Ep. 259: Jessi Alexander on Writing "The Climb" The Week She Almost Quit... + What It Takes To Last as a Nashville Songwriter

Today's guest wrote "The Climb." She also wrote "I Drive Your Truck," "Mine Would Be You," "Don't Think Jesus," and "Ain't No Love in Oklahoma." But her real story isn't the hits. It's the ten years before the first one, the five years after it when the phone stopped ringing, and what she figured out in between about how to actually last in this business.

From a dropped record deal and years as what she calls a washed-up artist nobody would write with, to Song of the Year, a Grammy nomination, and a run of hits she wrote while raising three kids under three. She carries three things at once that almost no writer figures out how to hold together: a working method she can actually teach, a conviction that this is a calling and not a job, and a refusal to write the safe version of anything.

And The Writer Is... Jessi Alexander!

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0:00 Intro

0:48 Her favorite non-songwriting songwriter trick

1:54 "How do you make unavailable country men emotional?"

5:33 The five songs on her Hall of Fame plaque

11:07 Pool halls and stick shifts: "that color is what I draw from"