Songs as portals into lived memory.
Take 5 is a warm, interview-led music series where a guest’s song choices become a map through their life. Recent conversations move from folk music and film soundtracks to classical performance, pop liberation, comedy, travel, and Australian music.
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Take 5 is a music interview series with the feel of a record pulled from the shelf at exactly the right moment. Its structure is clear, but the conversations wander in rewarding ways. A guest brings a theme and a set of songs, then the episode follows whatever those choices release: memory, craft, family, travel, heartbreak, ambition, or the strange private logic of fandom. The show is warm without becoming glossy. It is curious without turning clinical. Recent episodes show how elastic the format can be. Alexei Tolyopoulos uses music to talk about movies, Greek music, folk traditions, and the way a scene can hold tradition and conflict at once. Gillian Welch and David Rawlings take a theme of time and stretch it through old homes, bluegrass records, death, memory, and the emotional compression of folk songwriting. Ed LeBrock’s conversation moves across classical performance, teaching, instruments, Afghanistan, China, self-discovery, and the leap into the unknown. Tim Rogers treats songs as a way to think about work, bands, youth, survival, and the question of how a person makes a life. Lizzie Who brings a sharper comic energy, with travel stories, chronology, and a performer’s instinct for the turn in a tale. Sophie Ellis-Bexter’s episode connects dance-floor pleasure with liberation, Madonna, songwriting, desire, and the perspective that comes with time. The show often begins in music criticism, then ends up closer to memoir. That is its real appeal. Songs are not treated as trivia answers or playlist filler; they become small archives of who someone was, what they wanted, and what they learned to hear later. The pacing leaves space for digressions and clarifications, so the best moments feel discovered rather than forced. It is especially strong when guests are allowed to explain the precise emotional weather around a song. Take 5 works for listeners who want music talk with texture, not just recommendations. It also works for people who like life stories told sideways, through the songs that made them possible.
Made for: For listeners who like music interviews with emotional range, cultural context, and room for guests to think aloud. It especially suits fans of singer-songwriters, Australian music, folk, pop, film soundtracks, and artist memoir.
What sets it apart: The format makes each song choice do real narrative work: a record can lead to a kitchen dance, a childhood room, a touring life, a road trip, or a creative philosophy. Its best episodes feel less like promotion and more like carefully guided listening.
The Take 5 is a music podcast where the people you love, share five songs they love. Each guest has a different theme, and the memories attached to their most beloved songs flip them to fan mode, often giving a rare insight into their creative heart. Hosted by Zan Rowe.
Based on 6 episodes we listened to · September 2026
Five song choices become sharply observed portraits of how artists, performers and cultural figures hear their own lives.
Take 5 uses five song choices as a route into the guest's musical life. Zan Rowe asks closely enough to move beyond taste into interpretation: why a rhythm carries feeling, how a formative song shapes ambition, or what makes a performance belong to its artist.
A childhood favorite can become your adult permission slip, if Sophie Ellis-Bextor has a say.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A cinephile's musical memories open into family, film and the relief of feeling understood.
Alexei Tolyopoulos approaches music as something cinema uses to carry feeling, tracing a line from a teenage routine of watching three movies a day to the songs that still cling to certain moments.
A careful conversation about time, old homes and the grief inside bright-sounding folk songs.
Take 5 offers a considered path through the years since Gillian Welch and David Rawlings released Revival under Gillian's name. The conversation begins with their modest wish to play music for a living and avoid a straight job, then follows songs about returning home into…
A cellist's musical map, traced through travel, memory and the players who shaped his ear.
Ed LeBrock's Take 5 turns a music-selection format into a compact portrait of a restless musical life. Cello, viola and violin sit at the centre, but the episode keeps widening out, following journeys that have taken him from teaching school kids in Afghanistan to playing for…
Sophie connects midlife liberation with Madonna's lasting pop charge.
The episode frames liberation as a pop idea with a long memory, moving from Sophie's Perimenopop and its midlife-party energy back to Madonna's Express Yourself.
A warm special about songs remembered as turning points in the lives around them.
This Take 5 special treats songs as markers of change in the lives gathered around them. It moves from Richard Fidler recalling the Doug Anthony All-Stars taking their savings to Edinburgh and becoming the most talked-about act there, to a guest tracing Missy Higgins's The Sound…
Wayne Coyne links a beloved song's comfort to the risk and conviction behind Flaming Lips spectacle.
Wayne Coyne's Take Five frames "Do You Realize" as a song with a public life and a private anchor. It has lifted and comforted listeners, but it still returns to the person who has sung it thousands of times. Coyne does not treat that as a burden.
A song about taboo opens into culture shock, musical discovery and the memories Ngaiire carried into "Boom."
Ngaiire's return to Papua New Guinea gives this Take 5 episode a reflective frame, revisiting a March 2020 conversation recorded over Skype after COVID had unsettled ordinary life.
Joe Wong interviews drummers and musicians about craft, history, and the working musician's life.
Records, careers and arguments, weighed by people who listen closely.
Flaming Lips frontman Wayne Coyne joins Take Five to share five life-affirming songs.
Zan Rowe revisits a joyous Take 5 with Common, where he shares music that inspired his activism and discusses his EP A Beautiful Revolution Part 1.
Zan revisits a 2019 interview with Lucy Dacus, who discusses her songwriting, fan connection, and the surprise success of her music.
Zan Rowe revisits a 2020 Take 5 episode with singer Ngaiire, recorded over Skype during COVID-19.
Take 5 on Double J asks Alexei Toliopoulos to map his life through five songs, opening with E.T.
Take 5 on ABC Listen asks Gillian Welch and David Rawlings to choose songs about time, and they keep circling back to 30 years since Revival and the mid-1990s gamble of making acoustic music in a mostly electric era.
["Take 5 opens with Ed Le Brocq saying he had to go on a trip, play the cello, and transition, and he closes the story by calling it love.", "Zan interviews Le Brocq, the former Eddie Ayres, whose work as an ABC Classic FM broadcaster, cellist, violist, violinist, and four-book author makes each song choice personal.", "Ed traces his musical life from Shrewsbury, free school lessons with Mrs Turner, Joni Mitchell's Blue, and Jacqueline Du Pr\u00e9's Elgar recording to the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra and a 1999 bike ride to Hong Kong.", "The later chapters cover the Taklamakan Desert, Mr Gupta's sitar teaching, Pakistan, Boys Don't Cry, 20,000 dollar chest surgery in Brisbane, and the Raikuda and V.M.
Tim Rogers discusses his song choice 'Ice' by Magic Dirt and reflects on his music career.
Comedian Lizzy Hoo joins the Take Five podcast to share stories and songs, starting with a tale about a generous woman named Mary.
Sophie Ellis-Bextor joins Take 5 on Australia's Double J to discuss her 2024 album Perimenopop and five songs of liberation — Sylvester, Madonna, George Michael, Sigrid, and Prince — tracing her evolution from standing motionless as an indie rock teenager on a disco stage to appearing in a sequined leotard at midlife.
Take 5 on Double J presents a Best of 2025 compilation featuring highlights from conversations with Richard Fidler, Gordi, comedians Denise Scott and Matt O'Kine, Lorde, and author Trent Dalton.
Katy Steele discusses reuniting Little Birdy to perform their debut album in full and reflects on growing up in a famous musical family.
Sam Cromack of Ball Park Music discusses the band's shift to a more heartfelt sound on their latest album and shares highlights like supporting Oasis.
Zan revisits a 2019 interview with Lucy Dacus, who discusses her songwriting, fan connection, and the surprise success of her music.