Songwriters on Process

“I’m a ‘go in phases’ type of gal. It took me a year and a half to write this record, but it came in blocks,” Gatlin says. It’s how she manages her routine in those blocks that makes her songwriting process so fascinating. Gatlin is most effective between 3pm and 5pm, and thanks to a typing class she took as a child, she can type those lyrics at 95 words per minute. She finds walks to be particularly inspiring for lyrics, but when she’s with her guitar, Gatlin sits cross-legged and gently rocks back and forth as a way to focus. And just like many songwriters have told me, bathrooms are especially productive. 

Gatlin’s latest album is Eldest Daughter on Dualtone Records. 

"I made a conscious effort on this album to be more disciplined in my writing because my ideas were getting stale and I was writing from the same place," Mariel Buckley told me. "I realized that my material was becoming repetitive when I was waiting for inspiration to strike." 

Buckley's new process involved writing every day and writing from a more joyful place. The result is her fantastic new album Strange Trip Ahead. 

Etta Friedman and Allegra Weingarten of Momma return! Momma is my favorite band and their new album Welcome to My Blue Sky is my favorite album of 2025. At least I'm consistent since I said the same thing about them when they were on the pod in 2023. (Their live show is absolutely killer too.)

Friedman and Weingarten have been writing together since their teens, and one thing hasn't changed over the years: they still write most of their songs in Etta's bedroom. But as you'll hear, there are exceptions. Weingarten wrote the riff to "Medicine" in the shower, and the title track to the new album got its start in a green room.

"I'm a professional daydreamer," Conor Oberst of Bright Eyes told me. That's the catch-22: are you really daydreaming if you're aware that you're doing it? Daydreaming leads to eureka moments, but only when you don't sit down and say, "I'm going to daydream." As with most people, the eureka moments for Oberst involve mundane activities for a practical reason: no one interrupts him when he's doing the dishes or cleaning a room. 

The perfect daydream for Oberst involves looking out a window when he's in motion and things are going by. When Oberst writes, he uses both sides of the notebook: the right side is the final version of the lyrics, and the left side is filled with the unpolished, rougher versions.

The latest release from Bright Eyes is Kids Table. 

"I get a physical tingling sensation. It's beyond my control, an impulsive feeling where I have to sit and wait for it," Billie Marten says about that moment before a wave of inspiration strikes. The problem, Marten told me, is that it's been a while since she's written anything.

But as we soon realized, Marten has been writing a lot: she pulled out her Notes app and scrolled through all the freewriting and thoughts she's written over the past year. "Look at this," she says. "I haven't written anything, but I've written something every day." Good writers know that pen to paper is only a small part of the writing process. And as you'll hear, when Marten writes songs, she loves to write diagonally.

Billie Marten's latest album is called Dog Eared.

"I allow myself to miss the guitar. And the guitar comes calling when I start to feel bored," says William Prince. A multiple JUNO award-winner, Prince is also a member of Peguis First Nation in Manitoba, Canada, writing often about his experience as a member. Prince finds long drives to be productive--and those long drives in Canada are common. "So many voice memos happen on those long drives from Calgary  to Vancouver or Winnipeg to Calgary. I’m always trying to recreate the language then."

William Prince's latest album is Further From the Country 

"It's important to separate my sense of self-worth from my creations. If I was so self-aware of my output, I don't think I'd be having fun," Melina Duterte, who goes by the performing name Jay Som, told me. She says that output is proportional to her introspection: "How much I express through music depends on how much work I've been doing on myself," she says. And there's no better place for Duterte's introspection than at her kitchen sink, doing the dishes. 

Jay Som's latest album is Belong on Polyvinyl Records.

It's the return of Hayes Carll! I first interviewed him in 2013 and again in 2016. A recurring theme of those early interviews was Carll's admitted lack of discipline in the writing process. "I'm always looking for something else to do other than write," Carll told me in 2013.

But 2025 brings a new Hayes Carll, one who sees discipline as an ally. "I don't turn away from the knock at the door, even when it's inconvenient," he says now. 

Carll's latest album is We're Only Human.

"The decision has been made, and now it's time to f**k off," Mitch Rowland told me. To be clear, Rowland wasn't saying this to me; instead, it's Rowland ruthlessly killing his darlings in the editing process. 

Rowland is a solo artist, but he's also the guitarist in Harry Styles's solo band and has co-written many songs with Styles, including "Watermelon Sugar" and "Golden." (Rowland's wife Sarah Jones is the drummer in the band.) His songwriting has appeared on all three of Styles's albums. Rowland's songwriting process involves finding time for the eureka moments. He likes to mow the lawn, for example. Walking is an also big part of Rowland's process, so he never listens to music when he walks. And as he told me, "A tremendous amount of water has landed on my phone in the shower."

Rowland's latest album is Whistling Pie. 

If you took a contemporary poetry class in college in the last 30 years, Paul Muldoon was probably on your syllabus. The New York Times has called him “one of the great poets of the past hundred years. . . . Only Yeats before him could write with such measured fury.” The Times Literary Supplement referred to Muldoon as “the most significant English-language poet born since the Second World War.” He's a Pulitzer Prize winner, a former poetry editor at The New Yorker, and currently a professor at Princeton University. 

But Muldoon has a side gig as a songwriter, which is why he’s here. So if you’re a writer in any capacity, songwriter or not, listen to this episode as we go deep into the writing process of one of the most significant poets of the past hundred years. 

The latest album by Paul Muldoon & Rogue Elephant is Visible From Space.