You're listening to Song Exploder, where musicians take apart their songs, and piece by piece tell the story of how they were made.

I'm Rishi Kesh Hirway.

This episode is sponsored by the podcast Songwriter hosted by musician Ben Arthur and now on their sixth season

Every episode of songwriter features an author or celebrity telling a story and a songwriter performing a new song written in response.

It's an exploration into the elements of human flourishing including forgiveness, empathy, and

caregiving. Songwriter features extraordinary talents including Questlove, Joyce Carol Oates, David

Gilmore of Pink Floyd, and Susan Orlene.

You can find it wherever you get podcasts by searching for Ben Arthur. Fen Lily is a singer and songwriter from Dorset England.

She released her first album in 2018,

but I didn't find her music until 2023, when she put out her third album, Big Picture.

The album that she released in between those two was one that got a little lost in the lockdown

when all our touring plans around it got cancelled.

And all of that plays into the story that she tells in this episode about making her song

Lights Light Up.

I spoke to Fenn in front of a live audience at W-B-O-R city space in Boston.

Coming up, you'll hear how Lights Light Up

evolved across different versions of demos

and then later in the studio with Grammy-nominated producer Brad Cook.

And you said, sir,

do you ever want to leave here?

And I said, well, that depends on the day.

And you said, oh, do you even want to be here?

...