Stephen Bishop has always had a thing for storytelling. Sometimes those stories are wistful, romantic, and woven into the fabric of soft-rock radio. Other times, they involve enchiladas, kumquats, and lipstick postcards from absentee parents. His latest record, We’ll Talk About It Later in the Car, manages to hit all of those notes—and then some.
The title itself goes back decades to a moment with his late friend Carrie Fisher. “We were at Saturday Night Live, and I overheard her say to someone, ‘We’ll talk about it later in the car,’” Bishop recalled. “I thought she meant me, but she said, ‘No, my mom used to say that—Debbie Reynolds—whenever there was an argument.’” For Bishop, it became a recurring bit onstage, a zinger to button awkward moments. “It’s like a punchline,” he said. “A very Debbie Reynolds punchline.”
Fittingly, the album is part memoir, part reimagining. Many of the tracks date back to the beginning of Bishop’s career. “I tried to rediscover the elements of how my songs became hits,” he said. “Then I re-recorded them, reworked them.” It’s not a greatest hits, exactly—more like a do-over for songs that didn’t quite get their due the first time around. Except for one: “Like Mother Like Daughter,” the first single, which is brand new and deceptively sunny.
“It sounds kind of country,” Bishop said. “But it’s also pop. I co-wrote it with Robin Lerner, who did ‘This Kiss’ with Faith Hill. It starts with a three-year-old girl getting a postcard with just a lipstick kiss and her mama’s name. It’s about letting go of the past. Or walking away from it.”
Bishop has always been pigeonholed as a balladeer—something he both embraces and resents. “It was It Might Be You that really solidified that,” he said. “But I’ve got a fast song on here called ‘One-in-a-Million Girl,’ some jazzier stuff, and a Peggy Lee cover. There’s more than just the slow jams.”
Still, if you want a slow jam, Jimmy Webb’s got you covered. One of the standout tracks on We’ll Talk About It Later in the Car is the very first song Webb ever wrote—at the age of 12. “Can you imagine?” Bishop said. “He came out fully formed. When I was 12, I was writing songs called ‘There’s a Hair in Your Enchilada’ and ‘She Took All My Kumquats.’”
Bishop says Harry Nilsson might’ve released those. “He had wild songs,” he laughed. “But great ones. I knew Harry. Great guy.”
The new album also includes “Almost Home,” a song Bishop co-wrote for the 2018 reboot of Benji. “The movie’s actually really good,” he said. “And I’m a big dog freak. I’ve had Golden Retrievers for years. I just got a new puppy and named it Randy Newman.”
When asked whether writing for movies influences his personal songwriting, Bishop got analytical. “You can’t just describe the truck that’s onscreen,” he said. “You have to paint a picture that supports the scene emotionally without narrating it.”
There’s something refreshingly unpretentious about Stephen Bishop’s outlook. He’s still crawling out of the cave, as he put it. Still writing hooks, still chasing chords, still trying to balance sentimentality and sarcasm in the same breath. And as far as life mottos go, We’ll Talk About It Later in the Car isn’t a bad one to live by.
Listen to the interview above and then check out the videos below.
