E8 - Tim Rice | The Words Behind the Songs

September 23, 2026 · 57 min

Show notes

Today, Wodcast sits down with Sir Tim Rice one of the world's most celebrated lyricists and one of only a small number of people to have won an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony, for a wide-ranging conversation about words, songwriting, storytelling and the strange alchemy of turning language into something that lasts.

From Jesus Christ Superstar, Evita and Chess to The Lion King and Aladdin, Tim has written some of the most recognisable lyrics of the last half-century. But this conversation is less about the hits themselves and more about what happens inside the words: how a lyric comes together, why a title can change everything, and why sometimes the smallest rhyme can make a song feel complete.

Tim shares the story behind “Hakuna Matata”, including the lost verse that never made it into The Lion King, and explains how a phrase from a Swahili dictionary became one of the most recognisable expressions in popular culture. He reflects on the difference between writing for a character and writing from your own experience, and why a lyricist has to be able to imagine lives they've never lived.

Together, they explore the hidden architecture of lyrics: rhyme, rhythm, titles, repetition and the words that somehow lodge themselves in our memories. Tim reveals why “Don't Cry for Me, Argentina” almost had a completely different title, why vagabond was the perfect word for a line about kings and vagabonds, and why sometimes the best explanation for a particular word is simply: “It rhymed.”

The conversation also wanders into the life of words themselves. Tim reflects on how words change meaning, why he thinks “hopefully” is often used incorrectly, and whether words are losing their meaning altogether. They discuss the power of songs as one of the oldest forms of storytelling and how a song can sometimes communicate something faster and more directly than a novel.

This is a conversation about the craft of words, the life of words, and the extraordinary things that can happen when the right words meet the right melody.

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Topics include:

• The art of lyric writing
• The Lion King and “Hakuna Matata”
• Jesus Christ Superstar, Evita and Chess
• The power of song and storytelling
• Why titles matter
• Rhyme, rhythm and scansion
• How words change their meanings
• Childhood and memory
• Writing from other people's perspectives
• The lost verse of “Hakuna Matata”
• “Vagabond” and the words we remember
• Poetry, music and meaning
• Language, mortality and the mystery of existence