Jessie Reyez - Goliath

Song Exploder

Hrishikesh Hirway

Music

4.8 • 6.4K Ratings

🗓️ 3 December 2025

⏱️ 25 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Jessie Reyez is a singer and songwriter originally from Toronto. She's won two of Canada's Juno awards, and she's been nominated for a Grammy. In addition to writing her own music, Jessie's been a songwriter on tracks by Calvin Harris, Dua Lipa, Sam Smith, Eminem, and many others. You're probably aware that there are songwriters and producers whose names you'll find over and over again in the credits for big hits; Jessie is one of them.

But for this episode, I talked to her about her own song "Goliath." And the day that she wrote that song, she happened to be in the studio with a bunch of other songwriters and producers. So I also talked to Jordan and Stefan Johnson, from the production team Monsters & Strangerz, and Jeff Gitelman, AKA Gitty. Between the three of them, their credits also include songs by Selena Gomez, Maroon 5, Alicia Keys, Mac Miller, and again, tons more.

When a group like this gets together to write music, they don't always know if they're going to be making a song that's going to get recorded and released by an artist somewhere down the line, or if the song's going to get recorded at all. But in the case of "Goliath," what came out was a song that was very personal to Jessie Reyez.

For more info, visit songexploder.net/jessie-reyez.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	You're listening to Song Exploder, where musicians take apart their songs, and piece by piece, tell the story of how they were made.
0:06.7	I'm Rishi Kesh Hirway.
0:10.6	So I just wanted to say a couple words about how this show works.
0:14.2	Song Exploder is part of Radiotopia, which is a group of independent podcasts.
0:18.4	And if you look around these days, independence is becoming more
0:21.0	and more rare. Everything from record labels to movies to newspapers, everything's getting
0:26.4	consolidated and controlled by a small number of corporations. To me, one of the tragedies of this
0:32.1	means you get less original, weird, unexpected, and creative stuff out in the world.
0:37.2	And this podcast is all about
0:38.6	celebrating the surprising ways that creativity gets manifested. That's really interesting to me,
0:44.1	the way that actual people turn their experiences into art. And if you're listening to this,
0:48.5	I hope that means it's interesting to you, too. But in order to maintain this show and that
0:52.9	philosophy, it takes a lot of hustling to keep
0:55.1	things going. This spiel is part of the hustle, and I hope you'll forgive me for it. But Song Exploder,
1:00.4	and all the shows at Radiotopia need the support of listeners like you. It's the annual Radiotopia
1:05.5	fundraiser right now, and we're looking for 1,500 new donors who believe in unique, independent media and the messiness
1:13.4	of creativity, and more importantly, just love listening. If that's you, please consider making a tax
1:19.1	deductible donation at songexploder.net slash donate. That's songexploder.net slash donate.
1:26.5	Thank you so much for making the show possible.
1:29.2	This episode contains explicit language.
1:34.1	Jesse Reyes is a singer and songwriter, originally from Toronto.
1:37.9	She's won two of Canada's Juno Awards, and she's been nominated for a Grammy.
	...

Transcript will be available on the free plan in 15 days. Upgrade to see the full transcript now.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Hrishikesh Hirway, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Hrishikesh Hirway and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.