The song that transformed Iron & Wine’s career and more stories from his catalog

In every musician’s career, there are the songs that stand out among the rest. Perhaps it’s a song that changed everything for them, the song they grew to love or the song that was the hardest to write.

Those are the songs we want to learn more about on a World Cafe feature called Backtracking. The premise is simple: We give artists a long list of prompts they can choose from. Then, they look back through their catalog and pick the song that fits best. They’ tell us the stories behind them and perform them live.

In our latest installment, Iron & Wine‘s Sam Beam joins us to talk about how his career changed after his song “Flightless Bird, American Mouth” was featured in the 2008 film Twilight.