Gesamtlänge aller Episoden: 6 days 3 hours 32 minutes
Returning for season 10, Song by Song throws its hat into the live arena in a conversation with John Hodgman and Helen Zaltzman, recorded as part of the London Podcast Festival 2017. In this first of three special episodes, Martin, Sam, Helen and John...
Returning for a second week of live shows, Helen, John, Sam, Martin and the rest of our London Podcast Festival audience dig into the next track from Waits’s 1985 album Rain Dogs. With discussion of intertextuality with songs from the 1960s, debate...
For our third week at the London Podcast Festival, John and Helen help us pick apart some of the exaggerated family narratives at play in this third track from Rain Dogs. Waits's preoccupation with the exoticisation of deformity, the vocal effect of...
Back in the studio, Sam and Martin regroup briefly for a discussion of some of the features in this fourth track from Rain Dogs. More magpie work from Waits, cherry-picking children’s rhymes and pirate songs, as well as the unique guitar stylings of...
As they continue through Rain Dogs, Martin and Sam are joined by Eric Molinsky of the Imaginary Worlds Podcast. Discussion focuses not only on the songwriting of Waits, but also the talk-show stylings of David Letterman, the idea of stepping into...
For a second week with Eric Molinsky, Martin and Sam take a look at the image of police as both a mortal figure as well as an existential threat, as well as Waits’s role (through his music) as an ambassador for the strangeness of his worlds. Song by...
For our final week with Eric Molinsky we discuss a Sesame Street crossover, oblique western storytelling, the dreamlike landscapes of Waits’s worlds, and the power of group singing folk music. Song by Song is Martin Zaltz Austwick and Sam Pay; two...
Song by Song welcomes Jon Ronson to the show to discuss the way Waits inspires an image of a world beyond Cardiff, Wales. With the division between the heart and the head, as related to Waits vs. Springsteen, as well as a possible dairy-based spin-off...
The lyrical richness of Waits’s writing moves into the foreground again as Jon, Martin and Sam deal with the sense of loss and isolation found in this track, as well as in Jon’s feature film Frank. Song by Song is Martin Zaltz Austwick and Sam...
We reach the apex of the album (and perhaps the best exemplar of this era of Waits) as Jon, Sam and Martin dig into the portentous imagery of this song as well as some of the real consequences of life on the street. Song by Song is Martin Zaltz...