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 Rishikesh Hirway.
Every winter I just feel like I want to die.
I'm just so fucking sick of being beaten down by the wintertime.
I feel like every spring my life is saved and I'm reborn.
You're listening to Song Exploder.
My name is Rishikesh Hirway.
Jim James is the lead singer of the Grammy-nominated band My Morning Jacket.
Since starting in 1998, they've put out six albums, and in this episode,
Jim breaks down the song Spring Among the Living from their soon-to-be-released seventh album,
The Waterfall.
When spring finally comes, it's like in Louisville where I live, it's a massive transition,
you know, because everybody is so bummed in the wintertime and so down and it's gray and horrible.
And so when it finally becomes spring, it just really is like this rebirth, you know,
and everybody's out in their shorts running through the park and falling in love and going out and having fun again.
You know, it's a lifesaver.
I remember I had an apartment in New York City.
for a while and I had the back door open and I had this really cool backyard for New York and the door was open and the snow was thawing and you know the grass was starting to come up and it just popped into my head of like how glad I was that it was spring again.
So I just remember that moment so vividly and the song came into my head.