Dr Simon Barber is Associate Professor of Songwriting in the Birmingham Centre for Media and Cultural Research (BCMCR) at Birmingham City University. His work focuses on songwriting and the creative process, which he explores as co-lead of the BCMCR Popular Music Cluster. He convenes the Songwriting Studies Research Network and currently co-leads the AHRC/DFG-funded project Songwriting Camps in the 21st Century.
Simon is also the producer and co-presenter of the popular Sodajerker podcast, which features interviews with some of the world’s most successful songwriters. Described by Esquire magazine as ‘the Frost/Nixon of tunesmithery’, the podcast has published almost 300 episodes featuring interviews with world-leading songwriters like Sir Paul McCartney, Burt Bacharach, Alicia Keys, Paul Simon, Sting, Sheryl Crow, Beck, Elvis Costello, Tori Amos, Nile Rodgers, Jon Bon Jovi, Lindsey Buckingham and Diane Warren. Sodajerker’s compelling conversations with songwriters have been downloaded almost 10 million times and the podcast has been featured in publications like Esquire, The Guardian, The Telegraph, NME, Slate and New Statesman. In 2016, the podcast was used as the basis for the BBC documentary The Secrets of Songwriting. In 2020, the Sodajerker interview archive was added to the British Library in London for posterity. In 2023 Sodajerker on Songwriting won Best Music Podcast at the Independent Podcast Awards in London. Today, the show is well on the way to building the world’s most expansive archive of audio interviews with renowned songwriters about the creative process.
Find out what Simon is working on now.