Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy Wants You to Be Bad at Something. It’s for Your Own Good.

Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy Wants You to Be Bad at Something. It’s for Your Own Good.

Recently, I picked up Jeff Tweedy’s “How to Write One Song.” It was a bit of a lark. Tweedy is the frontman for Wilco, one of my favorite bands, but I’m not a songwriter, and I don’t plan to become one. But, unexpectedly, I loved the book. It’s the most generous and approachable guide to the creative process I’ve read.

It’s also relentlessly practical: To Tweedy, this really is a process, replete with practices that you can enjoy doing daily. As a writer of a very different sort, I’ve had a blast with them.

So I asked Tweedy to come on the show to talk about creativity, ands his approach to it. He debunks the idea that suffering is necessary (or even useful) for the creative process, talks through his relentless search for inspiration, sings and analyzes a few of my favorite songs, analyzes his relationship with his mother, shares some of his tricks for finding fresh language for old ideas and even convinces me to write some poetry.

This is a fun one.

Book recommendations:

Don Quixote by Miguel De Cervantes

A Temple of Texts by William H. Gass

The MacGuffin by Stanley Elkin

You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of "The Ezra Klein Show" at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein.

Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at ezrakleinshow@nytimes.com.

“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Annie Galvin, Jeff Geld and Rogé Karma; fact-checking by Michelle Harris; original music by Isaac Jones; mixing by Jeff Geld, audience strategy by Shannon Busta. Special thanks to Kristin Lin.

Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app.


Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Episoder(499)

Let's Talk About the Anxiety Freedom Can Cause

Let's Talk About the Anxiety Freedom Can Cause

Maggie Nelson is a poet, critic and cultural theorist whose work includes the award-winning 2016 book “The Argonauts.” Her newest work, “On Freedom,” pierces right into the heart of America’s founding...

8 Okt 20211h 5min

How to Do the Most Good

How to Do the Most Good

Do we actually know how much good our charitable donations do?This is the question that jump-started Holden Karnofsky’s current career. He was working at a hedge fund and wanted to figure out how to g...

5 Okt 20211h 28min

Eric Adams Has a Message for the Democratic Party

Eric Adams Has a Message for the Democratic Party

In July, Eric Adams narrowly won the Democratic nomination for mayor of New York, making him the odds-on favorite to win in November. And he won the nomination by running directly against the verities...

1 Okt 202148min

This Conversation With Richard Powers Is a Gift

This Conversation With Richard Powers Is a Gift

There are certain conversations I fear trying to fit into a description. There’s just more to them than I’m going to be able to convey. This is one of them.Richard Powers is the author of 13 novels, i...

28 Sep 20211h 24min

Opinion Crossover: California Republicans, Facebook and Media Navelgazing

Opinion Crossover: California Republicans, Facebook and Media Navelgazing

Today, we’re doing something a little different. Instead of a normal interview, we wanted to let you in on a special round table discussion I recently had with my fellow Opinion Audio hosts: Jane Coas...

24 Sep 202134min

We’re on the Precipice of a Post-Roe World

We’re on the Precipice of a Post-Roe World

A few weeks ago, the Supreme Court let stand a Texas law creating a system of vigilante legal enforcement against anyone who participates in an abortion after the point of fetal cardiac activity. In e...

21 Sep 202159min

Economics Needs to Reckon With What It Doesn’t Know

Economics Needs to Reckon With What It Doesn’t Know

“The world discovered that John Maynard Keynes was right when he declared during World War II that ‘anything we can actually do, we can afford,’” writes Adam Tooze. “Budget constraints don’t seem to e...

17 Sep 20211h 15min

How Colson Whitehead Writes About Our ‘Big Wild Country’

How Colson Whitehead Writes About Our ‘Big Wild Country’

“If he got a thrill out of transforming these ill-gotten goods into legit merchandise, a zap-charge in his blood like he’d plugged into a socket, he was in control of it and not the other way around,”...

14 Sep 202156min

Populært innen Politikk og nyheter

giver-og-gjengen-vg
aftenpodden
aftenpodden-usa
forklart
stopp-verden
popradet
det-store-bildet
nokon-ma-ga
fotballpodden-2
rss-gukild-johaug
dine-penger-pengeradet
lydartikler-fra-aftenposten
rss-ness
hanna-de-heldige
aftenbla-bla
rss-espen-lee-usensurert
rss-dannet-uten-piano
rss-penger-polser-og-politikk
frokostshowet-pa-p5
bt-dokumentar-2