Top 5 Music Podcasts
2020 has been the year of the podcast. They’ve been around since before now, but this year has seen a huge rise in podcast consumption.
Music podcasts come in so many different shapes and sizes. You can learn about how the construction of a single song, or of an album, or a whole career.
Best tours. Worst hangovers. Greatest achievements. Biggest regrets.
Due to this, we wanted to offer a bit of a smorgasbord of music podcasts for you to sink your teeth into.
Tape Notes
Hosted by John Kennedy, Tape Notes follows the beginning, middle and end of creating records. Artists come onto the show, play original demos and stems, talk about the production process and explain the shortfalls and triumphs they had while making it.
The episodes are equally interesting for those new and experienced to producing music. Learning the language, understanding the layers and the order they can flow are a fantastic first hand way to follow a track’s inception to its master.
If you’re up on the lingo, you can hear about all the instruments and plugins artists favour when trying to create certain styles of music, and get some inspiration for when you’re next in the studio.
Song Exploder
This is the same idea as Tape Notes, but focuses on single songs rather than full albums. The language is much more descriptive and you really hear the ins and outs of writing a song.
Artists also share fun anecdotes from the studio, breakthroughs they had and how they almost gave up on making your favorite song. Hosted by Hrishikesh Hirway, this is a must listen for all studio dwellers.
Disgraceland
Do you know which famous rockstar murdered someone? Which ones regularly conducted satanic rituals while on LSD? Which ones hijacked cars and destroyed hotel rooms through a flurrying vortex of drugs and alcohol?
Jake Brennan does, and he can tell you all about it. A marriage of rock n’ roll and true crime, dive through the most ridiculous stories on the lives of members of Motley Crüe, Elvis Presley, Guns N’ Roses….anyone. They’re all there, and they’re all equally nuts.
Broken Record
This is essentially a round table of music legends. Co-hosted by Rick Rubin, Malcolm Gladwell, Bruce Headlam and Justin Richmond, the four share the times of their lives and careers.
Studio time with legendary artists, insight into the inner workings of the music industry and never before heard stories of your favourite superstars. Sit back and enjoy.
Dissect
The albums you love, in ways you’ve never heard. One album per season, one song per episode.
Take the full journey through Kendrick Lamar’s To Pimp a Butterfly, Kanye West’s My Beautiful, Dark Twisted Fantasy or Frank Ocean’s Blonde. The intricacies revealed are immense, and you’ll listen to your favourite albums again as if for the first time.