The following podcast contains explicit language.

Hey, this is the moment.

Brian Koppelman, thanks for listening. My guest today is Slade Cleves.

Slade's a songwriter. It's one of my favorite songwriters, one of my favorite living songwriters and has been since.

I was driving on Sunset Boulevard for real in 2000.

And the song came on the radio.

And it's happening about 5 times in my life.

I drove right to the record store.

There still were record stores then and there was this one record store in LA

that had these Americana records. I think it was called like Hear Music or

something. It was some strange store and I remember going in and saying there's this thing and you know

your name is so strange slayed that I was like I think his name is I couldn't figure it out and I got this record and I

listened to it over and over and over again and ever since then I shortly thereafter got

in touch with Slade and we've sort of known each other from far for a while. But I thought it'd be great because

some of you will know is music but many of you won't. I thought it might be great to just start with a song by by Slade so that you have some context

for what we're talking about maybe I'll get to play one at the end too.

Hey Slade will you play this song Cry?

I can do that?

All right, great, and we'll talk about it. You love like a diamond, like a twinkling star, but it's a whole lot of heartache to get to where we are.

Because every man is a myth every woman dream

Watch your little heart get crushed when the truth gets in between

everybody's born to sorrow.

...