How The Creators Of New Netflix Series ‘Song Exploder’ Got R.E.M. Back Together, Sort Of

For all the blows 2020 has dealt us, “Song Exploder,” the new Netflix
NFLX
series based on the long-running podcast of the same name, offers a musical respite for R.E.M. fans. 

Like the podcast, the show—premiering Friday, October 2—features notable musicians breaking down various aspects of one of their songs, from inspiration to songwriting to instrumental elements to technical aspects. New interviews, archival footage and raw recordings interplay to weave intimate, multilayered stories.

Among the quartet of debut episodes is a segment featuring all four original band members parsing and playing, in turn, their 1991 hit “Losing My Religion”—a reunion of sorts for the seminal artists. The other eps feature Alicia Keys delving into “3 Hour Drive,” Lin-Manuel Miranda on Hamilton song “Wait For It” and Ty Dolla $ign on “L.A.”

“As an R.E.M. fan, having all four of the members of R.E.M. together is something that I haven’t seen or heard in decades,” says Morgan Neville, the Oscar-winning documentary filmmaker (“20 Feet From Stardom,” “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?”), who under his Tremolo Productions co-produces the show with “Song Exploder” creator/host Hrishikesh Hirway. “That was really special.”

Twenty-five years to be precise. Although the band members famously have no bad blood, Michael Stipe, Mike Mills, Peter Buck and Bill Berry played their last tour as a foursome in 1995.

Berry survived a ruptured brain aneurysm during that outing but left the band two years later. The drummer subsequently hopped on stage to accompany his former band mates for a song or two only a couple of times, and the remaining R.E.M. members disbanded at the end of 2008, leaving behind legions of grieving fans. 

Lead vocalist/guitarist Stipe and bassist Mills appeared on Hirway’s podcast in December 2017 to dissect “Try Not To Breathe,” from the band’s 1992 album “Automatic for the People.” 

The two “had initially done the podcast, I think, with some level of skepticism,” says Hirway. “They had basically been talked into it by their publicists, who said, ‘We really think you’re going to like this.’ And it turned out they really did. They enjoyed the conversation and how the episode turned out. So when we were trying to book for our television episodes, we went back to them and they were happy to do it.”

But what about lead guitarist Buck, who post-R.E.M. has embraced a largely off-grid solo career? And drummer Berry, who decades ago said he’d lost his passion for music-making and pretty much has stuck with that script. It wasn’t an easy ask.

“R.E.M.’s team said, ‘We don’t ask Bill to do very much because this is not something he likes to do, not something he’s comfortable with. We think this is going to be special so we’ve asked him, and if he says yes could you please be, could you just be cool?’” Hirway recalls. 

“They were like, ‘If you screw this up, you’re going to make things difficult for us for a long, long time.’ And our ask was not only for us to do an interview but also if he would play his drum part of ‘Losing My Religion’ so we could film it and have him talk about it. It changes the way someone talks about a song when they actually have it in their muscles again and they perform it. And he did… he was game for all of it. He actually played drums for us on camera.”

Neville concurs: “He hadn’t done anything like that in, I think they said 10 years. And then they said, ‘Please don’t screw this up so that when we ask him again to do something 10 years from now he’ll say yes.’ ”

The desire to seek participation from the entire band highlights a key difference between “Song Exploder” the podcast—which debuted in 2014 and has blossomed into a treasure trove for music lovers—and “Song Exploder” the TV series. 

From Podcast to TV Show

“The podcast tends to be a singular interview with an artist. We realized having other voices helping to tell the story and bringing more dimensions to it makes it work more as a television show,” Neville says. “We’ve interviewed more producers and band members and engineers to help us understand each song dimensionally—that works for television.

Hirway says the television format changes the nature of the requests. “The stakes were so different going from the podcast to something like working with an Oscar-winning filmmaker for Netflix, a platform with millions of viewers,” he says. “And it also allowed us to do something like travel to Athens, GA, to film where the band first formed and film our interview with Bill Berry.”

Television also carries a different weight. “Something the podcast has benefited from is its timeliness,” Neville says. “Rishi can turn around an episode in a few weeks so it really can be part of an artist’s release strategy and promotion.” 

For the new series, he notes, “The episodes have to be timeless in a way. They are going to be up on Netflix forever, so they need to not feel like this week’s promo but something that will stand the test of time. I think the artists got that. Which is good. Because it doesn’t serve them as much to say, ‘This’ll help push your new album.’ For the most part all the people we’ve talked to understand, ‘This is a moment for me to share something about my creative process even if there’s no direct benefit to me.’ I think that was the big corner we turned and something I’m really proud of.”

Which is not to say the show doesn’t aspire to engage new fans.

“The process of music discovery has changed so much recently, and this show is hopefully a way people will discover something new, fall in love with a song they might not have been exposed to otherwise,” Hirway says. 

“We purposefully tried to book the shows the same way the podcast is booked, which is to have a really diverse range of artists that almost ensures there’s not gong to be any one person who’s the No. 1 fan of all four of these artists,” he adds. The concept is viewers “would buy into this kind of storytelling, and the art of turning ideas into something that exists in the world, and then they’ll watch all four episodes.” 

Back to R.E.M., fans may be wondering if the band’s episode could be a prequel to a long-awaited reunion. Sadly, it’s back to bad news.

“No, I don’t think so,” Neville says. “It was not the impression I got.”

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