Over the past thirteen years, Sodajerker, a duo comprising British musicians Simon Barber and Brian O’Connor, have made it their mission to use the podcast medium to unpack the complexities of songwriting for those that love the creative process. Described by Esquire magazine as ‘the Frost/Nixon of tunesmithery’, their podcast Sodajerker On Songwriting has published over 270 episodes featuring interviews with world-leading songwriters like Sir Paul McCartney, Burt Bacharach, Alicia Keys, Paul Simon, Sting, Sheryl Crow, Elvis Costello, Tori Amos, Nile Rodgers, Jon Bon Jovi, Lindsey Buckingham and Diane Warren.
Simon and Brian’s compelling conversations with songwriters have been downloaded almost 10 million times and since its launch in 2011, the podcast has been been featured in publications like Esquire, The Guardian, The Telegraph, NME, Slate and New Statesman. In 2016, the podcast was used as the basis for the BBC documentary The Secrets of Songwriting, which Sodajerker wrote and presented. In 2020, the Sodajerker interview archive was added to the British Library. In 2023, Sodajerker On Songwriting won Best Music Podcast at the Independent Podcast Awards in London. Today, Simon and Brian are well on the way to creating the world’s most expansive archive of audio interviews with renowned songwriters about the creative process.
