I'm very excited to be joined today by Jason Schwartzman, who’s been in so many incredible films and shows, including 'Scott Pilgrim vs. the World,' 'The Darjeeling Limited,' 'Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse,' the new movie 'Mountainhead,' and so much more. In addition to being an actor, he’s also a writer and musician. He makes music under the moniker Coconut Records, and he was also the drummer in the band Phantom Planet. I was first introduced to Jason’s work in one of my all-time favorite films, 'Rushmore,' which came out in 1998 and began his long history of working with director Wes Anderson. And we’re gonna talk about some of the music from that time in his life.

For more, visit songexploder.net/jason-schwartzman.

Goo Goo Dolls formed in 1986 in Buffalo, New York, and by the time 1998 rolled around, they’d already had a pretty successful career. They’d released five albums, and one of their songs, “Name,” from 1995, had become a Top 10 hit. But things really changed for them when they made the song “Iris.” It originally came out on the soundtrack for the movie City of Angels, which came out in 1998 and starred Nicolas Cage and Meg Ryan.

“Iris” spent a record-breaking 18 weeks at number one on the radio, and became one of the best selling songs of all time, with over 14 million copies sold, and over 4.5 billion streams. So for this episode, John Rzeznik of Goo Goo Dolls came over to my place, and he told me about how he wrote the song. He told me how the Grammy-winning producer Rob Cavallo helped them expand their vision, and how the version of the song in the movie isn’t actually the version that everybody knows.

For more info, visit songexploder.net/goo-goo-dolls.

Little Simz is a rapper from England who put out her first album in 2015. She’s won the Mercury Prize, a Brit Award, and three MOBO awards. She also starred in the Netflix series Top Boy. Her most recent album is called Lotus. It came out in June 2025, and it followed a pretty tumultuous time in her career. For this episode, I got to talk to Little Simz about one of the songs from that album, called "Free," along with Miles Clinton James, who produced the track.

Thanks to Sonos for their support of the podcast. Check out sonos.com.

For more, visit songexploder.net/little-simz.