Hrishikesh Hirway made an album about running out of time — in no time

Switched on Pop

Vox Media Podcast Network

Music, Music Interviews, Music History, Music Commentary

4.6 • 2.9K Ratings

🗓️ 28 April 2026

⏱️ 49 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Hrishikesh Hirway, host of Song Exploder, returns with his first album in fifteen years, In the Last Hour of Light, made under a premise that's almost contradictory for a podcaster built around isolated stems: session players who had never heard the songs, vocals tracked live in the room, no click track, and no overdubs. The layered style that defines current pop production is itself a relatively recent development. Hirway's record reaches back to the older live-tracking tradition that shaped the 1950s and 60s Bollywood recordings he grew up listening to in his parents' house. The album is about memory and so it’s appropriate that the music is recorded whole in all its beautiful imperfections. Songs Discussed Hrishikesh Hirway "Things Change Even Now" Hrishikesh Hirway "Stray Dogs" Hrishikesh Hirway "The Ocean" Hrishikesh Hirway "Home Movies" Adrienne Lenker “Anything” Chuck Berry "Maybellene" The Beatles "Twist and Shout" James Brown "Papa's Got a Brand New Bag" Sidney Bechet "The Sheik of Araby" Les Paul & Mary Ford "How High the Moon" The Beach Boys "Good Vibrations" The Beatles “A Day In The Life” Queen "Bohemian Rhapsody" Jacob Collier "With the Love in My Heart" Brandi Carlile "You and Me on the Rock" Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Dell PCs with Intel Inside are built for the moments you plan and the ones you don't.
0:06.0	There for those all-night study sessions.
0:09.0	The moment you're working from a cafe and realise every outlet's taken.
0:14.0	The times you're deep in your flow and can't be interrupted by an auto update.
0:19.0	That's why we build tech that adapts to you, built with a long-lasting battery so you're not
0:24.2	scrambling for an outlet, and built in intelligence that makes updates around your schedule,
0:29.5	not in the middle of it.
0:31.1	Find technology built for the way you work at Dell.co.
0:34.1	UK, forward slash Dell PCs.
0:37.4	Built for you. Support for the show comes from
0:42.5	Limpie, the Lillahammer Institute of Music Production and Industries. Limpie is a one-year program
0:47.2	in Norway built by hit songwriters where you learn music the way music actually gets made in the
0:52.8	studio every day alongside the people doing it professionally.
0:56.9	Limpi believes that classrooms don't create artists, studio sessions do.
1:00.7	So rather than pitch you Limpi, I'd rather introduce you to one of their graduates,
1:04.2	a songwriter who went from a childhood dream to a billboard number one.
1:08.4	My name is Haley Joelle. I'm an artist and songwriter.
1:11.6	Haley knew from an early age, she wanted to be an artist.
1:14.6	I think I just loved being a storyteller, and I loved being able to express myself.
1:19.6	Probably in middle school, I was like, yeah, I really want to do this for the rest of my life.
1:24.6	But wanting a career in music and knowing how to actually build one are two very different
1:29.6	things.
	...

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