And The Writer Is...with Ross Golan - Ep. 165: Sam Hollander

Episode Date: October 31, 2022

Today’s guest is a multi-platinum songwriter behind 22 US Top 40 Hits including everything from Panic! At The Disco, One Direction, Fitz and the Tantrums, Weezer, Katy Perry, blink-182, Ringo Starr, Def Leppard, Carole King, Billy Idol, Jewel, Train, Tom Morello and Gym Class Heroes. He’s been named one of Variety’s Hitmakers as well as Rolling Stone's Producer of the Year and most recently held the #1 position on the Billboard Rock Songwriters Chart for nine weeks, a record. And The Writer Is… Sam Hollander! Watercolor by: Michael Richey White Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome to And The Writer Is with Ross Golan. There are millions of singers, thousands of artists, and only 40 songs per genre at a time. These are the stories of the hottest creatives, the most venerable legends, artists, songwriters, executives, and more. Come join our Discord, follow our socials, and share your music with the and The Writer is community. We'll see you all there and now. Here's this week's episode. Hey, what's up? It's Paige MacDonald and this is your weekly music industry update. Steve Lacey is set to make his Saturday night live debut as a musical guest.

The mechanical licensing collective has distributed nearly $700 million in blanket royalties to its members in the year and a half since launching full operations. Apple is increasing the pricing for Apple TV Plus, Apple One, and Apple Music worldwide. Adidas has terminated their Kanye West. partnership and the talent agency CAA has dropped him as a client. Taylor Swift set a new record in China after her latest album Midnights became the Priciest Digital Album sold in the Chinese market at 35 yuan. Jimmy Ailene and Phineas have joined the $15 million funding round for the immersive content

firm, Yume. Despite maintaining its lead in the global music streaming market, Spotify says that it will consider raising its prices in the U.S. following recent moves by Apple Music and YouTube. The hacker who stole Ed Sheeran's unreleased music to sell for crypto has gotten a 18-month jail term in the UK. Ingroves has won the third patent for AI tech to predict TikTok trends that can translate into upticks and streams. Global songwriter royalty collections topped $10 billion in 2021, but we're still below pre-pandemic levels. Shawnee Corbett Rice has been promoted to SVP of marketing for Warner Records.

David Gorman has been named creative director at Acceleration Music. Russell Dickerson has signed a worldwide publishing deal with Concord Music Publishing. The Rising songwriter Mika Carpenter has signed with Boom Music Group. Jacob Hackworth has signed a publishing deal with Koss Weaver's Go Island Sound and Boom Music Group, with exclusive administration by Warner Chapel. Sony Music Publishing UK has signed Baby Queen. Conrad Sewell is the latest edition to the Mushroom Management roster. A big thank you to Charlotte Isidore of Megahouse for gathering today's news.

Now stay tuned for this week's episode of An The Writer Is. Welcome to And The Writer is. I am your host, Ross Golan. This episode's A-list songwriter and producer defines some of the biggest multi-platinum hits for some of alt-rock's and pop's biggest artist. In fact, he was the number one song. songwriter on the Billboard Rock Songwriters chart for a consecutive

nine weeks. Over seven billion streams will do that. Not to mention, he was chosen to be on Variety's Hipmakers List as well as being named Rolling Stones' hot list producer of the year. All the way from the

couch next to me, this writer has carved his own lane in a very busy industry. And the writer is Sam Hollander. Hey. What a glowing intro, man Dude, this is, you know, it's one of the first interviews

we've actually done in person after quarantine, which I don't know, like, I know this is audio, but that's the truth, so this is exciting. You're kind of scraping the bottom of the barrel on this one, but, you know, let's get into it. Yeah, I get it. It's all right.

Okay, so factually, you don't live in Los Angeles, and yet we're here in a place together. I am on a semester at sea from Los Angeles. I lived here for the last decade, and then my family, we made a break back to New York, which is the motherland. And we've been there for the last year. And I'm sure we will resume life here at some point, but it was time for a little break. My kid wanted to attend my alma mater, my high school.

What high school is that? That'd be Fox Lane High School in Bedford, New York. Why would you want? Famous alum would be John Schneider from Duksa Hazard. Oh, cool. Kimia Dawson from the Moldy Peaches. Marissa Winneker, who lived right around the corner here, I believe. Susan Day from the Partridge family.

Oh, there you go. Thanks, man. And that's why, obviously. So you're probably on the Hall of Fame that they have somewhere in the high school. Did they have something like that? Ross, it's funny. I was at homecoming this year. and Coach Mergart, who's the athletic director,

I petitioned for some sort of Hall of Fame status as a JV wide receiver with nine drops and two receptions. And I quit every other sport, and I give him an impassioned plea. He said there's a special Hall of Fame for guys like you just might not be in this corridor. It's so funny because my wife makes fun of me because I would say

I talked about playing football in the summer in high school, and she was like, well, there's the first problem and the first tell that you didn't play football because football's not in the summer. I was like, well, I mean, I played one year, and it was, uh, anyway,

I really did only play one year. And this is, this conversation is getting off to a weird place. The movie ends bad. Yeah, exactly. So you grew up, uh, you grew up there. tell me a little bit about your childhood

are your parents musicians my parents were artists so my dad was a modern dancer with Jose Limon a troupe in the 50s and then he became an architect with Philip Johnson and John Johansson a bunch of the modernists and eventually was a professor

at Pratt for the rest of his life until he passed and my mom my mom was badass man and she was a she was an interior designer and a collector and of sort of Victorian area furniture. And she had sort of, she assembled, like, cobbled together this incredible collection. And she partnered with a cat named Jed Johnson in the 70s in the city.

And they had a firm, uh, interiors firm. And Jed was Andy Warhol's boyfriend. So, um, during the 70s, they did Andy's apartment. They did Eve Saint Laurent. They did Mick Jagger. They did all this badass shit. and I it's funny because

Ross I just completed my book that would be a 21 hit wonder flopping my way to the charts on Ben Bella books Matt Holt books and that released it can I do that again?

Can I say that again? Can you edit that one thing? Yeah that would be 2100 I can't even speak this morning 21 hit wonder flopping my way to the top of the charts on Matt Holt, Ben Bella Books,

released November 1st, 2022 in a store near you. I want to announce that right here on your show. I came on the air to do that here. This is our moment to do it, but the reason I say that is because the book begins, it's a memoir, but I frame the beginning of it as, you know, the moment when Andy Warhol was indeed my babysitter as a little kid.

And he used to babysit me as a little kid when my mom would go out with Jed and they would go out, you know, and shopping and buying things on the weekends. My mom would drop me off at Andy's apartment. I'd sit with Andy and his maids. And, you know, he'd kick it with a snotty-nosed little kid who he had no interested.

And it was a formation of something in my brain because it was an exposure to a strange sort of celebrity for a little dude. And, you know, I saw his name in the post. I knew his picture. But that opening sort of led to the synapses sort of connected. and suddenly, you know, I knew I wanted to be around this in some capacity,

and music was the only thing that spoke to me. So as a little kid, that was my path. And I was in this town. And, you know, I was a music nerd. I was a collector. And, you know, I had no idea how I'd ever accessed the industry. It wasn't even a reality. I just felt I was a kid with spent every weekend at flea markets buying 10-cent records

and sort of accumulating like a real war chest. And I'd study the record. like baseball cards and I look and see who the writers were and who the producers were and I just tried to you know I just wanted to learn you know and I had like a real thirst for it and that's how I grew up I was basically like I said I was a shitty football player who love music did you try painting or did you try that kind of art no you know it's funny I don't have a great eye man like visually I'm pretty terrible so I don't think anyone would need to see that I just envision I just envision finger painting while you're at Andy Warholz

because you're the snot-nose kid who's sitting there and he's probably being like, how do I entertain this kid? And you're probably doing, you know, let me show you how to do my hand. As you'll learn when you make it through page three of my book, what you will learn is I had an aversion to tissues when I was a little boy. So I had issues. When I say snot-nosed kid, I actually had a lot of phlegm. And I was known for sort of wiping my boogers on my sleeves, which wasn't really that cool.

And what happened was the day at Andy's that first time, there were no tissues available, and my arms were completely coated, and I didn't know what to do. So I began rubbing my nose boogies under his table. And that sort of frames my life and all the downfalls and grifts that would happen after. sort of. It's set me up for how I landed in this room. Wow. There's a lot to unpack there. That's crazy, though. I mean, I think a lot of people who are raised in major cities come across some famous people, but not necessarily, you know, maybe the number one of their field as a babysitter. So I can imagine that shaping at least a level of excellence, you know, I think if you're, you're, if you're, you're, you know,

your mom obviously was very talented of what she did too. So you must have been around, you know, I think if you have parents like that, even if they're not musicians, the aspirations you end up having as a musician still are like, well, I need to create at the level of completeness and the quality of this kind of art. You know, you don't have to do the same art

but to still recognize the level of, of excellence that you need to to compete. Well, my mom and dad really raised the bar, in all fairness. Like, they were, um, aesthetically, they were both so tight at what they did, man. Like, and they were perfectionists, and, um, art was everything in our house. And so I agree with you. I would say the bar was very high and just for creating, you know? And it's funny because I remember bringing my mom my first demos and the appalled look

in her face, you know, when she heard how terrible I was. and I thought, oh, I have a long way to go, man. Well, before that, you have to play an instrument. I mean, your parents were probably, did you have brothers and sisters? Were you being encouraged to play music by them? I have a brother, and my brother was very, very helpful in my development because my brother, you know, when we grew up, you know,

he grew up listening to all this like shit kicker Southern rock stuff and all this, like, ridiculous, you know, It was like Boston and all these sort of 70s bands. And then he went off to Boston University, and he, I believe, he roomed with the college DJ that first semester. And he came back and suddenly, you know, we have a six-year differential. And he came back. And suddenly he had these crates that were magical.

And it was, you know, it was early Smith singles. And, you know, it was, you know, R.M., the, you know, Chronic Town and Murm. And, you know, let's act. and just a million bands from that era. And so I had an advantage, man. I was exposed to so much stuff. I would say my brother really opened Pandora's box, man, because it was just my head exploded.

And then from then on, that's all I did was just listen to music. So what makes you create music? There's a difference between somebody who is a fan of it versus going, how do you go from that to creating a demo? What happened between that time? Ross, so many things happened. I bounced around colleges. I visited many of them, you know.

So it was sort of a dwindling proposition, so I checked out college for a bit, didn't really work out for me. I struggled, but I, you know, I was always... Did you struggle because of, you know, because of why? Well, if you're watching my brain work right now, It's pretty obvious that, you know, I will eventually land the plane on everything, but I tend to take crazy detours. If this was a direct flight between Burbank and Las Vegas, I've just taken you.

To Zahadi. And I made my way back down. You're fine, Delta. Yeah. So when I grew up, you know, man, I was like the definitive ADHD kid. I was all over the place. And this is in the 80s, man. So they didn't really know what that was.

So that was deemed colossal fuck up. You know what I mean? And so we sent me to therapists and just trying to be. figure out my parents you know my parents were both Ivy League and I graduate the bottom of my high school and they really didn't understand where where the train had derailed and I think the one thing that they under they noticed about me is I was lyrical sort of I sort of had a lot of content you know I was like an early content provider and so I was always just sort of you know I spewing poetry and just you know you know my version of what you know spoke

word would have been if I was doing you know my Gil Scott heron are the last poets but in the suburbs and what that would read like you know and so they they knew there was something there but it was very hard to to really you know a pigeonhole where it would land and so what I did is I got to i got to manhattan at 18 um from westchester and uh I started messing around with uh just recording early primitive recording I found a studio on 1111 street a guy named Jimmy Musson had a room and it was a little middy room and it was cheap and he was this lovely guy who would give me lessons and just teach me sort of the notion of sampling and for me that's when my head exploded because I'm this flea market kid with thousands of records and what I

realized was you know I take these little shitty like 45s and you know obscure records I'd loop them up and then I would try to do my version of a top line and sometimes it was sort of singing and sometimes it was rapping and I was just constantly trying to fuse all these cultures because at the end of the day you know I um I was always like this big musical bowl of gumbo in my head at a time when that was less of a thing you know like you know I mean you guys are younger than me and your generation um you know which I deemed the iPod generation like you guys were listening to tons of different shit and it was cool when I was growing up and I was like an unabashed Debbie Gibson fan who loved Husker do, that was like sort of off the rails, man. You know what I mean? Like that wasn't

how it worked. I always wanted to take my inner jukebox, fuse it together, and then create a voice out of that. And it took me, you know, many, many years to find that voice. When you said that you played the demo for your mom, what was the song that you played? That's a heck of a question, Ross. you know that song the first thing i believe i ever played her when she when she when she started to see that something was happening is i was signed to a production deal at 18 to uh mic murphy and david frank who were known as the system back then they'd come off a massive hit don't disturb this groove great writer producers in the 80s of like funk stuff electro funk and they picked me up they give me a production deal at 18

and the first thing I ever did for him was I did a rap on the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles theme 1989 and as you'll learn in my book 21 hit wonder flopping my way to the top of the charts Matt Holt, Ben Bella books what you will learn is that was the most pivotal moment of my youth where I really you know if we were to take this to a sports analogy I spiked the ball on the five-yard line. So I recorded this rap. I played it for my mom. I was like, guess what, man, I'm in this movie. She said, that's amazing. It was a lock. Everything happened. It was done. You know, so I went back home and told everyone I'd ever met. You know, yeah, man, I might not be academic. I might be trudging through my third university in a year and a half. But, you know,

the good news is I am the rapper on the Ninja Turtles theme of this big movie that's about to come out. The snipes were all over Broadway. Everywhere you look, there were these magical snipes. and I was just like, you know, using it with girls, anything I could for real estate. This was going to be life-altering. And the cassette arrives at the studio, and it's standing on the corner, and I rip it open. And my name isn't on it, you know?

And I thought, that's weird. And we go to my segment of the Teenage Mutin Ninja Turtles theme, and there's 16 bars where my hot 16 is no longer there. It's been replaced by a DJ scratching, radical. Totally awesome. Wiki, wiki, wiki, wiki, awesome. Radical! That's all I remember from the teenage

miniature, you know, so that's all I got for you. But it was the moment where I realized this business was brutal and no shade on those guys, man, David Frank and McMurphy, that was not their fault. It just, it's the way the game works. But that was the eye opener. But I would say, you could see

my mom hearing the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle's theme probably thought that we needed to get me back into school quickly. I know, again, this is your story and not mine, but in the spirit of telling some random music industry stories, I was in a similar place where I'd had songs, a lot of songs out of, pretty successful at really good album tracks, you know? And maybe a couple singles here or there,

but none of them really reacted. And I'm down the hall, and these guys come in there like, hey, can you come and help Flo Rida write this the bridge to this song? So I walk in and it's Avecci's track with good feeling the, you know,

what later became one of Flora's biggest songs. And the verses were written, but the bridge wasn't. So like, yeah, let's write it. So we write the bridge and we're stoked. I mean, this song is like, Like, Floorad has a lot of hits. This is going to be a big move. And, you know, we do splits and all this stuff.

I'm so stoked. And then it turns out Avicchi sold the track to Universal Music. So they had to reproduce the track, but they couldn't buy the sample because the sample wasn't theirs. So Dr. Luke came in, did the, re-did the track, and he signed this new kid's circuit, who then did the bridge. did this dubstep bridge. And there were no dubstep anything at the time at radio. And they just cut the bridge and they cut my part out.

And the song is still something where you just hear all the time. Like you hear marching bands play. You hear it all the time. And that was supposed to be my first number one song. And it was not my first number one song. For anyone out there who's just getting into this business, I want to lead by saying it is the greatest life, right?

It's amazing. It's changed, you know. It's altered my perception of what possibilities were. So it's magical. Flipside is, it's horrific. And you will go through some of the most

sort of skull-fucking the awful moments of your life. And you have to have a stick toitiveness that you just have to, I've always said, you know, this business, at least for the first 14 years of my career, was akin to me waking up every morning in Washington Square by the arches, waking up, going for a gingerly stroll and getting hit by a cab every day of the week, where you just know it's sort of like, you know, it's like the Groundhog Day moment with Phil Connors.

Phil, Phil, Phil, God. You just know that you're about to get hit by that cab again, and there's nothing you can do. You're going to get laid out, and you've got to get up, and you've got to go write a song. Yeah. And that's what this business is. Totally. So you meet Carol King

This is years after that Like if you're talking about There's a lot of failing in there man There's a lot of failing that happens I guess Okay So let me paraphrase it very quickly There's like a decade of torture

I got signed And you were in Manhattan In Manhattan the whole time I get signed as an artist I have a record deal What kind of music was it? It was like sort of alternative hip hop-y sort of stuff

I would say that's the I use the word alternative because you can get away with murder with the word alternative, right? Like alternative says, don't judge me. You know what I mean? I'm kind of quirky and weird. So let's just go with that, but it was pretty terrible. But during the 90s, this is, you know, grunge is everything. This is 91, man. This is early.

I got sound young, so. So if it's 91 and you're 20, 21 years old or something like that. You know, you've got like, you know, Nirvana just comes out that year or whatever it is. My guess is that, you know what your guess is? What? My shit didn't sound like Nirvana. that's what I was getting to say what do you do when

when you're going to become so big for the next five years well I'll tell you what happens you make a record you you know the powers of B gave me a record deal a 20

I just turned 20 21 and I was allowed to produce my own record and the one thing people shouldn't do is produce their own first record you know it just says just and you know and it's funny because trackmasters were a huge thing back then and they wanted to produce the record Bob Power, the great Bob Power, who, you know,

produced Eric Abadu's on and on and mixed all those tribe records and those De La Records. He produced a song on my demo, Gratiss, because he like lived what I was doing. He was awesome. And all these guys who really could have elevated my craft, but I just was such a control freak at that age. You know, I had like such a specific vision. So I had to produce my record. And of course, I just made this just heaping piece of shit. And so I make this record. Do you say that in jest or is it actually terrible? Oh no, it's like a heaping piece of shit. When you listen to it now, are you proud of anything?

I don't listen to it. What was the last of me to listen to it? No, not in the millennium. But I'll tell you one thing. But I learned how to navigate myself in the studio, which was crucial. And so that was basically getting paid to have an education on how to conduct myself in a room with people. And I thought that was huge. Was that deal enough to pay for rent?

Yeah, it was. It was a great deal. It was more than rent. I actually, I mean, these were different days, but I was able to buy an apartment. I bought an apartment on 17th and 7th. It was a studio apartment in a building, and I paid 37K for a studio apartment

with a doorman, with a crank elevator, like old school. And I flipped that. And the funny thing is, man, there's a cat named Eric Wong, who's a big, you know, huge marketing guy in the business. He actually lives in that apartment. Now he combined it with another apartment. Five owners later, he lives in the apartment that I first lived in.

But no, it was amazing. It was a great experience. But what happened at the end of that is after I got dropped, so my record came out, sold five copies, a little video, and it was over. And then when it ended, I immediately began remixing. And I was just doing anything I could to stay in the business. So I remixed, I got an SB12, drum machine, made beats. I did that.

I was doing industrials, commercials. And, you know, the, I guess the pinnacle moment was when I did drum programming on a kid's bop record. So that's when I thought that I was about to get a job. I thought it was over. It was a tough year. And right around that time, that's right around the time, I met Carol King. And I met Carol King because, you know, in all the years of futility in my 20s, my manager, Brett Dissend, who I've been with the same manager for 22 years.

Brett, you know, when we first hooked up, he said, look, man, you develop acts, I'll get them deals. So we would put together groups casting, village voice ads, and put together these things. I was working with a guy named Dave Schumer, really talented cat from Chicago, and we were making these records, and we were getting kids signed,

and we were getting these big deals, and every single record got shelved. And this went on for years, man. So we were truly, the biggest fucking losers in America. Everything we touched would get shelved. So you'd bring a kid in. You'd say, hey, man, if we do this demo, we write these songs, I promise you,

you're going to get a record deal. Now, I never could promise that it would get released, but they would get a deal. So it was something, right? But that's what I did for years. What happened was one of the projects that got shelved was a girl named Tarsia Vega. She was an emcee from the Bronx. And I was writing her rhymes. And what happened was

Brian Maloof, great A&R and producer, knew her manager at the time, Lorna, and Carol got wind of it. Carol flipped on it, came down to the studio to meet the girl, sits across from her,

it's like, hey, I love your wordplay, I love your lyrics. And thank God for this, you know, Tarsha was this, she was this wonderful girl, and she just turned, she said, it's him. Yeah.

Carol looked at me sort of puzzled, and I was like, it's me, you know. It's me, girls. So from that point on, man, we spent a lot of time together. And we ended up writing her single and producing it, the last record she ever put out, Love Makes the World in 2000. And it was a Gap commercial and it was badass.

And she was the greatest, you know, she was the greatest teacher I ever had in this business because the humility and the wisdom, and just everything about her, you know, she was so nurturing and caring and just straight with no jive-ass shit. She was just lovely. And so she set the bar.

But during that time, I'm like, you know, she connects me with Paul Williams, you know. Outside of that, I'm hanging out with Nile Rogers. Like, I'm getting blessed by the greats, but I can't write with anyone my own age because, like you said, now Nirvana's come into play. And, you know,

self-contained bands are a thing. And my goal was really, I just wanted to kind of write with bands and singer-songwriters. That's really what I wanted to do. When did you decide that? Because you don't know that until someone shows you that that's a possibility.

You know, I mean, I love disco music, right? Like classic disco. But classic disco died. It morphs into Electro and then House. And I never really felt House to the same extent. Rock was like, you know, hip-hop. I loved hip-hop, but obviously I wasn't an MC. wasn't going to happen, but I just loved, I loved the spirit of and I loved the word play.

Rock was the one thing that I could sort of articulate. I felt like every era of rock, there were things that I really connected with. And also, there was like a through line in rock where there were cats in the room who were writers who collaborated, man. It wasn't like brill building, you know, to the same extent, but still there were writers. I think there's co-writers on Use Your Illusion, and there's writers on, you know, the Eagles records, co-writers, Jack Temptions, writing on those Eagles. records writing hits with those guys.

Like, there was a moment when it was totally acceptable to collaborate. But what happens is when Grunge comes in, the least cool thing in the world is the other guy in the room. You know? And that's when I come of age. So I'm fucked.

So all I really want to do is write with cats, but I have absolute zero access. And, you know, man, that's why my 20s were such a shit show because they're really, I didn't see the playing field and it's funny i was thinking this morning as i came over here about gen x writers right of a certain age there aren't that many gen x writers left you know and i do believe a lot of that had to do with the

fact that we came up in an era that was impenetrable in many ways you know where it wasn't a great pop wave the pop wave happens a little later right with all the boy band stuff in the late 90s but early 90s late 80s all the way to like 97 it's like you know the Those records are really hard to access, man. You know? And so it was a dire time. Ross, I edited ringtones for a while. That was a job.

So I edited ringtones, but I didn't edit any kind of ringtone. I was getting paid. I forgot what the sum was. I want to say it was like $35, maybe $50, something like that, per ringtone, to edit jam band ringtones. Now, do you know what it's like to edit a jam band ringtone? Can you imagine what that is? That's taking 25 minutes of content.

down to like a 15 second differential. It's a lot of chopping and pasting. And there was some gruesome years, brother. So you understand why I'm so giddy being here with you, fellas. But when you, you know, the industry, I think that most people peak, not peak. Most people really break in the industry in their 30s. I think that it's a myth. You see these people in their teens and 20s that are killing it.

and in reality those are very far and few between most of people who make moves as songwriters and producers in my experience like their best years are late 20s through 30s and 40s even you know it's not necessarily um you know it's not really as young it's sort of a young person's game but if it's really about sticking through those times like, you know, to get to the point where your skill set is in vogue. Well, I mean, I look at the icons of hip-hop, and I look at, you know, at this moment, for as many emcees there are out there who, you know, dominate Spotify,

if I look at, like, the icons in my head at this moment, it's still J, and it's still Kanye, and it's still Diddy to some extent. You know, obviously, he rules the universe, and, you know, all these guys, gnaz, they're all my age, man. You know what I mean? And it's wisdom. What happens is there comes a moment, and I agree with you completely.

I felt like it was in my 30s. There was a moment where the light bulb got brighter, and I began to hear it. And I think I had a sense of self, man, you know, you spend your 20s. It's a lot of chasing, right? You're chasing whatever the thing is, and you're just trying to get in. You're just trying to get in. You want to be in this game, right? You want to write songs.

You want to experience sort of, you know, if you're a pop writer, you want to experience that feeling of something entering the zeitgeist. And what happens is you get in your 30s and you're sort of become a human, man. Maybe you have kids. Maybe, you know, there are just things that happen that frame it. For me, having a kid was huge because I really felt I was on the creative clock. I felt like, you know, I can't be a dad now. I mean, this whole other window.

I can't stay out all night and, like, you know, doing this thing. And like chasing it, I got to, there's windows. And like you said, Ross, we're both early morning guys. So I became an early morning guy, right? So every morning I had to go harder than ever. And I felt like when I had that on my back, when I had my kids' energy sort of fueling me, I just got better.

Like I just felt like I really dialed in who I was and I knew what I could bring to a room every day. That was it. Some of it's that choice where your skill set's good enough to keep things going. But at some point, you know, people are we know the prodigies again but a lot of times the people who break in the business are it's when they have this mental shift of yeah i know that there's a level that i haven't

really tapped into and either i'm going for it or i'm not but it was it was when i realized like i wasn't the cute kid anymore like i wasn't going to just get a real you have to actually do the work to show the to to prove that that potential is real you know you have to you have to realize some of that potential, which means you have to put in that work. You have to change your mindset to realize, no, I can beat this, I can beat this, I can beat this, and be your own worst critic.

The good thing for me is I was never the cute kid, so Duck was sort of stacked against me early on, but... You were the kid who had the record deal who produces their own record deal. That is the mistake that you're talking about where, like, you needed somebody to say, you can beat that, you can beat that, versus me being like,

I'm the shit, and everything I do is so good that I don't even need to edit this. Well, I also, I came of age at a time when, you know, I was in the, I was in these village. And, you know, I was very lucky with the crew that I had surrounded myself with. And obviously, that, how did I surround myself? Well, I was out seven nights a week hustling. So I was networking every single night. I go to any industry showcase. If I had a friend who was a secretary or entry level A&R at a label, you know, I'd pound them until they get me invites to showcases. I would do anything just to be seen and just like so people sort of recognize that at least I was a presence

and I existed and I would you know stand on the street outside the Columbia records building black rock on 50th and I'd stand out there with cassettes I'd memorized all the faces from billboard there's a billboard on 22nd and 6th Avenue sorry there's a billboard there's a barns and noble on 22nd 6th Avenue and I'd read the billboard magazines for free I'd study the photos and of all the ANR guys in the golden platinum presentation pictures. And so I'd remember their face and say, hey, that's Don DeVito, you know, that's the, you know, Mitchell Cohen. And I'd stand out and I'd accost these guys the way dudes like accosty on Hollywood Boulevard with their

CD. But I would come into it, knowing who they were, introduced myself, say, I've seen them in the magazine, I have a demo. And, you know, it's like there is a gear you have to hit. If you want to be in this, you know, this is everything. This is not a business you limp into, you know? Yeah. I think that gets lost on people sometimes.

I do believe in my heart that every living American is capable of one hit, but I don't believe every American is capable of multiple hits. That takes the hustle and the drive, and that's the other gear that you have to get to, and then you can do it. Well, let's go to that first hit. Well, you want to get something? Well, you jump. I don't want to cut you off.

Well, no, no, but isn't your first? It's going to be like some glowing introduction. Let's go. Exactly. No, but we go from, you know, like you said, you were working with the Carol Kings of the world and meeting Paul Williams and meeting Nile Rogers, and you're in with those people. And through the beginning of the 2000s, like... Let me tell you how I hit it.

Yeah, please. I'm in the East Village, and I've accumulated, like, a pretty cool crew, all right? And it's a crew of songwriters, managers, and film guys, right? all these cool cats. It was a really interesting bunch and no one had really blown up. We had a guy named JJ Abrams we used to hang out with and he was our first friend who ever got a TV show.

I had a show called Felicity. So we all went to Odeon and had a little party to celebrate the night he got greenlit from the WB who got his first show, right? We had Morgan Spurlock. I wrote the Super Size Me song with my friend Morgan for the movie because he was my friend and he said I'm going to eat McDonald's for 28 days straight

and I thought he was out of his fucking mind. he looked disgusting. But I thought that was fun. So we wrote a song of Super Size Me or with our buddy Toothpick and he performed it and it was in the movie. It was great. And, you know, there were all these guys

that was creative energy, but there was one guy in our crew that I made friends with. It was a guy named Jonathan Daniel. And Jonathan Daniel is now, you know, the most successful managers in the industry. He runs Crush Management with his partner, Bob McClain.

But, you know, back then, man, they were a scrappy little organization. They were very scrappy. and I was pretty scrappy. And I met J.D., I believe, through Clyde Lieberman at a meeting. And the second I met him, I was like, man, this guy is this shit. Because he had such, we had so much shared historical knowledge of records, man. We were both nerds.

And it was amazing to meet a fellow nerd at this extent. We were really, we were just going deep on like, hey, man, Stephen Bishop Records. And, hey, you know, we just loved it all. and we started having these coffees. We met at Dean and DeLuca downtown. And he would give me these pep talks. And he was the only guy I ever met in the business. Like my manager is my guy, right?

Like, Brett's my guy. But Jonathan was the only guy I ever met outside of my manager who really understood what I was writing and what I was going for and could pick out the references. Because I was always trying to do this cool hodgepodge of shit that was like probably way too obtuse and way over under people's head, so I just missed. But he got it.

He knew what I was going for. And one day, it's 2004, and he says, meet me at the Virgin Megastore in Union Square. I go and meet him. And he's like, look, man, he's like, you know, I really have like a scene beginning to happen, man. You know, I got this band Fall Out of Chicago.

And, you know, Pete Wentz is the kid. He's the bass player. And man, they're on this little label Fuel by Ramen, this John Janick kid with like a dorn. in Florida or something but this Pete Wentz kid is modeling his business in a way of what

Jay Z and Dame are doing with Rockefeller and he said you know there's all these bands under his tutelage that he's sort of developing and it would be great to have a cat in the room who actually was a song guy who really could help craft it and he

I said that's great man that's cool and he said so you know the first thing I'd like you check out as a band called Jim Class Heroes so I went out to Knitting Factory with J.D. Trabby McCoy performed. I want to say there might have been 40 people in the crowd. And I found love.

I thought this guy was everything I had ever wanted to be as an artist, right? He's like, he's good looking, and he's so charismatic, and he was lyrical, and he was sharp, and I was just, I was mesmerized. And so I went to Bob McClain's apartment that night to beg for the record, and I sat with Bob watching a Steelers game, drinking beer. I hate fucking beer. And I'm sitting there, like, drinking with Bob, because, I'm doing whatever I can

and I just give them this impassioned pitch and they said, all right, you can do the record. I said, that's amazing, man. I said, so what's the budget? They said, yeah, man, it's, you know, it's 28. I go, oh, that's crazy, 28 a track. That makes sense because I've been getting, you know, about 250 to 500,000 for all these flops that I've done.

This is amazing, you know? He's like, no, no, it's 28,000 all in and that includes mastering and mixing. And I was like, these guys are out of their fucking minds, you know? So I went back and I talked about it, I tucked it over with Brett, my manager. I said, look, man, I'm at the bottom of the fucking barrel

cutting up ringtones for jam bands. Like, who the hell am I to turn down $28,000 to do this? My wife's pregnant. My wife gives birth. And three days later, we start as cruel as school children, the album. And out of that, I have my first hit. And that's when it begins. People say that happens a lot after they have a kid

that things really seem to come together. Is it the work, I think, that changes when you have somebody else who you're responsible for? Or is it zeitgeist? Is it... It's just like some weird... I think it's some weird, like, mystical energy that just, like, sort of...

That just flutters above. It's really hard to... It's hard to label it, but I would say, in my case, the day my kid was born, I really do feel like I became a different writer. There was a desperation, not in a negative way,

but, like, there was a passion to have my voice heard more than ever before. And, you know, while we did the gym class record, you know, we moved in with Crush. We began, we all moved into a loft on 11th Street. Who's we? Well, me, my manager, Brett. And I was writing a lot with Dave Katz.

I started working with him halfway through that. I worked on Cupid's Chokeold, and then Dave came on board for the rest of the record with me. And, you know, I started working with Dave Katz, my favorite collection. Liberator ever, an incredible writer and also the loveliest guy in the world. And, you know, we started, we just, we split a lot of those guys. And truly, like, nothing will ever replicate that in my life, you know. Crush had the front, probably half to two-thirds. Then in the middle, Brad had his office, ozone management, which is a completely different entity. No, no connection, you know, contracts with anything. They're just, we're just homies. Across the hall was Alan Ferguson, who was directing all the videos for both Crush and. zone and then I had two rooms in the back and what happened with it was it was just this incredible fertile breeding ground of just creativity all day long artists were coming in and out you know you'd have biance walking in one day and then you know you'd have you know the guy from third eye blind who you know stumbled into my room looked at my boys like girls plaque on their wall and was like boys like

girls man we did shows of them they suck and walked out of the room so that was my only exchange with the third-eyed blind guy. But it was a lot of that energy, man. Courtney Love running around the halls. Like just so many interesting figures in and out all day. And it fueled the creativity was incredible. And, you know, man, we're all competing but also working together. And the best part is there were no strings.

Like it was magical, man. No contracts. We didn't do paper. Perfect example. Like Pat Monaghan became a friend of mine from Train. We started writing songs together. Pat was looking for new management. I introduced him to crush.

They connect. J.D. introduces me to, you know, the, you know, Travi or Brendan Yuri and things like that. There's all this symbiotic stuff all day long that was born out of friendship more than anything else. It was just guys who, you know, people who really enjoyed each other's company, just hooking each other up and trying to make good art. I mean, it's your, it's, you're literally describing what we think of

when we think of Andy Warhol and where you're, The factory, it's a factory, and also the Brill Building. I mean, honestly, it's discussing it with Carol. You know, I mean, you know, Carol, you say, I believe that the musicians all camped out in the diner below the Brill Building, and you'd have all these incredible session cats downstairs, and they just, you know, hey, you know, we need this, we need this. Hey, Tony Orlando was singing the demos back then. I mean, just incredible stuff. This was modeled after that, and it was obviously intentional.

But, you know, the fruits of it. You can intend to do a lot of things. It doesn't mean that it actually functions. and to function for really what looks like, you know, 15, 20 years almost at this point. It was the personalities really fit. It was a lot of people, I think, who all came into it with, I'd say a shared love of song before anything else, more than the industry. I think we're all people who never really love the industry. We all sort of painted ourselves outside of it, and I think that comes from years of futility, right?

Years of when it's not working out, the calluses grow to such an extent. You're like, fuck this business. Fuck this business. well we're not really anarchist but truthfully we were guys who just truly believed in like the songs that we were crafting and the acts and all that stuff so

had you had had that first album been a success or the second or third of any of those projects that you were developing had any of those worked when Jonathan says to you you know when you go see gym class heroes

you're not taking that if any of those things were successful you are not taking that and you do not go down to this string of gym class heroes you would not have done Cobra Starship you would not have done boys like girls you would not have done metro station

you wouldn't have done any of those coheed none of them you wouldn't have done any of those things had any of those other things been successful and you would have gone down a whole other path but because you had

this dearth of work you were then set to do something like you had to prove a point and it was the right it was it couldn't that that's a great point and honestly I don't really think about it but now you're freaking me out now I'm just thinking what might have been you ever stand like some of the records that flopped were gut-wrenching man I mean I worked with guys from my high school who had grown up with Dan Dan Woods and Aaron Aseta who were in a band called Jay Bender

and we put together they were in a band a different band and we paired it down gave it a new name and we wrote some songs together and they got son about David Kahn, no, Mitchell Cohen at Columbia. And, you know, man, Dan was one of my closest friends in high school. And he ended up, you know,

he's in film and television. Aaron ended up writing Best Day of My Life for the American authors with Shep Goodman, you know. But the truth of matters, these guys, like, these are my boys from high school. Imagine having to tell them, hey, man, your record shelved. Yeah, they're not putting it out.

That's fun. And you signed to, like, that I was going to say earlier, because you've given some good advice for new writers. and I think most of us who got record deals, that was the goal. And none of us thought about the work that it took afterwards. If we did, we would have had someone else producer for a cell album. If we did, we would have gone and hustled that much harder and assumed that the label wasn't doing the work.

We would have done all the things to get to the next goal, which is actually all the things that happened after the record deal. But instead, when the goal becomes the record deal, deal. So many people get there. They sort of ring the bell and then they look back and they're like, oh, shit, that was my opportunity. I had to, like, I had a machine that was waiting to work, but the machine doesn't work for you

until you sort of work for it. And that takes years of experience. 100%. Dave Katz is older than I am. So he was always sort of like a big brotherly figure. Dave Katz wrote candy from Andy Moore. And he always told me a story when we started writing together that he's sitting in uh he's sitting in watching square park he's had a couple drinks which is very dave cats and he's sitting there and a truck pulls up and watching square

park and it's a sony or epic records uh street team and they run out literally like haphazardly flinging postcards everywhere that's a can't mandy is candy and that was the moment he realized oh shit I'm finally on something that has a trajectory that's going up. It's like we get so used these things. Like you said, man, back then the record deal was all any kid wish for it. It's like, you know, you grow up, you read Spin, you read Rolling Stone. And all you care about is, man, like making the record and getting the record deal. But then lower down the list is actually promotion and actually the record being released and touring and all those other things.

You just, it's the magic of the studio and, man, a record deal and all this shit that you grow up in. And unfortunately, that's the smallest part of it, man. The rest of the hustle goes so much deeper. Well, you know, working on albums that start to sell really well, you know, and even, you know, working on some of these songs that start to get heard, that's those you then kind of really arrive, you know, and maybe even see some residuals where it wasn't, you know, just upfront cash. You've now seen some money on the back end.

But even some of it is like getting like, maybe things that don't matter but kind of matter like a BMI Pop Award or something where you show up and you're like oh my God I'm in a room with that guy and that guy and that woman that woman and holy shit this is a room of legends and you're like oh my god this is this is the other side of the curtain there comes a moment when you wake up and you realize you're actually in it you know what I mean and for a while you you fake it you fake it and you know the fake it to you make a thing is so real in music obviously like what it's one of these jobs, just like a music manager, by the way, who are, you know, most managers suck,

as we know. And the truth is like, why? Because there's no bar of entry. You can literally wake up one day at 18 and say, I'm a music manager. And there's no ID. You don't get proofed. You know, you're a music manager. Okay, great. Well, it's the same with being a songwriter producer, right? Man, I mean, I've met one million writer producers in my life. But, you know, the truth is to actually, that moment where it really becomes real, where it transcends, where you're like, wow, I'm actually in the room with these people is the heaviest thing. I agree with that. I want to say it was a songwriter's Hall of Fame event maybe many, many years ago. And I went to, I think Crane was doing something or whatever, but I was walking around the room and people were like shaking

my hand and people kind of, some people knew who I was. And it was the most powerful feeling I'd ever had. I was like, holy shit, I'm not a joke. This is like actually real. I'm actually, you know, I've been blessed to some extent by some of the OGs. It was so powerful, man. But a lot of people who experience that have severe imposter syndrome, and it sounds like you have an element of it, and yet you also recognize that it's real. Do you currently have imposter syndrome looking back at your career,

or do you look at it as like, no, that was the moment you arrived and you were no longer an imposter? That was the moment I arrived. You know, I definitely, I think as sort of what I was alluding to earlier is like, you know, one hit, I felt like an imposter, two hits. The second hit was Great Escape by Boys Like Girls. And when that hit, I immediately thought, okay, I'm super legit for a second of my life. Like, they can't take that away from me. And with that, it's a newborn confidence, man, because once you're actually in it and you've been verified, so to speak, you know,

musically, it's the most powerful shit. You just like, you know, you just, it takes away a lot of those insecurities. Like, the monkey really does get off your back for a second. Hearing your songs on the radio is sort of like the other thing that, you know, we didn't really talk about, but it's like it's the part of music that is, you know, is really what we're aiming for is to hear your songs in public or hear other people playing your song where you're not constantly being like, please check out my music, please play me,

like check out this artist I'm working with. They're like, you don't have to, when someone else is playing it by choice, it's the greatest feeling in the world. And you kind of go through a string of that. When was that first moment? Wow. Well, you know, there's a bunch of them.

I mean, you know, New York was a great radio town with Z-100. So, you know, all those songs, those things you alluded to, man. you know specifically metro station and boys like girls a bunch of those singles and um jim class heroes and we the kings check yes julia i mean they used to bang those songs on z-100 so i'd be in so many different scenarios driving you know here or there and you know it would come on and then you know the moment when it really uh gets nutty is when you know they were what t rl was still a thing like having videos on t rl man was the that was the craziest experience in the world where

go down to Times Square if you were lucky to tag along with the act who, you know, was going on. And people are like, you know, 10,000 screaming kids in the streets screaming, you know, as your song hits number one on TRL or whatever that. You know, I fear for this generation of kids because they're not getting the radio experience to the same extent. And they're not getting the, certainly not getting the music video experience to the same extent. You know, when everything's online and it's completely different, you're missing sort of those subcultures, like in person, those events, like that shared experience of, being in a car and the radio coming on with that.

It's magical, man. The first time I hear your song, it's magical. It's weird. Radio is, everyone's fearful radio will disappear. But I do think people do crave that shared experience. And I'd like, maybe this is rose-colored glasses, but I do feel like there is a need for that and a want for that. And I think if you still drive in a car,

then you still put on the radio as often as you're putting on a playlist. When you're at an office or you're doing other thing, you know, maybe it's something different. Let's hope, man. Honestly, radio is still kidding to me. Radio is everything I believed in because I was completely raised on it. You go through, you know, you stay in this, you're, you now get to this upper echelon of writers, right? And all these projects are doing really well. Yeah.

enough so that your kids taking care of, you're doing a lot of projects, you're making a living, you're producing and writing on a lot of big albums. Even if the song goes platinum or goes gold, and even if a song does pretty well at radio, it's still this one step away. There's a big difference.

I remember someone saying, like, you don't want the number 11 song, you don't want the number six song, you don't want the number four song you don't want the number two song because all those things just miss out on the next level of bonuses

100% and they all miss out on and it doesn't just represent the financial bonus but those numbers really do reflect when radio stations are willing to put a little more umph behind a song so maybe it has it's why a lot of songs die at 15

you know because they didn't quite get to that top 15 you know and they didn't get to the top 10, top five. And so you end up with a few of these songs get real close, but for a while it's still this, you know, multiple years of really, like songs we know, songs that did well, but they didn't quite get to where your songs later end up going. Do you have a new baseline of success

where you started thinking, okay, well, if a song doesn't charge, or go gold or go platinum or get a BMI award like that's not successful did you what was before your definition of success was if I can make this jam band ringtone into to 30 different ringtones let me tell you some is quite a scale and so then you change your your you move your bar and where once you have the I don't know man honestly at the end of the day I uh I really like uh it was song first in terms of if I could walk away from the song and really stand by it in such a weird emotional way that it resonated that sort of meant the world to me man it was like at the end of the day I had mid charters and I had a bunch of top tens and blah blah that during that time but you know what

truthfully it's like there's some songs in that era that didn't do anything relatively and they're my favorites and those are the ones like I mean I had a song with a band called the academy is a song called About a Girl and I think that might be my favorite song of that era and you know it was a big TRL video

and you know they played it on MTV New Year's but you know live but you know what it didn't even get a look at radio man didn't even go for it but I was okay because I thought man this song is just badass when I bump it it moves me it's like this is the kind

of song I as a little kid I would have wished that I could write so I was always okay with that I know this is jumping forward again a bit, but to me, one of the biggest songs you have, and Joe and I were talking about catalogs earlier, and the songs that get the most licenses are worth more than the songs that chart the highest. Sometimes they're the same,

but you can have a number one song that does not generate nearly as much as that song that doesn't chart but gets licensed all the time, and some classic songs. Sure. You know, like Dream On for Aerosmith that this got to number 17. Like that is not a hit, but yet it's a huge hit.

It's like certain songs get licensed. They just get to a certain thing, and they're everywhere. You cannot still, we're six years removed from it, you cannot go anywhere without hearing hand clap. Well, you know, I'll tell you how. By it fits in the tantrums. That's a massive, massive song. Here's how we arrive at hand clap, which is pretty funny.

Because this is, there are two or three things I want to say. about hand clap um i met fits a couple times of parties when i first moved out to la so i moved here in 2012 and 2011 late 2011 and i met fits a couple times and i was a huge fits in the tantrums fan right like i was way into the the early stuff like i was in a money grabber and like you know break the chains and you know like whatever you know the real deeper deeper soul stuff and then you know it gets a little more 80s doubt which i love and i thought man this guy's just he's amazing i met him a couple times, there was a 0% chance I was going to get on a Fitz in the tantrums record. And I say that because I think it's so imperative to know where you are at that moment

in the business in terms of what you're writing. You know, when I first met Fitz, I was coming off of Carmen's Acapella and Daughtry's waiting for Superman. And they're both relative hits, you know. Certainly waiting for Superman did very well. but, you know, he was writing with Sia, man, you know? And he was running with Dave Bassett, who was, like, coming off a fight song and L. King. And I wasn't as sexy a brand.

And I knew that, okay, he's probably, I have no chance of accessing fits. Now, also during that time, I went really cold as a writer. I took a gig. I took a sidebar, and I went to New York, and I produced the music on the second. second season of smash, which was just brutal. And I did the show, TV thing, and I did that because my parents were both sick. And it gave me, it was basically paid trips to go back every few weeks to go checking on my folks. When I did that, I took my eyes off the prize a little bit. Dave Katz and I have been writing the same pop punk song for many years. We segued, you know,

into train. I really wanted to get into hot AC because I realized that hot AC songs, just live longer. I thought the writing was just maybe a little broader, and I liked what that represented. And, you know, so for a while, we did train and Uncle Cracker and, you know, a lot of these bands, blues, travelers, or whatever, and we had a great time, great experiences. But even then, like, I just began to feel like I was losing my thing. And during that time, I end up at dinner one night with one of my oldest friends is an actor named Jeremy Piven and Chicago and Piven and I go to dinner in the city brings me out with them I was I was like a perennial plus one with Piven and Cusack when I was very young so these guys used to let me tag along so I've

just years of stories of these guys who were so kind to let me sort of be the entourage to the entourage and I once again I learned how the people operate and how the world works in a different way that I had viewed it. And Jeremy brought me out to dinner with Steve Nash, who's now the coach of the Brooklyn Nets, but back then was finishing up a Hall of Fame basketball career, and we went to get a burger in the city. And as we were talking about process,

and a lovely guy, by the way, lovely guy, and really artistic and interesting. And, you know, he's talking about sports, and he's talking about how in sports, at some point his third year in the NBA, his numbers were plummeting. He went to see a sports psychologist. Sports psychologist says to him,

hey man, you know, the reason you're doing this is because you've been to all these markets so many times already. The luster has gone. The novelty of, I made it, is over. Now you're like, actually, it's a grind, and it sucks because it's all encompassing. You're away from home for months at a time,

and you're in, like, all these tertiary markets, like, you know, eating shitty food, you know? And he, uh, so the, the guy prescribed, him sort of this this this regiment of yoga Pilates swimming meditation you know a tai chi i believe and he said you're never going to take a day off during the season from this point forward well what happens is fast forward he follows this and suddenly his career goes to new heights and from that point on he then maintains that level for the next 15 years until he retires hall of him player that night when i leave i'm walking back through Washington Square, and we're at Manetta Tavern. So I'm walking back through Washington

Square to my apartment. And it hits me. I still own my place in the city. And it hits me. I'm like, man, why can't apply this to songs? Because for a long time, I realized when, you know, at the end of the pop punk thing and when we're doing all these other bands, truthfully, man, we were beginning to live higher on the hog, man. You know what I mean? We, you know, five days a week of writing became three days of writing. And, you know, you just start to like enjoy it more, you're living life, you know. And I realized that in the process of doing that and then taking on this TV show, I had lost my voice. I didn't know who I was anymore. And I didn't really feel like I had a defined thing anymore where at once I really felt very confident in it.

And it's back to imposter syndrome, right? So I decided, what if I apply that to writing? So I went to the beach and every single day in a summer I wrote seven days a week. week. And from that point on, I realized, all right, well, summers are a great time to stock up for the year. So you did it by yourself? You were just ready to- Every day wake up and it would start with, I would start with a lyric sheet that was driven by either first, you know, I give myself assignments, man. Today, you have to start the day. And I'm up at six, man, so like 10 titles today. And not like hack titles. Like they've got to be really sharp. Like a high concept focused ideas, you know? Next day. a verse and a pre next day a chorus just things constantly doing if i didn't hear anything narrative poetry man i like really flow and write something that's sort of like beat and with like lots of sort of internal

rhymes and stuff just to keep my craft tight and i started doing that and i've never stopped since and the way i work it is since my my um my skill sets tend to be when i'm in a when i'm in a studio with a band right or with an artist one on one like i i do better with artists. I don't write pitch stuff as much because I was never really great at it. I do my best stuff sort of being the appendage in the room who's, you know, adding some days doing a lot of heavy lifting and other days, you know, shaping or whatever. And what I realized was the more I did that, the sharper I was in every room I got to. So I spent a summer just completely getting my skills together. I went back to L.A. The first session back was Fitts. And I met him because we have a

holiday band called Band of Merry Makers. That was me and Kevin Griffin and Mark McGrath. And we'd started this thing, kicking some money to musicians on call and music cares. And it was just like this fun little idea we had. And Fitz sang on the song. And I finally got a session with him through it. And as I'm prepping for the session, I keep hearing this thing in my head. I can make your hands clap.

I can make your hands clap. right and i didn't know what it was i just felt like this is cool you know and uh back then i actually had it as i can make your hand clap because i like the hand clap singular and it's craig kalman chairman of atlantic of all people who said this is the hit but it has to be hands clap a hand doesn't clap hands clap and i was pissed off about it i was like fits what does he know oh he was right but you know i came in the room and i just started spitting this verse to him you know and i had the whole I sort of like the front shape of the, you know, somebody say,

you're so close who've been sitting in it, and it has all this internal shit that I love doing. And he's sitting there wide-eyed, and we've just sort of met, like we're just getting to know each other, and here's this odd guy running in a room, like he's literally snorted all of Bolivia, and he's like trying to,

somebody say, yo's, and I'm acting it out in this whole shit. And he looks at me, and he just goes, and I said, I can make your hands clap me. He goes, and I thought, what the fuck is that? I was like, why do you just do that? five-clap thing. That's weird, man.

I'm more of like a I'm a disco guy, right? Everything's two claps. He's doing this five-clap. And we do it back and forth. And we do it back and forth. And you realize, man, these are like two 40-something-year-old guys who are like, oh, we get paid for this. This is amazing. So we're writing this thing. Fitz sits down at the keyboard and, I mean, Fitz is a talented dude, man.

And he sits down and he immediately just creates this earworm. my engineer and programmer at the time he was also a great writer again named Grant Michaels I had tasked him with coming up with a sound that resembled a bagpipe sort of like the House of Pain jump around thing because every time I hear jump around

it doesn't matter whatever the setting is it just sort of it works in any room so I thought maybe something like that could be cool with like it to manipulate and Grant found this badass sound Grant found this like that weird distorted blown out horn thing if it sits down and literally literally five seconds.

It's a man, this guy's badass. And he put the track together and we finished this thing and, you know, I thought it was dope. He thought it was dope. But then we got to the end of it. I said, that's great, man. So you'll track it with the band and you're going to take it to Motown, right?

So it's going to be like, you know, snares on the core notes and bat-to-batto-buttub. And like, you know, baby love, kind of like a real Motown thing. And he looks at me like... No, this is it. And he's like, no, no. we're done. And I was like, no, no, no, no, no, come on, man. Like, band, band, band, cornered snares, man, it'll be dope, man, like, you know, Supremes. He's looking at me like,

I'm an idiot. He's like, no, no, this is it, man, Electropop. And we really vibed on all these shared influences, and Electro was, early 80s, electro, like, you know, Freeze and John Rockin, and all those kind of African Bombata records and all that stuff. So we did have a shared sort of perspective on it, but I didn't hear it going there. So every step of the way, he'd send this thing to me and I was like man this song is going to brick so hard and I'm going to be the guy who killed his career. I'm literally going to be the career killer. And I would say there are a couple of people, Evan Tabenfeld, Jonathan Daniel, a couple of these guys I played it for early on. My closest friends who were like, this is a fucking hit. And I was like, no way. And it's funny because like you said, it's not that it was a pop hit. It wasn't a pop hit at all. It went like number 30 or something. It was a hot AC hit and alternative hit. But the sink. were just the most disgusting that was like 2506 so it was like

it was just it was so enormous on a global level and then also overseas it was a billion streams just in Asia so it was such a big foreign record

more than anything else that it just it's amazing I mean I watch the Olympics this year I think I heard it 35 times I mean every time I turn on some event it's like oh what's the fat guys with the brooms doing that thing

what is that thing you know the curling the curling guys the drunken guys are out there curling their faces I love those guys and the handclaps blaring I'm like yeah soundtrack of curling man

I love this Fitz is like you know former guest of the podcast he's such a chameleon at you know and he's also he understands licensing in a way that most people don't

and he goes he understands his audience he really genuinely is connected to his brand as well as any artists. I adore him. Like he's one of my closest friends. And what I would tell you about Fitz

that I would say the same thing about, there's a bunch of peers that, you know, I've known for a long time who do a similar thing. And it's, I'd say Fitz, I'd say Pat Monaghan. I'd say Rivers Cuomo. I think about these guys is, man, we're all around the same age. And they want it so bad.

And when you work with them, they're perfectionists and they never stop writing. The output is unbelievable. And it's humbling because truthfully, I mean, I think Rivers writes three songs a day. I mean, he wants it so bad. And that's the, you know, you can't coach that. But for a guy like me who's on the outside who's just a fan who they let in the room, I find it incredibly inspiring.

That's such bullshit, bro. You just said that you're writing seven days a week now for the last seven years. Like, it's not true. You've the same drive. Oh, no, I'm saying, it's a different, like you're not. Oh, no, I'm the same. They invite you in the room because you are that guy. But no, no, listen, listen, I get that.

I'm saying that at the end of the day, though, I find those guys incredibly inspiring because these are guys who at this point have made enough cash where they could sit back and just take privates and do their shows and not worry about this. But they still are so aggressive in their output and how they do it that it fuels me to every day just get better and just keep going myself.

I think the two most valuable things in the music industry are people who can break artists and people who can reinvigorate somebody's career. And panic was at a point where they hadn't had a hit in a long time, not the way that their first hit was. So my assumption is that the expectations were about the same as every other song, even if you really liked High Hopes. And I know that there are a lot of,

there's a high hopes has its own journey that's like it's an incredible journey an incredible journey but it goes so far past you know other songs like it's it's such a big big big big song um how does that feel at that point in your career to to to then ring a bell at that level greatest moment of my life man you know really yeah that was it i mean the thing about high hopes is um I'm very proud of high hopes on so many levels. Everybody involved in the song is pretty rad. Brendan Uri is incredible. But what I did on the song,

I really felt was a testament to the years I put into this business, and this is what I mean by it. As you know, high hopes, or if those who don't know, high hopes, I think, was born. The chorus was born. born in a hot tub at a writing camp in Colorado. Yeah, the BMI writing camp. I want to say like 2016.

And it was Ilsejuber. It was Cook Classics. It was Taylor Parks. Taylor Parks. And it was Jonas Jabor, you know? And these guys killed it. So they had this incredible chorus and this track, which I think was Jonas and, you know, Will. But the track was fierce.

and what happened was I'd done four songs with Brendan and Jake Sinclair on Death of a Bachelor and then I did a ton of prep work going into the next record man

I wrote my face off with all sorts of ideas so if I got in a room with these guys I'd be prepped same thing every day that was my assignment ideas to bring into Brendan and Jake and all these guys you know and what happened was

we started writing together and the first thing was hey look ma I made it and I heard that and I lost my shit because I was like, this song is fierce. This is something I could mess with. You know, I love that song. And I felt like the whole thing was turning

a really interesting corner because, you know, the bulk of those tracks were born from sample tracks that different guys had like sort of chopped up interesting samples. So the sonic beds were really inspiring to write over. And it took me back, once again, to the essence of when I'm starting out with an SP12 drum machine and I'm looping up record. records and it's back to writing over two bar loops and things like that one bar static loops where you

just have to really find that melody and so as a task i don't ever remember being more inspired in my life we wrote eight or nine songs in a row and they were all making the cut but high hopes was the one where i had heard this chorus jady and um evan had played it for me and i literally was like that horse last weekend at the kunducky derby who's just sitting in there trying to bring break out of the stall to like write that song. And I never got the opportunity. And it was just sitting and I don't know. I've always equated in my head that maybe other people took a stab at writing the verses on that song in my head.

And maybe it's like the guitar solo and Pegged by Steely Dance, Jay Graydon, but seven other guys did that solo before Jay Graydon nailed it. I always felt like maybe that's what happened. I don't know because like the song was sitting. Then those guys all the team of those guys, Brendan, and JD and Jake and whoever else grabbed a pre-chorus from another existing panic demo that had been thrown out and suddenly you had like a pre-chorus slash bridge

but there were no verses and this was to me 30 years of writing where I had to connect a chorus to this bridge and create a narrative and construct it and write it and I sat on my porch and I waited and finally I got this call that's like hey the album's like

mastering in a week, man. We might want to try that idea. We want to finish it. Do you have anything? And I put on headphones and I just started scatting ideas in 20 minutes. I sort of knew how I heard it and I heard a verse, a verse, and obviously, you know, when I write these things, you know, from my end of it, the part that I'm bringing, sure, I want to like, I want to be about Brendan's journey, something that he'll connect to. But at the same time, I'm also writing stuff that I connect to because it's my own path. And so I sort of framed it as a conversation with my mom who had passed in the first verse,

and the second verse is a conversation between me and my daughter and just sort of passing the generational torch. And I just spewed like all this stuff I've gone through. I just lost both parents. I'm like, you know, I'm in a weird place and I'm very like, I felt like I was in a very nostalgic place and I just sort of, I just hammered it out. And I went and then Brendan took it,

ran with it, flipped a few things, and suddenly we had a song, and it changed my life. And I would say, why I'm so emotionally invested in that song is I had, it literally was like akin to any sporting event in history, the clock was ticking. And I really had a big ass job on that song. So write some verses and really make it work as an idea, and I thought I killed it. and that's the one I'm obviously you know I hear it everywhere still

and I would say I still like I get chills there's like that visceral response every time I hear it because I know what went into it I know how bad I just wanted a shot at that song those guys were at the greatest chorus ever you know what I mean like Jake and and Brendan and Jenny Owens Young I think did that and maybe Lolo

did that bridge with all those cool chords like that was so dope mama said Like it's so sophisticated and cool I just wanted to be part of it And to bring my shit And I felt like I did it We're gonna go to the next segment Five for Five I'm gonna list five things

Tell me the first thing that comes off the top of your head We're gonna start with We're gonna start with the East Coast The Motherland We're gonna go with Your daughter My life Your wife

My life Your wife father. Miss them. Your mom. The greatest. Well, thank you for doing this podcast. You know, it's nice because I feel like there's, there are people who are in this business

for all kinds of reasons. But they're, the ones that are, that are, I'm going to say still around, the ones like you were saying, the gen, other gens that are not. already thinning out in the business. The reality biters? Yeah, right. It's the people who genuinely love it, appreciate it.

It's the people who did have to struggle. It isn't, you know, the people who really succeed early on, a lot of them don't know what to do with that success and they don't really understand how fortunate that may be and they may blow it really early or all the

other things. But the guy who had to edit ringtone, and that ends up you know 20 years later has a song that feels like is the biggest success for him is the guy that that couldn't be more excited

to walk into a room and then everyone else in the room is fucking excited to be with them because there's this feeling of it reminds you of how fortunate we are to be here and you know I just am I'm happy

that you're sticking with, I'm happy you're writing books, I'm happy you're writing music, because it's the, this is all for fun. Ross, I got to tell you at this point. I got to tell you that. You know? You know, it's never once been lost on me how incredibly, uh, wonderful. The journey has been. Every step of it.

And, you know, I don't have a lot of hobbies, man. I, uh, I like music. I like documentaries on cults, really in a cults. But outside of that, you know, man, I don't, this is, this is everything to me every day of the week. It's what I believe in. It's a religion. It's like, song is everything. It doesn't matter.

You know, man, I wake up. I check out everything going on, even if I don't understand the genre, even if somebody says to me, oh, it's like hyperpop or whatever the fuck it is. And I'm like, all right, I'm going to figure this out. I want to know what it is. I might not write it. but I want to know why people like stuff. I want to know why songs work. I want to connect to it.

I want to know who the baddest young cat is and I want to get in a room with them and see what they do because I've worked with all the greats. I've worked with all the greats. I've worked with the old school cats and I've learned so much from them but I want to learn from the kids.

So I want to be down with like the baddest 25 year old melodic writer and get in a room and learn. And it's like if you have that thirst for knowledge and this is like, there's no plan B, this is the only thing that speaks to you on that level. That's all you can do.

Hey, there you go. Thank you. Seriously. Thank you guys. It means a world to me to have it. Thank you so much. This episode is produced by Joe London, hypnosis, mega house management, and myself. Shout out Paige McDonald, Kelly Fox, Casey Robinson, David Silberstein, Tim Kirch, and Zach Weinstein.

See you all next week. I'm Ross Golan, signing off.