In short
Podcast Summary: Broken Record - Rewind: Jeff Tweedy
Episode Overview
- Hosts: Rick Rubin, Malcolm Gladwell, Bruce Headlam, Justin Richmond
- Guest: Jeff Tweedy, frontman of Wilco
- Original Release: Late 2020
- Current Episode Focus: A revisit of Jeff Tweedy’s insights related to his book *How to Write One Song*, which encourages creativity in songwriting.
Key Themes & Discussions
Introduction to Jeff Tweedy
- Jeff Tweedy’s background as a musician and songwriter.
- Discussion of his book *How to Write One Song*, highlighting its aim to unlock creative potential in others.
Jeff’s Early Influences
- Family Influence: Tweedy reflects on his father, who wrote poetry as an emotional outlet, and how these experiences shaped his own artistic journey.
- Musical Aspirations: Tweedy’s father’s desire to entertain and his own early songwriting experiences.
Songwriting Journey
- First Songwriting Experience: Tweedy recalls writing his first song, “Your Little World,” at age 13.
- Evolution of Songwriting: Discussion on how he articulated emotions through his music, leading to significant works in his career.
Writing Process
- Routine and Structure: Tweedy emphasizes the importance of establishing a routine to combat the unpredictability of creative work.
- Ideal Songwriting Day: Tweedy describes a typical songwriting day, where he engages in creating music from early morning until late at night, often incorporating dreams and ambient experiences.
Exercises from *How to Write One Song*
- Tweedy discusses specific exercises and structured approaches he suggests for aspiring songwriters.
Collaboration and Influence
- Collaborative Work: Tweedy’s experiences working with other artists, including Mavis Staples and the process of transforming Woody Guthrie’s lyrics into songs.
- Musical Influence: Exploration of how he draws inspiration from various artists and the idea that songwriting involves borrowing and transforming existing ideas.
Case Study
Song Breakdown
- Tweedy breaks down a new song titled "Opaline," explaining its genesis from personal experiences and societal observations.
- Lyrics and Themes: Discussion on the metaphors used in the song, such as the hearse stuck at a tollbooth, representing deeper societal issues.
Key Takeaways
- Emotional Honesty: The importance of conveying genuine emotions and thoughts in songwriting.
- Creative Process: Acknowledge the fluidity of creativity and the significance of allowing ideas to develop over time.
- Community and Collaboration: The value of working with others and drawing inspiration from the community and environment.
Notable Quotes
- “Not every song has to be the greatest song that's ever been written, but it sure helps if you feel like it is at the moment.”
- “We're walking around and there's no failed experiment if you're paying attention to the world.”
Conclusion This episode of *Broken Record* revisits Jeff Tweedy’s insightful approach to creativity through songwriting, emphasizing the blend of personal narrative, emotional honesty, and collaboration in the artistic process. His reflections provide a valuable perspective for aspiring musicians and writers alike.
Written by AI. May contain mistakes. Listen to the episode to check what was said.
Transcript
Automatic transcript. May contain errors.0:06Pushkin.
0:10We have a pretty great episode from our back catalog to play for you today. In late 2020, Wilco's frontman and songwriter released his compact How to Write One Songbook, an immense guide for bringing out anyone's inner latent creativity through songwriting. This is just the kind of idea that my co-host Malcolm Gladwell loves. And so the two had a nice little conversation about the book and about what's made Tweety one of the consummate songwriters of the 20th century so far. So enjoy this episode from 2020. This is Broken Record. Real musicians, real conversations.
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3:10Pretty much. I think so, yeah. Was your father musical? My father was a frustrated entertainer. He got my mom pregnant in high school, and they dropped out, and he got a job on the railroad. and I think his whole life, I think that he wished that he had had an opportunity to be on stage somehow. But he was not particularly musical, but he was entertaining, that's for sure. But he aspired to be musical. He liked to sing. He drank a lot and he got up at every wedding and embarrassed us terribly, humiliated us in lots of cases. But were his poems, were they any good? Yeah. No, my dad was brilliant.
4:03You know, they weren't, I don't think that they were good in like a Robert Frost way, but they might have been good in a Jimmy Stewart kind of way or Ogden Nash maybe at the high end of his aspirations. But, you know, he wouldn't have had any of those references other than Jimmy Stewart. But he made unrequited forays into indulging his musical side many times. Like he bought an organ from the mall that the salesman claimed would teach him how to play. And he would just sit there and watch the lights flash as it would play itself and drink a beer. I have a lot of memories of that. But he wrote the poems when you said when he was angry.
5:00That was my memory of them. Yeah. And I sadly, you know, a couple of summers ago when he passed away, we, you know, we emptied out the house, the house that I, the only house I'd ever lived in when, you know, like my parents bought one and my mom was pregnant with me. And I found a lot of his homework from when he taught himself or basically learned computing early on, math homework and stuff like that. But I didn't find any of the notebooks that had any of the poems. So I suspect that he just got it off his chest and then threw them away, you know? Yeah. I just love these kinds of generational parallels.
5:48it's almost like you know if if you were on the couch i would say you're like tweety 2.0 you're like the do-over the frustrated musician who's who's writing these essentially lyrics of a sort and then you're you you you've come along and you've turned it into an art well yeah i mean uh There are tons of parallels that I mean, it's disturbing as you get older how much you start to look like your parents and look like exactly like my dad. And, you know, I think he suffered from a lot of the same mood disorders that I've dealt with in my life. But he clumsily, but somehow, you know, as far as employment goes and as far as like not having worsening consequences, which would be typical of alcoholism.
6:39And he managed to medicate himself clumsily for his entire life, you know, for anxiety. I'm sure he had anxiety and depression. And yet he did instinctively seem to have turned to some of the same things that have provided some solace for me that weren't unhealthy, you know, like getting things off his chest. And, you know, I was indulged a lot, perhaps because I was a do-over. When did you write your first song? Do you remember? The first song I remember writing, and I'm pretty sure that there were songs before this, but the first song I remember writing was a song called Your Little World. And it was about a girl and her not having enough room in her world for me.
7:36How old were you when you were writing? It was maybe 13, 14. You don't remember it, do you? Your little world's much too small. Oh, I ain't got no room at all. So, yeah, I remember it. I could play it. Actually, one of the weird things is that this local musician who went by the name Joe Camel, a band Joe Camel and the Caucasians, they actually recorded that song and made a single out of it. Oh, really? It exists. Yeah. Yeah. Because I was this kid that hung out at the record stores and hung out around other musicians when I could get near them. And I would always write songs. And this guy in this band, Joe Camel, said, hey, let me hear one of your songs.
8:29And I went over to his house and I played him this song. He said, oh, that's great. I'm going to record it. We're going to record this song. And he did. That's fantastic. When do you think you wrote your first good song? Well, I honestly don't think that that one was terrible. I think it's, you know, it's not great, but it was good enough for somebody else to want, you know, see some potential in it. The first song I liked that I wrote was probably Screen Door on the first Uncle Tupelo record. You know, that's the first one where I felt like I had said something that felt true to me and that I didn't necessarily have anybody else's song to convey that idea.
9:18I always look at it like I'm trying to make songs, a new song for me to sing that someone hasn't already written. So that one was the first one that felt like that. How old are you when you write that song? 16. Maybe. Oh, I see. 16, 17. Yeah. So pretty, it's funny, I have heard musicians of various kinds answer that question over the years. And there's a whole set of them who like, you know, 10 years pass between the first song they write and the first one they like. Yeah. But you have a much less ambivalent relationship to your early songwriting. One of the things I feel like I've had some shame about in my life is how shamelessly I love stuff that I make.
10:11And I think over time I've really made peace with it because I think that that's kind of beautiful and it's kind of one of the things that's allowed me to grow. I don't tend to keep liking things that I've made. I tend to get pretty dissatisfied with them over time. But initially, even when I figure out how to play something on the guitar that someone else has done, I feel like I invented it. I have this really sort of delusional relationship with the joy that I take from making something. And I think that really comes naturally. So a lot of times my favorite song is always the one I'm working on, almost invariably.
10:56I was like, wow, this is really great. And it dissipates over time, but I've always felt like that. Does that make you a bad judge of your own songwriting? I think it does. And that's part of the reason that I've had to learn a lot of different ways to get my ego out of the way, They allow things to gestate for a lot longer or put them away and forget about them so that I can come back to them with a little bit more objectivity. But in general, I think it's just kind of the spirit of it is what comes across a lot of times. And that, in a lot of cases, is enough because, you know, not every song has to be the greatest song that's ever been written.
11:42but it sure helps if you feel like it is at the moment, in the moment. You describe in this lovely book you've just done, How to Write One Song, you describe a series of exercises, songwriting exercises, and also describe a kind of what a songwriting day should look like. And I was curious before we go into that, how long did you, I mean, if that's the pattern of songwriting you practice now, How long have you been doing it that way? Did you always have this kind of very structured way about writing music? No, I think that as I've gotten older, I think one of the things I've really had to learn how to do is provide myself structure.
12:26Because I work in a profession that doesn't have a lot of structure outside of touring, which is extremely structured and routine. But being home has always been a little bit dangerous for me in terms of my mental health, though the routine has been something I've had to learn and has helped me quite a bit. That being said, I don't remember a time where I haven't felt like a kind of a nagging sense all day that I should be making something or that I should be learning something or I should be reading something or I should be listening to something. And that tends to provide a lot of momentum to my days.
13:14This ugly feeling that I'm avoiding almost all the time is that I don't want to get to the end of the day and feel like I didn't learn anything or didn't make something or just didn't participate in my life in the ways that I've found to be the most enjoyable and helpful to me. you describe this ideal songwriting day in the book when was the last ideal songwriting day you had and what did it look like it's been a while i think the the ideal day the last one i might have had would have been during the process of making the album i just released love is the king where you know around eight o 'clock at night or something i would have started working on a song that I was thinking about recording the next day.
14:07I would have worked on it and played around with it, maybe made a little demo of it on my phone until maybe midnight, gone to sleep, woke up, probably would have finished the lyrics early in the morning because they tend to kind of untangle themselves in my sleep a lot of times. and I like to write even before I get out of bed, where I feel like I'm still sort of, the judgment side of me is still sleeping or something. Then I would have gotten up and come to the studio, maybe worked on that song for a little while in the studio, had lunch, maybe taken a nap, would have gotten up from the nap, finished the song, maybe invited my younger son over to sing a harmony vocal on it.
15:02Common practice in that moment when I'm asking someone else like Sammy to sing on something would be to really focus on the lyrics and make sure they're where I want them to be. So I would have done some revisions on that. Maybe until around five or six and have a rough mix to take home and have some dinner and listen to records generally until I get excited about trying to make something to beat something I just heard. Some sort of like trying to activate some competitive side of my brain and then start the whole process over with maybe seeing if I could come up with another song for the next day.
15:41So in your ideal world, is it a song from start to finish in that one day or is it that you have little bits and pieces already there that you're going back and finding and playing with? I can do a song start to finish in one day, but typically there are little pieces of raw material that have been accumulated. Yeah, I think one of the things I might do at 8 o 'clock, say the beginning of the day I just described, would be to go through my phone and find a musical idea that I'm excited by that, I don't know, just catches me enough unaware to start dreaming about it and start fantasizing about where it could go or what it could sound like.
16:29Do you have your phone with you right now? Can you play us a musical idea of the phone? Sure. Let's see. Well, this one sounds a little bit, maybe a little bit more finished than normal.
16:49How can I forget The lesson that put you In the tunnel at the end Of the light
17:05The tunnel at the end of the light So that, has that little bit been turned into a song yet? Or is it just out there waiting? It's waiting. It's waiting. I mean, there's stuff that's maybe, I don't even know what this is.
17:31Just some chords I thought were pretty. But yeah, there are dozens, or not dozens, there's probably literally hundreds of those things in my phone. When they stack up a little bit, I usually transfer some to the computer here at the loft. So they're at least in a couple places. Yeah. And now time for a coffee break with my Broken Record co-host, Malcolm Gladwell. This coffee break is brought to you by the Starbucks Coffee Company. With me today, I have the esteemed co-host of this show, Malcolm Gladwell, who I don't think I'm telling tales out of school here. He's quite a coffee drinker, right?
18:12You enjoy coffee. And a coffee shop aficionado. It's more than just experience. It's not just the coffee. I spend enormous amounts of time in coffee shops. Would you say you would rather drink coffee in a coffee shop or would you rather take it to go? Always in. Always in. Always? Yeah. I'm not a guy who takes it and sits in my car and drinks my coffee in my car. Otherwise, you're ruining the fun, which is settle in, a nice table, sun streaming in the window. eavesdropping on conversations, and then you enjoy your cup of coffee. Okay. I'm like, this is a little moment in my day where I can reflect and relax and sit back with a cup of coffee.
19:01Wow. There's a moment in the afternoon. That's my coffee moment. No morning. Coffee's an experience. That's the thing. I have my experience in the afternoon. in that little moment in the middle of the afternoon when everything's quiet, you get feeling a little bit, like, calm and, like, you know, and I go and I sit in a coffee shop and enjoy myself. Do you remember the first time going to a Starbucks, Malcolm? I do. I do. I had all these friends who, they were all these friends I knew from Stanford. They all lived in San Francisco. And everybody came east for a wedding. It was in Long Island. And I remember on the morning of the wedding, Chris, who was the chief hipster of the California crowd, said, this is like, I don't know when this was, mid-90s maybe?
19:54Chris says to the assembled multitudes, I hear there's a Starbucks finally out here. We piled into cars and we drove somewhere, like it was somewhere in, you know, central Long Island. I remember this. It was quite the journey. And we were like, whoa. it's like this thing called Starbucks had finally arrived in Long Island. Because I guess it starts, I mean, it clearly starts in Seattle, right? Yeah. It's very exciting. I remember that. I remember it was like a destination. It's like, that's what we're doing on the morning of the wedding. Getting a cappuccino. It remains. It remains. 30 years on remains a destination for me.
20:34Yes, yes. I'm sure that Starbucks is still there. Absolutely. leads me to want to ask, sort of seasons aside, are you a hot coffee guy or a cold brew? Only hot. Only hot. To me, the whole coffee on ice thing is like, what are you doing? Wow. That's not, we're not here for that. On a 98 degree humid day, I will go in and I'm having, and there's always a point of confusion because I'll go into a coffee shop and I'll have a cappuccino and there's a pause and they're expecting me to say iced. And I say, not iced. This is not, I'm not doing, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not like, you know, turning my back on my coffee experience just because the weather's a little on the warm side.
21:18No, no, the experience remains the same. Doesn't matter where I am. I'm having my cappuccino and it's not got ice in it. It's hot. I got to say, I'm running through my memories of going to coffee with you. And I really can't place an iced coffee in your hand at all. I think you're telling the truth there. You really are a hot coffee person. Before we end this coffee break, I got to ask you, Malcolm. Yeah. There's been a whole wave of oat milk drinkers of late. Not doing that. Almond milk? I am aware and grateful for the option. And I don't look down on anyone who wants to go the oat milk route.
21:53Okay. I am an unwavering traditionalist. I have a cappuccino that is hot with whole milk. I never waver from that. My thing is, you know, I'm very, very, I, you know, my whole thing on, I've only, I only drink five liquids. I was going to, yeah, right. It's red wine. It's water. It's espresso-based beverages. It's milk. And it's tea. That's it. And is this stand still to this day? Yeah. Never waver. Never waver. All right, man. Well, thanks for the coffee break, Malcolm. All right, Justin. All right. I know Malcolm said he doesn't like iced drinks, but I happen to love them. And so after we talked, I went down to my local Starbucks here in Long Beach to try their iced horchata oat milk shaken espresso.
22:38And this drink is incredible. It's a blonde espresso combined with horchata syrup that delivers a fusion of cinnamon, vanilla and rice flavors shaken together with ice and topped with oat milk. I'm a person who likes to explore the Starbucks menu. I'll go up and down that thing whenever I'm at Starbucks. But there are a lot of people, and I can be this way too, that like the staples. If you're one of those people, this drink still retains that wonderful coffee flavor. But on the back end, chases it with this wonderful milky, cinnamony horchata flavor as well. And it has something, in my opinion, for everyone.
23:15Your rice horchata, oat milkshake, and espresso is ready at Starbucks. So I'm fascinated by this process. How long might some, a little bit, linger on your phone or in your archive before you use it? But is there stuff? And if we went into the, you said sometimes you download them at the loft. How far back would we have stuff there from 10 years ago you've never used? Yeah, I mean, probably. I used to do it on cassettes. And basically, I used to just leave a cassette in a dictaphone, old style, like what a steno would have used or someone in a secretary pool. and I would just leave it on the coffee table until it filled up and then I'd put another cassette in.
24:01And there are dozens of those cassettes. And on the Suki Ray album that I made under the name Tweety, there's a song on there that I finished after 14 years, I think. What song was it? It's called I'll Sing It. Was there a little snippet of it that was the original snippet? It's actually in the track. I actually just played over the cassette version. Yeah, yeah. Oh, that's... And then I think that ended up on the Summer Teeth box set that we just put out because it was written around the same time as Summer Teeth. Yeah. When you go back and find a little snippet like that, do you remember when you created the snippet or is that gone?
24:42It depends. A lot of times I don't remember at all. I have no recollection at all of... A lot of times I don't even remember the tuning and I have to like sit and figure out because I use a lot of different tunings. And I really hate it when I don't bother to tune the guitar to a standard pitch because then it makes it even harder to figure out what tuning I'm in and stuff like that. So a lot of times it's it's it's completely gone wherever wherever it happened, which is kind of I love it when that happens, even though it can be frustrating trying to to relearn it. But then there are times where I absolutely have a distinct memory of where I was and what was happening.
25:26And a lot of times that's because there are other ambient elements that made their way onto the recording. Like, say, backstage and somebody in Wilco walks through and says something and I can viscerally feel that room and I'll know even what city it was in. in a lot of cases. Sometimes when I'm doing it in hotel rooms in Europe and you have the windows open, whenever we're fortunate enough to find a hotel that has windows that open, you hear people eating at the cafes or something like that. Those are always really kind of special recordings that a lot of times mean a lot to me even without them being finished.
26:09Yeah. We did an interview with Nora Jones a while back now, and she was talking about how she did her song Wintertime with you. And she was talking about this very process that she had some scraps of little bits and pieces and you had bits and pieces and you kind of put it together to create a really beautiful song. Can you walk us through that little case study of this time with a twist with another person involved? But it seems like both of you were doing the work of creativity in the same way. Is that true? Yeah. I think that, well, first of all, Nora Jones doesn't need me to help her write a song, for sure.
26:54But we admire each other, so there's already kind of a base level of camaraderie or something. But I haven't found many people that I've worked with to have just wildly different approaches to it. Everybody seems to have sort of the core process is sort of similar. You basically start with something that is nothing, you know, that feels like it could be something. And then you basically surrender this idea that you can't do that. You can't make something out of nothing and you do it. And it's really the most important part is just letting go of the idea that it can't happen, I think. And with someone else, it requires a lot of waiting until you both have, you know, both people have to feel comfortable and supported enough and trusting enough to kind of throw out ideas until, you know, a light bulb goes off in two heads at once.
28:02It's a little bit more foolproof in a way because you have that consensus of universality for two people as opposed to like just trying to imagine that everybody will like something you like. We'll be right back with more from Jeff Tweedy after the break.
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29:25where you can see the sky. Best network based on analysis by Ukla of Speedtest Intelligence Data 1H 2025. The greatest music stories aren't always in the songs themselves. They're in the late night studio sessions, the chance encounters, and the cultural moments that shaped entire movements. For music lovers who find themselves going down rabbit holes about their favorite artists, Claude, an AI thinking partner, helps you explore those deeper questions. Whether you're wondering about the connections between different scenes, trying to understand what drove a particular creative period, or exploring how social movements influenced sound, Claude works through these complex cultural puzzles with you.
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31:45Our listeners get 10 % off their first month at BetterHelp.com slash broken. That's BetterHelp.com slash broken. we're back with more of Malcolm's conversation with Jeff Tweedy you've done an unusual amount of collaboration with other artists you write for Mavis Staples uh you did those beautiful Mermaid Avenue um albums with Billy Bragg that I um are among my favorites when you're writing with another person in mind does it change the way you write a song yeah I I think it does Because I honestly think that that is the thing that I am most comfortable doing. I think it's the thing I truly aspire to do more than almost any other thing that I get to do.
32:37I always pictured myself being a person that would write songs for other people to sing. In Uncle Tupelo, I wanted my songs to be sung by Jay because he had this magnificent, rich, authoritative voice. And I had this squeaky, you know, voice that I didn't feel like was quite my own even at the time. I was struggling to find it. As much as I felt great when I sang, I just loved the idea of writing the song more than the idea of singing it. And I still think that that's where my most natural abilities lie is in helping somebody with another with their song, like working with Nora or finding something for someone to sing like Mavis.
33:25I don't look at it as like I'm putting words in her mouth. I feel like I'm just kind of helping find something that she feels comfortable singing that makes sense for her to sing. Same thing with the Woody Guthrie lyrics. That was even more along the lines of what I feel I have the strongest sense about as being something that comes naturally to me. Because those lyrics were sacrosanct. You know, they're like, you know, you're not going to mess with them. They're there. You don't even need to worry about whether or not they're good enough. They're important. And for people that don't know, there were all these lyrics that Woody Guthrie left behind that the music was never documented or he never really made any music for.
34:08There's all these archival lyrics and writing that we took and made songs out of. And with those, I would just sit and read them over and over and over again until the meter would emerge. And then next, there would be a melody that would emerge. And in a lot of cases with Woody Guthrie lyrics, you read it and all of a sudden a Carter family song emerges because that's what he was actually writing his lyrics to was someone else's song. I did the same thing with a bunch of lyrics for Bob Dylan that never came out because I wasn't able to be a part of that process for that record that they did a couple of years ago where they had a bunch of lyrics that Dylan had written.
34:48And it's like Elvis Costello was a part of it and some of the Mumford's. But anyway, T-Bone had asked me if I could do it. And I got all these lyrics. And then my wife started treatment for cancer. So I couldn't go to L.A. for the amount of time that they wanted me to. But I did the same thing with those lyrics. I wrote and recorded a whole record in a weekend. Do you find it sort of freeing to not have to do it in your own with your own voice in mind? Yeah, I think that I just struggle with allowing myself to comment on certain things that I don't feel like I have the authoritative weight to weigh in on.
35:33In terms of like Mavis or something like that, of the things that I feel like Mavis has a voice of righteousness, of some broader scope and historical importance and place. There's just a weight to it that I feel very privileged to have been able to write for. but a lot of those things are not going to make as much sense coming out of my mouth. It just doesn't feel right for a lot of social reasons, I think. What's the right word to describe your attitude towards your own voice? Are you self-conscious about it? No. You made that comment about Tupelo and how you preferred if... No, I feel like I've gotten way better as a singer and I've worked really hard to get better over a lot of time.
36:30And I actually, I enjoy my voice, my singing voice quite a bit. I actually do like listening to myself sing now. When I find things that I want to sing, in a lot of cases I feel like I'm the only person that could sing it the way I want to hear it. But that doesn't mean that I'm oblivious to the fact that my voice isn't technically great in the, you know, by the normal criteria of American Idol or the voice or whatever, you know. But all my favorite singers are like that. Almost all my favorite singers have nontraditional voices that have become communicative, you know. It's like where they trade virtuosity or technique or whatever for sincerity or sentiment and conviction.
37:19And I feel like I found that in my voice over time. And I am very, very proud of the idea that I still work at getting better and try and sing in tune, you know, but I'm more, I'm much more concerned with making the words feel the way I want them to feel. My speaking voice, on the other hand, is awful. I cannot, I will never listen to the book that I just read or this interview. I might listen to you do another interview with someone else. But not, so on this point, in the book, you talk about stealing, which you're being a little bit mischievous because you don't really mean stealing. But you're talking about being open to influence, essentially.
38:09So give me an example of another artist whose work you find lots of stuff to borrow from and be inspired by. And I'm just curious, does it come from everywhere or are there predictable places where you go to find ideas? Well, the thing I'm describing in the book is just based on this belief that you can't really copyright a group of chords. What I'm describing in the book is basically me saying, well, I'm going to look for a song that I think has a bunch of cool chords in it, and I'm going to learn how to play it. And then I'm going to take it and make it into something that no one would hear that song in it anymore.
38:50But it's basically like just when you're a little bit stuck, just realizing that the world is full of these, you know, sort of naturally occurring shapes that you can appropriate. You know, I don't look at them as being particularly ownable by anybody. And especially if I don't, you know, sing the same type of song or put the same type of melody over it or even have the same rhythm or, you know, like there are many, many ways to describe it. But it's such a liberating thing to do to just go, oh, I'll just take these chords and start there because I haven't been able to come up with anything all day.
39:28That being said, there are just tons and tons of artists, new and old, every day of my life that I encounter. And to me, you have to work to not encounter art that inspires you. And I think that that does overwhelm people. I think sometimes some people do get to a certain point where they want to hide from influence or hide from the feeling that they're being challenged by other artists. But I look at it like most of the time I get that way too. I can feel overwhelmed sometimes. But more often than not, I feel really invigorated by the fact that if I go looking, it won't take me long at all to find something that shows me where the bar is that I should be aiming for.
40:19We'll be right back with more from Jeff Tweedy after the break. In today's super competitive business environment, the edge goes to those who push harder, move faster and level up every tool in their arsenal. T-Mobile knows all about that. They're now the best network, according to the experts at Ooclas Speed Test, and they're using that network to launch Supermobile, the first and only business plan to combine intelligent performance, built-in security, and seamless satellite coverage. With Supermobile, your performance, security, and coverage are supercharged. With a network that adapts in real time, your business stays operating at peak capacity, even in times of high demand.
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41:44They're in the late night studio sessions, the chance encounters, and the cultural moments that shaped entire movements. For music lovers who find themselves going down rabbit holes about their favorite artists, Claude, an AI thinking partner, helps you explore those deeper questions. Whether you're wondering about the connections between different scenes, trying to understand what drove a particular creative period, or exploring how social movements influenced sound, Claude works through these complex cultural puzzles with you. It's built for people who know that understanding music means understanding the human stories behind it.
42:17Claude doesn't just compile facts. It helps you see patterns across decades of music history, ask the kinds of follow-up questions that reveal deeper truths, and works through the nuanced relationships between artists, movements, and moments. Whether you're a music journalist, industry professional, or someone who just lives for understanding the stories behind the sounds, Claude matches your level of curiosity about what really drives great art. Try Claude for free at claude.ai slash brokenrecord and see why the world's best problem solvers choose Claude as their thinking partner. Lexus is a company that believes in the importance of setting a standard, which I can appreciate as someone who holds themselves to lofty if not ridiculous standards, especially with the car I drive.
42:59The standard Lexus has set for themselves is to experience amazing. Lexus measures success by the feeling and emotions evoked in a driver, like exhilaration and joy. Amazing can only be achieved by knowing people on a deeper level. The standard of amazing results in a feeling in drivers that their car was built in anticipation of them. machines that make you feel more human. Because a car that doesn't make you feel something is a car that stops short of amazing. Experience amazing at your Lexus dealer. What's an example of a song you listened to recently that triggered all kinds of reactions and inspirations in you?
43:39You know, Kate Laban writes a lot of music that makes me feel that way. She's just the first person that popped into my mind. I mean, she's an artist that has this undeniable Kate Lebon-ness about what she does, you know. And that's hard to find, you know. She has a very specific angle that she comes at what she does, and nobody else knows that precise angle, I think. The song Meet the Man, I Wanted to Meet the Man, I think that's the name of it. I think it's the last song on her most recent record. it has all of these twists and turns that are unpredictable and I don't know. When you listen to that song, can you turn off the part of your brain that wants to to kind of learn from it, use it, employ it in some way and just enjoy it?
44:31Or do you, is that part of the brain always on? Well, that is how I enjoy it. I think that is part of how I enjoy it. I think I enjoy it first and foremost the way I have enjoyed music since I was a little kid before I played any music or wrote any music. I am just attracted to sound and excited by records and I don't think that that's any different. But I don't feel burdened by the knowledge that I have now and I think it just adds this insight like, oh wow, I can kind of tell what reverb is going on there. But that being said, the things that I tend to enjoy the most are the things that I have zero idea how they came to be.
45:17Those are the things I listen to, you know, like have more repeated listenings, tend to be like some hip hop records and things that are outside of my skill set. And, you know, and then there are times where I crave comfort food, where I just want to hear a simple country song played on an acoustic guitar. And I have a very, very firm grasp on how that comes to be, but it doesn't diminish its importance in my life. Is there an artist, a contemporary of yours, whose career you would have loved to have? No, I honestly, I've thought about that a lot. I have moments where I have professional jealousy.
45:59I think it'd be impossible not to have these moments, especially if you're somewhat competitive like I am. I think Like, why is everybody writing about this guy now? I was like, you know, like, I'm not ashamed to admit. I have like, you know, it's not the end of the world to admit you have petty feelings, you know. But honestly, I don't think so because when I take a step back, the prevailing emotion is gratitude. I mean, this is nothing like I would have ever been able to imagine for myself. 30 years in from my first time probably playing on a stage or getting in front of people. We'll be right back with more from Jeff Tweedy.
46:48We're back with the rest of Malcolm's conversation with Jeff Tweedy. It would be really fun if we put together a bunch of the stuff we've been talking about in a song. Is there a song that you could break down, play and break down for us where you talk about all the little pieces that brought it together, how the song was created, the little bits of influence if you remember them. Is there one that's that fresh in your memory that you could do that? A little mini masterclass? Let me think. I have a guitar here.
47:26That's the G chord I always play when I pick up a guitar. It's inadvertent. The invariant G. The Tweety G. It's pretty, it's just my grounding.
47:44Well, there's a song on the new record called Opaline,
47:56where I was writing it this summer, or this spring, when there was so much going on in the world and our relationships with our police departments were being investigated and talked about a lot. So I'm not a person that's ever had that feeling. I've never really been a fan of police because I've always felt like police had a lot more to do with, their mentality had a lot more to do with the people that made fun of me in school and were more jockey. And it's just a general atmosphere around police that I've not enjoyed, but I've not had this experience that a lot of minorities have had with police in this country.
48:41And I'm aware of that, but I was trying to put myself into that headspace of living with that fear. So those were the lyrics that I was playing around with. It was like, I hear the police outside my window. I can hear them talking on the radios. And I hear the police outside my window. I can hear them talking on the radios. I keep my head underneath my pillow.
49:30Pray that they're gonna leave me alone
49:39So that's like just one little chunk of the song. That was a melody that I had without any words. Did you write that chunk first? Yeah, I did. And then I had a piece that was like,
50:00You know, I didn't really have any lyrics, so we had a golden orb weaver spider in our garden this spring that I named Opaline for some reason, just because it just seemed like a cool name. I had an ant opal, and so I just started singing to her.
50:26Oh, believe, make believe that you still love me. Oh, believe, it's hard to see reality when you got no love at all. So that's just writing a country song. It's just trying to figure out a way to get to the line reality is hard to see when you got no love at all. Because one of the things that has been on my mind a lot these last few years or for a while now is how do you get to the point where reality doesn't matter? and it obviously is very negotiable for a lot of people in our information climate that we can shop for a reality that we trust and believe and there isn't a shared consensus a lot of times, which is really maddening and strange to witness.
51:36We don't even have the same agreed upon fictions anymore you know like so it's it's uh really troubling and i my theory is that must be a lot easier to do when people have been isolated from a lot of their feelings of being cared for or having you know affection and and warmth in their life so so you have in the song you have that opening image of the kid in bed, head under the pillow, and hearing the cops outside, and worrying. And then you have Opaline. And then you also have this other interesting element is, it's very plainly a country song, but we're not in country territory, are we? Well, I mean, country territory is pretty vast in my opinion.
52:32To me, where country music fails is when it tries to adhere to the tropes of country music and becomes like Civil War reenactment or something. It's not about what's happening. And this is a weird song for me to pick, but I'm going to stick with it now because we're in it. But, you know, this is like a little bit of a pastiche to where I got all of these elements to make sense to me and feel good to me. There's a story that runs through it that feels apprehendable to me, you know. So I had that, and that's probably what I put in my phone first. Aside from the initial chord progression that I might have hummed over.
53:17That was like the first document of this song. And then I was out driving my car on a toll road right after that. And there was a hearse on a toll road outside Chicago. And this literally happened. And I went through a toll next to a hearse. And as I went through the toll, I looked back and the hearse was stuck at the toll. like it didn't have any money or whatever. But as I kept driving, I kept looking in the rearview mirror and it just kept not being let through the toll. And I just felt like I'd been hit over the head with one of the most striking metaphors I'd ever encountered in the real world.
54:05You know, like what is purgatory? I don't know. Like it's just one of the craziest things. And so I actually wrote this in the car into my phone. I've just voice memoed into my phone. There's nothing worse than a hearse driving slow.
54:33Out on the tollway, stopping at the tolls. No change, no easy pass What a way to go
54:52There's nothing worse than a hearse Driving slow
55:02Oh, oh, believe Then you get back into the chorus Wait, dumb question, but you had the Hearst experience, and you had these two little bits that you've already done. Why do you think the Hearst experience belongs to this song and not any number of other things that you have stashed away for future reference? How do you know it belongs here? It's just what was in my mind. So I don't really think of things as accidents that I need to really investigate. and it just, it sang well to this melody before I could even make a decision about where it should go. Do you know what I mean? It's like that song was already in my mind.
55:48I had been working on it. So those are the patterns that you walk around with when you have a song in your head. And that's one of the reasons I enjoy having a song in my head because then everything that happens to me is you know like everything fits in that melody it makes some it makes some order out of the world i suppose you know so those lyrics that you just sang for me is that exactly as you composed them in the car or would you fiddle with them later no that's exactly as i composed them in the car and did you compose them in the car like like off the cuff or did you were you playing with in your mind before you recorded it?
56:29I played with it in my mind a little bit before I decided that I should document it before I get home. And again, I'm sorry, now I'm totally, I can't get over this. I think this is so much fun. Do you pull over or do you keep driving and you're singing into your phone? Well, I mean, not to get too technical, but I pressed a button on my phone that allowed me to record it without having to take my eyes off the road. No, I didn't mean, I wasn't suggesting you were an unsafe driver, but I was suggesting like, does it, I was imagining there was a scenario where you're so caught up in this that you're like, I got to focus.
57:06And you would like pull into the, you know, the IHOP parking lot. And, but no, no, you're just, you're just driving merrily down the road, singing this into your phone. Yeah. I love also that 99 % of humanity sees the hearse, either doesn't see the hearse, or sees the hearse and doesn't immediately understand the perfection of that metaphor. I feel like you're attuned. You are attuned to these things. Thank you. I think we all should be. I mean, we're walking around and there's no failed experiment if you're paying attention to the world. I think we get tired. I think we get overwhelmed, like I was saying before, with like inspiration or influence and things like that.
57:53You know, we're not always receptive and we're not always – we don't always have the energy. Or a lot of us have a lot of concerns all the time about a lot of other things that would require more mental energy than we have. And that tends to crowd out a lot of, you know, paying attention to the strangeness of the world or the, you know. I don't feel like I'm doing anything super unique in that regard. I just think that I am aware that my brain wants to make sense of stuff, and I give it an opportunity to make sense of stuff, you know, or actively participate in the fact that it does that. I think all of our brains do that.
58:34But all of our brains would much prefer to find some reason for something to be the way it is than to try and accept and understand ambiguity and randomness and things like that. So we're designed to do that. And then sometimes it hits you over the head because it is just too perfect and beautiful like a hearse being stuck at a tollbooth. Lassa. Well, you're not done. We're not done. Keep going. Well, the thing, you know, so there's another verse and a chorus, verse and a chorus. And then by that time, I think I had already recorded it. And I had recorded the song without any lyrics. I didn't sing it.
59:26I just was just, and then I envisioned this like long outro guitar solo. So I needed another verse and I needed something that was going to set up a long guitar solo into a last chorus. And that was actually the hardest part because I wanted something that sort of tied those two pieces together a little bit, at least ambiently somehow. So I came up with a bunch of things that I actually changed over time. And I can't remember all the different changes because I only remember what I ended up on. But it was...
1:00:14I'd like to find out why she had to go.
1:00:23My heart wants what a heart can't control
1:00:31So I hang in the air as the light gets cold And I hide in her shadows and welcome her home
1:00:51And then it goes into the solo there. But to me, it was kind of like I had become the guy that was hiding from the cops, that got killed, that got murdered by cops, that ended up on the highway in a hearse, not having to change even the money to go through a toll. you know comically dark even in in uh my demise still completely just devoid of any luck whatsoever you know which is a country trope in a way you know just like the the beautiful loser um but still but still singing this is a theme on the record actually is still singing from beyond the grave to this woman who basically took everything away in his opinion or his feeling, but knowing, basically saying, I'm still going to be in that air that you breathe.
1:01:51I'm still going to be, I can't have what I want, but I can still imagine that you are going to think about me from time to time. And it's a sad, pathetic notion that a lot of weak men have. I've had in my life is that you'll miss me when I'm gone. And I think it's more often than not wishful thinking. Yeah. Would you have to finish the song for us? Well, it's just one more chorus. No, no, it's fine. It's so beautiful. Thank you.
1:02:39Make believe that you still love me Oh, oh, believe It's hard to see reality When you got no love at all I love that. Hold on. Thank you. Well, thank you, Jeff. I think that's a lovely way to wrap things up. Well, I appreciate it. Thank you so much. Hope you enjoyed that catalog episode of Broken Record. To hear some of our favorite Jeff Tweedy songs, hit the link to the playlist in the episode description. And be sure to check out our video episodes at youtube.com slash brokenrecordpodcast. And be sure to follow us on Instagram at thebrokenrecordpod. You can follow us on Twitter at Broken Record.
1:03:32Broken Record is produced and edited by Leah Rose with marketing help from Eric Sandler and Jordan McMillan. Our engineer is Ben Toleday. Broken Record is a production of Pushkin Industries. If you love this show and others from Pushkin, consider subscribing to Pushkin Plus. Pushkin Plus is a podcast subscription that offers bonus content and ad-free listening for$4.99 a month. Look for Pushkin Plus on Apple Podcast subscriptions. And if you like this show, please remember to share, rate, and review us on your podcast app. Our theme music is by Kenny Beats. I'm Justin Richman.
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From the publisher
Today, we're revisiting a gem from our archives. In late 2020, Wilco's frontman and acclaimed songwriter Jeff Tweedy released his compact yet powerful book, "How to Write One Song" – a remarkable guide for unlocking anyone's creative potential through songwriting. This exploration of creativity immediately resonated with Broken Record host Malcolm Gladwell, leading to a fascinating conversation about the book and examining what has established Tweedy as one of the most distinctive songwriters of the 21st century so far.
You can hear a playlist of some of our favorite songs from Jeff Tweedy & Wilco HERE.
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