Patton Magee (The Nude Party)

Patton Magee of The Nude Party has the best reason why reading makes you a better songwriter: it gives you a stronger and more wide-ranging vocabulary, which in turn gives you more ways to express yourself. "Words that you rarely use are a lot more fun to play around with," he says on the pod. This reminds me of one of my favorite lines in William Zinsser's book On Writing Well, when he says that if a word comes too easily to you, don't use it because it's probably overused.

The Nude Party's new album is Look Who's Back.