Netflix Announces Song Exploder TV Show With R.E.M., Alicia Keys, Ty Dolla $ign, & Lin-Manuel Miranda

Netflix Announces Song Exploder TV Show With R.E.M., Alicia Keys, Ty Dolla $ign, & Lin-Manuel Miranda

Song Exploder has long been one of the most interesting music podcasts around, an engaging venue for artists like Tame Impala, St. Vincent, Arcade Fire, Yo La Tengo, and many others to take listeners under the hood and explain how their music works. Now creator Hrishikesh Hirway — whose own music as The One AM Radio once graced these pages — has adapted the podcast into a TV series for Netflix.

The Song Exploder Netflix show will premiere on Oct. 2. It’s set to feature Hirway interviewing a high-profile quartet of artists. R.E.M., who once broke down “Try Not To Breathe” on a Song Exploder podcast, will discuss “Losing My Religion.” Alicia Keys seems to be spotlighting “3 Hour Drive,” her new collaboration with Sampha. Lin-Manuel Miranda is on board to dissect “Wait For It” from Hamilton. And Ty Dolla $ign gets an episode too, breaking down “LA.”

News of the Song Exploder TV show comes just weeks after Hirway, in a now-deleted tweet, announced that he was having to delete some podcast episodes due to licenses expiring: “This is a bummer, but I’m starting to take episodes of Song Exploder down. I’ve always hoped they’d all be available forever, but the reality of music licensing makes that impossible. As the podcast approaches 200 episodes, it’s just too expensive to keep all of them afloat.” Even with that Netflix money?! (Just kidding, I wouldn’t want to pay to perennially maintain all those licenses either.)

Watch the trailer below.

Song Exploder hits Netflix on 10/2.

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