Over the last decade working as a freelance photographer, one of my favorite things to shoot was the behind the scenes of creative people working on their medium. From musicians to architects, to filmmakers, I’m always fascinated by their thought processes and love witnessing art being created right there in front of me. As much as I enjoy photographing many other things, that was always a sweet spot for me.
Mars Motel @ Virtue and Vice Studios | 2018 | © Leo Mascaro
With that in mind, it’s easy to understand why Song Exploder was meant to become one of the most inspiring things I would watch this year. Song Exploder (the Netflix show) is based on the Podcast of the same name with the premise of “A podcast where musicians take apart their songs, and piece by piece, tell the story of how they were made.” — I think you know where this is going, right?
After having listened to a lot of episodes and binge-watching the first season of the tv show, it’s pretty obvious to me that they both act as perfect companions, in the sense that it’s impossible to choose one format over the other. The beauty of the podcast is relying on your ears to put all the pieces together and imagine the whole situation in front of you. At the same time, the advantage of the tv show is being able to see everything that they’re talking about translated into (incredibly produced) imagery. At the end of each episode (in both formats) the song is played in its full version for the first time and, like magic, it’s like you can finally connect all the pieces and from that moment on, you will never listen to that song the same way anymore. And while in the podcast you get to close your eyes and pay full attention to the song, in the tv show we are gifted with an incredible visual experience (unique to each episode) of the song and lyrics, like this one from Lin-Manuel Miranda’s “Wait for It”: