TED Talks Daily What you discover when you really listen | Hrishikesh Hirway (re-release and interview)
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Apr 25, 2026 
Hrishikesh Hirway, musician, composer and creator of Song Exploder, explores the art of deep listening. He talks about conversations as layered spaces and how music can teach us to hear people better. Later, he opens up about his album In the Last Hour of Light, songwriting through grief, family history and vulnerability, and the making of “Things Change, Even Now.”
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Listening To Himself Was Harder Than Interviewing Others
- Hrishikesh Hirway says the hardest listening task was listening to himself after years spent serving other artists' stories.
- Writing about his mother reopened a neglected inner voice and made music feel necessary for wholeness, not selfishness.
Specific Lyrics Can Feel More Universal
- Hrishikesh Hirway shifted from metaphor-heavy writing to direct, memoir-like songs because specificity often feels more universal, not less.
- Years of Song Exploder taught him that highly personal songs create closeness by revealing something intrinsic about the artist.
Interviewing Others Taught Him To Interrogate Himself
- Interviewing vulnerable artists trained Hrishikesh Hirway to question his own emotional shorthand and dig deeper.
- He began asking himself interview-style prompts like what feeling sits under this feeling, using interviewer habits on his own songs.