis had called Coppola Creativity Camp. He basically had this idea was like, everyone should be getting together in our family and kids and make something and present it to each other. It's going to be 10 days of just making things and sharing things. So I went up there and I had this play that I wanted to write. And basically, he was like, you could put on a playwright in this room. I'm going to do a play, you can do a play here. And it was really wild. And so I also, my cousin Sophia Coppola, she also directed a play called Bernice Bob's Her Hair. And she asked me if I'd be in that play. So I guess that was kind of my first experience with acting.

• 5:57Speaker 01

  And I was also, I'll say it, had a huge crush on a woman who took care of my brother and I. When we were teenagers, she was just like, I was pretty head over heels.

• 6:08Hrishikesh Hirway?

  Yeah.

• 6:10Speaker 01

  Going into my senior of high school, just so you can edit all that out and we can just keep, to answer your question, I did not want to be an actor. And I was going into my senior of high school and we had made our record, Phantom Planet Is Missing, and it hadn't come out yet. And that's right when I found out about Rushmore.

• 6:28Hrishikesh Hirway?

  And how did you find out about it?

• 6:29Speaker 01

  So how it happened was, my grandfather was a composer. He was no longer living at this time, which would have been 1997. But there was an event in Northern California. To celebrate his music. And it was a sort of a family event. And my mom asked me if I would go. We live in Los Angeles and I didn't want to go, to be honest with you. I wanted to do band practice and stay with my band. But she said, you know, you gotta go. It's my father's music. So I rented a tuxedo with tails and I flew up to San Francisco with my mom. And anyway, I was just, I was at a, this party, I guess, or the celebration of my grandfather's music.

• 7:14Speaker 01

  And there was a woman there named Davia Nelson, who, do you know Davia? Of course you do.

• 7:20Hrishikesh Hirway?

  Of course I do.

• 7:20Speaker 01

  Okay, so Davia, of course you do.

• 7:22Hrishikesh Hirway?

  Right, Davia Nelson of The Kitchen Scissors. Another Radiotopia show. Besides being this public radio icon, also has been a casting agent for a lot of Francis Ford Coppola films.

• 7:33Speaker 01

  Of course, yes. So here's what happened. We're at this party and Sophia says, Jason, come over here. And I walk over and she says, Jason, this is Davia Nelson. And Davia said, yes, I'm, I'm casting a film for a director named Wes Anderson. And they were looking for someone to portray this character in, named Max Fisher, in Wes's film. And the backstory of it, or what I hear later was that Sophia said, what's it about? She said, it's about this eccentric 15 year old who writes plays and is in love with an older woman. She says, this is like my cousin, Jason. She said, where is he? He said, right over there. So I remember, actually, my reaction was, well, I'm a drummer in a band and I don't

• 8:16Speaker 01

  think that I could do that, to be honest. But there are two people in my band who could be really good at what you're describing. And she said, no, no, you, I think you should do it. You could try to audition. I said, no, believe me. And I, you know, I just was very uncomfortable. And she said, look, just here's the phone number. Give me your address. And I wrote it down. I went back to Los Angeles and, you know, a few days later, a package arrived in a manila envelope. It said Rushmore. And I read it. It was the first script for a movie I'd ever read in my life.

• 8:49Hrishikesh Hirway?

  Yeah.

• 8:49Speaker 01

  I remember reading it and just thinking, whoever gets to play this part is so lucky. I called the number on the thing and I said, my name is Jason Schwartzman. I met someone named Davia Nelson. And it says, yes, we heard that she met you. And we would like you to come in this Friday at 12:30. Does that work for you? And I was like, absolutely. I said, what do I wear? And she said, whatever makes you feel comfortable, you know? But nothing was gonna make me really feel comfortable. I don't know what that means. So I figured, well, what I'll do is, I'm not gonna do well with the acting part of this, I don't think, but I will be remembered.

• 9:31Speaker 01

  So that was my whole thing, was I'm gonna dress up like this character is described in the script, like, try to deck myself out so that they would say, remember that kid who at least looked like? Anyway, that was my whole thing. And then I walked into this audition and there were two other kids dressed exactly like me. And I was like, son of a bitch. I was like, fuck. It's like, well, there goes that. That sucks. And then they said it was my turn. And I remember so distinctly walking down this hallway and I could see like Wes's foot over his knee, kinda going like bobbing like his foot. And he had, I believe they were Converse sandals, which I've never seen since.

• 10:16Speaker 01

  And he was young. He was 27. It was not what I was expecting. I was expecting like some fancy intimidating adult. And he just seemed like cool. And he said, hi. And I said, hi. And then I was wearing these New Balance at the time that had these like pink reflector ends on them. And he's like, oh, I like your shoes. And I was like, yeah, these are extra large girl shoes, cuz I can't, they don't make them. You know, we start talking and I'm feeling much better, like, we're good. We're not talking about auditioning. This is fun. And then we started to talk about music.

• 10:50Hrishikesh Hirway?

  How did you get started on that?

• 10:52Speaker 01

  Maybe I said I was a drummer. It's not hard to get me to talk about music. And he loves music. And we started talking about Weezer, Pinkerton, and going in depth about, I was going in depth about like all of this.

• 11:07Speaker 01

  Now we're talking about something that means a lot to me and I'm comfortable talking about this. And we had the greatest conversation about the first two Weezer albums. And once he knew Pinkerton, I honestly, it was like a code word or something. I think that it was like, we shared something. I don't know, it just immediately felt like a super connection. And then he said, okay, well now, let's, should we read it? Should we do it? And I, I thought, no, we should stop here. This is a great conversation. We could be friends. But anyway, he said, no, let's do it. And we started to read the scene and instantly, it just felt like I was just like with my friend.

• 11:52Speaker 01

  I don't know what happened, but I mean, I had no business being in the room. And it was just like this life-defining moment where he actually listened to me. He's one of the first, probably the first adult, like not in my family, who asked me a question and cared what I had to say about it. I was kind of surprised. Anyway, after we read the scene a few times, he said, what are you doing the rest of the day? I said, nothing, I skipped school to be here. He's like, well, hang out, I gotta read some other people and then maybe you can come back and we can do some more. So I ended up staying there for like four hours. And then I went home and then, by the way, I didn't get the part immediately.

• 12:34Speaker 01

  I had to go back and audition two more times. But then I finally got it. But then, I only had like three weeks before we started to go shoot it, or a month or something. And Wes had a car, this old Mercedes station wagon, and we were sitting in it at the studio. In Los Angeles. In Los Angeles, here at the Sony lot. And he gave me like a TDK mixtape. He's like, here's the soundtrack. And it was the soundtrack to Rushmore. It was all of the songs that he wanted to have in the movie. And he said, this is it. So you can, you can listen to this and just know these songs. So we sat in the car and he played this soundtrack and he talked over this music, saying, now this is what's happening.

• 13:19Speaker 01

  Now you're doing this. Now we're doing this. Now the elevator opens. Now you're walking out here. Like the whole thing. He described it to me, like in real time, over the soundtrack. And it was the perfect way to communicate too with me, because that's exactly what I needed.

• 13:36Hrishikesh Hirway?

  My conversation with Jason Schwartzman continues after this.

• 13:43Hrishikesh Hirway?

  There's a new podcast called Before the Moment with Nile Rodgers. In every legendary music career, there's a moment right before it all changes. And in every episode of this podcast, Nile Rodgers talks to a legendary musician about the choices, the events, and the relationships that shaped their career before the moment that everything changed for them. Every story is unique and opens a window into the lives of some of the biggest names in music. And Nile is the perfect person to lead these conversations because for over 50 years, he's played guitar with artists like Diana Ross, David Bowie, Madonna, Daft Punk, and Beyoncé. In the first season of the podcast, some of Nile's guests include John Legend, Miguel, and more.

• 14:27Hrishikesh Hirway?

  New episodes are coming out every other Tuesday. Listen to Before the Moment with Nile Rodgers wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks to Stio for sponsoring Song Exploder. I took a trip to Iceland this summer, and because it was the summer, I didn't really think about dressing for the cold. Even though I was hiking and I was planning on seeing some glaciers, I thought, it's August. But then I got there and I realized I made a huge mistake. Now, though, I have a Stio Hometown Hooded Jacket, and I just wished I'd gotten it before my trip. All of Stio's clothes are designed and tested in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, by locals who live, work, and ski in below-freezing temperatures.

• 15:09Hrishikesh Hirway?

  I'm headed back out into the cold this winter, but now I'll have my insulated hooded Stio jacket. Ski season's almost here, so gear up now, the way the locals do. Go to stio.com/songexploder for 20% off your order. That's S-T-I-O dot com slash songexploder. Stio dot com slash songexploder. Stio, designed and tested in Jackson Hole.

• 15:37Hrishikesh Hirway?

  This episode is sponsored by the podcast, What It's Like to Be. Do you ever think about what other people's workdays look like? Satisfying some of that curiosity is the idea at the heart of bestselling author Dan Heath's podcast, which is called, What It's Like to Be. In each episode, Dan interviews someone from a different profession to find out what it's like to be a professional Santa Claus, or a Secret Service agent, or a long haul truck driver, or an aerospace engineer at NASA, just to name a few examples. The show gives you an insider view into all kinds of jobs from a wide range of industries, answering questions like, what do mail carriers learn about us from our mail? There are so many jobs out there that exist only as titles in our imagination,

• 16:22Hrishikesh Hirway?

  if they even register that much. This show is a chance to reach beyond what you know, or think you know. If you're curious to learn more about the work lives of other people, check out What It's Like to Be, wherever you get podcasts.

• 16:38Hrishikesh Hirway?

  When Wes Anderson was playing you the soundtrack in his car,

• 16:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 16:41Hrishikesh Hirway?

  Did you already know any of those songs?

• 16:43Speaker 01

  No, I didn't know any of those songs. You know, Wes was also like an older brother is that feeling of dang, how does he know about these? What are the like, you know, and I knew the artist's son, but I was like, what is this song? What? Oh, my God. It's, I knew the kinks, but didn't know the kink. You know what I mean? It was like a real, it was basically just like a series of doors that someone just says, here, you could go through any of these.

• 17:11Hrishikesh Hirway?

  And what was the feeling you got when you heard those songs?

• 17:13Speaker 01

  Well, I think that, for instance, when I heard the Who song, a quick one while he's away.

• 17:19Hrishikesh Hirway?

  Yeah.

• 17:19Speaker 01

  It had a rebelliousness and a kind of attitude about it. You know, Wes also like had short hair and glasses and, you know, and very nice. But when you hear like that song, it's got a hidden. Wildness that was kind of like exciting to me. And I remember thinking like, okay, what is going on under this guy's hood? But I guess what I'm saying is it made me feel wild, like the character, in a way that I probably wouldn't have felt normally, especially the Who song.

• 17:49Hrishikesh Hirway?

  Yeah.

• 17:49Speaker 01

  That one felt like insane. And I think it made me feel crazy and it pumped me up. That was a really big thing, yeah. And certain kinds of songs, you know, they fit in that world. And there was a kind of somberness too to those songs, which also was interesting. I mean, now that I look back on it, he picked songs that I think have a kind of cloudy day feeling about them. You know, Baroque tea, dark wood lane in England. I don't know, I'm just, I don't know what it is. I was just like, it was different for me. It was a different thing and I liked it. Cause I had spent so much time focused on other parts of music.

• 18:29Hrishikesh Hirway?

  Yeah.

• 18:30Speaker 01

  And then when we made the movie, he had the soundtrack on the set. We were playing it live through speakers.

• 18:36Hrishikesh Hirway?

  And did that change the experience? How did that feel?

• 18:39Speaker 01

  Awesome. Cause then it's like, you know, I've never been in a movie. Like, you know how this interview started? I was like, I can't believe I'm in, I'm in your speakers. It's kind, it was like that for movies. It was like, I could, I was like, so I'm gonna be, let me get this straight. He's playing the creation song, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, while we're doing all the clubs.

• 18:58Hrishikesh Hirway?

  Yeah, the montage of all the clubs that Max is in.

• 19:01Speaker 01

  Yep. And he was blasting it from the speaker. And it was like you were in the movie, but in real life. I, you know what I mean? Like, it was like, this is the movie. It was a perfect way to do it. Cause like, we could time it all out. You could do it to the songs, you could do it to the drums. It was like my favorite kind of thing. It was like somewhere between acting and being in a band at one moment. You know what I mean? It was really cool. I've never done anything like that before. Directors don't typically play music on set, really.

• 19:30Hrishikesh Hirway?

  Yeah.

• 19:30Speaker 01

  And in the high school, I remember like blasting these songs in the, in these hallways. He'd blast them on, in the hallways that had the speakers sometimes and the camera dolly. It was like they went hand in hand. Even in the scene, like when my character climbs in through a window and he is talking to Miss Cross, who's a woman that he has strong feelings for, there's a song that's playing.

• 19:57Speaker 01

  Even that was playing in the room.

• 20:01Speaker 01

  Very powerful ways of easing you into it.

• 20:07Hrishikesh Hirway?

  Yeah.

• 20:07Speaker 01

  And it made you feel like you were in the movie. I can't describe it, but if the songs weren't playing, I definitely wouldn't have done the same thing, if that makes any sense. I think I was performing to the songs.

• 20:18Hrishikesh Hirway?

  Yeah.

• 20:18Speaker 01

  Just because I loved music. So it was just hard not to start doing it to the songs.

• 20:23Hrishikesh Hirway?

  Do you get the sense that Wes Anderson would have done that anyway? Or do you think he was doing that at all for your benefit? Because he knew how much you connected with music.

• 20:31Speaker 01

  I really don't know. But it's continued to be a big part of our... We did this movie, The Dark Gene Unlimited, and we were playing this... We were listening to music to and from. It was just like, it becomes a part of the rhythm. And that excitement about music still sustains. I mean, it's such a big part of Wes and I's friendship even to this day. It's like, I think the people you love are the people that you want to show things to. That's kind of what it comes down to at the end of the day. It's like, you can't wait to see their face when they experience something. That's to me what I think love is.

• 21:12Hrishikesh Hirway?

  It sounds like this experience being both your first time on a set and also just the age you were, it was kind of like school for you.

• 21:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 21:22Hrishikesh Hirway?

  And I'm wondering if it was so formative that you then tried to take that experience or a version of that experience and try and recreate it for yourself in subsequent projects?

• 21:33Speaker 01

  Yes. I mean, so I did this movie, The Hunger Games. For that movie, for The Hunger Games, for instance, I was like, what could my characters like? What's his song? Like, what's his... And I wanted it to be "Putting on the Ritz" by Taco. Because that's really like what that... It's like this weird futuristic but past. And so that's the song.

• 21:56Hrishikesh Hirway?

  Yeah.

• 21:56Speaker 01

  And when I look at like, I have playlists on my phone of all the different things I've done.

• 22:00Hrishikesh Hirway?

  Yeah.

• 22:00Speaker 01

  And it's like, I see all that stuff. I was listening to that and that and that and that. I'm sure a lot of actors will say that music is a big part of their process. Well, first of all, I don't really have a process because I wasn't trained. So I'm sort of... Scrambling, you know, but the one through line has been music. And so any excuse to make a playlist, I'm gonna do it.

• 22:26Hrishikesh Hirway?

  Yeah.

• 22:26Speaker 01

  And I'm gonna call it acting. I'm gonna call it quote unquote, this is getting into the character. Really, I mean, everyone else is learning their lines and I'm like there making a playlist. I mean, that's what I will do because really what is it? I just want to listen to music and I just want to discover music and I just want to discover more music. And so it's just an excuse really to keep learning.

• 22:53Hrishikesh Hirway?

  There was one thing you told me on the phone, which was that you will ask a director, what kind of song a scene is?

• 23:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, so a director, they are the conductor of the piece. And they have the whole thing in perspective because some songs on the album, like on an album, for instance, are like, that's the hit. And then some songs are, this is like the album closer and it doesn't have a chorus. And then this song is the six eight song. Just whatever the contours are of that shape, that's the experience that they want to make. I'm asking the director, like, where are we in the set? That's how I think of things.

• 23:32Hrishikesh Hirway?

  Do you usually get helpful responses back when you ask that?

• 23:35Speaker 01

  Yes, I mean, sometimes, sometimes I do. I mean, now I kind of tailor my questions more to the person. Because I also don't want, like, I love music, so it's not really fair of me to be like, what track number would you say this scene is? Like, and they're like, what are you talking, like, it's like, oh, you don't know what track it is? Like, I, that's just how I think. I forget that I'm a bit of an indoor kid in that respect. So I like metaphors and I do well when they typically are related to music. Yeah, sometimes I get good answers, sometimes I get, people don't know. So that's what's fun about this shit. Pardon my French, and that just sounds so stupid.

• 24:16Speaker 01

  If I saw that in writing, I'd be like, he says that's what's fun about this shit.

• 24:22Hrishikesh Hirway?

  That's a question you basically didn't have to ask on Rushmore. Because before you even ask it, Wes Anderson is playing the song.

• 24:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 24:29Hrishikesh Hirway?

  And so you're getting a cue from the feeling of that song, how you might approach the scene.

• 24:35Speaker 01

  Absolutely. It's hard to say if I hadn't worked with Wes, because I don't think I maybe would. Would I be doing this? I don't know.

• 24:43Hrishikesh Hirway?

  So all the ways that your love of music and sort of your natural fluency and way of thinking about music played into this experience with Rushmore and then like continues to be a part of your acting. I was wondering if that experience with Rushmore and those songs, did that come back around to influence your own music?

• 25:03Speaker 01

  Certainly not immediately. Like, I think right after I finished Rushmore, for instance, I went back and finished my album. And, you know, the irony is that the movie came out before the album did.

• 25:15Hrishikesh Hirway?

  Yeah.

• 25:15Speaker 01

  And then when the album came out, they said, oh, an actor with a band. And I was like, but I've been doing this forever, or, you know, pretty much forever. I'm 17, but I've been doing this every night, you know, trying to get this band going. So I think when Rushmore was finished, I really didn't think I was going to act again. I was back into band mode. So I don't think I absorbed a lot of the textures and those things from that movie in a way that I could initially have sprinkled them into my music anywhere. I wish I had.

• 25:51Hrishikesh Hirway?

  Did you ever tell Wes Anderson after the fact how significant that conversation before your audition was for you?

• 26:00Speaker 01

  I never told him, like, hey, but he definitely is aware of, aware that it was a big day for me. And yeah, I remember everything about it. You know, sometimes I'll just be in a store and like, one of these songs will come on and I'm back there instantly. You know what I mean? I'm just back and it's cloudy and I'm in Houston and I'm 17 and I don't know what I'm going to do with my life. And I met this person who is going to change my life, who I love. And I'm excited. And it's, it all comes back.

• 26:35Hrishikesh Hirway?

  Thank you so much.

• 26:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, thank you. Is that all right?

• 26:37Hrishikesh Hirway?

  That's beautiful. If you haven't seen Rushmore yet, go watch it right now. And then go listen to the Rushmore soundtrack, which I feel was as formative for me as it was for Jason, and all I did was see the movie. Then watch all of Jason's other work and listen to his own music, which he makes under the name Coconut Records. Visit songexploder.net/kechange for more Key Change episodes and for a playlist with all the songs that have been discussed on the series. I'll be back with a new Song Exploder episode next time, but stay tuned for more Key Change episodes in the future. This episode was produced by me and Mary Dolan with production assistance from Tiger Biscop. Song Exploder is a proud member of Radiotopia from PRX, a network of independent, listener-supported,

• 27:22Hrishikesh Hirway?

  artist-owned podcasts. You can learn more about our shows at radiotopia.fm. If you'd like to hear more from me about what I'm watching and listening to and thinking about, you can subscribe to my newsletter, which you can find on the Song Exploder website. You can also get a Song Exploder t-shirt at songexploder.net/shirt. I'm Rishi K. Sherway. Thanks for listening.

• 27:47Speaker 02

  Radiotopia. From PRX.