Hey guys, this is the very first episode of And The Writer is. I'm Ross Golan and I'm going to be your host.

I've written with hundreds of writers and artists over the years and my favorite part of each session is the first hour when we catch up about life and the

industry politics composition whatever if you ask me songwriters are some of the

most worldly and intelligent people I've ever come across. So this is a journey of

learning why people write songs, how people write songs, and most importantly, who the people are who

write the songs. I'm co-producing this with my friend Joe London

who's nominated for Grammy this year. He records every interview and makes sure we

sound like angels. So if you like what you hear, please rate us on iTunes or whatever your preferred

podcast listening site is.

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We recorded our first interview a few months ago with Benny Blanco. He's one of my good friends.

In fact, we wrote Simmel Love together and and he co- publishes Compass, which also went number

one for me and country.

He's recently been nominated for producer of the year because he worked on about 20 projects that I think we all wish we worked on.

Even this past week he released a song with Ed Sheerran, but of course that's not the only

thing that happened to him last week. In fact, he had the number one song at both

Hot A C and Top 40 radio with Don't Want to Know from Maroon 5.

Right before that he had cold water, which was also number one at top 40 because

that's just what he does he makes hit records. So let me set the stage for you for

how this interview happened. The first time I met

...