Songwriters on Process

"I've been very happy lately, and that's worrying," KT Tunstall told me. "It's much easier to write sad songs than happy songs. Happiness makes you want to be present, but pain makes you want to escape. And music has always been a way for me to get out."Tunstall is adamant about not writing every day. "I love doing nothing, so mindless puttering is especially effective. When she finally sits down, she has rules: no blue pens, and the paper has to be unlined. Why unlined? Because she hates being told what to do, and lined paper represents a means of control. Tunstall is celebrating the 20th anniversary of her debut album Eye to the Telescope with a deluxe edition out now. 

Melody Prochet, the French singer-songwriter behind Melody's Echo Chamber, dives into her creative process and the rituals that shape it. She shares the importance of a clean workspace and daily seaside walks for clarity and inspiration. Balancing discipline with creative flow, she explores how ordinary routines and journaling inform her melodies. Melody reveals the soothing power of nature on her songwriting and discusses how past challenges transform into luminous tracks, like 'Broken Roses' from her latest album, Unclouded.

"Pants delivery was my eureka moment," Julien Ehrlich of Whitney says on the pod, and with that we have my favorite out-of-context pull quote. Ehrlich was not speaking metaphorically: when he and bandmate Max Kakacek were writing Whitney's first album, he drove a clothing delivery van that had no working radio. The monotonous drives were great sources of inspiration. Kakacek, on the other hand, was a competitive swimmer until he turned 18. Swimming endless laps staring at the bottom of the pool was a boon to his creative process. Kakacek runs now, where the monotony takes on a new shape: he listens to the same song over and over for his entire run."Lyrics don't come naturally to our brain," they said. "Our North Star is the melody." One big change to their process is learning how to tweak less.Whitney's latest album is Small Talk.

“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.