Broken Record with Rick Rubin, Malcolm Gladwell, Bruce Headlam and Justin Richmond

Joe Jackson

Joe Jackson showed up in the late '70s UK New Wave scene, all nervous energy and biting wit, with hits like "Is She Really Going Out with Him?" putting him in the same conversation as Elvis Costello and Squeeze. But where a lot of his peers stayed in their lane musically, Jackson kept moving: into the jump-blues swing of "Jumpin' Jive," into the sophisticated, Latin-tinged jazz of Night and Day, and then into classical composition, into a music-hall concept album framed around a fictional Edwardian performer named Max Champion. He's rarely made the same record twice, and that restlessness has

Jun 30, 2026

Radiohead’s Ed O’Brien

Ed O'Brien has spent decades crafting some of the most textured, expansive guitar in modern rock. From the fragmented beauty of Kid A and Amnesiac to the experimental layers of The King of Limbs, with the more straightforward muscle of OK Computer somewhere in between, few players have done more to expand what the instrument can do in a rock context. In recent years, Ed has been building a parallel universe, one where he's at the center. It started with Earth in 2020, released under the moniker EOB. Now comes Blue Morpho, out under his full birth name, Ed O'Brien. The title isn't incidental: l

Jun 23, 2026

Earth, Wind & Fire

Just before the premiere of Earth, Wind Fire's new Questlove-directed documentary , the three OGs of the group stopped by Broken Record: vocalist Phillip Bailey, singer and percussionist Ralph Johnson, and bass player Verdine White. Host Justin Richmond will tell you straight up that talking about Earth, Wind Fire's music feels a little beside the point. It exists on a level that resists explanation spiritual, emotional, somewhere in the body before it reaches the brain. What the conversation reveals instead is the kind of people these three are: warm, grounded, and deeply committed to what th

Jun 16, 2026

Fania Takes Nueva York | From Our Thing: The Birth of Salsa in Nueva York

The 1960s brings social and political change to the world and to New York City, where a young Johnny Pacheco keeps people dancing with his orchestra and charanga music. The Dominican musician is also going through a divorce and his lawyer, Jerry Masucci, happens to be a fan of Johnny s music. The two form a music partnership that will forever change music. They call their music label Fania Records. Hosted by Oscar and Emmy-nominated actress and Brooklyn native Rosie Perez and produced by Pulitzer Prize-winning Futuro Media. Our Thing: The Birth of Salsa in Nueva York, is the most comprehensive

Jun 11, 2026

The New Pornographers

The New Pornographers have never been easy to pin down. Since forming in Vancouver in the late 90s, the band became one of the defining acts of the Canadian indie rock explosion. They re part of a scene that also produced Neko Case, Dan Bejar, and a generation of artists who seemed to operate entirely outside the commercial mainstream. Co-founders Carl Newman and Kathryn Calder have spent more than two decades making records that sound like they arrived fully formed: densely layered, relentlessly melodic, and somehow both euphoric and melancholy at the same time.Their latest album, The Former

Jun 9, 2026

Mopreme Shakur

Mopreme Shakur is 2Pac's half-brother, a rapper, filmmaker, and record producer living at the intersection of revolutionary politics and hip-hop. He's one of the only surviving members of Thug Life and Outlawz, raised alongside 2Pac in the tradition of Black liberation activism. And now, for the first time, he's telling his own story. His new book, This Thug's Life, is a book about brotherhood, survival, movement building, and the making of a legend. On today's episode Justin Richmond talks to Mopreme about growing up in a family steeped in activism, how he started his rap career with a classi

Jun 2, 2026

Hardy

Before Hardy was known as the breakout artist who pushed country music into hard rock territory, he was a self-proclaimed redneck from Philadelphia, Mississippi who studied songwriting at Middle Tennessee State University. Since moving to Nashville in 2013, he's written 22 number ones for artists like Morgan Wallen, Blake Shelton, and Dierks Bentley. In 2018, with the encouragement of producer Joey Moi and his label Big Loud, Hardy started writing songs for himself and it paid off. He's now a five-time ACM Award winner and two-time CMA Award winner, joining the upper echelon of Big Loud artist

May 26, 2026

From Robert Margouleff | Shaping Sounds: Stevie Wonder, DEVO, the Synth Revolution and My Life Behind the Music

Recently, we had visionary music producer Robert Margouleff on the show and today we're sharing an excerpt from his new audiobook, Shaping Sounds: Stevie Wonder, DEVO, the Synth Revolution and My Life Behind the Music. In legendary studios like Electric Lady and the Record Plant, Margouleff became a pioneering producer and engineer for artists like Billy Preston, Jeff Beck, DEVO, The Isley Brothers, and David Sanborn. A true sonic innovator, he was an early adopter of immersive audio and surround sound, developing new mixing techniques for home theaters that brought some of Hollywood s biggest

May 21, 2026

Robert Margouleff and Mark Mothersbaugh

Robert Margouleff is one of the most quietly consequential figures in modern music a sonic architect who helped build some of the most innovative and enduring sounds of the last half century. Together with his partner Malcolm Cecil, Robert created TONTO, the world's largest analog synthesizer, and used it to co-produce a string of era-defining Stevie Wonder classics including Music Of My Mind, Talking Book, Innervisions, and Fulfillingness' First Finale. He went on to work with Jeff Beck, The Isley Brothers, and a scrappy art-punk band from Akron, Ohio called DEVO helping shape their early sou

May 19, 2026

Maya Hawke and Christian Lee Hutson - Live from SXSW

Maya Hawke first became known to wide audiences as an actress especially through her work in Stranger Things but she's been quietly building a parallel life as a songwriter of genuine depth. Since her debut album Blush in 2020, she's released four records. Her latest, Maitreya Corso, arrives at a pivotal moment: the album follows her marriage to longtime musical collaborator Christian Lee Hutson, and centers on a fictional persona through who Hawke explores ego, ambition, and the strange labor of making something. Recorded in Woodstock and New York City late last year, it's co-produced by Huts

May 12, 2026

Why Would I Do That to Jennifer Lopez? | Revisionist History

In the latest season of Revisionist History, Malcolm Gladwell is looking at the origins and consequences of mistakes why we make them, the context in which we make them, and what happens after we make them. Years ago a music producer named Irv Gotti a hitmaker for Jay-Z, Ja Rule, and Ashanti was tapped by Sony Music to make a record with Jennifer Lopez. They wanted a big hit. And Irv delivered. But then he made the biggest mistake of his career. Find more episodes of Revisionist History wherever you get podcasts.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

May 7, 2026

Bruce Hornsby

The magic of Bruce Hornsby isn't just that he's one of American music's great piano stylists or that he wrote one of the most unlikely pop hits of the 1980s, a song about racism with two improvised solos that nobody at his label thought should be the single. It's how relentlessly he's kept moving, long after he had any commercial reason to. Hornsby grew up in Williamsburg, Virginia, and got discovered playing a steak and ale joint across from the Hampton Coliseum by Mike McDonald. He scored his first big hit in 1986 with "The Way It Is. What followed was a long, restless second act: teaching h

May 5, 2026

Dave Grohl

The magic of Dave Grohl isn't just that he's one of rock music's great raconteurs, or one of its greatest drummers and frontmen of the last thirty-plus years. It's the sheer number of lives he's gotten to live within rock and roll. Dave started out drumming for Scream, one of DC's great, underrated hardcore bands, running in the same circles as Ian MacKaye and the Dischord crowd. Then he joined Nirvana and more than made his mark in one of the most consequential bands since the Beatles, and an indelible piece of Seattle's music story dates all the way back to Jimi Hendrix and Quincy Jones. And

Apr 28, 2026

Wyclef Jean - Live from On Air Fest

Wyclef Jean may just be the most wide-ranging rapper, producer, performer, and composer of his time. As the lead producer and MC of The Fugees, he helped craft their 1996 landmark album The Score, one of the best-selling hip-hop albums of all time. The following year he released his debut solo album, The Carnival, which included hits like "Guantanamera" featuring Celia Cruz, and the platinum-certified single "Gone Till November." As a writer and producer for other artists, Wyclef is behind Whitney Houston's "My Love Is Your Love," Santana's chart-dominating "Maria Maria," Shakira's global smas

Apr 21, 2026

Jessie Ware

Jessie Ware has always moved between worlds. She's a British soul singer who spent the early part of her career making intimate, understated records. Then, in 2020, she released What's Your Pleasure? and morphed into a full-blown disco goddess. The record received widespread critical acclaim, earned Jessie her first top-three album on the UK charts, and was nominated for British Album of the Year at the BRITs. Today Jessie traces that sonic evolution back to an especially ripe creative period in her life, when she launched Table Manners, the podcast she hosts with her mom Lennie. Table Manners

Apr 14, 2026