10 Questions with Sean Ross
I’m a bit of a podcast junkie. When my kids were very little, podcasts helped me feel connected to an outside world that often felt very far away. Whenever in need of adult company, I could pop in my headphones while I washed the dishes and suddenly feel like I was in the company of a like-minded soul.
During the upheaval of the last two years, podcasts have helped to keep me sane. I have spent so many hours circling our neighbourhood with my dog, listening to voices that reminded me there was life beyond the grind of life in lockdown.
When our mutual friend Steph told me a few years ago that her friend Sean Ross had started a podcast devoted specifically to the music we both loved, I was immediately on board.
Once upon a time, Sean was my university residence suite-mate at The University of Toronto. Though we were in different years and didn’t really share a social circle, we connected over our mutual love of women-centric music. In particular, I remember him burning me a copy of Fiona Apple’s album Extraordinary Machine, which I listened to endlessly on my Shockwave Discman.
Having listened to every episode of Miss Thing, created by Sean and his co-host Derek Aubichon, I am here to tell you that it is exactly what you need right now, especially if you happen to have come of age in the 1990’s and early aughts. Alternating between episodes dedicated to a single female artist from the Lilith Fair era and episodes exploring each consecutive Women and Songs compilation album in minute detail, this podcast provides the perfect breather the horrible things happening in the world this week.
Sean Ross is the co-creator of Miss Thing, a podcast devoted to women-centric music from the 90’s and early aughts.
1. Can you tell me the origin story of the Miss Thing podcast?
Sean: I am a huge consumer of podcasts, as are many of my friends. My Miss Thing co-host, Derek, and I batted around several podcast ideas over the course of a few months but none of them really landed. Eventually we realized that our podcast should be about the same topic that the majority of our conversations are about. That happened to be the female singer-songwriters of the mid-to-late 90’s: Alanis Morissette, Sheryl Crow, Liz Phair, Tori Amos, Fiona Apple, Sinead O’Connor and… yes… Jann Arden. After landing on the idea, it seemed so obvious that I couldn’t believe it wasn’t the first thing that we came up with.
Kate: Oh, Jann. Am I the only person I know who has watched the every episode of her eponymous TV show? Perhaps.
2. I have recently realized that I have totally become one of those old people who only listens to the music of her youth. The artists and albums that Miss Thing digs into with such obvious love and joy is that music. So, I totally get why someone would want to make a podcast about this topic. That said, I am endlessly fascinated by how creators determine the parameters of a particular project. How and why did you and Derek decide to focus on this particular genre, era, and gender?
Teen Sean, on stage at an Avril Lavigne concert.
Sean: This was a no-brainer for us. I grew up listening to Alanis Morissette. She was like a second mother to me, my Queen. Unfortunately, she has a tendency to take breaks of several years between each of her albums. For a kid, a few years is an eternity. I eventually had to start branching out to other similar artists to find new material to work with. This led me to Jewel, Fiona, Tori, Tegan and Sara, and so many more. I think that a lot of people had a similar musical journey in the late 90’s and early 00’s. However, being an obsessive completist compelled me to follow all of these women throughout their entire careers. So, while other people moved on to the next big thing, I was enjoying the second wave of Women & Songs in 2002 with Avril Lavigne and Michelle Branch while arguing with strangers online about Jewel’s foray into pop music. I’ve always been fully aware that this makes me extremely uncool. So, when I met Derek many years later in my life and saw his faded vintage Sarah McLachlan Surfacing t-shirt, I knew immediately that I had met my match. We spent many months talking, debating and joking about our favourite and least favourite Lilith-era artists. It was clear that our podcast would be about that genre and that moment in pop cultural history.
The issue we had to grapple with was how to format the show. We knew we wanted to do “deep dives” into our favourite artists, but we needed something that would grab a listener’s attention and make them curious about the show. We needed something broader. That’s when we decided to format the show around discussions of the annual Canadian compilation albums called Women & Songs. By dedicating an episode to each instalment of W&S, we were able to talk about the genre and the Lilith movement in much broader terms, plus we were able to touch on virtually every artist involved to whatever extent our little gay hearts desired.
So, all of this to say, the parameters of Miss Thing seemed obvious to us. 1) Is a woman singing a song? 2) Did they release material in the late 90’s or early 00’s? 3) Even if 2 is a no, we’ll make it work. We basically just talk about the music we’re passionate about.
Kate: I love that you say that if you are passionate about something that doesn’t quite fit, you will just make it work. I’m someone who really likes the challenge of having constraints put on a creative project, because I think it often makes me take things in directions I might otherwise not have thought of, but I also love having the freedom to be able to adjust or discard my own rules when they they aren’t serving me.
I also love that you mention that the Women & Songs series of albums was, in fact, Canadian. I think this is something not everyone remembers — I certainly didn’t! Revisiting the albums, I was struck by just how much classic Can Con they contain. It strikes me that this era featured a ton of Canadian women, whose music was very diverse. Some of those names were huge internationally, like Celine Dion, Shania Twain, and Sarah McLachlan. Other artists were pretty niche and feel so specific to the experience of being a teen or a young adult in Canada in a very particular time. If you know who Amanda Marshall is, that tells me so much about you.
3. What were the goals for your podcast before you started it? Have they changed? What do you hope for this project going forward?
Sean: My main goal was to create a podcast that I would want to listen to. Every now and then I would come across a pop culture podcast that touched on a Lilith-adjacent artist that I love, and I never walked away from it satisfied. I knew that I could do better and I knew that if I was looking for this content, other people were looking for the content too.
Once people started listening to the podcast and we started getting positive feedback, my goal became to grow the numbers and grow the engagement. There is a strategy behind that which I still do not fully understand. I think Miss Thing has grown largely through word-of-mouth.
We have been in one of our cute dormant phases for a while now. Our last episode was released earlier this year. Miss Thing is a passion project that requires a lot of effort and research. Unfortunately, life gets in the way of that sometimes. I do, however, have bigger and loftier goals now. My next goal is to interview a Lilith-era artist on the podcast. Jann, call us!!
Kate: I’m defiantly one of those listeners who found you through word-of-mouth, specifically through our mutual friend Stephanie Nakitsis, who was a guest on one of your earliest episodes (her hot take on Chantal Kreviazuk’s centrist politics is perhaps my favourite moment in podcast history). I remember listening to the first episode and hearing you tell the story of moving into your residence suite in first year university and hearing someone listening to Alanis’s That I Would Be Good in the common room, and being excited that perhaps you had found your people. And I got so excited because that was me! But then you said that you realized they were just watching Dawson’s Creek, which I totally was, but still! YOU WERE RIGHT! I WAS YOUR PEOPLE!
4. Can you tell us a little bit about your day job? Are there parallels between it and the work of creating podcasts, or are they totally different animals?
Sean: I work a very standard corporate office job that doesn’t really tap into any of the same creative or technical skills required for podcasting, and I think I prefer it that way. Any time that podcasting begins to feel like work I know I need to take a break. It’s very much a hobby for me and I don’t ever want my hobby to become soul crushing.
5. Once upon a time, I had considered making this blog a podcast, but I was scared off by the idea of trying to actually produce and edit such a thing. It seemed so daunting! How did you learn to actually do this? How and where do you record these episodes? How long does each one take? Is it as hard and time consuming as I imagine?
Sean: In the beginning, yes, it is as hard and time consuming as you imagine. However, there’s a learning curve. You very quickly figure out the shortcuts and tricks that speed up your workflow. Plus, as with anything, you become more confident and creative as you go. I learned everything I know about podcasting from the internet. Many hours of Googling and YouTube tutorials taught me everything I needed to know. Although there was a little trial and error involved, it actually wasn’t that difficult to get up and running. And, today, there are more resources than ever to help get new podcasters on their feet.
I record at home, using a relatively inexpensive USB microphone plugged into my computer. I record and edit my episodes on Garageband and host them on Podbean, which does most of the work for me in terms of distributing the episodes to podcast platforms like Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
The time that it takes to produce and release an episode can vary wildly. For example, an episode where we discuss a standard volume of Women & Songs tends to be much simpler than a deep dive into the 20 year career of a pop-punk princess (especially if she secretly died and was replaced with a lookalike at some point in her career). The entire process can take anywhere from 2-8 hours and that’s not including the research which, in my opinion, is the true brunt of the work.
Kate: That sounds doable, but still like a very impressive amount of work. It totally doesn’t surprise me that you spend so much of your time researching, because that depth and breadth of knowledge totally comes across, and is what makes Miss Thing such a great listen.
6. I love podcasts that go deep on niche things that are close to my heart, but I find so few of them are able to strike a satisfying balance between having true depth of knowledge about the subject matter and maintaining a fun, casual tone. Either things tip over into feeling like an academic lecture, or I am seething with frustration because hosts don’t actually know what they are talking about. You and Derek thread that needle so perfectly--y’all go DEEP, and you offer genuinely thoughtful, thought-provoking commentary and analysis, but it is also such a fun listen, with plenty of delightful tangents about your lives. How did you manage to find this balance?
Sean: Again, I think this comes back to my primary goal of making the podcast I would want to listen to. I have listened to too many podcasts where the hosts either just skim the surface of a topic, go way too deep into a topic, or use a topic as an opportunity to simply talk about themselves at length. We try to edit ourselves in real time by sticking to a predetermined episode outline and reeling each other back in when we start to go on a tangent. But, we’re only human and sometimes we do go too deep, or stray too far from the topic at hand. That’s where post-production editing comes in very handy.
There are very fine lines between “entertaining”, “boring”, and “annoying”. I don’t know if we stay on the right side of the line all the time, but we try our very best.
7. What food brought you the most comfort as a child? How about now?
Sean: Baked goods and baked goods. As I’ve alluded to already, when I find something I love, I have a tendency to overdo it. I have a vivid memory from my childhood of sneaking into the kitchen to eat an entire tray of butter tarts and then promptly throwing up all over the house about an hour later. I didn’t touch butter tarts again until I was an adult, and now I’m back at it, but with a little more restraint.
Kate: Baked goods are also my love language. My husband dove deep into butter tarts two Christmases ago, baking several different batches trying to come up with the ultimate version that would impress our families and friends. By the time Christmas arrived, I had decided I could never eat another one again. I don’t know if there is a denser food on Earth.
8. What should we all be listening to, watching, or reading this winter?
I’ll keep this on theme and encourage everyone to watch Jagged, the HBO documentary about Alanis Morissette, and specifically the making of and cultural impact of Jagged Little Pill. Come for the controversy (Alanis has publicly denounced the documentary for reasons that aren’t immediately apparent), but stay for the incredible, previously-unreleased archival footage from the era.
Read Rememberings by Sinead O’Connor. Or listen to the audiobook, read by Sinead herself. Although it’s very spotty as far as memoirs go, Sinead is a riveting storyteller. She also does her own deep dive into each of her albums at the end of the book. I couldn’t ask for more.
Listen to Rett Madison’s album Pin-Up Daddy. This has been on repeat ever since I discovered it this fall. She is a worthy successor to the Lilith-era artists I love, plus she has been endorsed by the great Joni Mitchell herself.
Bonus - Listen to my other podcast. This summer I launched a new podcast called Drop Your Buffs, all about the other obsession in my life: Survivor. Yes, the “is that show still on?” Wednesday night CBS staple. We talk about the current seasons of the show (in case you’re not following, they’re on season 41. I know, I know…), the history of the show and its contestants, and we also interview former players. It’s been a podcasting dream come true.
9. What artists would you love to do deep dive episodes about in the future? Also, can I please be a guest on one of them?
We have a long deep dive to-do list but I’d say my top priorities are Jewel, Sinead O’Connor and Sarah McLachlan. Whew, I’m exhausted just thinking about all of those sad songs I have to listen to.
Also, I’d love to have you on as a guest. Having guests was a much easier thing to do when we would record in person, in the same room. Now that we are forced to record remotely it’s a little trickier to coordinate a 3-way recording. But I’m hoping that the in-person recording is coming back soon.
Kate: Fingers crossed! I would especially love to hear a deep dive on Sarah McLachlan. I wouldn’t say she is my favourite W&S artist, but I do think she is sort of the spiritual mother of this genre.
10. If the Women & Songs people were to call you up and ask you to create a super album of your all-time favourites, what would be on that tracklist?
Here is my definitive Women & Songs playlist:
Sarah McLachlan - Adia
Lisa Loeb - I Do
Amanda Marshall - Dark Horse
PJ Harvey - Down by the Water
Natalie Merchant - Wonder
Paula Cole - Where Have All The Cowboys Gone
Liz Phair - Divorce Song
India Arie - Ready For Love
Tori Amos - Past The Mission
Fiona Apple - Never Is A Promise
Holly McNarland - Numb
Natalie Imbruglia - Wishing I Was There
Alanis Morissette - Unsent
Meshell Ndegeocello - Fool Of Me
Jewel - Who Will Save Your Soul
The Cranberries - Free To Decide
Des’ree - You Gotta Be
Joan Osborne - One of Us
K’s Choice - Not An Addict
Suzanne Vega - Tom’s Diner
Sheryl Crow - If It Makes You Happy
Sophie B. Hawkins - Damn I Wish I Was Your Lover
Ani DiFranco - 32 Flavors
Tracy Chapman - Give Me One Reason
Kate: There are so many songs here that absolutely bring me back to my high school bedroom, vibing out in the glow of many scented candles from Pier One Imports. There are also so many songs that I still listen to all the damn time.
I know that absolutely no one asked me, but I am going to go ahead and give you my own ultimate playlist as well. While most of my choices were from the 90’s and early aughts, a few are from earlier or later, in keeping with the spirit of Sean’s loose definition of their boundaries. I am going to challenge myself not to duplicate tracks Sean already picked, even though Never is a Promise, One of Us, and If It Makes You Happy are right up there for me.
Here is my definitive Women & Songs Playlist:
Sarah Harmer - Basement Apartment
Lisa Loeb - Stay
Amanda Marshall - Let It Rain
PJ Harvey - The Wind
Fiona Apple - Paper Bag
Holly McNarland - Beautiful Blue
Garbage - Only Happy When It Rains
Alanis Morissette - No Pressure Over Cappuccino
Natalie Imbruglia - Torn
Tori Amos - Cornflake Girl
Joan Osborne - Pensacola
Sheryl Crow - I Shall Believe
Aimee Mann - Save Me
Tegan and Sara - My Number
Basia Bulat - Heart of My Own
Melissa Ethridge feat. Joan Osborne - Bring Me Some Water
All Saints - I Know Where It’s At
Robin - Show Me Love
Fleetwood Mac - Landslide
Alison Krauss - I’ll Fly Away
The Pretenders - I’ll Stand by You
Jann Arden - Good Mother
Sarah Slean - Sweet Ones
Regina Spektor - Laughing At God
Feist - Islands in the Stream
Chantal Kreviazuk - Surrounded
Nico Case - Wish I Was the Moon
Ani DiFranco - Out of Range
Stevie Nicks - Crystal
11. Now, imagine that this album sells so well that they call you back and request that you create a holiday-themed follow-up. What’s on that one?
Sean: Ok, this one is less definitive, but here goes...
Joni Mitchell - River
Faith Hill - Where Are You Christmas
Sarah McLachlan - Wintersong
Dido - Christmas Day
Pretenders - 2000 Miles
Kim Stockwood - Marshmallow World
Alanis Morissette - Happy Xmas (War Is Over)
Jewel - Hands (Christmas Version)
Fiona Apple - Frosty The Snowman
Aimee Mann - You’re A Mean One Mr. Grinch
Tori Amos - Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas
Kate Bush - 50 Words For Snow
Kate: That is a very fine festive list. Instead of making my own list from scratch, I am just going to suggest these additions! Again, I have taken some liberties with the era, reaching back in time a little to include The Waitresses, and traveling forward to include a little T Swift.
Sarah Bareilles and Ingrid Michaelson - Wintersong
Taylor Swift - Christmas Tree Farm
Chic Gamine - Noel (Au Coin de Portage et Main)
Chic Gamine - Friendly Beasts
The Waitresses - Christmas Wrapping
