Little Simz is a rapper from England who put out her first album in 2015. She’s won the Mercury Prize, a Brit Award, and three MOBO awards. She also starred in the Netflix series Top Boy. Her most recent album is called Lotus. It came out in June 2025, and it followed a pretty tumultuous time in her career. For this episode, I got to talk to Little Simz about one of the songs from that album, called "Free," along with Miles Clinton James, who produced the track.

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For more, visit songexploder.net/little-simz.

My guest today is Shirley Manson. Since 1994, she’s been the lead singer of the band Garbage, and she is a bona fide rock icon. The two of us worked together on a different podcast called The Jump, which Shirley hosted and I helped produce. It was a dream of mine to get Shirley as the host of that podcast, partly because, as you’re about to hear, she has one of the greatest voices, and I could listen to her talk about anything. And so I’m especially excited to listen to her today tell me about a song that changed her life.

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For more, visit songexploder.net/keychange.

And check out the Song Exploder episode with Garbage from 2014, featuring Shirley and her bandmate Butch Vig talking about how they made their song “Felt.”

Anohni is a singer and songwriter originally from England, who started putting out music in 2000. She’s released 6 albums, and won the Mercury Prize. She’s also been nominated for two Brit Awards, and an Oscar. For this episode, I talked to her about the song "4 Degrees," from her 2016 album Hopelessness. It might be strange to describe a song about climate change as an anthem, but that’s what I think it is, and it feels more urgent with every passing year. It’s also one of my most listened-to songs. It was produced by two of my favorite electronic musicians: Daniel Lopatin, aka Oneohtrix Point Never, and Ross Birchard, aka Hudson Mohawke. I got to speak to Ross about how he started the track on his own, before it became a collaboration between the three of them. This is an episode that I’ve been trying to make happen since 2016. Here it is.

For more info, visit songexploder.net/anohni.

Thanks to Sonos for their support of the podcast. Check out sonos.com.