Sad Song Queens

In this episode of Sad Song Queens, hosts Laura Webb and Lindsay Wolfington sit down with Andrew Bird—Grammy-nominated singer-songwriter, violinist, whistler, and recent Emmy winner for Outstanding Original Music and Lyrics. Recorded prior to his big win, this conversation dives into the award-winning track "Need Someone," co-written with composer Gavin Brivik for HBO Max's hit medical drama The Pitt.
Whether you are a longtime fan of Andrew Bird, an admirer of his work across film and television, or simply a lover of deeply emotional, melancholy music, this episode offers a captivating look into his creative process and collaboration with The Pitt composer Gavin Brivik. During the interview, Andrew reveals that he wrote "Need Someone" in just an hour and a half after watching a single poignant scene. He reflects on how writing to picture provided a refreshing constraint, pushing him to be far more emotionally direct than on his solo albums. He also breaks down the song's core theme: the universal human need for connection and comfort during end-of-life care, and the profound reality that healthcare workers are often the last people by our side.
Beyond his 18 studio albums and contributions to projects like The Bear, Ted Lasso, and Disney's The Muppets, Andrew Bird touches on scoring Netflix's upcoming series Pride and Prejudice. He also opens up about his broader artistic philosophy—how fatherhood alleviated his career anxieties, why playing guitar keeps his songwriting grounded compared to complex violin arrangements, the real story behind his iconic whistling, and why live performance offers a far deeper connection than studio recording. To wrap up, Andrew shares some of his personal favorite sad songs and what makes his musical style so unique.
Grab your tissues, tune in, and enjoy this deep dive into music, emotion, and storytelling!
Keywords: Andrew Bird interview, Andrew Bird Emmy, Need Someone Andrew Bird, The Pitt, Gavin Brivik, Emmy-winning song, whistling, Sad songs podcast, music supervisor podcast

Exciting news!  The Sad Song Queens podcast is a finalist in two categories for the Signal Awards!  The Signal Awards recognize the podcasts that define culture, and we've been recognized for both the Best Music Podcast
Essential Sad Songs, from LoveCat Music.  Stream it now on Spotify.
https://open.spotify.com/playlist/4DyWdiKiwI6L01fOJG5Zgc?si=gs0i5XrcSL6oU9Yz4zvR-w
Support the show
To help support these artists’ as well as their favorite sad songs, please check out our Official Spotify Playlist! 
Find us elsewhere: 
https://linktr.ee/sadsongqueens

If you like what you hear, you can buy us a coffee!
Our theme song is "All My Favorite Songs" by Weezer, courtesy of Crush Music, Atlantic Recording Company, and WEA International Inc, a Warner Music Company.
Our Sad Song Queen image was created by Keahu Kahuanui. 
Check out our friends at The Songwriting School of Los Angeles!

Grammy-winning songwriter Dan Wilson (Semisonic, "Closing Time") returns for part two of his Sad Song Queens interview with hosts and award-winning music supervisors Laura Webb and Lindsay Wolfington.  In this episode, he goes deep on co-writing Adele's heartbreaking hit "Someone Like You." Dan shares the untold story behind the song's iconic piano part, how Adele's iconic “screechy” falsetto note almost got cut, why her mum's tears convinced them to finish the song, and what really happened in the studio during those two legendary writing days.

Plus: Dan breaks down his personal (comprehensive) list of the saddest songs ever written — from "Fast Car" and "Somewhere" to "Rainbow Connection" and "I Can't Make You Love Me" — and explores why nostalgic songs like "In My Life" and "Night Swimming" hit just as hard as the openly heartbreaking ones. 

Dan Wilson is a Minneapolis-born, Los Angeles-based artist with four Grammy wins across seven nominations, including Song of the Year for the Chicks' "Not Ready to Make Nice," Album of the Year as producer on Adele's 21, Best Country Song for Chris Stapleton's "White Horse," and Best Song Written for Visual Media for "It Never Went Away" with Jon Batiste. As the frontman of Semisonic, he also co-wrote generation-defining hits like "Closing Time" and "Secret Smile."   

This episode is a must-listen for fans of Dan Wilson, Semisonic, Adele, and lovers of iconic sad songs.

Topics covered: Adele songwriting process, appoggiatura in sad songs, Someone Like You, Saddest songs of all time, Dan Wilson interview, Music production stories, Grammy-winning songwriters.
Exciting news!  The Sad Song Queens podcast is a finalist in two categories for the Signal Awards!  The Signal Awards recognize the podcasts that define culture, and we've been recognized for both the Best Music Podcast
Essential Sad Songs, from LoveCat Music.  Stream it now on Spotify.
https://open.spotify.com/playlist/4DyWdiKiwI6L01fOJG5Zgc?si=gs0i5XrcSL6oU9Yz4zvR-w
Support the show
To help support these artists’ as well as their favorite sad songs, please check out our Official Spotify Playlist! 
Find us elsewhere: 
https://linktr.ee/sadsongqueens

If you like what you hear, you can buy us a coffee!
Our theme song is "All My Favorite Songs" by Weezer, courtesy of Crush Music, Atlantic Recording Company, and WEA International Inc, a Warner Music Company.
Our Sad Song Queen image was created by Keahu Kahuanui. 
Check out our friends at The Songwriting School of Los Angeles!

In this episode of Sad Song Queens, hosts Laura Webb and Lindsay Wolfington sit down with Grammy-winning songwriter, producer, and Semisonic frontman Dan Wilson to unpack one of the most quietly devastating songs in his catalog: "Fly Safe." For a podcast built around the songs that make people cry, Dan turns out to be the perfect guest — a self-described "earnest" songwriter whose melodies, he admits, sound sad even when he's trying to write something hopeful.

Dan Wilson is a Minneapolis-born, Los Angeles-based artist with four Grammy wins across seven nominations, including Song of the Year for the Chicks' "Not Ready to Make Nice," Album of the Year as producer on Adele's 21, Best Country Song for Chris Stapleton's "White Horse," and Best Song Written for Visual Media for "It Never Went Away" with Jon Batiste. As the frontman of Semisonic, he also co-wrote generation-defining hits like "Closing Time" and "Secret Smile."  This episode's conversation focuses on "Fly Safe," a song many fans read as purely comforting, and which Dan reveals is anything but simple underneath the surface.

Laura and Lindsay walk through their own theories of the song — pointing out that lyrically, "Fly Safe" reads like reassurance: get high, travel light, think about the good times, we can start again.  Dan agrees, and then goes further, explaining that the phrase "fly safe" itself carries an inherent unease — you only say it to someone you love, and only because there's a real chance something could go wrong.

That tension, it turns out, wasn't accidental. Dan opens up about the real circumstances behind the song: he wrote it during a genuinely difficult period in his marriage when he and his wife were both preparing to leave for separate trips, and the phrase "fly safe" became loaded with everything neither of them was saying out loud. Dan describes the uncertainty of the lyric — a hope that they'd find their way back to each other.  

They then discuss the songwriting process, and true to what he calls his "Nashville habit," Dan says the title came before anything else.  He explains the song's minor-to-relative-major chord movement, and why it never fully resolves — a trick he credits to years of working with producer Rick Rubin, who trained him to take the "easy, sweet resolves" out of his chord progressions.  The result is a song that ends on a minor chord after a swelling, hopeful instrumental section — leaving listeners suspended between reassurance and doubt, which is exactly the emotional trick that makes "Fly Safe" so effective as a sad song.  

The episode also touches on his history with Semisonic, including how their label initially rejected their album Feeling Strangely Fine outright before offering the band money to re-record it — a moment that was talked down by his longtime manager, Jim Grant, who convinced him not to touch songs like "Closing Time" and "Secret Smile." 

Toward the end of the episode, Dan shares what's next for him, including Semisonic's new single "Don't Give Up Yet," written as a love letter to Minneapolis. He explains how the song began as an unfinished tribute to bassist John after John suffered a stroke that initially took away his ability to play — and how Dan eventually finished the lyrics under very different, heavier circumstances tied to his hometown. A recent Semisonic performance in front of over 35,000 people in the Twin Cities, was made even more meaningful by John's return to the stage, relearning bass with a pick after his stroke.

This episode is a must-listen for fans of Dan Wilson, Semisonic, Adele, and anyone who has ever choked up over a song that sounds happier than it feels. 

Don't miss part two of this conversation with Dan Wilson next week, where we go deep into the making of Adele's "Someone Like You," plus Dan Wilson's definitive, handwritten list of the saddest songs of all time.

Topics covered: Dan Wilson, Fly Safe, Semisonic, Minneapolis, Adele Someone Like You, Sad Song Queens
Exciting news!  The Sad Song Queens podcast is a finalist in two categories for the Signal Awards!  The Signal Awards recognize the podcasts that define culture, and we've been recognized for both the Best Music Podcast
LoveCat Music - Essential Sad Songs Playlist
https://open.spotify.com/playlist/4DyWdiKiwI6L01fOJG5Zgc?si=gs0i5XrcSL6oU9Yz4zvR-w
Support the show
To help support these artists’ as well as their favorite sad songs, please check out our Official Spotify Playlist! 
Find us elsewhere: 
https://linktr.ee/sadsongqueens

If you like what you hear, you can buy us a coffee!
Our theme song is "All My Favorite Songs" by Weezer, courtesy of Crush Music, Atlantic Recording Company, and WEA International Inc, a Warner Music Company.
Our Sad Song Queen image was created by Keahu Kahuanui. 
Check out our friends at The Songwriting School of Los Angeles!

Music supervisors Laura Webb and Lindsay Wolfington kick off this episode with a summer catch up. From travel tales and rock biographies to the tracks on heavy rotation, the Sad Song Queens sync up on everything that defined their summer break.

The duo peels back the curtain on the raw realities of music supervision and clearance, and music coordinator Jordan Linsley steps into the studio to talk shop—and host a high-stakes, hilarious game of Misunderstood Songs.

Play along as Laura and Lindsay throw down, attempting to decode famously botched lines from your favorite bands. Equal parts industry insider track and laugh-out-loud song trivia, this is the ultimate listen for music lovers and trivia nerds alike. Stick around to the very end to see who takes the crown!
Exciting news!  The Sad Song Queens podcast is a finalist in two categories for the Signal Awards!  The Signal Awards recognize the podcasts that define culture, and we've been recognized for both the Best Music Podcast
Essential Sad Songs, from LoveCat Music.  Stream it now on Spotify.
https://open.spotify.com/playlist/4DyWdiKiwI6L01fOJG5Zgc?si=gs0i5XrcSL6oU9Yz4zvR-w
Support the show
To help support these artists’ as well as their favorite sad songs, please check out our Official Spotify Playlist! 
Find us elsewhere: 
https://linktr.ee/sadsongqueens

If you like what you hear, you can buy us a coffee!
Our theme song is "All My Favorite Songs" by Weezer, courtesy of Crush Music, Atlantic Recording Company, and WEA International Inc, a Warner Music Company.
Our Sad Song Queen image was created by Keahu Kahuanui. 
Check out our friends at The Songwriting School of Los Angeles!

New York rock veteran Jesse Malin joins Sad Song Queens hosts Laura Webb and Lindsay Wolfington to break down "My Little Life," a song that's taken on an entirely new meaning after the health crisis that nearly ended his career. Malin has spent more than two decades as one of New York's most beloved rock artists — his 2003 solo debut The Fine Art of Self-Destruction earned him praise from Rolling Stone, and his songs have since been covered by Bruce Springsteen, Lucinda Williams, Green Day, Elvis Costello, Bleachers, and Counting Crows. In 2023, Malin suffered a rare spinal stroke that left him paralyzed from the waist down. Rather than step out of the spotlight, he learned to stand again and returned to the stage the following year, later channeling the experience into his off-Broadway debut, Silver Manhattan, a Drama Desk–nominated autobiographical production, and his new memoir, Almost Grown: A New York Memoir.

"My Little Life" plays a pivotal role in Silver Manhattan, and the hosts open by unpacking why the song — written years before Malin's stroke — feels almost prophetic now. Malin explains that he originally wrote it about people in his life who struggled with the simplest, everyday things: friends and family members who felt like they never quite fit in, for whom just getting through the day carried real weight. 

The conversation moves into how "My Little Life" ended up in Silver Manhattan in the first place. Malin describes handing his entire back catalog over to the play's director and co-writer to cherry-pick from, and being genuinely surprised by some of their choices — only to find that hearing his own songs performed in a new context, in front of an audience, changed how he understood them. He's candid about the physical challenge of performing at all after his stroke, describing the months of physical therapy it took just to stand and balance long enough to sing one song upright for his sold-out Beacon Theater shows.

Malin also opens up about the origins of Silver Manhattan itself — conceived the day after that Beacon Theater show, when a friend suggested he turn his catalog and his story into an ongoing New York residency rather than retreat. What started as that idea grew into a 92-minute rock show built with his full band, tracing his life from his old hardcore band Heart Attack and his punk band D Generation through his solo career, while also functioning, in his words, as a love letter to Manhattan and to the freewheeling, walking-the-streets life he lost and then had to rediscover from a wheelchair.

Elsewhere in the episode, Malin talks about writing "Shane," a song named for his friend and hero Shane McGowan of the Pogues, and how singing that song live took on new weight after McGowan's death, and after Malin himself began touring in a wheelchair. He and the hosts also dig into Malin's reflections on chasing music before the internet made it instantly accessible,  his teenage years in the New York hardcore and punk scenes and its DIY attitude, and how PMA became a guiding life mantra. Don’t miss this candid and reflective conversation between the Sad Song Queens and a New York music legend.
Exciting news!  The Sad Song Queens podcast is a finalist in two categories for the Signal Awards!  The Signal Awards recognize the podcasts that define culture, and we've been recognized for both the Best Music Podcast
Essential Sad Songs, from LoveCat Music.  Stream it now on Spotify.
https://open.spotify.com/playlist/4DyWdiKiwI6L01fOJG5Zgc?si=gs0i5XrcSL6oU9Yz4zvR-w
Support the show
To help support these artists’ as well as their favorite sad songs, please check out our Official Spotify Playlist! 
Find us elsewhere: 
https://linktr.ee/sadsongqueens

If you like what you hear, you can buy us a coffee!
Our theme song is "All My Favorite Songs" by Weezer, courtesy of Crush Music, Atlantic Recording Company, and WEA International Inc, a Warner Music Company.
Our Sad Song Queen image was created by Keahu Kahuanui. 
Check out our friends at The Songwriting School of Los Angeles!