Five music-and-talk podcasts that dive much deeper than most

If you’ve watched many “music reaction videos” on YouTube — you know, the kind where hip-hop fans share their real-time response to K-pop girl group BlackPink, hyperkinetic kids play air-guitar to AC/DC’s “Back in Black,” and puzzled dogs tilt their heads while listening to the voice of Geddy Lee — it’s only natural to assume that serious, in-depth analysis of contemporary music is something that’s completely fallen by the wayside.

But that’s not true. While YouTube may be a critical wasteland, there are a number of podcasts that cater to the needs of even the most obsessive-compulsive music fans. Currently, there are more than 20,000 music-and-talk podcasts on Spotify. Here are five that dive much deeper than most.

Chances are, if you’ve read this far you’ve already listened to Song Exploder. Hosted by Hrishikesh Hirway — whose other podcasts include The West Wing Weekly, Partners and Home Cooking — the biweekly series has featured more than 250 well-known artists describing, in sometimes excruciating detail, the making of a single song.

“That’s a synth Omnisphere,” says The 1975’s George Daniel in a full-band discussion of their 2020 track “The Birthday Party.” “It was like two sounds blended, one of those thumb kalimbas, and like a music box. Even though we added loads and loads of production, and it became this really weird trippy thing, we were trying to make this song feel like you’re in a room with us playing a song.”

Slipknot’s Jim Root, meanwhile, takes a more philosophical approach to the horrorcore band’s “Unsainted” single. “There’s the section of the songwriting where you get to do what we call, like, the icing, you know, the frosting on the cake or whatever,” he revealed. “And that’s where you’re just trying to find, you know, cool sounds.”

The success of Song Exploder has also led to a Netflix series that includes episodes in which R.E.M. talk about “Losing My Religion,” Trent Reznor discusses Nine Inch Nails’ “Hurt” and Ty Dollar $ign writes and records a song in real time with Kendrick Lamar and Brandy.

Next up we have And The Writer Is, a podcast that features “acclaimed and venerable songwriters” talking about toiling in the shadows while their clients prance around in the spotlight.

Guests range from Desmond Child — whose credits include Bon Jovi’s “Livin’ on a Prayer” and Ricky Martin’s “Livin’ La Vida Loca” — to X Ambassadors’ Sam Nelson Harris and Billie Eilish’s brother Finneas.

The show is hosted by Russ Golan, who over the course of the last decade has penned more than 50 hits for artists like Selena Gomez, Demi Lovato, Michael Bublé and, of course, Linkin Park.

If you want to take a break from the solipsism of musicians and songwriters talking about themselves, check out NPR’s This Song, in which artists talk about songs (not their own) that changed their lives. Particularly noteworthy episodes include Black Pumas’ Eric Burton reflecting on Otis Redding’s “(Sittin’ on) the Dock of the Bay,” Patty Griffin discussing the nuances of Peter Gabriel’s “Secret World,” John Prine talking about how Bob Dylan’s “The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll” impacted his songwriting, and St. Vincent explaining how early Disney songs taught her to not be ironic.

Dissect, meanwhile, takes a more long-form approach to its subject matter. Now in its fifth year, the weekly podcast finds host Cole Cuchna deconstructing a single hip-hop album, song by song, over the course of a full season. A former musician, composition major and member of the Columbia House “buy one, get seven free” record club, Cuchna came up with the idea for his podcast after binging on Serial and a whole lot of Great Courses educational videos.

The series began with a 21-episode analysis of Kendrick Lamar’s To Pimp a Butterfly, with subsequent seasons devoted to the music, lyrics and narrative arc of albums like Kanye West’s My Beautiful Dark Twisted Family, Tyler, the Creators’ Flower Boy, Beyonce’s Lemonade, and Childish Gambino’s Because the Internet.

And finally, for those who prefer less variety, there’s Watching the Throne: A Lyrical Analysis of Kanye West, which draws more than 100,000 listeners to its weekly worships at the altar of Yeezus.

In addition to song-by-song discussions of Kanye’s discography, the podcast frequently steps back to look at the big picture with episodes like “The Full History of Kanye West and Taylor Swift from the VMAs to Kim’s Snapchat,” in which co-hosts Chris and Travis spend 115 minutes exploring the tumultuous relationship between the two pop icons. “This is the most absolutely comprehensive analysis you will find of Kanye and Taylor on the Internet,” they promise, “with some terribly unfunny banter to boot.”

Kanye fans with shorter attention spans can check out “Watching the Throne” spinoff Kanye West News; or What Would Ye Say, in which Kanye fans play a “patented game where we put ourselves in Yeezy’s Yeezys and guess what he would say”; or The Book of Ye with Rob Haze and Chris Daniels, hosted by two comedians who spend each episode “diving into a different chapter of the ever-expanding legend of the mad genius Yeezy”; or the short-lived and anticlimactic Kanye West Please Notice Me; or many, many others.

Sadly, none of these podcasts have been granted an interview with Kanye himself. For that, you’ll need to check out episodes of The Joe Rogan Experience, The Breakfast Club and Big Boys’ Fully Loaded Interviews.

Or, you could just go back to YouTube and watch TRUTH! Two Old Dudes React to Kanye West’s “Runaway.” The choice is yours.