Ear Biscuits with Rhett & Link - Ep. 30 Rhett & Link "Our Song Writing Process" - Ear Biscuits

Episode Date: April 25, 2014

In this special edition episode, Rhett & Link focus on exploring their creative process when it comes to song writing. The episode features never-before-heard demos of songs like "Rub Some Bacon on It," "My Hair Song," and "It's My Belly Button," original recordings of songs that never made it into video form like "Fartin' Girl," and fully produced tracks that have never seen the light of day like "Public Place" (about using public restrooms) and "Don't Block My YouTube" (about...not blocking YouTube). To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This, this, this, this is Mythical. Welcome to Ear Biscuits. I'm Rhett. And I'm Link. This week at the round table of dim lighting we have us. Yay! The two of us and you. Hope you're not disappointed. I picture you in some sort of seat listening to this. It could be a moving vehicle seat.

What if they're jogging? I mean, some people aren't sitting down. Some people are jogging. You could be jogging, but I don't picture you jogging. Maybe on a skateboard. Not that you're not in shape. It's just that you're not jogging. Someone is on rollerblades right now.

Think about that, Link. Oh, gosh, I am. Somebody's on rollerblades. They look cool. They look really cool. When they go by, everybody's thinking, that guy must be listening to Ear Biscuits. That's what they're thinking. That's an Ear Biscuits man.

See, he's got those big headphones on and the rollerblades. That only means one thing, Ear Biscuits. That's happening. Well, here's what's going to happen on this Ear Biscuit. As you know, if you've been listening for any time, we started doing this thing on a semi-regular basis where we just talk to one another. And it's been fun. We've learned some things about one another. We've taken questions from you, the Ear Biscuits listeners,

and asked them to one another. We're going to continue in that tradition tonight. And what we're going to talk about is the creative process as it specifically relates to our music. Because... Songs, yeah. Yeah. And, well, not because,

but one of the things that's going to happen to illustrate this is we're going to play a lot of music tonight. And that includes a lot of tracks slash demos slash maybe even not quite demos that have never seen the light of day that I don't think anyone other than just the two of us has ever heard. Never hit anyone's ears.

I mean, there's some things that I found on my phone that you had never heard. Right, voice memos. I mean, we're going into voice memo demo level tonight not because we think we're like the Beatles or something and we're opening up the archives and you're going to be blown away, but because it's embarrassing and hopefully entertaining and hopefully informative to those of you who are trying to do something creative out there.

If you're an aspiring songwriter, then maybe this will give you confidence that you can certainly do better than we can. And if you're just a rollerblader, I mean, hopefully this will just be entertaining. Yeah, I think you don't even have to like music to get a kick out of some of the things that we have tried. So we have some questions that we've gotten off Twitter that we're going to go through.

But first, I think a good place to start, Rhett, is with the first comedy song that we wrote together. Now, I mean, we were in a band together in high school, the Wax Paper Dogs. It was comical, but it was not intentionally comical. There were no comedy songs written. Right. So the first intentionally comedic song we wrote, I guess it was 2001. I mean, this was our third roommate in college, Greg. It was 2000.

With three Gs. It was the year 2000 because you guys got married in 2000. Right. You and then Greg in December of 2000. You got married in 2000. Right. You and then Greg in December of 2000. So we decided to write a funny song,

making fun of Greg at his rehearsal dinner. We were going to perform it live at his rehearsal dinner in order to embarrass him in front of not only his family, but his fiance, Jen's family. Right. So we wrote a song, which I somehow have the demo recording of us practicing the song before we performed it. And I guess we should go ahead and tell them

that this song was then adapted. Well, here's what we realized. We realized a song about a guy who you lived with for three years and making fun of him before he gets married is not something that has a wide audience. Yeah, not a lot of broad appeal. So we decided to change the words and keep the tune and the guitar part, and that became the Unibrow song.

Right. Which I'll play a little bit of that right now. How did I get here in this awkward position? My two eyebrows have formed a coalition. So the Unibrow song actually ended up being one of our first music videos on our YouTube channel that went big. It was featured on the homepage of YouTube. That's right. Back in the day.

And you can still watch that music video, which features Rhett's father as one of the guys in the barber chair that we shave his unibrow. Yeah. The good looking one. So to go back to this rehearsal dinner with Greg, we wrote this song and the bridge was, well, I'll just play it and see if you can hear what we said. We sing Greg naked

Soon you will too Hope you enjoy it More than we do Then we know that you were meant for each other The best of friends, soon to be the best of lovers Didn't we know that you were meant to be together Two peas in a pod, two birds of a feather. Okay, so that's a little embarrassing, I gotta say.

A couple of things to note is we sounded like absolute rednecks. We were. Yeah. Still are rednecks, just kind of reformed a little bit. We could not sing well at all. The harmonies were so flat. I think a dog actually barked as a result of one of your harmonies. He's in torture.

Yeah. But the interesting thing was- We've seen Greg naked, soon you will too. Hope you enjoy it more than we do. But it was a hit. The thing I would like to stress is that- At the rehearsal dinner. Not a nationwide hit.

As bad as that sounds, as embarrassing as the play for you, it was an absolute hit at the rehearsal dinner. So much so that one of the most formative conversations that we have had about our careers took place right after that. You remember this? Yeah, sitting in the car with our wives. With our wives, with my fiance at the time, your wife of six months,

and I was gonna get married to my wife in six months. And it went over so well, they said, you guys need to do something with this. Like you can't just get up there and sing this song and have everybody respond like that and just move on to the next thing. You've got to keep doing this. You've got to pursue this. Like you can't just get up there and sing this song and have everybody respond like that and just move on to the next thing. You've got to keep doing this. You've got to pursue this.

And I think that was the beginning of us thinking, and first of all, I'm so thankful they said that because based on that recording, no one should have ever thought there was any promise, there was any reason to keep pursuing it. Yeah, I'm very thankful for our wives for seeing the potential. They were like our Simon Cowell.

But I mean, in fairness, the live performance was much more dynamic and much more practiced. The whole reason of recording that was so that we could not forget it when we started to practice it a little bit later. Right as we were writing it. We can give us the benefit of the doubt. So we started writing intentionally funny songs after that. And I mean, it wasn't like immediate success. We wrote the Unibrow song pretty much right after that, but we also wrote Fartin' Girl,

which I don't know why I'm playing some of this, but just because it's so embarrassing. Okay, and there's a lot of voices in this one. This was, many of our friends joined in, many who could sing and many who could not sing, as you'll be able to tell as you hear the chorus of voices. Tina. Tina gives the laughs when she farts. Santa Cruz.

Tina gives the laughs when she farts and everything against the glass When she farts If she farts too much then she might have to go and If she farts too much Oh, oh, oh Oh, fart, fart, fart, fart Fart, fart, fart, fart, fart, fart, fart, fart, fart, fart, fart, fart, fart, fart, fart, fart, fart, fart, fart, fart, fart, fart, fart, fart, fart, fart, fart, fart, fart, fart, fart, fart, fart, fart, fart, fart, fart, fart, fart, fart, fart, fart, fart, fart, fart, fart, fart, fart, fart, fart, fart, fart, fart, fart, fart, fart, fart, fart, fart, fart, fart, fart, fart, fart, fart, fart, fart, fart, fart, fart, fart, fart, fart, fart, fart, fart, fart, fart, fart, fart, fart, fart, fart, fart, fart, fart, fart, fart, fart, fart, fart, fart, fart, fart, fart, fart, fart, fart, fart, fart, fart, fart, fart, fart, fart, fart, fart, fart, fart, fart, fart, fart, fart, fart, fart, fart, fart, fart, fart, fart, fart, fart, fart, fart, fart, fart, fart, fart, fart, fart, fart, fart, fart, fart, fart, fart, fart, fart, fart, fart, fart, fart, fart, fart, fart, fart, fart, fart, fart, fart, fart, fart, fart, fart, fart, fart, fart, fart, fart, fart, fart, fart, fart, fart, fart, fart, fart, fart, fart, fart, fart, fart, fart, fart, fart, fart, fart, fart, fart, fart, fart, fart, fart, fart, fart, fart, fart, fart, fart, fart, fart, fart, fart, fart, fart, fart, fart, fart, fart, fart, fart, fart, fart, fart, fart, fart, fart, fart, fart, fart, fart, fart, fart, fart, fart, fart, fart, fart, fart, fart, fart, fart an international hit from Rhett and Link. Now that actually went on an album that was sold at some point. Just Mail Us the Grammy.

And I don't believe that is Out of a trunk. that is available to be bought anywhere. Thank goodness. No. But one of the things that was very much a part of the process

at that point in our comedy and especially in our music was as soon as we wrote it as soon as we came up with it, a line, we wrote it. And moved on. And there was never an evaluation of, hold on, what just happened? What did we just write?

Did we just really write a song that says, Tina gets the laughs when she farts in a group? Have you ever been in a party where a girl named Tina farted? And gets the laughs? And gets the laughs? And gets the laughs? It was all a setup. That's another thing. It was all a setup for poop.

Which is stupid. Because poop and group rhyme, see, Link? Yeah. And so as soon as we figured out, oh, listen, it'll be great if we can just say, if she farts too much, she'll poop. So, hey, let's just start it with something about group. Oh, Tina gets the laughs if she farts in a group. The sad thing is, we just established that we are married men at this point

writing this song. We're not in, like, third grade. And we put it on an album. I mean, our eight and nine-year-old sons wouldn't have had more decency now to not write a song like this. My kids don't even know about this song. My kids would be singing this song left and right all throughout the house if I were to play this for them.

But the reason we wanted to play that is not just because we thought you'd laugh at how horrible it was. It was because the process, I will give us some credit, over the past 14 years, the process has changed significantly. And I think for me, one of the things that I've noticed is that it's so much more iterative than it used to be because where it was, oh, poop rhymes with group, boom, let's sit down, let's record this, invite some friends over, let's record this with them. It's so much more iterative where it starts with an idea and that idea

and whether it's the chorus or whether it's the melody or whether it's the music itself takes a lot of different forms before it takes its final form. Well, okay, so I've got a Twitter question here and I think we can get into that. Junus Pupo

That's appropriate. He asks, when we start a project, do we already clearly know what the finished product will be like or does the idea evolve? I think he may be talking about like a concept for a particular song. But I think what you're saying is that

the song does evolve as you go along. A perfect example, I think we can walk through uh it's my belly button one of our most recent songs just to kind of take it to the other extreme and somehow we have never seen this hole a little dent with a little bit of lint Inside it Underneath this cotton tea You've been hiding It's time that

We unwrap this gift Let's bring back The mail me drift It's my belly button My belly belly button I won't pretend like it's nothing Cause my the belly button song or it's my belly button became. But the song started in a much different place than that. We actually have the first, the demo version that we did right when we came up with this idea.

We sat down, we wrote some music for it, and then Link recorded a melody of some of the lyrics that we had written. See if this is in any way similar to the final version. This morning, while taking a shower I noticed something amiss similar to the final version. I don't recall you ever getting a gunshot wound. Oh, snap, I've got one too. What are the chances we were both shot in the stomach

in the same place then recovered, and we both have the memory of it? Improbable. Highly improbable. What was that? I mean, I think you had, I was working on something else, and you sat down at like the computer and the keyboard and kind of developed that backing track,

which was just playing in the room, and then I took it and tried to come up with some sort of melody. And we had talked about the concept. And a few of the lyrics. Right. which was just playing in the room, and then I took it and tried to come up with some sort of melody and... And we had talked about the concept. And a few of the lyrics. Right. But the thing that we had talked about was, we wanna do a song about grown men

who discover their belly buttons. They think that maybe they've been shot and they both healed in the same spot and they've got a scar in the same spot. What are the chances? Oh, highly improbable, that's highly improbable. And we wanted that to be what the song was. Then months later, because that was-

In a very weird sounding song. Oh, yeah, yeah. That was in 2013, actually. That was in October of last year that we conceptualized that. Lots of time passed, and then we revisited it this year. And I remember saying, you know what?

I want to take a day, and I'm going to- You were working on something, and I was like, I'm going to take a day, and I'm gonna, you were working on something, and I was like, I'm gonna take a day, and I wanna revisit this Belly Button song, see if I can move it along, and I sat down and listened to exactly what we just listened to, and I was like, oh, this is horrible, we can't, we can't do this.

Right, and it's funny, because I pulled it up in order to email it to you so that you'd have it, and when I pulled it up and listened to it, I was like, this is horrible. We can't do this. But I sent it to you anyway. And I was like, this is his problem today. And then you came back and said, I didn't use that. And I was like, okay, yeah.

But the funny thing is that I listened to it and I was like, you know what? We should handle this whole discovery of the belly button and the conjecture as to what it might be, let's handle that in a sketch at the beginning of this thing. And then let's just let the song be

about celebrating the belly button. Right, like post-realization. And so then I updated it with this version, which is a little bit more like the final version, but still a little different. I can't believe we lived to be this old but still a little different. stomach hurt. I'm not about to hide this guilt. It's time for us to put back the milmite ring. I'm gonna decorate my temple with jewels. I'm gonna do it, do it for you. It's my belly, You added a baby at the end. You were really reaching.

I was singing it to a woman. It was... You were? Yeah. I mean, it was very emotional. It was a you were? Yeah. I mean, it was very emotional. It was very dramatic version. It was supposed to be overdramatic, like these guys, they discover their belly button,

and then they sing this really dramatic song. But then, you know, I never played that for you. Because I played that. Yeah, this is like the first time I'm hearing it. Yeah, right. And I'm like, oh, gosh, maybe we should do that one, too. And so I never played you that version because I listened back to that, and I knew that that wasn't good enough.

And another couple of weeks passed, and then when I revisited it again, I said, this needs to be, this has got to be happier, more ridiculous. This should be a pop song. And then that ended up, you can see that the chorus was almost there, right? Right. But lots of things changed. It ended up being the belly belly button, really really something. It became The hook, really. But it's just

that's how the song got to the sound that it ended up having. But let's talk about how the concept changed. Did you have another version though? I thought you had one more demo to play. Okay. I have basically what is the very last version before we change the concept.

I can't believe we've lived to be this old And somehow we have never seen this whole I can't believe we've lived to be this old And somehow we have never seen this whole Okay, so that, it was kind of repetitive at this point in the demo. That was just like, okay, it's going to have more of a pop beat. It's going to have... Going to be a beat in the...

Right, more poppy, that piano and that kind of thing. And so then at that point is when I brought it back to you. Right. And we were in our office and I was like, okay, here's the updated version. I think we're on to something here in terms of the sound. And you had the chorus too because that was the best part. It's my belly button. That was, you also had that.

Right, the chorus was there. And then we kind of just added some jokes and added the rap and all of that, and started to structure it. But we had to figure out where the song was going to go. I think that's always the second question. The first question is, what's this song about?

What's the comedic angle? Two guys discover the belly button. But then it has to go somewhere because I don't think that concept is enough to support a song. And we decided, we didn't have the trees yet, right? We had telescopes going into the belly buttons.

Well, the thing that we said was, this song has got to go crazier, right? It's got to go more in the left field. And so the first idea we came up with, oh, let's get to the point where these guys start selling... Tickets to look in their belly buttons. With telescopes. And somehow, I don't know,

I can't remember exactly how we came up with this, but we were also going to give away magazines about horse mains. Horse main. Horse main magazine. It was really- Miniature horse main magazine. It was crazy.

If you came and looked at the belly button, you got a free subscription to Miniature Horse Maine magazine. And then we said, okay, but before we get to crazy town with Miniature Horse Maine magazine, let's try some things like we didn't have the nugget yet, because I made that up later, but we had

a couple of the other things, including trees, bedazzling it, and putting a seed in there and a tree growing out of the belly button but then when we revisit it we said hold on let's let's if we keep running with the trees it could actually be logical we don't have to go to horsemane magazines which doesn't make any sense so we can carve and offset ourselves and then the song kind of it just went from there but you so you can see what we're saying this is kind of the iterative process of writing a song,

I mean, since last October. Yeah, and so it gets to the point where it becomes, it's not just a song about Billy Buttons, it's a song about somehow about, it's almost an Earth Day song, kind of an anti-Earth Day song almost in an ironic way. But it took five steps to get to that point. Right.

A couple other questions. Sort of Sam asks, is one of you more of an idea-centered person whereas the other acts as a filter for the ideas? Well, I think that this Belly Button song is the perfect example of how we work a lot of times. And that is, and we may have, I don't know if we've ever talked about this specifically. First of all, both of us come up with all kinds of ideas and both of us help finish and filter lots of ideas. Our process is

incredibly collaborative and I'm not just making this up. It is truly the case that a lot of the time we do not remember who came up with the idea. When we think back on a specific idea, it's like, I think maybe you've said something in a conversation and then I immediately had another idea that built on it. And then we're off to the races and we build ideas. That's how we always work. But I do think that I'm more forward thinking than you, and you're more detail oriented than I am. We established that when we talked about our personality differences on an episode of Good Mythical Morning. And what that lends itself to a lot of times is I'll come up with 15 different ideas for songs. You'll help establish what the

best idea is. And then if we move forward with an idea and I kind of get it off the ground, like this belly button song, I probably would have just been fine finishing the song, making it sort of an ode to belly buttons. But we were sitting there and you're like, we got to take it. It's got to go somewhere else.

It's got to go to a new level. And that's when the whole left field conversation started happening. And it became the song about belly button trees and carbon offsets i think that i think that's the answer to the question is that a lot of times there's this i might have an idea but it never it never becomes what it's going to be until you marinate on it and turn it into what it is because that's how our brains work as a default but certainly it works the other way as well. Yeah.

I have ideas and you make them better. Smith Brent 518 tweeted, who makes the witty comebacks or do you create your own parts like an epic rap battle, nerd geek or manliness or just the original epic rap battle? rap battle. I guess what he's asking is, do we each separately write our own parts of the rap battle, so we're legitimately rap battling? The answer is no. I hate to crush your hopes there, I don't think that's ever happened. Smith-Brent 518. Yeah, I mean, it's still just very collaborative. I think until the very last, when we're dividing it up, we kind of divorce the lyrics and the whole writing of the rap from who's going to be delivering it, because that wouldn't be fair. And it doesn't matter, at least at that point. I mean, once the song is written,

then we have to determine who's going to say what. But as we're writing the lines, we don't know who's saying what or how we're going to divide it up. We're just trying to make the best song ever. Right. Because we both win if it's a great song. Right. And I'd say that you're more of a student of rap than I am.

You listen to more rap. And so typically what we do, and I think this has become— And it's also a detail or anything for me to kind of take— Right. To craft a rap. So with something like the Texpert, I'm a Texpert rap, one of our most recent raps.

What I'll do is I'll sit down and I'll just write a lot of concepts. Like this would be funny. It'd be funny if there was a joke about texting with your feet. It'd be funny if there was a joke about a masseuse, a Swedish masseuse giving you thumb

shiatsu and i could have a yogi and but i don't think about the rhyme scheme i don't think about the flow just come up with different ideas and then kind of you take it all i move on to something else we're always working on something i'll move on to something else and you'll kind of sit there in the office and kind of toy with the lyrics until you kind of land at something. Then bring it back to me as a demo and then I'll kind of say, well, I think I'd rather say it like this or maybe it would be funny if we did it like this

or it would be a better, and then the final version is collaborative again. So the typical process is, and I think this is probably typical of lots of people who work together, which I would say that one lesson learned, or I don't even know what it would be like to create things apart from you, apart from Link. It's such a collaborative process of handing things back and forth, like two guys working on

the same project and kind of like, all right, you take this for a while. I'm going to go work on something else. Give it back to me when you've moved it along. I would say that's an encouragement to, if you're having trouble creatively, you come to Creative Roadblocks, find somebody to work with because I think so many of the creative breakthroughs that we've had have been related to the fact that we hand things back and forth until it becomes what it's going to become. And only recently, I think in the past year, have we determined that we should spend more time on writing jokes and coming up with funny concepts and the beginning, middle, and end of a song before we start crafting the song itself, especially for a rap.

I mean, there's so many more jokes crammed into a rap. We learn to write as many jokes as we could. And then you kind of have things to choose from to kind of make your rhymes in the second half. Whereas before, we would just start at the beginning and start writing and rhyming as we went. And you would end up with filler and things that didn't work. Well, related question to that.

It says Ellie Brash X asks, do you write lyrics first or compose the music first? By the way, love you guys. You weren't gonna read that, I wasn't even gonna say that. I mean,

but it's in the tweet. Heart hearts. Yeah, two actual icon hearts there. For me. Two hearts for me. You didn't get a heart, I don't know why.

Well, I think one of them's for me. It says, you guys. I'm gonna take one of those hearts. I don't even know this girl. Maybe I'm not them's for me. It says, you guys. I'm going to take one of those hearts. I don't even know this girl. Maybe I'm not going to take any hearts. You can have all the hearts.

I got a wife. Well, they were both for me anyway, so I've got them. I think when it's a rap, like Link was saying, a lot of times it's very much jokes, even lyrics first. I can't write the lyrics without the music. I actually tried that because I tried to change the music on text halfway through

and I was like, whoop, I can't change the tempo. It's not working. Yeah, so usually we do have the beat that we've gotten someone to make for us. That's another thing with raps. A lot of times we have a producer create something and then we kind of help guide that process.

With our songs, we always write the music for those. So we're writing the music for the songs and then trying to come up with the melody slash lyrics. And a really funny example, something that we found when we were going through all these old demo levels. This was on my phone. It was another voice memo when we were working on the My Hair song, which I remember how that one worked. I don't remember whose idea

it was, but I know that you came up with the hook, like the piano hook for the... I think it goes from the verse through the chorus. My hair goes, I think it goes from the verse and through the chorus. My hair goes up, my hair goes down. My hair goes up, my hair goes down. My hair goes up, my hair goes down.

Down, down, down, down. The beginning of the idea was I was like, I got an idea about a song for hair going up and hair going down because my hair goes up, your hair goes down. All I got is this, and it was just the chorus. And then we played a little bit like, well, but the verse could be something like this,

but I have no idea what the lyrics are going to be. I have no idea what the melody should be. But we had this little, we had a beat, and we had a chord progression. And that was all we had, and you had that on your computer. Yeah, and then you started working on the second caption feel. And I said, all right, I'm going to work on this melody. And then I kind of had something. I kind of worked on a melody and recorded as I went so I wouldn't forget it. Because what you learn when you're writing songs

is you get something great and then you're like, I'm never going to forget that. You go to lunch and you come back and you do not remember it. So that's why we have so many voice memos on our phone was because we forgot things that we thought were genius. Actually, you're just documenting proof that what you came up with really wasn't genius, as you'll see. So this is the My Hair Goes verse melody. I was just making up words off the top of my head

and trying to come up with the melody. Something that was catchy. Check one, two. Testing. Testing. This is My Hair Goes Up. Oh, I wonder if you would. And if I wrote the song and you sang it with me, would the people depend? And if we went down like this and up like this and

then of all around the world then everybody would be singing this song and passing it on to girls yeah i'm trying to remember this way to sing so i can sing it with these new words and when i add in the words and you sing along, it'll be like two floating turds. And if floating turds are cool and we are cool, then we can float along with them. And you can Rufus, if Rufus and Rufus and Rufus them. Oh my goodness. Rufus? It's like if Bill Cosby got his wisdom teeth out. It's like what that was.

The funny thing about it is the melody that you came up with there was actually better than the melody we landed on. You were like, it was a very R. Kelly thing you were trying. Yeah, at a certain point. We backed off on the R. Kelly nature of that because it was almost too over the top. And we also didn't include lyrics about turds. It's like, what's our problem?

And if the turds are cool, we'll flow down with them. Boy. Oh, gosh. That's embarrassing, man. I didn't know that that existed. Again, I'm hoping, first of all, if you know us, you know that we result or resort to bathroom humor. It's natural. That was a perfect example of it.

It's in your brain naturally. Stream of consciousness. The turds are going to come out. The brain turds are going to come out. You can't help it. But I'm hoping that, you know. And something about girls. I said something about girls.

The girls will share it. People will share it with girls. I think that's what you said. I mean, that's great. girls will share it. Share it with, people will share it with girls. I think that's what you said. Which is, I mean, that's great. We want people to share our music with girls and guys.

But I do hope that, you know, I remember when we were first getting started. I mean, I started playing the guitar when I was 17. In the band, we had already started

because we were two lead singers. And then I was like, well, one of us needs to play an instrument. And at that point... Oh, and you know what? Patricia Joyce 94 asked you, how long did it take you to learn to play guitar? What was your favorite song to play?

I don't know what my favorite song to play was, but I do know that I learned in a matter of weeks. I remember I got the guitar. You learned, you bought a fake book. That's what they're called, right? Where they tell you how to play guitar. It's called a fake book. I don't know why, but I think that's what they're called. You mean where it just has chords?

It's got the fakes in it. Yeah. You got the Eagles one and you got Leonard Skinner. Yeah, and it was kind of, the Eagles one was great because the Eagles have so many just chords. Acoustic, strummy. Yeah great because the Eagles have so many just chords that make up this. Acoustic, strummy.

Yeah, but the Lynyrd Skynyrd was just, I had all these electric guitar riffs for like. Give me back my bullets. Yeah, that kind of thing. The point I am making though

is that I think about that process of trying to learn how to write songs and we kind of felt our way through it and we didn't have a whole lot of people telling us what to do, but these little tips like, you know, if you come up with a melody, sing it immediately so you won't forget it. If you don't have what the song's going to be about, go ahead and record yourself singing about turds or whatever because you're going to help establish what the song is going to become. Obviously, we didn't write a song about turds. whatever because you're going to help establish what the song is going to become

obviously we didn't write a song about turds not that we're above it we started this thing off talking about the one a girl that farts in a group and then ends up pooping so we're not above it but i think for anybody out there who's aspiring to be a songwriter those are some tips that we that we would throw your way is that just get something out there. Open it up. Don't wait until you've got it completely formulated in your mind. Adane09 asked us, how do you come up with the premise

or concept for your songs? I think we've got three or four different ways that we come up with the concept. As we've already established, obviously just an idea will pop in our brains. I don't know how you came up with the concept. I mean, something, as we've already established, obviously just an idea will pop in our brains. I don't know how you came up with the idea

of writing a song about two guys discovering their belly buttons in their 30s. It was a sketch. I thought it would be a funny sketch. Okay, but how did you come up with the idea for that period? I have no idea. You were like looking at your belly button.

I think I may have seen something about, I know what it was. I saw something on television about self-awareness and how at a certain age, babies realize that their bodies are like, they have some sort of self- Part of them. Part of them.

Right. Like they look at their hands and stuff. What if grown men realize that? Oh, they might find their belly button. Right. You know, and then it just, from there. Okay. Yeah, I remember coming up with a,

I'm a thoughtful guy. I was driving into the Fatburger parking lot. I was gonna get me a Fatburger, and there was an ad on the radio. It was a dating ad on the radio, and it said something about I'm a thoughtful, you know, if you wanna meet a fat burger. And there was an ad on the radio. It was a dating ad on the radio. And it said something about, I'm a thoughtful, you know,

if you want to meet a thoughtful guy. And I was like, well, I'm a thoughtful guy. But I'm like, well, I don't need a date, but that's kind of funny.

It could also just mean that you think a lot. And then I just jotted that down. And then two weeks later, I was looking through a list when we were talking about song ideas and it came up. But I mean, I'm not gonna say it's a sad fact. A lot of the ways we come up with our songs, A Day in 09,

is through sponsorship. I mean, all of our rap battles started with a sponsor. Dentine wanted to, they wanted to do something that tied gum together

with confidence confidence to start a relationship and that led to Epic Rap Battle and then when

we picked we pitched Epic Rap Battle Manliness to a sponsor and then same thing with Tiger Direct

and Nerve vs. Geek right so a lot of it to a sponsor. And then same thing with Tiger Direct and Nerve vs. Geek. Right. So a lot of it has to do with somebody just saying we want something that speaks to a certain thing. And we approach that kind of like a math problem. And I don't want to talk about it too much because it could be boring.

Well, I think it's nice to have a constraint. We're reactive sometimes, and I think that's a good thing is having something, having somebody request that you write something for them can help you come up with ideas that you would not have come up with if it was just you riding along, listening to the radio,

and hearing a commercial about a dating website. Well, I mean, that's why we came up with the five word song title idea. I mean, the Indie Machines guys, our friends, they came up with the idea for films and they gave us permission to use it for songs too. And really, when we first started making YouTube videos, we were already doing that.

Not five word song titles, but just submit a song title. The Fear of Frogs song, one of the first songs on our channel after Unibrow. And that was part of the viral boom, right? No, it was after that, but it was a submit a song idea within our fan base, someone submitted that idea. And then when we came back with the idea to do five word song titles, we made a video where we said,

hey, we want to write a song based on your suggestions. The first one that we wrote was Nill Away for Top Hat Time. We saw that. We said, okay, surely there's a song in Nill Away for Top Hat Time. Wrote a very quick and easy song and did a live performance of it for our music video. But then a number of months passed, and surprisingly, we asked people

to submit five-word song ideas, and there might be, I remember going through and looking at the suggestions for those five-word songs, looking at like 1,000 in one sitting. Oh, yeah. And not being able to find one that I thought we can make into a good song i i don't know what it was it was just like man i thought that there would be

so many of these that would work but so many of the people's suggestions were things like purple dinosaur kitten donut hole or something like that you know what i mean like it's it's not really a concept there and then all of a sudden uh i wish i knew who suggested this it's not really a concept there. And then all of a sudden, I wish I knew who suggested this. We gave him the credit in the video. Yeah, it's there. We saw Rub Some Bacon on it. It's like, that is funny. And that's actually Serge underscore BT's question

was how did you come up with the Rub Some Bacon on it idea? Well, it was a suggestion. That was one of the five word songs. Now, you have a demo of that. We had a really hard time writing Rub Some Bacon On It. I definitely remember that. So, yeah, two things about that.

First thing is, we wrote the chorus for Rub Some Bacon On It at least four times. So that Beach Boy style Rub Some Bacon On It chorus. Rub some bacon on it. That was after we had visited many different choruses that we didn't like over several weeks. Then we finally land on that chorus,

and then we've got this Rub Some Bacon on It chorus, additional line in the chorus that we wanted. And this is originally what it sounded like, just me singing it as a demo. Rub some bacon on it. Throw some bacon on it. Throw some

bacon on it. Throw some bacon on it. Now, I remember as we were writing that and recording that, listening to it back, I'd as we were writing that and recording that, listening to it back, I'd be like, man, we just sound like dumb as dirt, like knuckleheads singing.

Either that or some type of frat guy that you don't want to hang out with. And we're like, I don't know what to do. We couldn't come up with anything better. And then the idea was, what if a robot sang it? What if it was a robot voice? And we kind of knew we could do that using Logic, so we changed it to a robot sound effect, and it sounded cool.

It didn't sound like a couple of numbnuts singing, roll some back, you know what I mean? But then we thought, we've got this robot singing in the song. What are we gonna do in the music video? We've gotta have a robot in the music video. So the bacon, this is just an example of how it isn't totally ever determined

from the beginning. The bacon bot, which is the focal point of the entire music video, and ultimately the point, like the application point at the end, it was only created because we didn't like the way we sounded in the chorus and added a robot voice and then needed a robot to sing it.

And then decided, well, let's just build this. And Jason ended up building that robot in my backyard over a number of days because we were like, we gotta have a robot. How do you build a robot? Well, we can use a trash can and we can get an old phone and then we can put Nick Bishop in it. And the robot has to be able to fry bacon.

So therefore, let's make the head out of a functioning George Foreman grill. It ended up not being functional. It wasn't plugged into anything. And now he's dead. He fell off the top of the refrigerator and uh the whole his whole head busted but he's still there i mean i think he could be repaired yeah if if need be he could be salvaged but i mean those are kind of the ways that we come up with ideas from our brains from sponsors from fans but i there are some times and we don't have the luxury of a lot of time just to

do this anymore but maybe we never did. But I know there were certain points that we would just say, you know what, today, let's write a song with no constraints. Let's just sit down with a guitar and a notepad and just open our brains and just vomit out whatever comes out. Hopefully, it just won't be like more poop humor. And we found a demo that we recorded. Right, so this is one we recorded. We were down at the beach. This is a number of years ago.

This is before we moved to California, so this is probably four years ago. And we were sitting there, just what Link said, we want to write something that has no constraints, and it was a song about a dream that we had. And this is, let me tell you, this is a very early demo. This is kind of catching us in the middle of a writing session

and trying to kind of capture what we had. The song would be conversational and so you would be telling me about a dream that you had last night and I would be responding to it. Right. And then there would be a second verse where I would have a dream

and you would respond to it. We never wrote the second verse about my dream have a dream, and you would respond to it. We never wrote the second verse about my dream, but we kind of ran with your dream just because and tried to draw a conclusion on the end of it, and I think I was really far back from your iPhone, which was recording this thing, so it's hard to hear me. It's not a great recording.

Link sounds like he's across the room because he was, but I actually still like this song. You'll get the idea. Let me tell you about a dream I had last night. Okay, why don't you tell it? I was selling colored pencils on the roadside in a world of black and white. And then I noticed I was wearing nothing but my drawers.

Then a big panda bear came out of nowhere holding the key. He said, is this yours? I opened my mouth and screamed but nothing came out but the screen but nothing came out but Oh sir, we saw you something, I'm saying something funny. And then the bear became a woman Oh now you're onto something But she looked like Bruce Springsteen This is not my kind of dream Then she lit a purple flare

And merged in the air Summoning a committee For the deurbanization of cities She was giving a presentation The woman who wants to put the bear She invented a two-seater scooter That was fueled by facial hair I shaved my whole face

And then I took my trimmer And shaved both my legs Like an Olympic swimmer And once she had all my hair Then she went back into the van Hold on, were you there? I don't know, that's up to you And once she had all my hair Then she went back into a van Hold on, were you there? I don't know, that's up to you

And then she ate it all She what? My hair And then she went Nom nom nom nom nom nom nom nom nom nom nom nom nom Are you sure she didn't go Nom nom nom nom nom nom nom nom nom nom nom nom nom nom nom nom nom nom nom No, it's more of a mix of the two.

More like Nom nom nom nom nom nom nom nom nom nom nom nom nom nom nom Do the longer one there. Nom nom nom nom nom nom nom nom nom, nom, nom, nom, nom, nom, nom, nom, nom, nom, nom, nom, nom, nom, nom, nom, nom, nom, nom, nom, nom, nom, nom, nom, nom, nom, nom, nom, nom, nom, nom, nom, nom, nom, nom, nom, nom, nom, nom, nom, nom, nom, nom, nom, nom, nom, nom, nom, nom, nom, nom, nom, nom, nom, nom, nom, nom, nom, nom, nom, nom, nom, nom, nom, nom, nom, nom, nom, nom, nom, nom, nom, nom, nom, nom, nom, nom, nom, nom, nom, nom, nom, nom, nom, nom, nom, nom, nom, nom, nom, nom, nom, nom, nom, nom, nom, nom, nom, nom, nom, nom, nom, nom, nom, nom, nom, nom, nom, nom, nom, nom, nom, nom, nom, nom, nom, nom, nom, nom, nom, nom, nom, nom, nom, nom, nom, nom, nom, nom, nom, nom, nom, nom, nom, nom, nom, nom, nom, nom, nom, nom, nom, nom, nom, nom, nom, nom, nom, nom, nom, nom, nom, nom, nom, nom, nom, nom, nom, nom, nom, nom, nom, nom, nom, nom, nom, nom, nom, nom, nom, nom, nom, nom, nom, nom, nom, nom, nom, nom, nom, nom, nom, nom, nom, nom, nom, nom, nom, nom, nom, nom, nom, nom, nom, nom, nom, nom, nom, nom, nom, nom, nom, nom, nom, nom, nom, nom, nom, nom, nom, nom, nom, nom, nom, nom, nom, nom, nom, Don't trust a woman who makes you shave your facial hair Especially if moments ago she was a panda bear Don't trust a panda that just ate your body hair Especially if it's got a key in your underwear. Don't buy a scooter that runs on facial hair.

Especially if you don't want to end up hairless and alone. Cleaning up a dead panda bed Don't ride a scooter that runs on facial hair. We had a lot of facial hair humor in there. We did. We could salvage that song. There's something in there. It's kind of nuts, but it could work. It reminds me of that song we wrote a long time ago,

A Tribute to Friends. A Tribute to Friends, yeah. It was kind of a story, and it was based on nonsense. Yes, well, there's a lot of nonsense there. And I think it's a good answer to this question from Miranda Renee. Three. Three.

She says, can you tell us some of the ideas that you haven't followed through with? Well, there's one right there, Miranda. I mean, we've got a lot of these. There's a lot that we won't play for you, but things that we had an idea and we kind of ran with it, and then we got to a point where we're like, well, this probably doesn't need to go public.

Usually, the ideas that we develop do find their way onto the internet, right? But occasionally, especially in the past, we would try a lot of different things that might not make it, like this dream song. I don't remember exactly why we decided, you know what? We just open up our brains. Why did we decide not to do it?

Just not to follow through. Just because we got back from the beach and we had other stuff to do and we never got back to it. Right. I mean, that's how it happens a lot of times. Okay, I found another one that we will never go back to. Well, we're going to it right now though. This is what you get when you listen to Ear Biscuits.

And we are, no one's ever heard this thing. Now when I played this for you earlier, did you remember that we had done this? Vaguely. This song's got it all, people. It has, it has, it, it's like it has bathroom humor. It has potty humor, literally. It's all about the bathroom. It is about

that awkward situation when you're in a public restroom that's like a one person at a time, but somebody knocks on the door and you have to figure out what you're going to say before they try to shimmy the door open thinking no one's in there.

But the genres that we combined for this are. I was just messing around. I don't know why you made the voice that you made. It's so horrible. It was just crazy. We were like, let's just do the craziest thing. Let's throw this drums on there. You can sing in a nasal voice.

I'm gonna try out all these things in GarageBand I've never used before. That's many years ago. It's called Public Place. Chinese. Only for customers though I'll be in the back Give me an egg roll to go I'm in a public place Trying to do a private thing This bathroom is made for one But someone is knocking Knock knock knock knock Oh man I never know what to say

When this happens Knock knock knock knock, man. I never know what to say when this happens. Knock, knock, knock, knock. Oh, man. Should I trust the lock and say nothing? Turn, turn, turn, turn, turn. Oh, snap. Uh, I'm in here. That's crazy. I love the Indies.

That's crazy. I love the Indies. I really like where that song goes. Boom, boom, boom, boom. That is possibly... I'm in a public place trying to do a private thing. Oh, man. That is quite possibly

the stupidest thing we've ever done. I'm sort of liking it now. Third or fourth time I've heard it today as we've prepared for this. Maybe we should make it into a music video. So again, things have changed a lot. And the more things change, the more they stay the same. Well, the interesting thing is we work in a different way today. I mean, one of the things that's changed about the way we work is we have a team of people.

We have things scheduled out more in advance. And so there's not just time necessarily for us to sit around and write that. But back when that was written, it was just the two of us. We're just for the fun of it. We just come into the office, and we say, all right, well, I got an idea for this public place, private thing, and then it's like, all right,

well, I'm gonna do this weird drum beat to this country thing that you've come up with. We would never let ourselves do that now, but hopefully, I'm hoping there can be a time. I do want to do this thing where we rent a cabin and go up there for an extended period of time. And write a whole album. Just a whole album.

And it might end up singing like this again every song. And you could do the percussion thing. That would be great. Who knows what will happen It could be a whole new genre Yeah Whether people will listen to it Is another story Or question

Okay listen I found one more song And this is a complete demo That I found And based on what the song is Written about I'm kind of deciphering that it was written maybe still while we were engineers.

But the quality of the demo is so good that I think it's later, but we're certainly pulling on principles from the engineering days. Don't block my YouTube. So it had to be after 2005. That's true. That's true.

But all the humor was based on... Based on being in the workplace. Yeah, here's the angle. it had to be after 2005. That's true. That's true. So this was... But all the humor was based on... Based on being in the workplace. Yeah, here's the angle. The song that no one has ever heard is called Don't Block My YouTube. And it's written from the perspective of someone like an engineer

who works in like a cubicle job and he's just getting started. And his biggest fear is that the boss will block YouTube at his place of work, which happens. Oh, yeah. They won't let you look at YouTube because you'll waste your time

and not get your job done. We would never write a song like this today because it's too geared towards the workplace, and that's not where a lot of our fans are at or care about that type of thing, so we're not going to write cubicle humor. But I did think it was interesting that this was like a complete,

almost, it sounded like almost produced demo. I only start singing at the end. I remember you wrote most of the song and I wrote this thing at the end and started singing it. Yeah, so there's like two and a half minutes and all of a sudden there's like, Link comes in and it's like,

it's good, it's a surprise. I like it. Well, we just spoiled the surprise ladies and gentlemen the world premiere of don't block my youtube the first thing you'll notice is that you're beginning to gain some weight. Face it, dude. Because you don't reach your target heart rate on your commute. Before you know it, you'll be parting your hair and tucking in your business casual shirt. Because your faux hawk and Miller genuine draft T-shirt just don't work at work.

At first you will be averse to doing number two in the restroom. You think, what if my boss comes in? He would know me by my shoes. But just give it two months, you'll be relishing your precious time in the John. Cause it's the only time you can have conversations with anyone from second level management. Woo!

You'll go crazy trapped there in that cube. If your boss ever makes that dreadful decision to put a block up on you too. There will be a certain girl at work you would have never noticed back in school. But here in the office setting, she seems hot in her pinstripe pantsuit. You're thinking about asking her out, but let me set your perspective right what you think is a 10 on monday morning

is a 5 on friday night you'll go crazy cooped up in that queue backhand your boss if that sucker decides to put a block up on youtube and don't forget those meetings, meetings What's with all these stinking meetings Leading up to you leading your own freaking meeting About meetings, meetings, meetings Just to make more meetings Let's call a meeting So we can minimize our meetings Who?

Don't block my YouTube It's the only thing I've got Boss man, boss man Don't cry for YouTube YouTube, YouTube, YouTube It took you a while to come in there, but you really came in strong. And you really finished strong. I like that song, man.

It's like a Nickelback ripoff or song, man. I just, I mean. It's like a Nickelback ripoff or something. Well, I sound very Weird Al, very nasally weird. You're very high singing. There will be a certain girl at work you would have never noticed back at school. That was harsh, that whole logic there that I came up with. Yeah, we would never say that publicly now.

That's kind of sexist. A little bit. But still, a completely formed song that no one's ever heard until right now on this Ear Biscuit because you decided to stick around and hang out with us for this amount of time. So we're truly grateful. I think hopefully one of the things

that has been demonstrated here is that if you think that some of our music is actually good, which hopefully you do, uh, you see that the only way that that even has a chance of happening is a whole lot of bad to happen. Yeah. You know,

you, you have to churn out so much stuff, uh, creatively, uh, in order to get to the things that you actually want to share with people but you just that you've got to get that engine going you've got to get the machine working so something will come out of it so then you can say okay I got this out of the way so I could get to

the next thing and maybe the next thing or the thing after that will be the thing that I actually want to share. But I don't know. Sitting and listening to this stuff and kind of being reminded of, you know, we've been doing this a long time. That's the thing I'm struck with. Some of these songs are from, I mean, the first one's from the year 2000.

Yeah, that's about 14 years ago. It's kind of depressing. Actually, I mean, the thing that struck me, going back through this, is the amount of fun that we had developing this, I don't know if I would call it a skill, but developing this practice of collaboratively writing a song.

I've seen footage of comedy writing duos who can just sit down and they can write a script. We do very little of that, but we do very much of that when it comes to a song. It's funny how a song kind of brings out the best in both of us in terms of being able to contribute to something and create something because our brains do work differently. And we care about the same things, but then we also have the capacity to care about different things at the same time. But mostly I'm saying it's fun to write a song.

I mean, the best part about high school was being in a band, writing crappy music. And then, you know, whenever we would sit down in college, and ever since then, when you sit down, we have to divide things up a lot, but there's a lot of fun, and there's like a magical thing that happens when you can sit down and kind of craft a song

that comes together, and it's this cohesive thing that you want to, you can listen to a whole bunch. Well, and there's just something about, this is why I really hope, and I think this will be the case, that music will continue to be a cornerstone of what we create.

There have been times where we've gotten a little bit slack with the amount of songs that we're putting out, right? Yeah. We've gone for long periods of time where we're not putting out songs not writing new music not putting out music videos but there's just something when you go back and listen to listen to things like this it's just totally different experience to go back and listen to an old song to hear the iterative process of those five different stages of a song as it was being written. It's something that doesn't happen when you go back and watch a video, you know, because that's not how you don't, that's not how you make videos. You don't make the video five

times. You talk about it and plan it and script it, and then you go shoot it and then you edit it. And maybe there's a couple of different edits, but there's just something about music, Maybe there's a couple of different edits, but there's just something about music, just from a creative standpoint, that is different, is better. And talking about these, listening to this, listening to these old songs that we haven't listened to,

some we're hearing for the first time as we're playing for each other, makes me want to write more. Yeah, I feel energized. Let's go write a song. What are we going to, are we going to give them the scoop on something that we're, the next song we're going to write? Well, I can tell you the voice I'm going to sing it in.

It's going to be up in here. I'm singing our next song in a nasal voice. I hope that's okay with you. Let us know, hashtag Ear Biscuits. Well, not what you think of that. I know what you think of that. What you thought of this episode. Again, there's an experimental nature

to the two of us having a conversation guest-less. We're certainly not going to give up our guests, and you can count on that next week, but give us some hashtag Ear Biscuits feedback. I will say one thing, though, as you're putting together your tweets, hashtag Ear Biscuits, or leaving your comment or review and rating on iTunes,

which, again, as we've established, helps a whole lot. Please do that. Great way to support the show. I don't think I want to do much more unintentionally country music. I think that's one of the things that I hear in a lot of what we've done is that we would write a country song not realizing it was a country song just because we come from such a country background.

And so much of what we listen to is just naturally country. And when we start singing, the chords that we'll play and the melodies that we will sing naturally fall into that country thing. We've gotten to this place where we have to be like, no, no, guys, this is a rock song or this is a pop song or this is a rap song. It cannot be a country song. Not because country is bad, but because when you write a song that you want to be a pop song and then somebody listens to it and they're like, oh, is that a country song?

It doesn't work. It ruins the comedy because the clarity of the comedic angle that we're trying to get across is ruined. So, I don't think I'm gonna be singing like this and having you do some weird percussion. Unless we

decide to just do a, no, this is a legitimate country song, which I do have an idea for a country song about grilled cheese. Remember that one? I think that's half written already. But, you know, maybe we shouldn't go there. I need to dig up that demo. That's a good one.

Okay. Thanks for hanging out with us. Like I said, you can count on us to speak into your ears via a biscuit next week and every Friday. Thanks for leaving that iTunes review and for supporting our musical endeavors. Yes.

A great way to do that is by listening to it. Oofs. What else do you want to say, Rhett? Nothing. Me neither. I'm done. Bye. me neither done bye