Broken Record

Daniel Kessler grew up between London, Paris, and Washington, D.C., listening to his older brother’s early UK rock records. He picked up guitar as a teenager, the same day he quit skateboarding, and after moving to New York in the late ’90s, he set out to find musicians serious enough to start a band. In 1997, that band became Interpol and when their debut Turn on the Bright Lights came out in 2002, it helped define a new wave of New York indie bands, alongside the Strokes and Yeah Yeah Yeahs, and topped Pitchfork’s year-end list. More than two decades later, Kessler remains the musical architect of Interpol, writing the foundation of the band’s songs, often alone on a classical guitar before bringing them to his bandmates. The band has now made eight albums together, and their latest, This Mirror Weighs a Ton, is their first record made in New York in more than a decade. Produced by Andrew Wyatt, it expands Interpol’s familiar sound with more experimental textures—and feat

Brittany Howard has never been the type to do things quietly. Whether it was fronting Alabama Shakes with a voice that could fill a room and level it in the same breath, or striking out on her own with two solo records that pulled her sound in wilder and more personal directions, she's spent the last decade refusing to stay in one place for long. Now she's back with her bandmates—Zac Cockrell and Heath Fogg— for a new Alabama Shakes album, I Must Be Dreaming, their first in 11 years. And on today's episode, Brittany sits down with Justin Richmond to talk about what it took to get the band back together after a long break and what the new album sounds like on the other side of it. You can hear a playlist of some of our favorite songs from Brittany Howard and The Alabama Shakes HERE.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In Revisionist History's new season The Staten Island Problem, senior producer Ben Naddaff-Hafrey investigates the story of what was, at the time, the biggest secession movement in the U.S. since the Civil War. The Staten Island Problem reconstructs the battle for New York City amidst the turbulent early 1990s—the rise of Rudy Giuliani, the peak of the homicide rate, young Donald Trump, and the first Black mayor of New York—all through the prism of the city’s Forgotten Borough. At the height of the secession movement, the Wu-Tang Clan formed on Staten Island. Here’s a tour of early 1990s hip-hop and the hidden history of the group. Find more episodes of Revisionist History: The Staten Island Problem wherever you get podcasts.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Harvey Mason Jr. grew up steeped in music. His father, Harvey Mason Sr., was half of Herbie Hancock's Headhunters rhythm section and played on countless sessions through the '70s and '80s. After a brief detour through college basketball, Harvey Mason Jr. built his own life in music, starting where a lot of careers do: writing jingles. From there he assembled a production and songwriting résumé that includes Aretha Franklin, Michael Jackson, Justin Bieber, and Beyoncé, along with film work spanning Dreamgirls, Straight Outta Compton, Pitch Perfect, and the recent Michael Jackson biopic. Then, in January 2020, his path took an unexpected turn. The Recording Academy, the organization behind the Grammy Awards, installed him as interim and eventually full-time CEO. He stepped into the job at a moment of institutional crisis and set about remaking it from the inside: expanding membership, eliminating secret voting committees, and pushing the organization to be more diverse, transparent, and ref

My friend W. Kamau Bell has a new show out, Who's With Me?. Known for having conversations about the issues that divide, enrage, and confuse us, Kamau sits down with someone he admires to give them their flowers, ask his most burning questions, and invite his guest to give him and his audience homework on how to make the world a better place. Daveed Diggs joins Kamau to discuss his hip-hop career, parenthood, breaking out with Hamilton, and pursuing creative projects with friends. Kamau gives Daveed his flowers for being intentional with the work he selects. From his rap group to his role in the final season of The Boys, to his new film Magic Hour, Daveed busts his ass with projects he believes in. Donate to Cool Hand Series at coolhandseries.org to support bringing the arts into the prison systems. Find new episodes of Who's With Me? with W. Kamau Bell on YouTube or wherever you get podcasts.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Melissa Auf der Maur came of age in Montreal's bohemian art scene in the '80s and early '90s, at the very moment that alternative rock was becoming the defining sound of a generation. Through an unlikely chain of events, her band Tinker landed an opening slot for the Smashing Pumpkins, and Billy Corgan, sensing her natural talent on bass, recommended her to Courtney Love. What followed was a turbulent apprenticeship. Auf der Maur joined Hole for the Live Through This tour in 1994, just weeks after the deaths of Kurt Cobain and Hole's prior bassist, Kristen Pfaff. She later toured with the Smashing Pumpkins, released two solo albums, and has since built a life as a musician, photographer, and cultural curator, co-founding Basilica Hudson, a multidisciplinary arts center in New York's Hudson Valley. Melissa Auf der Maur's book, "Even the Good Girls Will Cry" is a bestseller, part rock memoir, part travel diary, and part psychedelic scrapbook. It's a vivid dispatch from the last analog decade that captures that

Today we're revisiting a conversation with acclaimed British guitarist Johny Marr. Marr started playing guitar as a young teenager growing up in Manchester. When he turned 15 he dropped out of school and moved to London to join the band Sister Ray. A couple years later he would help form The Smiths with Morrissey, Mike Joyce, and Marr’s friend and bassist, Andy Rourke. After The Smiths broke up in 1987, Marr went on to collaborate with an array of different musicians and play in bands like The Pretenders, The The, and Modest Mouse. On today’s episode Justin Richmond talks to Johnny Marr about his exciting work scoring movies with Pharrell and Hans Zimmer. Marr also recalls the terror he felt performing live in front of stadiums full of fans with The Pretenders on U2’s Joshua Tree tour. And he talks about the time he bought a Fender Stratocaster while hanging out with Oasis’ Noel Gallager. That Strat has nine pickups and it eventually led to him writing one the best songs of his solo ca

Joe Jackson showed up in the late '70s UK New Wave scene, all nervous energy and biting wit, with hits like "Is She Really Going Out with Him?" putting him in the same conversation as Elvis Costello and Squeeze. But where a lot of his peers stayed in their lane musically, Jackson kept moving: into the jump-blues swing of "Jumpin' Jive," into the sophisticated, Latin-tinged jazz of Night and Day, and then into classical composition, into a music-hall concept album framed around a fictional Edwardian performer named Max Champion. He's rarely made the same record twice, and that restlessness has probably cost him the kind of mainstream consistency that turns an artist into a household name. On today's episode, Justin Richmond sits down with Joe to talk about his new studio album Hope and Fury, digging into the songwriting on it and on older records, Joe's collaboration with his longtime and criminally underrated bassist Graham Maby, and why comedy is such an important part of Joe's artistic sensibility. You can

Ed O'Brien has spent decades crafting some of the most textured, expansive guitar in modern rock. From the fragmented beauty of Kid A and Amnesiac to the experimental layers of The King of Limbs, with the more straightforward muscle of OK Computer somewhere in between, few players have done more to expand what the instrument can do in a rock context. In recent years, Ed has been building a parallel universe, one where he's at the center. It started with Earth in 2020, released under the moniker EOB. Now comes Blue Morpho, out under his full birth name, Ed O'Brien. The title isn't incidental: like the striking butterfly it references, Ed went through a genuine transformation over the six years it took to make this record, and the album reflects it. On today's Broken Record, Ed walks us through the journey, beginning in solitude, playing guitar figures purely for himself, then gradually moving toward collaboration, eventually pulling in a crew of talented friends to help bring the songs to life. He also talks a

Just before the premiere of Earth, Wind & Fire's new Questlove-directed documentary , the three OGs of the group stopped by Broken Record: vocalist Phillip Bailey, singer and percussionist Ralph Johnson, and bass player Verdine White. Host Justin Richmond will tell you straight up that talking about Earth, Wind & Fire's music feels a little beside the point. It exists on a level that resists explanation — spiritual, emotional, somewhere in the body before it reaches the brain. What the conversation reveals instead is the kind of people these three are: warm, grounded, and deeply committed to what they've built together. And maybe that's the whole answer. In this episode, they talk about Maurice White, founder and spiritual leader of the group and Verdine's brother. They listen to some music together. And Phillip finally spills on what "Reasons" is actually about. You can hear a playlist of some of our favorite songs from Earth, Wind & Fire HERE.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy informa

The New Pornographers have never been easy to pin down. Since forming in Vancouver in the late ’90s, the band became one of the defining acts of the Canadian indie rock explosion. They’re part of a scene that also produced Neko Case, Dan Bejar, and a generation of artists who seemed to operate entirely outside the commercial mainstream. Co-founders Carl Newman and Kathryn Calder have spent more than two decades making records that sound like they arrived fully formed: densely layered, relentlessly melodic, and somehow both euphoric and melancholy at the same time.Their latest album, The Former Site Of,  draws on a different kind of raw material. Part of it came from a friend’s terminal illness and the weight of watching someone you love reckon with time running out. Part of it came from something more unexpected: the last remaining payphone in New York City, which became a kind of anchor image for the record, a physical object standing in for everything we hold onto after it stops being

Mopreme Shakur is 2Pac's half-brother, a rapper, filmmaker, and record producer living at the intersection of revolutionary politics and hip-hop. He's one of the only surviving members of Thug Life and Outlawz, raised alongside 2Pac in the tradition of Black liberation activism. And now, for the first time, he's telling his own story. His new book, This Thug's Life, is a book about brotherhood, survival, movement building, and the making of a legend. On today's episode Justin Richmond talks to Mopreme about growing up in a family steeped in activism, how he started his rap career with a classic appearance on "Feels Good" by Tony! Toni! Toné!, and what it was like to witness the evolution of 2Pac's career. You can hear a playlist of some of our favorite songs from Mopreme Shakur HERE.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Before Hardy was known as the breakout artist who pushed country music into hard rock territory, he was a self-proclaimed redneck from Philadelphia, Mississippi who studied songwriting at Middle Tennessee State University. Since moving to Nashville in 2013, he's written 22 number ones for artists like Morgan Wallen, Blake Shelton, and Dierks Bentley. In 2018, with the encouragement of producer Joey Moi and his label Big Loud, Hardy started writing songs for himself — and it paid off. He's now a five-time ACM Award winner and two-time CMA Award winner, joining the upper echelon of Big Loud artists that Moi has helped build, alongside Morgan Wallen and Florida Georgia Line. On today's episode, Leah Rose talks to Hardy about the craft of writing a song that sticks — including what he's learned from studying artists like Eminem. They also get into how AI is showing up in Nashville's writer's rooms, and why Hardy thinks bro country isn't going anywhere. You can hear a playlist of some of our favorite s

Recently, we had visionary music producer Robert Margouleff on the show and today we're sharing an excerpt from his new audiobook, Shaping Sounds: Stevie Wonder, DEVO, the Synth Revolution and My Life Behind the Music. In legendary studios like Electric Lady and the Record Plant, Margouleff became a pioneering producer and engineer for artists like Billy Preston, Jeff Beck, DEVO, The Isley Brothers, and David Sanborn. A true sonic innovator, he was an early adopter of immersive audio and surround sound, developing new mixing techniques for home theaters that brought some of Hollywood’s biggest blockbusters to life.  Here's a preview of the audiobook, where Margouleff talks about working with The Isley Brothers on their 3+3 album. If you want to hear more, check out Shaping Sounds: Stevie Wonder, DEVO, the Synth Revolution and My Life Behind the Music wherever you get audiobooks. You can use the code SOUNDS25 at pushkin.fm/shapingsounds to save 25% on the audiobook.See omnystudio.com/listener for pr

Robert Margouleff is one of the most quietly consequential figures in modern music — a sonic architect who helped build some of the most innovative and enduring sounds of the last half century. Together with his partner Malcolm Cecil, Robert created TONTO, the world's largest analog synthesizer, and used it to co-produce a string of era-defining Stevie Wonder classics including Music Of My Mind, Talking Book, Innervisions, and Fulfillingness' First Finale. He went on to work with Jeff Beck, The Isley Brothers, and a scrappy art-punk band from Akron, Ohio called DEVO — helping shape their early sound into something that felt like it arrived from another dimension entirely. You might remember Robert from his Broken Record interview a few years back. Now he's releasing an audiobook, Shaping Sounds: Stevie Wonder, DEVO, the Synth Revolution and My Life Behind the Music. It's a memoir about creativity, collaboration, and artistic courage, told by someone who was in the room when the future was being in

Maya Hawke first became known to wide audiences as an actress — especially through her work in Stranger Things — but she's been quietly building a parallel life as a songwriter of genuine depth. Since her debut album Blush in 2020, she's released four records. Her latest, Maitreya Corso, arrives at a pivotal moment: the album follows her marriage to longtime musical collaborator Christian Lee Hutson, and centers on a fictional persona through who Hawke explores ego, ambition, and the strange labor of making something. Recorded in Woodstock and New York City late last year, it's co-produced by Hutson and Jonathan Low, with cover art drawn from watercolors Maya painted herself. On today's episode Justin Richmond sat down with Maya Hawke and her husband and co-producer Christian Lee Hutson live at SXSW to talk about the making of Maitreya Corso, and what it means to finally come together as partners in both life and work. You can hear a playlist of some of our favorite songs from Maya Hawke and Chri

In the latest season of Revisionist History, Malcolm Gladwell is looking at the origins and consequences of mistakes—why we make them, the context in which we make them, and what happens after we make them. Years ago a music producer named Irv Gotti—a hitmaker for Jay-Z, Ja Rule, and Ashanti—was tapped by Sony Music to make a record with Jennifer Lopez. They wanted a big hit. And Irv delivered. But then he made the biggest mistake of his career. Find more episodes of Revisionist History wherever you get podcasts.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The magic of Bruce Hornsby isn't just that he's one of American music's great piano stylists — or that he wrote one of the most unlikely pop hits of the 1980s, a song about racism with two improvised solos that nobody at his label thought should be the single. It's how relentlessly he's kept moving, long after he had any commercial reason to. Hornsby grew up in Williamsburg, Virginia, and got discovered playing a steak and ale joint across from the Hampton Coliseum by Mike McDonald. He scored his first big hit in 1986 with "The Way It Is. What followed was a long, restless second act: teaching himself two-handed independence by scheduling benefit concerts just to give himself a hard deadline, making jazz records with Jack DeJohnette and Christian McBride, bluegrass records with Ricky Skaggs, and going deep into Shostakovich fugues that now shape everything he writes. On today’s episode Bruce Headlam sat down with Bruce Hornsby at the piano to talk about all of it. But they started somewhere unexpe

The magic of Dave Grohl isn't just that he's one of rock music's great raconteurs, or one of its greatest drummers and frontmen of the last thirty-plus years. It's the sheer number of lives he's gotten to live within rock and roll. Dave started out drumming for Scream, one of DC's great, underrated hardcore bands, running in the same circles as Ian MacKaye and the Dischord crowd. Then he joined Nirvana and more than made his mark in one of the most consequential bands since the Beatles, and an indelible piece of Seattle's music story dates all the way back to Jimi Hendrix and Quincy Jones. And then, as if that weren't enough: Foo Fighters. Which Dave Grohl essentially built by himself — Prince and Stevie Wonder-style — writing and recording nearly every note on the debut alone, save for some guitar from Greg Dulli of the Afghan Whigs. On today's episode Justin Richmond sits down with Dave at the Foo Fighters' studio to talk about their twelfth album, Your Favorite Toy. But they start somewhere une

Wyclef Jean may just be the most wide-ranging rapper, producer, performer, and composer of his time. As the lead producer and MC of The Fugees, he helped craft their 1996 landmark album The Score, one of the best-selling hip-hop albums of all time. The following year he released his debut solo album, The Carnival, which included hits like "Guantanamera" featuring Celia Cruz, and the platinum-certified single "Gone Till November." As a writer and producer for other artists, Wyclef is behind Whitney Houston's "My Love Is Your Love," Santana's chart-dominating "Maria Maria," Shakira's global smash "Hips Don't Lie," and Destiny's Child's breakout single "No, No, No." This spring, Wyclef is releasing Clef Notes, Volume One of Quantum Leap — an ambitious seven-album solo project that unfolds over the next year. Each installment is seven tracks and zeroes in on a different genre, ranging from country and reggae to jazz, hip-hop, Haitian kompa, and beyond. Today, we're bringing you a special episode: a live con