One Song - Britney Spears' "Toxic"

Episode Date: June 6, 2024

On this special rerun, Diallo Riddle and LUXXURY get Toxic! Join for LUXXURY’s thesis on why the song is a pop masterpiece that weds high art and obscure sonic references with Britney Spears’ bubblegum vocals. There’s also all of the usual deep dives, rabbit holes, and interpolations — Including a James Bond connection.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey, One Song Nation, what is happening? Luxury here. Diallo and I are cooking up more new episodes of One Song that we're going to be sharing with you soon, including an episode on last year's smash hit, The Biggest Song of 2023, Flowers by Miley Cyrus. So while we get our stems, musical opinions, samples, and interpolations ready for you, I wanted to share an earlier episode to usher us in to the summer season. It's a song from one of the biggest pop stars of the 90s and early aughts. It's gone platinum six times amassing billions of streams. That's right.

From the archives, we bring you, Brittany Spears. The song is toxic. This time on one song, we're talking about a pop classic that draws its influences from far and wide. That's right. It's a three-minute and 18-second global pop pastiche masterpiece. It's an India via California surf rock spy pop song, written by three Swedes and one Brit for an American Brit. An American Brit, I love it. It's toxic by Britney Spears.

Let's get into it. I'm writer, actor, director, and sometimes DJ D.J. Delo Roil. And I am producer, DJ, and songwriter Luxury, also known as the guy who talks about interpolation. Luxury, I've always said, a guy like you should wear a warning. You're dangerous. I understand. And we're falling in love with your TikToks. Listen, let me be very, very clear today.

And I appreciate it. Because I'm so excited to talk about Toxic. I'm so excited. Me too. Because I know that, I know from your TikTok that this is a song that you've thought so much about. It's really funny. I think it might be unexpected to some people. You know, we do the New Order and the Smiths and whatever.

We're so cool. You know, like, I don't want to break the idea that, like, what we talk about on this show is cool songs only. But if we do, like, remember that toxic. Today was the day if you didn't already know. Brittany Spears has entered the pantheon. Yes, she is. High art pop music. This was the song that for me crossed the line,

crossed over into like, this is sublime. This isn't just a throwaway piece of pop fluff. This is high art. This is a great all-timer of a song. Yeah, and I mean, like, listen, it's Britney Spears. She's one of the highest-selling big pop stars of all times. So you knew we had to do a one song about it. I'm so excited to dive into this.

Brady Spears toxic here on one song. Let's do this. So before we get into the stems and all these. fun reference points. You actually have some really interesting insight into how pop songs are crafted. I mean, the funny thing is that before I was doing this show and before I was on TikTok, I actually started as a musician first. My demo got signed to a publishing deal, and it meant that I had a whole new career in Hollywood as a ghost writer for pop musicians. Or I should clarify, as that was the goal of the job. The success of it remains to be seen.

Maybe one of the hundred songs I did co-writes for will become a hit. Some fun co-race. It was one using a TV show, I believe. Yeah, I mean, so probably the most famous, the job was try and write a hit for, you know, that week it would be J. Lo's looking. Beber is looking like you would get this list of who needs songs. Because the way the pop writing game works, it's a bit like film where you sort of see the singer out in front. And sometimes they participate in the songwriting, but sometimes they don't. A lot of times those songs are written for them in the background, in the backrooms of Hollywood by people like me.

And in the world of how this works, it's usually a topliner who's a vocal melody and lyric specialist. And a track guy who's the music specialist. So every week, I would meet five, six, seven new people that were top liners. And we would work together to try and write hits for, again, whoever was looking that week. J-Lo's looking, Brittany's looking, whatever it is. And that was a really fun job for a while that I did not fully succeed in. And so far as the goal is to get cuts and to have your songs released on the album. album didn't quite work that way for me.

That is so interesting. I got to ask, so no necessarily no big hits, but did you write for any of those people, Justin or... Actually, I say Justin, like, there's only one to Justin Timberlake, Justin Bieber, like, did you write for any of those people? So the closest I got to a hit single, it's not even

on the charts. It was in a TV show. It was in an episode of CSI Miami. And actually, this is... What I love about the song is that the song's lyric was, if that's love, then I'm gone. And in the episode, there's a teenager who's like a Hannah Montana type character, who's a singer.

She's like a pop star. And she's wearing glasses and she's really moody and unhappy. And she sings that on stage and then she blows up. How does she wait? If that's love, then I'm gone. She spontaneously combusts? Spontane. I think it was engineered.

She blew up. So it wouldn't be spontaneously combust technically. It would be, it was engineered to look like she was dying. but then she escaped. If I remember the plot correctly. Oh, she was faking her own death? She was faking her own death. This is a fascinating episode of CSI Miami.

To escape. I thought you're going to be like, you know, like. From the fame monster. Running along the beach. Like, I don't know how to wrestle for CSI Miami. So I think you're bringing all this up because this, in relating back to toxic. Are you saying that Britney Spears didn't sit down by the beach pad in one hand, pin in another, and pin the lyrics for toxic?

There's a lot of ways to skin a cat in this game, but she did not do. kind of classic. You have the vision of like, you know, maybe Elton John sitting at the piano and like laboring. Actually, in his case, it's a bad example because someone else is writing his lyrics for him. Is that true? Oh, yeah. I don't know. Oh, man.

Bernie Topin is the guy who writes lyrics and slips him under the door. And then Elton John, all they have to do is show up. Look at the lyrics. You can go dopo dopo do poop. Goodbye Norma Jean. Hey, all the Elton John fans save. Don't send us the angry emails. I don't think Elton John does.

I don't think Elton John just does dopo dopo do pooh. So where do you start? Like, where do you? What comes first when you are trying to write a song? So that's kind of what one extreme would be like the artist sitting in a room, like hashing it out. And at the other extreme would be this kind of team of people, again, with the movie analogy, writing for the star.

Or on another episode of the show, we talk about Break My Soul in the Renaissance album. It sounds like that was another case where people got into a big room. That's right. There's collaborators and there's throwing out ideas. And in Brittany's case, it's even more extreme than that. Because as we'll talk about in a minute as we go through the, story of the song. She was kind of the last person to participate in the process of going from track to singing. So tell us how this process went for toxic. The origin of this song is,

so we know that Britney Spears and Sweden have a connection. So her career begins with Max Martin, the just like ultimate Swedish pop. He's the biggest hitmaker of our time. He's the guy word with Backstreet and all this. And it's actually kind of surprising to me. I always forget that not everybody knows that name, but in like in the world of songwriting and producers, he is the number one guy. There's no bigger person in 20203 than Max Martin. He's Backstreet Boys, right? He did Backstreet Boys. He did, well, hit me one more time, I think, was his,

was hit one of his debuts as well as Britney's debut. And the number of number ones this guy is, this guy that Max Martin has is off the charts. And relevantly, he is a Swedish man because... His hold on English is not amazing, right? You know, it's funny, because I alluded a minute ago to how I co-wrote a song for that CSI Miami show. My co-writer, and I'm glad that I get a chance to mention her, Bonnie McKee, one of the great songwriters of our time. This was my one brush with greatness that we wrote together

because in the next room at the same time, she was, as we were both baby songwriters, she was writing Katie Perry's hit record. She was writing California Girls by Katie Perry. Seriously. And teenage dream, yes. Those were huge tracks. Huge tracks.

Teenage dream. I had the fortune, the good fortune of writing with her. She went on to fame and fortune with those tracks. The reason I'm thinking of Bonnie McKee, because of Max Martin is because they've worked together with Katie, among other people. And she told me that the way Max works is with phonemes. So his specialty, we talked about the kind of assembly line,

group of people that make songs together as a team like a film crew making Barbie, right? It's kind of like that with these big pop stars. So there's a track guy I mentioned in the room. There's usually a lyrics melody guy. When you get to this level of pop songwriting, not only the top liner starts to get split into multiple experts. So you have somebody who might be a lyrics expert. You have somebody who might be a melody expert.

And what's fascinating about Max Martin's expertise, apparently, according to my friend Bonnie, who's worked with him, is his expertise is phonemes. He knows exactly the right sound. It's not a word. But the exact right sound that you want to hit in this moment, in this melody. And it's called music math. And there's a whole lot of stuff on the internet where people are trying to break down the music math of this hit maker. They're trying to train AI to write the perfect song.

That's coming next. Because it's like, you know, if you sing gibberish, like, you know, one of my favorite things is listening to the demo tracks that artists will perform. I'm thinking specifically of like an early Michael Jackson version of Billy Jean where like he's not even singing words. He's just kind of singing like sounds. She told me I was a lonely back and a baby to say. She called my name that you said hello all that's done. And like, so he knows the sound that's supposed to go there, even if he doesn't know the word. word and you don't have to speak a language well to, you know, know that, oh, that's what sound goes

there. So then you end up with some of these nonsensical lyrics that all these like pop groups were coming out with in the Max Martin heyday. It was just like, that lyric makes no sense. Yeah, but it sounds good. Most songwriters that I know personally, like who are kind of not singer songwriters, for example, that are more maybe lyrics first. But in this game where you're kind of playing with sound and myself included, I will always try to find my top line melody and lyric starting with nonsense phonemes.

I step up to the mic and I've already got a music bed and just like, sa-da-da-z-z-o-do-cat cat-cat. It's this like sort of scatting thing. I'm L. Fitzgerald up there. Saw a girl, she had a cat, cat. But so often you do that

and like a handful of things start to paint a picture and you're like, this song is about a girl with a cat. cat. Just to get us back to toxic. This is a different Swede, in fact, group of Swedes that she wrote with. She wrote this song with Bloodshy and Avant,

who, as producers, they've done just incredible stuff for Britney Spears and other pop singers, but they also, their side project is Mike Snow, which is a great, in its own right... Which I think is Miquet Snow. I was always... Is that right?

Is that right? Yeah, that's why the double eye and the E. I would explain with the whole, like, Swedish thing. No, but I mean, like, seriously, like, I'm one of those people like animals? Come on, man. Mikes know, really, if you don't know him, go listen to them. They have incredible music. I think that, you know, some of their albums and songs from like, I would say 2010, 2011, really just great stuff. Animal. I remember that was the thing. Animal, that's such a good song. So we were talking a little bit about how the pop music sausage gets made.

The Swedish pop music. In this case, we have some special Swedish meatball sausage that we're about to delve into. In this case, the, Swedish production duo, Bloodshy and Avant, came up with this track, and we're going to dig into the track now and show you what they did. So one thing that's kind of, was fun for me on this track as like a musicologist, archaeologist, is that this is the most complicated group of stems I've ever encountered for two reasons. Number one, I have 300 separate audio files that I had to dig through. And it's really fun because there's lots of outtakes, there's lots of experimentation. there's a lot of questions we're answered. We're going to get into the baseline in a minute.

But on the internet, some people think it's a synth. It is definitely not a synth. It's definitely a bass guitar. I have the evidence right here. Let's hear the evidence. The other thing is that a lot of these stems are tagged in Swedish. So I'm not 100% sure all the time when I'm going to get into until I get into it. But I'm pretty sure that the one that's labeled MPC, I'm guessing that's a beat that was made by an MPC.

Let's just go on a limb. That might be the Muppet production company. and it was a Swedish chef who actually is speaking Swedish. We all found this out recently. Hordifur de herde. We thought that was gibberish. It was actually Swedish.

Go forth. Was that offensive when I did horror to fear to heardy? I didn't say it. I mean, let it be known that it was actually It was out of love. The Swedish chef, one of the best, most beloved characters. Absolutely.

What about Beaker? You found the MPC. Found the MPC. True story. When I was 12, one of my nicknames was Beaker. Why would you tell me that? I'm not going to be able to unseeing.

that now. And I, listen, I am not Bunsen Honeydew. And right now, every Gen Z person has turned off. Because they're like, I am not going to listen to my uncle talk about his childhood. All right. You found the NBC.

Let's listen to the Muppet production company. The Muppet Production Company. Pretty basic stuff. That beat runs through the whole song. And that little stutter, boom. Little Elektra, right? Little craftwork. Boom.

Boom. Little Arthur Baker. You can have a vitalic track. It's hypnotic. You could have like a Felix the Housecat track with just that drum. That was sick. That was really fun. But no, they didn't do that.

They wanted to knock a pop song out of the park. So what do they do? Well, then they added a little layer of sugar on top of that. A little percussion, which sounded like this. A little high hat, a little dirty high hat there. So that's pretty much underline. line the entire song. There's a little bit at the end where there's a ride symbol. Yeah. And for the most part, though, that's your beat. And now here's your baseline. There's a little bit

of a story behind the baseline that I'm going to tell. Okay. Let's listen first. It's pretty sick. I think you're going to like it. That's not a keyboard? Is that not a keyboard? I think it might be layered now that I'm hearing it. I know that a bass is playing that. That sounds like somebody's fingers on keys. But it also is a filter. There's a type of pedal that as a bass player. You can get all kinds of effects just like a guitar player. Okay.

And this, there is one that I know of, which sounds like that. So it's a common filter. It's really irritating. Like if you ever hear a bass player kick that in, it's like they're, it's either silly or they don't know that it's irritating.

But in this case, I think it's just funny, but it also cuts through the mix and it's just crazy sounding. It almost reminds me of Timberlin's baseline and pony. It totally has that genuine, like, And there was actually a TikTok trend where they were mashing up Genuine's pony with the Acapela of Toxic on top.

So you're dead on. You nailed it there. Oh, man. If only you had thought of that trend, you would have been TikTok famous just like me. Chinese social media. Oh, man. Beat us to it again. But we need it.

Don't say that too loud. We love you. Please have the algorithm help me. So another thing I should say about this is that an interesting phenomenon takes place when you're on the internet trying to delve through information. these stories. And one thing... And there's no misinformation out there. I mean, you can believe everything you see. The fact that we want to really apart on the show is that just if you see it on the internet, just believe it.

Yes. Hookline and sicker. Absolutely. Apparently I am single and worth $10 million. What I learned because of TikTok is that there is more than one guy named Thomas Lindberg who plays bass from Sweden. No way. So their information is always getting confused. Well, that's the story. So here's what I, when I posted that TikTok video about Britney Spears, that got me 2.5 million views. Yeah. Overnight, like, I had it went from,

literally, it was my first video, so I went from zero to 50,000 followers. I had, in my video, mentioned that Thomas Lindbergh was the bass player. I also discovered that Thomas Lindberg was a death metal vocalist named Goatsbell, whose band was called At the Gates, and I found footage of him, and I put it in

because for the storytelling, you know, it was like, wow, what a cool fact. A heavy metal bass player is also on this Britney Spears track. turned out not to be true. So you had little, but then you put out misinformation, you became big. The good news is that I got... But then when you fact-checked yourself, you had to give all those followers back, right? So here's what happened.

The fact-checking happened for me when Thomas Lindbergh from at the Gates' wife emailed me on Facebook. She probably saw him at home crying, and he was like, oh, I'm not the guine. Wait, is that your Swedish chef? Listen, I ain't trying to pick fight with no Scandinavian country. countries. She was so generous and kind. She's like, look, you are not the first person to make this mistake. Because the fact is, if you look online at all the sources, like both Wikipedia and all

music, because I'm corroborating. I'm like, yeah, just picking the first Google result. I'm like making sure as much as I can, the facts are right. She's like, this happens all that time. No, listen. It's Thomas Lindberg? Yes. I'm sorry.

That's not a kind of. I'm sure the spelling is weird. Is Thomas with an H or no H? It's the Toma, T-O-M-A-S-Linberg. I guess it's common. I think it's how you spell it in Sweden. So all the Thomas Lindbergs in Sweden, who play bass, are frequently going like... You get confused.

Guy, this one's yours. You know, I'm not showing up and doing the, like, goat spell voice today. That's not going to be me. But anyway, all this to say that I was like, do you want me to take it down? She's like, don't worry about it. Just put a comment up there. To this day, I get comments constantly going, are you... It's not the same guy, is it?

Or, like, really, it's the same guy? And I'm like... And you're like, check the comment. comment up there where I corrected myself. As much as I want to be putting out 99.999% perfect information, I am doing my best and there's just a limit to how... You can only do so much. You can only do so much. So this is a plea. Be gentle in the comments. When you see you that we posted in 1983 and it's really 1984, it's going to happen. Tolerate it. Tolerate your discomfort. One song preaches tolerance. After the break, we'll be hearing

Brittany's untreated vocals and answering the eternal question, can she? sing when we come back. Welcome back to one song. Before we get back into the song, I guess I want to pause for a second and consider Brittany. Breathless. Let's take a pause. Let's take a pause.

Let's consider Britney's place in the pop pantheon because, you know, do you think, I mean, she's in the pop pantheon, right? For sure. There's nobody's list who doesn't have her. Especially in the last 30 years, right? Exactly. Okay. Yeah.

I think that my own personal relationship with Britney is a little bit complicated because I am of an age that like, I wasn't really checking for teeny bopper stuff at that point. We were both in that age. It's true. When people were blasting Brittany, I was probably blasting Slum Village. I was probably blasting, you know,

you know, DJ Premier produced, you know, tracks and... You were not reaching for a bit, but let's be clear here because I think people forget or don't think about it until they're like, oh, obviously, like pop music is not intended for you unless you are a teenager. People do listen to it in their children. there are certain groups of people for whom like certainly

gay men like their pop star but like for the most part if you're not a 13 year old girl yeah but you know I mean pop music is not for you I will say this I always recognize that there was great songwriting taking place and that there was great showmanship I'll tell you when I got into Brittany when I got into Brittany was when

you know she was working with Ferrell you know I'm a slave for you like The music itself is like incredible There's some really innovative production stuff happening, which even if you're not there for the lyrics about teen heartbreak or whatever, the music is insanely good and innovative. It reminds me of probably 20 years earlier when Madonna was like reaching down into like, you know, club culture and like,

yo, give me jelly bean benitez, you know, like, and that sort of like era. But, you know, I was just a little bit, I think I was a little bit too old to see it coming. By the time that Brittany is the biggest pop star, you know, everybody, the VMAs only exist so that, Brittany can get on stage and do something crazy, like dance with a snake and kiss Madonna on the lips. Yeah, I mean, that was that period. Absolutely. And it took this song for me to kind of like have it not just be something that was happening

in pop culture that had nothing to do with my life. Because at that time, you were listening to that and I was listening. First of all, I was starting to be my own band and artist. So I was sort of delving into things that were like on the level of like sort of indie rock stuff that I would sort of go back and I was doing a lot of like thrift vinyl like dollar bin stuff. And I would find really interesting, rare commodities in there, like heart records that nobody wanted anymore that I was like, this is incredible.

And so that was my world musically. I definitely was not tuning into Top 40 Radio. But as I mentioned, when I moved to L.A. to be a songwriter, this song, I think it had come out a few years earlier, but it was still considered amongst the songwriters in the circle. Like, you could, this is the best possible song. And you know what? I think that's when pop music is best.

I think that's one of the reason we're talking about this song today, because we're talking about one of the biggest. pop artists of the last 30 years. I think the best pop artists understand that the underground is not your enemy. The underground is your friend. And whether it's Kelly Clarkson going to people and saying, hey, I want a song that sounds like the strokes. And then coming up with since you've been gone.

Or in this case, Brittany reaching, you know, like saying like, hey, I want to work with these, you know, these Swedes who have like really weird musical ideas. And I'm going to bring that into the pop mainstream. I think that's when pop music works best. That's what makes it exciting. I think that's what toxic is. It's pop reaching out into the weirdest corners of music and saying, you know, she's so popular. She can sell this to everybody.

Well, we're going to get into how weird this track was in a minute because that's actually a perfect connection to how this song came into being because it almost wasn't. Toxic almost wasn't. What? It almost wasn't. We almost had to live without toxic? There was almost no toxic. We're going to get into that in just a minute.

Okay, let's get into it. So the part I want to get into next is that. the guitar, which is played by one of the co-writers. He gets songwriting credit. His name is Henrik Janbach. I'm actually not sure if the songwriting credit comes because he was in the room doing the entire thing, or if it was just his guitar contribution. Because I do have to say one thing.

In a minute, we're going to hear a couple of demos, and you can kind of hear how the song progresses. The guitar line, which we're going to talk about a minute, the surf guitar kind of... Oh, I love that. Yeah, that was not in the original demos. Oh, no way. And it was one of those things that when you hear these original demos without, it, you're like, this song is not complete.

But it's just one tiny piece of the entire hole. But it's such a crucial part of it. It's my, I don't know if he was given songwriting credit because that guitar line he came up with was so crucial to the final product. You could have told me it was a sample of like an old, like, what is it, Dick Dale? Who's the guy who did all this? Well, we're going to talk about all that stuff because I love these connections. And also, I have some kind of fun outtakes that hopefully we'll have time for because

he didn't get it right the first time. And him trying to find that guitar line is really fun to hear all. all the pre-takes. Let's hear the guitar clip. And I should point out that there's two distinct guitar parts. One is the acoustic, the rhythmic acoustic part with nylon strings. It's kind of very of its era. In fact, when I hear it, I'm kind of scratch on my head.

Maybe you know, it feels like either a Justin Timberlake or a kind of a Neptunesy kind of thing. I'll play it for you. Let me know if this evokes any other song for you. Let's hear the guitar. This is Henrik Yonbach on guitar. It just feels very early 2000s. I know what you're thinking about Oh, pause and pause it.

You're thinking of Down, da-da-da-na-down Just talk about Down, da-na-da-da-da. Oh, yeah. That's exactly it. Justin's the other day. Just something about you.

Well, I'm looking at you. Whatever. Keep looking at me. That's funny that it's just, that's funny that it's just too really. Like I love you. That's so funny that that's what it is, given that this is Britney.

It sounds like, which is a Neptune's track. Good call. Right, right. It's funny because, like, hearing it by itself, my first thought was, you know, like, I'm a man, but I can't hope and love your show. Like, is that the John Spencer? Spencer Davis.

Spencer Davis. Spencer Davis. Which was, who's the lead singer of that? That is Stevie Winwood, age 16, I think. Stevie Winwood. Little Stevie Winwood. Can he see? No, that's another person.

That is one of my all-time favorite tracks to DJ. Like, that's like at the end of the night DJ. Do you. Do you. So the part I want to play for you next is the all-important surf guitar line. But what's interesting is that when you hear it in the mix, it's preceded by this really distorted, almost metallic-like guitar part, which you have to tolerate because it seamlessly goes into it.

So here's that combination, this one-two punch. Why was that guitar so angry? Wait, those loud parts aren't in the song. at all, though. They are. Whoa, they're in the song, and I just never noticed them there? What are they buried under? Are they buried under drums? That's it. I'm a day, to you. Here, I'll just play it. Let's hear it. Here it comes.

Oh, it's so far down in the mix, though. It is right there. You'd never know it was there. That's what's always interesting. I mean, like, at some point, do they, like, decide, well, it has to be in the mix, but it's going to be at a one and everything else is at a hundred. Yeah, these are the little details, especially as you're building the track. Why wouldn't you just mute it? Well, because you can't hear it. It adds a little bit of something. Yeah.

And even though you didn't notice it, you do hear it. There was that tingle in your spine. It's a tingle in your spine. It's a tingle in your spine. It's a little angry. It's angry. It's aggressive. It's really like a distinct change from what came before it and what comes next, which is a silent moment.

It makes sense in this song. This is the soundtrack to getting turned away from Hyde on Sunset Boulevard in 2003. It was like, my friends of DJ is like, get out of here. You didn't bring no girls. What? Too personal? Okay. I think everyone can relate to that. I like a good surf song. Yeah.

You know, the problem with a lot of those surf songs is that there are no lyrics. So, like, you'd have to go, back in the day, you'd have to go to like Amoeva Records or a record story. I'd be like, hey, yeah, that's all that's like, you know, no lyrics. You just didn't sing the melody line. Well, who decided surfers didn't want lyrics on those twangy guitar songs? I don't know the origin of that. That's a great question. Let's stop the show and find out.

We'll find out when we have Dick Dale on the show. So there's two really cool connections happening here. This is obviously, as we've been talking about, evocative of this late 50s, early 60s, kind of California surf rock sound, which kind of has its origin with, there's a handful of people that are the progenitors. You mentioned Dick Dale. Dick Dale, Link Ray. Yeah.

And... Is Link Ray a man or is it a band? It's a guy. Okay. Link Ray. Link Ray, great name. Yeah, his parents. That's freaking cool.

I like to think it was Faye Ray was his mom. Could have been. He talks about... He talks about... Kong all the time, but it's just buried in the mix, so you can't hear it. Link, I'm going to name my child, Link. All right, go ahead. So the connection between surf rock and James Bond is an interesting one, because these are

both happening at the same time. Oh, yeah, I can have some similarities there. And sonically, what's going on is the same idea. It's usually the lowest string of the guitar. It's got a lot of reverb on it. And it's usually playing, like, a one-note melody. So I'll play you a couple of examples. I'd love to.

We'll start with the surf rock. And here's the iconic from Pulp Fiction. This is Dick Dale's Miserloo. The song. But Ascap wants you to stop playing it. All right. Thank you, Ascap. You know what's crazy about that?

It's like the lyrics of that song, ha, ha, ha, ha. But, and you're like, oh, man, they're not really trying that hard. But then I think about Lou Uzi Verz, I just want to rock, where it's just, I just want to rock. It's kind of the same thing. Everything old is just coming back, guys.

You don't need that many lyrics. You don't need that many lyrics. Let me play you one more. This is Pipeline. melody. They didn't want their drummer to do too much, and I appreciate it. Ride symbol, reverb, a lot of ambiance. I've heard that song so many times.

It's funny. I heard that song so many times that I didn't know what it was called. Right. So if nothing else, thank you. It's covered by a lot of bands The Ventures, which is one of my all-time favorite bands. Yeah, and what's interesting is I was just listening to it, is I realized that it evoked another kind of contemporary song of that era that also uses, like, a surf guitar line. But it also uses that, I'll play it for you and tell me if you hear the connection to toxic. I feel a premonition.

That girl's going to make me fall. Yeah. Listen. Well, again, the surf guitar part is cool. Until you did that thing with your hand, I did not ever hear that. It's so funny how some things are so way down in the mix. Yeah. How does all that connect to James Bond?

I kind of know how it connects to James Bond. And to what was Peter Gunn? It was a theme from Peter Gunn? All those. So what, for some reason, it's probably because of the choice to use it in the iconic James Bond theme. It becomes kind of a symbol of spinesis. So simple. But delicious.

So I got to say real quick that, you know, obviously I love John Williams and Hans Zimmer. But I think sort of the unforgotten genius of movie music. of movie music is John Barry. The theme, the, the, the, the, the, the soundtracks, if you will, to Disney's The Black Hole, as well as the James Bond sort of forgotten classic in my eyes, the Living Daylights, the score that John Barry did for the Living Daylights. Those are two of my favorite records of all time. The Black Hole, you just, like, evoked a memory.

No, it's, go back and listen to it. It's fantastic. One other thing I want to say about spy music before we move on is that, yes, I feel like this was just the technology. This was like the guitar sound of the moment. moment when spies and surfers were both getting into like that sound. Yeah. It's the same way I always feel like how disco, if you go back and look at the very first

Star Wars trilogy and you think about how disco was really spacey at the time. Well, I think some of that had to do with the fact that Star Wars was such a huge phenomenon. Yeah. That everybody was trying to graft on. So like all, and discos are dark. So they kind of meshed well together. The same way, you know, science fiction from the late 70s and early 80s sounds very disco. Right.

Like, I feel like that's the same thing with, like, spies and surf music. That's a cool connection. Yeah, I agree with that. But seriously, I just think John Barry's a genius. And that's obviously an iconic song. Right. And so that's an arrangement, a John Barry arrangement. It's actually written by a guy called Monty Norman.

Oh, no. Yeah. I'm sorry. Mr. Norman, I thought it was John Barry. Mr. Norman appreciates your apology. But he says it's unnecessary. Is he alive? He's in the back of my ear.

His estate. His estate says it's not necessary. It's a state. It's very generous estate. It's just happy to be talked about. Let's face it, because John Barry usually is in front. He's saying, go back there, Norman. John Barry is brilliant without having written that one.

There's a kind of fun foreshadowing connection. It's a bit crazy. We're in a minute going to get into the core sample of this song. Yeah, I want to talk about that. We're going to talk about that. It's very interesting. It's the core sort of sound sonically. It brings us to India.

And there's another Indian connection connected to the surf to spy movement that we just went through. Okay. And it's the fact that Marty Norman, who wrote the James Bond theme, was actually interpolating himself. He had an unused piece of music lying around, which was published later and I'm going to play it for you. But this is what he ripped off from himself. And it's based on an Indian Raga. No way. I'm trying to keep track of all these connections.

I take back my apology, Monty. Just going over to other continents and stealing music. So annoying. So this is the work that Monty Norman wrote that later he turned. into the James Bond theme. And I think you'll hear the connection pretty quickly. I was born with this unlucky sneeze. And what is worse, I came into the world the wrong.

Right, all right. That song took a turn. Why is he singing in English for the record? Why did that happen? So this, the... Well, I guess, I guess any has a relationship with the English. The actual... A very toxic relationship.

with the English, if I may. To be fair, the actual recording we just heard was he went back years later and recently recorded that. So with the self-awareness of it having gone through the James Bond thing, there may have been tweaks made to dial up the James Bond. But the fact is that there is a surf, I'm confused by it too, but there's an Indian connection to that surf to spy connection already. Even before we get to the sample in this song, which will make it all the more explicit.

Amazing. I want to get into the sample in Tox. This Britney Spears song has a very prominent Indian sample. And I feel like hip-hop had been doing this for a while. You have Big Pimpin by Jay-Z. Beware the Boys with Jay-Z and Punjabi MC. It was like a really big song in this year, 2003. Yeah, exactly.

And then there's also Missy Elliott's Get Your FreeCore. Oh, right. It's also an Indian sample. So I feel like hip-hop had been using Indian samples, Addicted, which is one of my very favorite songs, you know, features the rock hymn verse, also an Indian sample. Can you tell us about this Indian sample? Let's get into this Indian sample.

I'm going to play it for you right now, and I'll show you how it was transformed from the original. It's really interesting. Yeah. So the sample comes from a song called Tiri-Miri Beach Mean, which was in a film called Achi Du J.K. Leet, and that is from 1981, and I'm going to play it for you now in the original form.

And there you can hear her singing. That's kind of hot. I understand. I mean, like, I think if you're fortunate enough to have access to music that sounds like that, I can see why you'd be like, ooh, I'm just going to put a beat under this. That's one of two different pieces they use. Here's the other one. That sounds so cool.

I'm sorry. Can you give me a little bit before the sample comes in? I just want to see how that sample came in. Yeah, you got it. Here it comes. You know, I'm going to say something controversial. Some of my absolute favorite samples are when you, find them super clean strings.

Like that shit, ah, it just gives you chills. Yeah, it gives you chills and it's such a weird, eerie melody. It's eerie. And by the way, the people listening to this on podcast can't really appreciate this. But like, go try and find this clip on YouTube because I'm watching the visual that goes with it. Yeah. And it's kind of crazy. Yeah, I want to watch this movie.

I kind of want to watch this movie now. It's kind of like there's... How was this song even justified in that moment? I don't even know. The movie seems like it's got some connections to what the song Toxic is about. There's like a love affair. there's like mystery. And I love it how these two samples

are from different parts of the song, but they're merged together to have that low, high. Those are from completely different parts of the original. Totally. And yet the way that they were put together, they sound like they went together.

Yeah. Honestly, you can't, you can't not, they seem very naturally like they fit. This is one of those few times I love seeing the sausage to come together

because that is like actual sausage. Like they are taking some meat from over here. No, it's an apt metaphor. We're here, and it doesn't even go together, and yet it really fits together. The only way I'm actually, and the only way that I'm actually disappointed is that in a part of my brain, I would love it if, like, Brittany was the person watching, like, this weird Indian movie, and she was like, oh, yeah, you know. And then she saw, like, oh, that would go with Terry Mary Beach Mean, you know. I wish that was the story that we had to tell you, but no, it was the Swedes, the Swedes are.

It was Bloodshine Yvon who had the brilliant idea to merge those two samples in the way that the way that they were. they did. And by the way, there's some complexity to it because I don't know if you could tell from that playing. It took me a bunch of listens to here, but it's, they had to sort of reverse some of the notes to piece it all together. And in the mix, and I'll play this for you now in the song, it was recreated. Parts of that melody were also recreated by a string orchestra. So what is actually a sample in the song and what is actually the recreated or interpolated? Thank you. You got there first. It's catchy. It's catchy. I can't even talk about interpret. interpolation around people without whispering.

I'm so glad. I had that effect. Oh, interpolation. Like, people smack you. Shut them down. There's a right way and a wrong way. So let's hear it all together in the mix, how that sample gets transformed. In the mix. By Bloodshy and Avant to be the backbone of Toxic by Britney Spears.

Yep. I'm blown away that that's two different samples when it sounded so cohesive. All right, now we've cut to a part of the show I've been waiting breathlessly for. I want to hear the vocals. I want to hear Brittany. Gene Spears's untreated vocals. I am here to deliver that to you. Play me those vocals and we're going to talk on the other side of it.

First I'm going to play it and then we're going to talk about it. That's the sequence we're going to do it. Are you ready? I thought that's what I said. Let's do it. You seem surprised when I fed back your words to you. Okay, let's do it. What was that?

You're toxic. What was that in the beginning? What was that in the beginning? of a poison paradise I'm addicted to you Don't you know that you're toxic Blake Luxury Robin

Can you play that again for me? Just play it from the exact place you played it before I want to hear if I heard something correct Just from the exact place you played it before Can I hear it again? Are you ready? Yes Here it comes

Pause it I don't think the human voice can do that What is that first sound? It sounds like a record player starting up Did they put her voice on acetate and then hit play on the record? Like, I'm not even being sarcastic. Let's do some musicological archaeology together.

That's not natural. So Britney Spears is famous as a vocalist, not for being like the shock-a-con. No, no, no. I don't think everybody has to be shock-a-con. She has a lot of interesting sonic, like sounds she makes and characters. There's the famous vocal fry.

There's all these things she does that are around the singing of the notes. Okay. But you do understand why that sounds artificial. Like that... I don't think your voice did that. Maybe it did. Maybe it did.

Here's my other thing. There's a limit to what we can know in this room. But do we have... Because that's still, obviously, that's several voices layered. That's several Britney voices. Do we have, like, just a clean take of what she sounded like when she sang it in the booth with nothing on it? I'm just curious. If we don't, it's okay.

The true answer is I'd have to go through those 300 files that I can mention it. Also, 100 of them are vocals. That is like about four Britney takes layered over each other, right? So that's four Britney takes and it's actually not the complete chorus. Let me play that for you because in the mix on the final version, not only is there Britney Gene Spears, but there's also Kathy Dennis.

Kathy Dennis being of course the lyricist and melody writer of the song. Did she do the demo? She did the demo and her vocals are still on the final version along with two other background singers. So let's hear the mix of all of them together.

Yep. You're toxic, I'm slipping under. The taste of a poison paradise. I'm addicted to you. Don't you know that you're toxic? Wow, I can hear those different voices. You can hear some of those different voices. Yeah, like there's somebody who does a very good deep voice in there.

I'm going to play some of those isolated and then put them back in the mix so you can isolate them. Here's Kathy Dennis, the co-writer of the song, and this is her demo vocal. Again, still in the final version of the song, and you're hearing this. Toxic, I'm slipping under. Taste of a poison paradise. That's just Kathy? That's just Kathy. And let me put Kathy and Brittany back together.

See if you can follow both of them separately in your head as you hear them together. You're toxic, I'm slipping under. Taste of a poison paradise. It's a little tricky to kind of untangle them. So can I hear Kathy's again? You're toxic. I'm slipping under. Taste of a poison paradise.

You know what's funny, and this is to give props to Brittany, there is something that she's doing with her vocals that's just like a spice, but it's like the spice that makes the meal. Yeah. It's what makes it, it's Britney. You know, like,

I can't do that. That's what I was kind of saying before about the different kind of characters that she has. She puts a character on the vocal. It's kind of an acting job, right? She's an actress. I always say, like, I don't even fault people for doing, like, you know, all the tricks in the computer and the auto team and all that. Because I love. T-Pain and I've been very clear about this from the very beginning.

That's his character. When did I get so adam about T-Pi-Tune is his character? I've heard T-Pain sing without it and he has an amazing voice. And yet, honestly, anybody who ever has ever used Autotune knows you have to kind of sing it out of tune for Auto-Tune to do its thing. To pick it up, yeah. So it's really, you almost have to be able to sing to use Autotune.

It's like you have to be a very good actor to do bad acting. It's kind of crazy. There's actually one more voice in the mix, I'll play for you. It's Emma Holgren. Okay. And here's what she sounds like on her own. And then we'll just put them all back together and see if you can thought experiment. Can you once I put them back together, hear each

of these three individual voices? It's hard to do. That wasn't nice. You're toxic, I'm slipping and dead. With a taste of a poison paradigm. You know what I hear in that? Is Emma doing the deep voice? She's exclusively what I just played. Oh, she's doing all that? And what I hear

just now is a Swedish person singing. Because that sounded like a Swedish Little Swedish accent Let's hear the Swedish accent You're toxic I'm slipping and dead With a taste of a poison paradise It's very subtle But it's there right

Yeah it's very subtle So let's bring her back in With I'm a niche on my knees I'm going to give it to you With just Kathy and Emma together And then I'll do one more after this

With everybody So here's Emma with Kathy You're toxic I'm slipping with the taste of a poison paradise. I'm addicted to you. So now you can kind of start to identify the little quirks of each of their voices. And here it is again with all three of them.

One last time. But no, Brittany? This is Brittany with Emma and Kathy. You're toxic. I'm slipping under. With the taste of a poison paradise. I'm addicted to you. Don't you know that you're toxic?

Part of the beauty of like mixing music is that simultaneously, it's kind of like that guitar part earlier on. All of these elements have their place. And if you take any of them out, it changes the overall effect. Yeah. I had no idea that there were that many voices on the track. Now, I'm going to play devil's advocate. There are going to be listeners to the podcast who are going to say, hey, you know, does she deserve to be called a singer when there has to be that many other singers singing the track? You're applied.

You know, I think sometimes, you know, you've got to do the sort of Wizard of Oz. Don't look at the man behind the curtain. The fact of the matter is the way pop music is made is that there are a group of people that are fine-tuning every single element to perfection. And the goal for the pop singer is less to be considered part of the creative process the way you might assume, you know, the Beatles are in a room and they're contributing or whatever it is, like kind of a more artistic musical project. Brittany's goal is to get up there and be a performer in front of people singing and her love, her first love is performing and singing. And it's just not in her skill set, in her wheelhouse to be a writer. Yeah, I actually just think it's... So I would forgive her lack of a contribution directly to the writing process as just being part and parcel of being in the pop music machine.

Well, to be clear, we're talking about the singing right now. Like, we're talking about like... You're making the distinction between singing and writing? Yeah, I'm making a distinction between the singing and the writing because, you know, Some people like, you know, you can go to, name your absolute best. You can go to Rita Franklin and say, hey, I wrote this song. Will you sing it? We're only talking about the singing, but I'm actually going to agree with you that in a way,

Britney Spears, whether we don't, I don't think any of us are saying she sings like Chaka Khan. Right. But I think that you can say that she is the embodiment of the final thing. Yeah. She's the embodiment of the final concept of what Britney Spears means. And when I look and I talk to, you know, Britney Spears, I have people in my life are huge Britney Spears fans, what

she was able to embody and what she was able to get up on stage and do the stuff with the snake and do the stuff that was crazy for the time that it was coming out with. Her dancing is amazing. She was the face of the thing, and I think that that's what we have to absolutely give her credit. It's tricky stuff because I don't

want to sound like I am being an apologist for, first of all, the machinery of like, you know, pop culture, which has its share of problems. But at the same time, I think it's going to be a case-by-case basis. Like the Britney situation is going to be different from the Rihanna situation, is going to be different from the Beyonce situation. All of these artists kind of want different things and have different skills and are in different situations. What they

share is that in pop music, you need to just at some point be ready to eat the apple and have the knowledge that what you thought was happening a certain way is not. There's a group of people, there's stylists and makeup artists. There's all kinds of artifice behind what we appear, to us seems just like art until you kind of realize, well, there's kind of a mix going on here. It's kind of a mix. I'm going to take it a step further. I think she's like Batman. I think she's bigger than a person, you know. She represents an idea, though. I think that's a really good analogy. So before we close out with Britney Spears and Toxic, I want to ask you Diallo, quick question. It's been, if you can believe, it's been nearly a quarter century since Britney Spears came on the scene,

which is crazy. That first song, that first Max Martin, produce as we were talking about hit me baby one more time. It's actually baby one more time. Yeah, you don't want to say hit me you want to say the hit me part. How do you think Britney Spears has changed pop music?

That's interesting. I guess you know what? She did change pop music by how she was put out there and how she handled it while she was out there. I think a lot of it is timing. You know, she came along

when everybody seemed really ready to dive into this world of celebrity that's out there. But I also think to a certain extent she wrote a wave of change. You know what I mean? That's a good way to put it. Yeah, I feel like, you know, we've talked on this show about everything from Nirvana to Missy Elliott.

They're agents of great change. I don't know that she is an agent of change so much as she is representative and an amazing representative. She's a representative of a certain generation that came of age with her. Yeah. And they sort of followed, you know, that wave of change with her. Almost as a person more than as a singer, I would say. There's her cult, not cult of personality is the wrong way to put it, but Britney Spears feels like she was a very important person to a generation for all of the reasons,

all the skills, all the stories, all the, you know, paparazzi stuff. Her story and the conservatorship, she made an impact on a lot of people's lives. And the music was one piece of it. There was the music, there was the videos, the dancing, the live performances. But almost it was almost like the stems you play for us today. It took all those different elements to. create the song. Yeah.

And it took all those different parts of her life to create this thing that is Britney Spears. And it means, to this day means, she means so much to so many people. Yeah. Because of all of these things. Yeah. I mean, like, I don't know, you know, like, obviously she's like anybody in the public eye as much as she was, she's had a lot of ups and downs. But I think that the reason why so many people continue to support her and love her is

because at the end of the day, it's Britney bitch. It's Britney bitch. All right, luxury, help me in this thing. Well, I am producer, DJ, and songwriter, Luxury. And I am actor-writer, director, and sometimes DJ Diallo Roald. And this is one song. We'll see you next time. Guys, if you like the show, follow us on Instagram.

Tell us if there's a song you want us to cover. If you have any comments or questions about the episode you just heard, I am at Luxury, L-U-X-X-U-R-Y on Instagram, and I'm at Luxury-X-X. That's L-U-X-U-X-U-X-U-X-U-X, on. TikTok. And this gentleman I love that. Yeah, and I'm Diallo Riddle. You can find me at Diallo Riddle on TikTok and

at Diallo on Instagram. And we'd love to hear from you. Thanks for listening to the show. Stay tuned next week for more one song and we'll see you then. This episode was produced by Matthew Nelson. And Jordan Colling with engineering from Marcus Hahn. Additional production support

from Leslie Guam. Charles Childers, Alicia Shemada, the show's executive produced by Kevin Hart, Ty Randolph, Mike Stein. Go Braves. Brian, Smiley, Eric Eddings, and Eric Wyle.

Hey, that almost sounded like a surf guitar. Hey, guys, luxury here. Really hope you enjoy that episode. If you're feeling like keeping up with YOLO and I outside of the podcast, please follow us on Instagram, where I'm at Luxury. with two X's, and Diallo is Diallo with two L-Ls, but I'll spell those for you. L-U-X-X-U-R-Y and D-I-A-L-L-O.

And on TikTok, you can find me at Luxury X-X, and Diallo is Diallo-R-O-R-I-D-L-E. That's right, it's D-I-A-L-O-R-I-D-L-E, and I'm at L-U-X-X-U-X-R-Y-X-X. Please keep your eyes and ears out for more one-song content on this feed real soon. If you're already subscribed, stay that way. And if you're not subscribed, now is the time. Click that button.