Life in Seven Songs How Taylor Swift got TV writer Michael Schur out of a rut
Michael Schur is the creative force behind some of the most beloved comedies of the past two decades: The Good Place, Parks and Rec, Brooklyn Nine-Nine, and most recently, A Man On The Inside, starring Ted Danson.
If Mike’s face looks familiar, it might be from his scene-stealing performance as Mose Schrute on The Office, on which Mike was also a writer. Mike’s shows have a distinctive signature: they don’t just make you laugh – they make you think about morality and what it means to be human. Along the way, they might just make you cry.
In this episode, Mike charts the songs and milestones that turned him into the writer he is today – from the Neutral Milk Hotel album that taught him to wear his heart on his sleeve, to the fender bender that sparked an existential crisis that would become The Good Place, to the Taylor Swift song that pulled him out of a creative rut during the pandemic. It’s a conversation about how art teaches us to feel, and how those feelings become the stories we tell. Here are his songs.
- “Weird Al” Yankovic, “Eat It”
- The Beatles, “A Day in the Life”
- Indigo Girls, “Kid Fears”
- Neutral Milk Hotel, “Ghost”
- Derek and the Dominos, “Key to the Highway”
- Arvo Pärt, “Spiegel im Spiegel”
- Taylor Swift, “gold rush”
Listen to Michael Schur’s full playlist on Spotify. Find the transcript of this episode at lifeinsevensongs.com. Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at lifeinsevensongs@sfstandard.com.