One Song - Phoenix's "1901"

Episode Date: February 20, 2025

Fold it? Fallin’? Or something completely different? This week on One Song, Diallo and LUXXURY break down “1901” by Phoenix, exploring the split between rock and electronic music that occurred i...n the 2000s, how their relationship with producer Philippe Zdar brought that electronic influence to their sound, and the guys try to definitively solve just what this song is about.  Cancel your unwanted subscriptions and reach your financial goals faster with Rocket Money. Go to RocketMoney.com/onesong today. Get to Insurify.com to compare car insurance quotes in real-time and start saving today! Have you ever dreamed of starting a business? Go to tailorbrands.com/podcast35 for 35% off all Tailor Brands services today. Songs Discussed: “1901” - Phoenix “If I Ever Feel Better” - Phoenix “Ballade de Melody Nelson” - Serge Gainbourg “Losing My Edge” - LCD Soundsystem “Deceptacon (DFA Remix)” - Le Tigre “Floating” - Jape “Meddle (Baron Von Luxxury’s Technicolor Remix)” - Little Boots “Phoenix” - Daft Punk “Feeling for You” - Cassius “1999” - Cassius “(If It) Hurts Just a Little” - Donna Summer “I Love You So” - Cassius “I Feel a Song (In My Heart)” - Sandra Richardson “Why I Love You “ - Jay-Z and Kanye West “Lisztomania (Classixx Version)” - Phoenix “Cyan” - Kindness “We Danced Together (SebastiAn)” - The Rakes Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Starting point is 00:00:00 Lexury, today's song is an indie pop anthem from a French band that straddled the line between electronic and rock music. It's right, Diallo. Oh, God. So much French. That's right, Diallo, this song was massive. Not only did it reach number one on the Billboard Alternative Songs chart, but the song has been featured in dozens of ads, TV shows, and video games. And most recently, the band performed the song at the closing ceremonies of the 2024 Summer Olympic Games in Paris. That's right.
Starting point is 00:00:27 And as soon as you hear it, you'll be saying, hey, hey, hey. It's one song, and that song is 1901 by Phoenix. You got the note. I love that. I'm actor, writer, director, and sometimes DJ, Diyah Riddell. And I'm producer, DJ, songwriter, and musicologist luxury. Also known as the guy who whispers, interpolation. And if you want to watch one song, please go to our YouTube channel and watch this full episode.
Starting point is 00:01:08 And while you're there, please like and subscribe. All right, Diallo, 1901 was Phoenix's first massive hit in the U.S. But you would actually been a fan for a while. Yeah. How did you get into Phoenix and why did they mean so much to you? I think it started when I was listening to BBC Radio One. That was where I got all my sort of like weird music first back in those days. And as I remember, they played If I Feel Better.
Starting point is 00:01:29 And I remember like, you know, old school style going to record stories being like, where am I going to find this record if I feel better, if I feel better? Did you know who was by? They didn't connect it. I don't think so. I don't think so. But I knew enough of the lyrics where I used the nascent web to figure out the name of the band. Oh, you just Googled what you heard. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:01:46 Yeah, I probably altivisted it. Probably did some geosities. Did you ask Jeeves? I think I might have asked Jeeves. And Jeeves came back with Phoenix. And then I went to Melrose as one used to do. And they used to have all these record stores along Melrose here in L.A. And I remember exactly where I was when I found it in the stacks.
Starting point is 00:02:04 Like when I found it in that box, I pulled it out. I was like, this is the album. This is the song. And I remember I went looking for it because I thought it sounded like a cool Jamiroquai song. Like, if I feel better, it sounded like, Like, it was clearly played by a band, but it felt disco-y. Right. And you and I have always connected on disco-and-and-and-a, and sort of those kind of sounds.
Starting point is 00:02:24 And also the overlap of where it's sort of bandy, disco-y. We're going to be talking about a lot about that today. Elements of rock, elements of indie, elements of electronic are all kind of in there. Yeah. I mean, to this day, if I feel better, is one of my favorite Phoenix groups. It's so interesting hearing this back with like 2025 ears because they were so ahead of their time and sort of bringing, first of all, France, French music and, up from Serge Gonsborg.
Starting point is 00:02:56 There's like a little, there's a, there's a spot between are we going to Serge? Are we talking Serge today? There isn't like necessarily a lot of French music that I'm listening to until daft punk basically in that gap. Yeah, there's always been like a little, I think it's the language barrier. Yeah, always like England has always flooded the American market with all these bands, all these sounds.
Starting point is 00:03:23 And France had never really had its like American moment. You can argue that it is the generation of daft punk, air, Phoenix. These are the guys who sort of like did a. America in a big way. Yes. Listen, all you French people out there, I like la Belle Auxagon, you know, this is my love for French. Shout out to Haitians as well.
Starting point is 00:03:41 French music with French lyrics to American ears can be challenging. It just, it hits different, as we should say. But he's singing in English, so I think that. But singing in English makes a difference. And also, what I'm really struck by on this listen, I can't believe that song is from 1998, is how much it would fit in perfectly today
Starting point is 00:03:57 with the French music of this moment with like parcels and Lempartreitris, all these great. great French bands in the wake of Phoenix and daf punk and their contemporaries and air who are setting the stage lane, the groundwork for a new French emergent. So hearing that early Phoenix song, it's crazy that it really sounds like today. And I will say in preparing for this episode, I was actually surprised that you weren't already a Phoenix fan. Like part of the reason we do this podcast is because we connected over indie disco, new disco and electro, which is a lot
Starting point is 00:04:28 of what Phoenix's appeal was. And when I was like, let's do Phoenix. You're like, oh yeah, I kind of know who that is. I was like, what? No, this is like, listen, I have to bring back an object from another episode. And I think we all know which one I'm talking about. That's right. The Caldron of Envy made an appearance on the Killers episode. This is an era. It's important, like, where I was at the time matters. You were making music. But it was, and it was such early days that I really paid attention to stuff that was similar to what I was doing, but like better or more successful in ways that in retrospect, I'm able to kind of analyze and be like, oh, that's why I missed the boat a little bit on this. I'm so curious. In 2000, was your sound more
Starting point is 00:05:02 approaching Jane's addiction or was it more, you know, Baron von Luxury? In 2000, I was making the transition from the earliest, like, and this is actually relevant to this episode, how they made this song. I first started making music with a four-track machine and a guitar in my apartment in New York City and I would just record little ideas and then I would move on. And by the end of the tape, a 30-minute tape, I would have like 100 ideas, but I would never go back and develop any of them. And this is foreshadowing for the story. of this song, which is really interesting. So I just like live for a number of years with fragments of material and no band and no partners. It was just, but you had the gear. And I had 30, I had a stack of 30
Starting point is 00:05:43 tapes until one day I moved to San Francisco and my music career began when I hired a woman. I can't, I'm so excited to give her props to Patty Boss who came to my house. I answered a Craigslist ad and she converted all of my tapes to digital. So I could look in early pro tools and be like, idea, idea, idea, Oh, I can mix and match this. I can read, oh, this could be a verse and this could be a chorus. This blew my brain up. And it just changed the course of my musical direction. Your Craigslist story ends much better than mine, I will say.
Starting point is 00:06:14 It's a happy of Craigslist story. Minds are dark. But it's so interesting that you say that because Phoenix is really emblematic of the split that's going on in rock music at the time, where some bands are leaning further into, you know, traditional rock sounds, you know, turning up the distortion pedals. Other bands are starting to incorporate more electronic. chronic influences. I mean, like, I feel like you're emblematic of that. In this time period, I went back and forth between the two because it really, when you are
Starting point is 00:06:38 making a band or a musical project happened, there's a sort of binary moment where you have to decide, is this going to be on the stage with a drummer and people listening to songs with vocals? And of course, there's a wide range. It could be instrumental. It could be jazz. The point is, that is distinctly different from, or is it for DJs to choose to play in their set in between other songs at a similar BPM with similar sounds, and it's functional to get the people dancing, where they're sort of looking at each other. And of course, they're big uping the DJ.
Starting point is 00:07:08 But it's a bit of a binary. It's one or the other. But in this moment, which, you know, call back to a few of our other episodes, this is another blog house episode. We talked a little bit about this era where the blogs are where a lot of music is released and how people get them. Free MP3s on the blogs.
Starting point is 00:07:23 This is an era in the early 2000s where, And our sister episodes where this would be like the yeah, yeah, yeah's episode. They're back and listen to that. The daft punk episodes, a big one. There are bands like Cut Copy, an Empire of the Sun and the presets. And they are perfectly on this line of making band-e music, like guitars and singing, but they have electronic elements. And one solution that is come up with, thanks to the blogs, is you can still be a band
Starting point is 00:07:52 and get the DJs because of the remixes. And that's the big epiphany in this moment. I will say I was such a huge fan of all these groups that you're naming. And one time I did book, copy, and my one interaction with them kind of prickly. Oh, no. Those two are pretty prickly. But I love everything you're saying, and it just reminds me of the LCD sound system lyric. I hear that you and your band have sold your guitars and bought turdables.
Starting point is 00:08:14 That is the 2000s to me because every band had to make a choice at some point. Are we more of a, because I feel like Dap Punk was more for the dance floor. Dad Punk adjusted, they went that way. And then, you know, a lot of these groups, cut copy, Phoenix. A lot of them went more bandy as time went on. And wonderfully, we're going to talk about that a lot on this episode because it is behind the scenes how this song and this album gets made is going between these two worlds having a foot in each camp. Sometimes in the recording of a song, sometimes with just production technique, sometimes with choices at the instrument level, at the sonic level, like how you're carving the EQ for the guitar. All of this is in the mix because there's inspiration also coming from.
Starting point is 00:09:00 the daft punk phenomenon. I actually think that Phoenix and a lot of these groups figured out for the album, it's going to be a band. That's right. And then we're going to come in and we'll get, you know, the hot remixer, the classics. 100% right, yes. You know, like, whoever's remixing at the time, we'll get them to do our, our dance floor version. Absolutely.
Starting point is 00:09:18 I mean, like, this is like when MasterCraft is like all over the place. All those, all those, you know, death from above DFA remixes that we love so much. For a long time, I thought that Decepticon by Latigra, was the DFA remix, not the version that I came to know. I feel like this is a little bit of an era that gets under-talked about. And I feel, I'm excited that,
Starting point is 00:09:48 I'm proud that on our show we bring blog house into the conversation so often, because it was really- We get it off of the blogs, because we know most of those blogs, it's like 404 cannot be found now. That's right. Although like, what is it? Z-share links.
Starting point is 00:10:00 All that, yeah, Z-Share. All that stuff is just gone. It's like it never existed. Right. It's really important because I think we live in a post-Bloghouse era. Insofar as, don't forget, that especially in America, like we're Americans. This isn't true everywhere.
Starting point is 00:10:12 But in America, we had disco demolition in 1979, July 12th in Kamisky Park where they burned disco records. And for about 20 years, disco sucks. Was it unquestioned sort of presumption of the culture. Disco is bad. It's corny. It's crin. Yes.
Starting point is 00:10:27 Even the Roxbury boys on S&L were a continuation of the, oh, look how lame they are nodding their heads. That's mainstream, by the way. Underground, it was cool. We loved it. We loved it. In Europe, they didn't stop loving it. In Europe, they didn't stop making it or loving it. But what happened...
Starting point is 00:10:39 They didn't stop making it in Chicago and Detroit. That's right. But the mainstream media here in America was like, dance music is inherently bad. And one thing that happened with Blog House is that a new generation grows up without a memory of that culturally. They just are hearing dance music. They just are hearing electronic music. They're just like, wait, this is good.
Starting point is 00:10:57 Why are we rejecting this? Exactly. It's mysterious to them, understandably so, that it would ever be considered sucky. to that point Holy Ghost was a great underground Oh yeah great band Yeah great a great group
Starting point is 00:11:10 And my connection to Phoenix is that Holy Ghost I think I knew Holy Ghost I knew San Valenti at Ghostly International And I'm pretty sure was Holy Ghost who was like Ask Daisy O'Dell
Starting point is 00:11:24 Our mutual friend like Hey do you have somebody who you want to spend this Phoenix after party with New York And shout out to Daisy O'Dell Thank you for thinking of me She was like, you know, he's a writer on late night with Jimmy Fallon, but he's a really good DJ.
Starting point is 00:11:39 And, you know, we worked together at the standard. So she called me in. And it was at the Tribeca Grand Hotel. Oh, yeah. Remember that place. It's to this day, one of my, it's called the Roxy Hotel now. Oh, really? But back then, Tribeca Grand, and they had an amazing, you know, music lineup.
Starting point is 00:11:53 And I got to spend this after party for the, for the Phoenix show. To this day, it is one of the best DJ experiences of my life because I was able to play all these underground, you know, remixes and songs. The one that really sticks out to me, it's such a hard song. And I was like, I don't know if I've ever even spun it out since or before, but it was called Floating by a group called JAP. And it was the D-I-M remix. Oh, man.
Starting point is 00:12:17 And if you hear that song played loud on those speakers for an appreciative crowd, is a rush that I feel like only DJs can really appreciate it. If I'm chopping at the bit to hear it, I think our listeners are too. Can we hear a little bit? Yeah. I'm glad to go. Dance music was so fun in this era. It was crazy.
Starting point is 00:12:41 There were no rules. Remixes. And it was dirty and it was disgusting. It was dirty. Like the production was like in the red. Dude, it sounded amazing. The wavelengths are like blocks.
Starting point is 00:12:51 Which we've talked about other shows. But I have to point out, we owe a lot to Fisher Spooner. When Fisher Spooner came out, like not a lot of people were doing that sound, you know, different when you hear the album version and just a band playing it. Yeah. But that kind of remixing was what took it to the dance floor. Yeah, absolutely. And I have to contain myself
Starting point is 00:13:15 with excitement. I just want to play. Because you got to imagine like people were really dancing to it. Like I don't know if all of them knew it, maybe half the crowd heard that remix, but like that to me is like classic blog. But this is Indie Slee's American Apparel. This is the Co-Coosey. Katsune was putting out the compilation. Yes, they were. Tuesday nights at Cinespace. You know, that's what they're spinning, and I'm there. And I'm participating in this. It's Lower Manhattan.
Starting point is 00:13:41 You're crazy. I'm participating in this, like, way on the periphery, because I have this band in San Francisco, and it's luxury. San Francisco is a little off the beaten path. So off the beaten path. And I'm making music, which is inspired by the same stuff, but I'm at this moment in 2007, especially, because I've just had this failure of a UK tour where I'm in the red, and the band breaks up, and we go places, and, like, it's just not really happening.
Starting point is 00:14:05 So I come off and I'm like, man, what do I do now? And my friend John Atron, shout out to Jonatron. We started DJ Night. We start a blog. It's called Disco Workout. And this is when this new chapter. I didn't know that we would one day become friends, but I used to visit Disco Workout. That's the thing that I did that people were like, oh, we like this.
Starting point is 00:14:21 Your music, not so much, but your blog. Listen, this is the moment that I change what I do to be more in line with what I'm excited by, which is remixes like this in the Blanc House era. So I became Barron Von Luxury, and I did my first series of remix. and they kind of in this moment, like people, I went back to prepare for this episode and I forgot about like all these hype machine write-ups and blogs I was on.
Starting point is 00:14:43 Like, I'm still on the hype machine with a lot of blog love from 2007. I totally forgot about it. But I just wanted to read to you from the fader. This is November 20th, 2008, quote, when Little Boots, this is such a 2008 quote, when Little Boots played at the Fader Fort during CMJ, we spent a lot of time thinking about
Starting point is 00:15:03 how her performance was much better than it. to be. So when I Am Sound, record label out of LA, shot over this Baron Von Luxury remix of metal, we were all over it, especially the first couple of minutes of bass lines. So thick, it sounds like Baron Von Luxury, open the door to a club where Little Boots is playing. We're going out without leaving our desks. That is so 2008. Blog House, like listening to this music, like in your headphones. Yeah. Dance music. It's all these genres are blending and crossing over. You could dance at your desk.
Starting point is 00:15:37 So let's talk about the history of Phoenix, this band. As we said in our dance, Arafunk two part episode, which you haven't heard, go back and listen to it. It's really good. This group, Tomas and Gee, had a band called Darling, named after a Beach Boy song. And there was a third member of the group, and that third member was Laurent Bronkowitz. We. And when that group broke up, he got in another band with Thomas Mars, Dek Darcy, and Chris Mazelai.
Starting point is 00:16:08 Also known as his brother, by the way. Yeah, they're belated. So like literally Phoenix is related to Daft Punk, which is insane. It's like how many people are in France? And it's almost a too perfect analogy for what we've just been talking about, about the split. You know, half of the band decides at the time, as we talked about on the episode, when Daft Punk first had their demos, it was more of an indie rock band. And they started.
Starting point is 00:16:33 We're going to the dance floor. One of the songs was more electronic. And obviously, Giman and Toma Bongalter were like, this is kind of what we want to do a little more of. A little less of the band thing. And that split, it's almost a perfect analogy. He's like, hey, I'm going to give with my brother over here. I like playing guitars with my brother and being on stage with someone else singing and playing drums.
Starting point is 00:16:50 Absolutely. Laurent goes by Bronco. And Bronco's little brother is Chris, the guitarist from Phoenix. And basically he goes and they formed this indie rock, what they called a garage band. And this is interesting. They actually, they meet in school in Versailles. Yeah. Like this is not Paris.
Starting point is 00:17:08 Versailles is a very different place. It's out there. an hour outside of Paris. Yes. The suburb. Yes. It's totally, it's like,
Starting point is 00:17:14 it's like if you find out your favorite grungy group is from Silver Springs, Maryland. Yeah. Which happens sometimes. Which can sometimes happen. No diss on Silver Springs. You know what you did.
Starting point is 00:17:24 But there's this quote from Tomas that I really liked. He says, I lived in a museum. The frustration we had was that everything great happened in the past and they wouldn't give the chance for anything new to happen.
Starting point is 00:17:36 There were like two shows happening there when we were kids. One was Pink Floyd, which wasn't really exciting. Trust me, dude, I get it. But it was exciting because something was happening. And one was Tina Turner. So out of this...
Starting point is 00:17:48 This small conservative town. They just stifled. Yeah. Christian also has a great quote. He says, as a band, we had a new name every two weeks. We were the Senoritas. We were Lovebo. By the way...
Starting point is 00:17:58 Oh, I like the Senoritas. The Signoritas is a great name. Might have to grab that one and come up with an album called Dance at Your Desk. Then he says maybe about 95 was when we actually picked the name, Tomazzo. and I were in the same bed. He went, Phoenix? Ah, we. He doesn't remember. I love Phoenix. And by the way, I always heard another story. It went something like this, Phoenix? Uh, we. It actually, that's how it went. Your French is far better than by my friend. Phoenix, who? Maybe it was an apocryphal story, but I had always heard that Phoenix got their name
Starting point is 00:18:30 from the song on Homework, the Daft Punk album, which, you know. Oh, right. I had always heard that, actually. But I guess maybe that wasn't true. In addition to their connection to Daft Punk, this other connection where apparently in the early days of being label mates with the band Air, which I love to death. The best. Oh my God. Phoenix was their backing band on several of their early UK TV appearances. That's crazy.
Starting point is 00:18:59 I can't wait to watch those. So after the success of Daft Punk and Air, they decide, oh, you know what? There's actually the chance that we're going to be able to do this for a live. There's a chance that we can blow up as big as they have. It's true. Like, it's kind of funny to say it in this context, but like representation matters. And like there aren't a lot of French bands taking over the world. until daf punk and error kind of break them over that.
Starting point is 00:19:20 A hundred percent. And suddenly it becomes like French bands were really cool. They were in both, right they? Yeah. So again, I adopted this group very early. You were an early adopter. I was an early adopter. I mean, I'm a latecomer.
Starting point is 00:19:31 United. Great album. Alphabetical, maybe my single favorite album just because this is a time when me and my friends, like, we're fully on board with Phoenix. And I feel like this is our album with the group. It's never been like that. Great album. and along comes Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix,
Starting point is 00:19:49 which I never knew that was the title of the album. As a person who picks up the album, it looks like the title is Wolfgang Amadeus and the word Phoenix is underneath there just talk about the band. Was it literally the other day when we were texting? Yeah. I was like, oh yeah,
Starting point is 00:20:00 and Wolfgang Amadeus and you're like, yeah, that's the band. And you're like, no, that's the title. And I'm like, what are we talking about? Who's on first? But I did not know that that was an official part of the title of the album. The three words are right next to each other.
Starting point is 00:20:10 It's an easy mistake to make. It was easy to assume that the name Phoenix was on there. And it's kind of a crazy title, Tomah himself, Mr. Mars, realizes, look, Wilking, Aminaeus Phoenix is kind of pretentious. It's also very silly. And then the brothers, when they told their mother, she cried. She thought it was the end of us. They thought the album title was just the death knell for the band.
Starting point is 00:20:31 I love that she cried. She's like, no, why? Pukwa. Pukwa. I know that word. So that brings us to 1901, and we can't talk about Phoenix without talking about Philip Zadar. He's there from the first album. As I heard the story told by Tomas himself,
Starting point is 00:20:45 He was like, listen, we worked with a bunch of producers on that first album. None of it sounded right to us or those producers. One of a producer was literally like, never touched my boards. You can never touch my boards. Philippe was the first one who made them feel like it was a collaboration. Can you tell us a little bit about the relationship with Phillips Azar? Well, yes, I can. I can indeed tell you a little bit about Philip Zadar, ZDAR.
Starting point is 00:21:06 Not his real name, but an incredible, incredible numb to plume. Born Philippe Serbonisky, he unfortunately passed away in 2019, the age of 52. who tragically fell from a building. And then it should be noted right at the top. For those of us who really like French Touch, you probably know Phillips Zazaar as one half of Cassius. Can I just say Cassius is one of my absolute favorite electronic artists of... They're so good and so important.
Starting point is 00:21:30 Yeah. These undersung groundbreaking French Touch era bands that Daft Punk made it to the pyramid in Coachella, but not everyone did. I feel like my feeling for you was probably the first song of that type that I had ever heard because there was a girl. who I thought was cute. And she was just like, she was like, hey, have you ever heard this song?
Starting point is 00:21:58 So Cassius is a group that Zdar forms with his buddy. Hubert Blancancancel. Uber, aka Boombase. The two of them form Cassius together. And they are, again, one of the seminal French touch artists. We talk a lot about French touch on our daft punk double episodes. We won't repeat ourselves here, but it's one of our shared favorite genres.
Starting point is 00:22:17 Absolutely. And here's another song by Cassius. This is 1999, and it's from the album, 1999. And of course, that's a sample of Donna Summer hurts just a little from 1982, which Diallo will now play for you. And then you may know this track. It's called I Love You So from 2010,
Starting point is 00:22:52 one of their biggest numbers. So epic. Great opener or a closer for your DJ set. I love you so. Or just drop it right in the middle. And that is also a sample of this song, Sandra Richardson. I feel a song in my heart from 1971. And last but not least,
Starting point is 00:23:22 interpolated by Watch the Throne, Kanye and Jay-Z, in 2011, which is why a new generation may come to have known both of those songs, thanks to this. Or I should say, interpolated. And that's a replay. That's an interpolation. In addition to being incredible, you know, dance producers as cash is, they're also a production team. They worked with MC Solar. It was another kind of pioneering French.
Starting point is 00:23:53 Yeah, in the 90s kind of breakout, like global breakup. French rapper. French rapper. And they did a couple of tracks with him, a couple of albums with him. And then they go on to, in this burgeoning field of electronic rock crossover. They work with a lot of bands like Cut Copy.
Starting point is 00:24:08 Cut copy who were prickly. They work with Cromio, Franz Ferdinand, Sebastian Tellier. And they did one of my favorite underrated records. Kindness, World You Change of Mind. One of my favorite, like, it's just unsung. If Philippe Zudar is the unsung hero of this episode, maybe kindness is the unsung record of this episode.
Starting point is 00:24:28 But the way Zadar talks about producing, and I think it's interesting because the word producer is one of those words in music that has a wide range of meaning. It can mean everything from like, I don't know, the Rick Rubin's school where it's sort of viving, but not necessarily hands on the board, to the Kanye's and mustards of the world
Starting point is 00:24:46 who are producing by manipulating the samples and the sound and Dre. And everything in between. So he obviously is capable of all of the above. But a big part of what he does is apparently kind of bringing a vibe to the process of making records, kind of being somebody whose opinion people trust, who's very specific ideas about what sounds good and how to get there. He's an incredible technical producer. And one thing I found a quote that I thought was great from Philippe Zdar, quote,
Starting point is 00:25:14 there are a few things in your body that you don't control, like swallowing, sweating, and your heartbeat. This is exactly how it feels for me producing. So some people call it, quote producing, I call it helping. It's totally natural. So I feel like he's one of these people that's unattached to having like, it's got to be my way or the highway, more trying to bring out in the band what is natural to them and finding the way through. Which makes a lot of sense.
Starting point is 00:25:36 It's such a personal thing for him. Like apparently when he heard List of Aena in 1901, he thought I cannot not do this record. Yeah, yeah. He was sold. Well, speaking of that record, we're about to play the STEM. So after the break, we'll dive into some of the chaos behind how this song got made. and I promise you, you will hear one of the best songs that I could ever recommend on this podcast. That recommendation is coming up.
Starting point is 00:25:59 We'll be right back. Look, you sign up for something. You forget about it after the trial period is. Then you get charged month after month after month. The subscriptions are there, but you're not even using them. In fact, I just learned that 85% of people have at least one paid subscription going unused each month. Thanks to Rocket Money. I can see all of my subscriptions in one place and cancel the ones I'm not using anymore.
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Starting point is 00:27:07 Rocketmoney.com slash one song. You know that weird intersection in Beverly Hills, which is like a five-way stop sign? I totally know exactly what you're saying. Dude, I never know if it's my turn to go. So I'm looking at all the other ways of people are crossing, and I'm not noticing that this guy in front of me has stopped. I don't like where this is going. I hit him.
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Starting point is 00:29:32 So, Philippe, one half of Cassius, you know, he's just moved into his new studio. And apparently it's like a construction site. Yes. Like there's this best. It is not finished yet. There's no, it's not finished. There's no air conditioning. It's very, very rough.
Starting point is 00:29:46 They even had to, like, reach out to some plumbers to get the toilets back online. But they said they actually appreciated this. They said a too nice studio was not the vibe that they were on. the nose metaphor for the state of all their songs and different bits and pieces and little four second ideas. Some of them are songs, but a lot of them are four second fragments all the way up to 12 minute fragments apparently, which they have recorded over the course of 18 months. Each of the four members of the band has a recording device like a little voice recorder. This is before the ubiquity of iPhones. And similar to my like cassette tapes, four tracks from my New York apartment non-finishing song
Starting point is 00:30:20 writing days I mentioned before. They are also not all complete ideas. And yeah, Philippe Zadar is extremely helpful in helping them piece it all together. So to quote, Philippe Zadar, the songwriting process in many ways for this record was, quote, gluing things together. So they would have hundreds and hundreds of ideas, and part of his objective ear would be like,
Starting point is 00:30:38 oh, this could go here, this could go here, this could be good with this. They described it as being like a big collage or a tapestry. And actually, as I was listening to the song this morning, that opening line jumped out to me, which is counting all different ideas drifting away.
Starting point is 00:30:53 I was like, I feel like, well, we're going to get into the lyrics a little bit later. It's obviously, there's a lot of poetry going on here. It's not necessarily like direct storytelling, like narrative beginning to end. And it's poetry by a person who's second language is English. That's right. And it's, I think sound is a big part of it. And the fragmentary nature.
Starting point is 00:31:09 One last thing I'll say, which is important, is that, and I'm glad I get to finally bring this up on an episode of one song. Brian Eno, one of my heroes, has a songwriting tool called Oblique Strategies, which in 1974, he put together with people. Peter Schmidt, it's a bunch of playing cards that you bring to the studio when you're stuck and they have these little coons, these little phrases like, honor thy error as a hidden intention. And when you don't know what to do, you pull out a card at random and it'll say something like, repetition is a form of change. Look closely, I love this one, look closely at the most embarrassing
Starting point is 00:31:43 details and amplify. So apparently they made a lot of use of these cards. And just I'm thinking about the process of making this record. It's fragments of ideas. It's sort of like bouncing off of this Zen, you know, card, deck of cards from Brian Eno. Yeah. It evokes a lot of Bowie to me. It makes me think a lot of how, like, Bowie would make records in the 70s in the same way. So really cool kind of echoes of that era. I feel like I need those in the writer's room.
Starting point is 00:32:08 Yeah. It sounds pretty cool. For once, let's actually open with the synth base because that's where the song starts. Let's listen to that giant, big, abrasive, shall we say, violent sound that starts the song? I think it's a little bit violent. I think it's a little bit violent, but let's hear it. So it's like very Gary Newman. It feels really you turn on a synth for the first time and it's the most preset, preset sound before you start building clever things with your synthesis and your ADSR knobs.
Starting point is 00:32:42 That's the sound of the synthesizer before you do anything. And it's great. And it's very big and it's very rock sounding to me. It's interesting. I found a quote where they talked about how what they wanted to achieve in sort of the sonic picture for this song was, quote, we want to achieve what ACDC is achieving. And I hear that in this. I kind of hear like instead of a big guitar, they're using this big synth kind of as like a big ACDC rock guitar.
Starting point is 00:33:08 Retro is almost always running on a 20 year clock. And so what was 20 years before 2005? And you think, oh, there was a lot of, there was a lot of heavy metal in the 80s. So that makes a lot of sense. So I don't know what synth this is because they don't know what synth it is. Quote, we do a lot and we don't remember at the end. So they proposed that it might have been a corg or it might have been a CS80. But the important thing is they use the CS80 is a big, expensive old.
Starting point is 00:33:30 80s instrument late late 70s but they also had these really cheap toys and they mixed and matched all these sounds and all these aesthetics because they really wanted lo-fi and hi-fi yeah so there's a lot of lo-fi and hi-fi in here you can make that sound on an expensive sense but you can also make it on a really cheap one and it almost doesn't matter no it's it's interesting when hearing philips didar has broken down the song wonderfully on um i think music radar dot com might be the place to find that interview he talks about how in the production process for this song and the entire album he's kind of equally bringing in rock thinking as well as electronic music thinking with his background in cashes etc but also he has a hip-hop background and a lot of his inspiration is coming from timbulin as well and any rd as he quotes in a few
Starting point is 00:34:13 places so it's interesting to hear in this moment with this synth this synth is meant to be quote the synth is malcolm young it's the rhythm guitar player from acdc it's performing the function of a big sound that's consistent throughout and it's rhythmic people for people don't give acdc they're due enough for being like rhythmic. There's a lot of like rhythmic cool things happening in that band. So that's what's happening there. It's two monosinths. They're panned hard just like you would guitars. And that's why it's so big. It's like a wall of sound. Pan hard for those just listening, just meaning that it's in a very distinct stereo. So and there is bass, which is largely mirroring in terms of the same notes and frequency, but different rhythms. I'll play it for you. And then I'll play both of the bases together.
Starting point is 00:34:57 It's yet another episode, another two bass episode. Another two bass episode and we can talk about how they interact or don't. So, Deck Darcy played both the synths as well as the bass guitar. Here is the bass guitar. One, two, and one and two. Man, yeah. Double duty deck Darcy. That's a lot of these. I prefer. It's my favorite Indian. Double Darcy movie. D, D, D, D, D, D. And here, let's hear both Deck Darcy basses together. That is so sick. But let's be clear, that's a daft punk song, right? Like that's the electronic direction of the band. Had we continued down this path exclusively,
Starting point is 00:35:49 you can turn this into an electronic music jam. You can turn this into a DJable track. And many remixes did. Yes. But it's interesting when you were playing this song a little earlier today. The first thing I noticed about the drums is that when they come in, it's definitely, you know, kick snare, kick snare. It's not, it's not, you know, just four on.
Starting point is 00:36:10 the floor, boom, boom, boom, boom. Yeah. Can we hear some of the drums? Because the drums are real distinct. Yeah, let's listen and we'll talk on the other side about what you're actually hearing. So interestingly, what you hear. I like that little like wood blocks out. A little bit later, it gets a little bit more syncopated with the snare in this section.
Starting point is 00:36:36 Ah, yes. I'll give you a little bass. That's on the bridge, right? We're still on the verse, actually. But check this out. This is when I was listening. I was like, oh, wait a second. Oh, wait a second.
Starting point is 00:36:50 Something's going on here in the pre-chorus, and I'll play that for you now. That's the moment where I was like, okay, these producer ears, you probably hear it too. It's like, that's a drum machine, or that's a sample, I should say. And I went in exploring how the drums got made.
Starting point is 00:37:11 It turns out our sort of fifth, another I suppose, unsung member of this band, hero of the episode, is the drummer, who's consistently been with them all this time, but is not technically cut into the songwriting, is Thomas Headland. He's a Swedish drummer,
Starting point is 00:37:23 who was in a band called Colt of Luna, but he's been there consistent session in live drummers since 2005. Wow. So when you see them live, you see him. And the credit says drums, quote, sampled from and played by Thomas Headlands. That's an interesting credit. And what they did was they did a mix of,
Starting point is 00:37:41 he performed the song, and then they cut out a snare hit, a kick drum hit. And Thomas Mars actually starts life as a drummer before he was a singer in his own band. just like us. So he uses, I don't know which MIDI controller, but some MPC type device,
Starting point is 00:37:59 or once you load a sample in, you can play the drums with your fingers. And so he's playing this beat. It's a combination, in other words, of a live drummer. There is some programming. There is some on top of it, him triggering the samples like kick, snare,
Starting point is 00:38:14 the tombs, et cetera. And last but not least, they play hi-hats and crash symbols in the room with live instruments. So it's this hybrid of all these ways of getting percussion sounds in one. This is a little bit normal now, but in this moment in 2008,
Starting point is 00:38:29 when this is recorded, these are all kind of new ways for a rock band to be having their drums come together. It seems harder than just saying, hey, Edlin, come to the studio. It allows them, though, to give them...
Starting point is 00:38:43 He knows where the studio is. No, no, he's in the studio. They got his number. But I think they dismissed him after he recorded a take of performance. And then they used what he used because they're trying to get that electronic music, that Cassius, that French touch, sound underneath it.
Starting point is 00:38:58 And one way to do that, as we heard in isolation, is by having the drums have this perfection. Right. So you don't want too much. Don't tell that to Dilla, but I understand what you're saying. Well, for this type for house music, I suppose, in this moment. No, exactly. Especially when you're trying to mix stuff in, like, you know,
Starting point is 00:39:14 sometimes that live drummer, he might be feeling it and he might speed up the tempo. He might be slowing it down. But it's so nuanced. It's like for a moment to moment because in the very next part, you'll hear those open highhats that are being played by just picture a high hat and one of the guys with a stick going and here's here's what that sounds like so to be clear i know that sounds simple we have a sampled kick and snare being performed on a little finger pads by tomah mars with the with the tombs dun dun dun dun dun dun
Starting point is 00:39:49 and then somebody else another layer is the high hat on top of that this is a pretty cool production technique especially for a rock band in 2008 and it's wonderful to me how it's it's it's You can almost say it's never been like that. Phoenix fans get it. It's a wonderful hybrid of all these sort of French musical ways of making music coming together in one place. And Philippe Zadar at the core of it making it happen. All right, let's go to guitars. All right, let's hear the brothers Mazzale, Laurent, aka Bronco, and Christian, on guitar.
Starting point is 00:40:22 I'm actually not sure who plays which part. So let's start with the first part that starts the song, this little jangly, vampire week. and-esque thing. So that runs consistently, or very yeah-ya-ya-yes, actually. This could be maps. I heard the maps. Yeah. So that's happening in one guitar while the other guitar mirrors that and three and four and I'll play the second guitar isolated, then I'll bring them together. Oh, that's so satisfying. And by the way, I hear that there's several guitars in there. I'm not able to isolate them further, but that combination of notes is forming some really
Starting point is 00:41:09 wonderfully chromatic, like complicated chords, I would say. Or complimentary. And they sort of rub momentarily and then they resolve. It's really kind of sophisticated. I hadn't really noticed it until this listen. So here's how that goes with the other guitar and then I'll bring in some other things. So fun quote from the Mazale brothers. Quote, we avoid playing like guitarists in classic rock bands where there's usually a lead
Starting point is 00:41:45 and a rhythm guitarist. We like it, but it doesn't work for us because we're at the same level. Sometimes the lead guitar player is like technically the one with better player because you can do these like fast runs and soloing and stuff. But he says each of us plays as little as possible. The older we get, the less we play so that the more the lines are clear and more subtle. So they're really approaching their guitar parts not like a, I want to, you know, have my like prowess be heard loud and clear and fancy. But more like this is a piece of a larger pie, a larger puzzle that I'm sharing with my brothers in the band. And the guitars feel like they're on the right that the rhythm section has taken us on.
Starting point is 00:42:21 Yeah, that's right. One more thing I have to say because it's in this era, I can tell you from personal experience with me the remixer in that moment being coming from the rock side of things and wanting to make it, wanting to make my remix is something DJs will choose to play. I have to talk about something called side chain compression, which Daft Punk a little bit introduces, and we talked about on that episode. It's just a production technique where the kick and the side. snare, everything else ducks for a second. It breathes. In other words, the way you can sometimes
Starting point is 00:42:53 tell an old record from a new one in the electronic area is that old records, they didn't do that yet. They hadn't learned it yet. But with Daft Punk, when you hear a lot of times, it's just, oh, this, ah, la, la, yeah, which I love. That's one production technique that Philippe Zadar brought from his electronic experience into the rock milieu in here is he brings that technique to 1901. So you're telling me that if we listen to the track that all the other other instruments sort of dip down a little bit when we hit to when we get to the basin snare. Going to that like electronic versus rock balance, 5149. We get 51. We get a little 51% electronic when you do that dipping of the synths and all the highs kind of duck a little bit.
Starting point is 00:43:35 It's very subtle. I love that. But that makes sense. And I can totally hear that. We've got to talk about these urgent synths. Yeah, let's talk about them. In the pre-chorus, we're hearing this synth rise and this build, almost to comical levels. Let's listen.
Starting point is 00:44:00 This is a massive tension release moment. Let me give that to you in the mix. That's happening at the end of the chorus where everything is like build, build, build, build, build, build. Makes my heart sore. It makes my heart sore. It's just riding on the five, five, five chord, five chord. And then when it hits that high, high note. Back to the one.
Starting point is 00:44:27 Now it really is last call. And there's a little ostinado on the keys here. Little synthy things happening. Little thing that you might not notice that's happening in that section too. That happens in both of the choruses. And that's pretty much for the synth. There's all these sorts of little bits and pieces floating around like that. That should sort of enhance the emotional feel of what's meant to be happening in that moment,
Starting point is 00:44:58 like the tension release in that moment. But I'll say, speaking of emotional feel, we have to play some vocals by our friend Tomas. And I'd love to hear, just his very first line to me is just, absolutely fantastic. Can you play the beginning of verse one? I love this verse. And I swear to God, when I first heard it, I thought it was a mistake, but it isn't. No, it's great. And we're going to clarify some lyrics out there, because I know a lot of us have been singing a lot of gibberish for the last 20 years. That little dip there, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. But here comes my favorite line is the next line.
Starting point is 00:45:32 Let's hear it. Past and present, that'll matter. Not a future sort it out. I'm looking at the lyrics right now. And so it all makes sense. but like when you hear that with all the music underneath it, like there's something about the actual rhythm and cadence of the lyrics. It's like perfect. Can we just hear just that section with just the vocals and the drums? I just want to hear the vocals and the drums real quick. Counting all different ideas drifting away.
Starting point is 00:45:58 Past and present, that's not a future sorted out. Like that's solid. Like you know what I mean? Like there's something about that case where you just want to be like, past and present, they don't matter, not the future started out. Yeah, it's very punk rock.
Starting point is 00:46:11 It's very, yeah, yeah. I love that. And it's so surprising to me. Like, every time I hear it, it's like, I'm not expecting the melody or the rhythm, not to mention the lyrics and the meaning. Like, it's all, it's very poetic. I can't think of a better word. It's so simplistic, but like, it surprises me every time.
Starting point is 00:46:25 Every choice is astonishing in its own way. Like, why did he go there? Why did he go there? Why did he do that with a little hiccup in there, which is intentional? Like, in every performance you ever hear them do, they kept that in. It might have been an accident in the moment they recorded it. Maybe not. But I love that it's there.
Starting point is 00:46:40 I love that in this hyper-produced, you know, refined production and mix. They're like, no, this gives it some humanity. Maybe balancing it out with some of those robot drums, right? You have this like very vulnerable, like, human voice moment. I love it. Can you play me? I want to hear the chorus, obviously, we all do. But I want to hear verse two real quick.
Starting point is 00:47:00 Can you play us verse two vocals? Girlfriend, oh, your girlfriend, stripping away. Does it that time too, so must be intentional. Pastime, present, 85. 551901. Oh. Watch them build up a material tower. I think it's not going to stay anyway.
Starting point is 00:47:18 I think it's overrated. Four men I thought I couldn't tell how to fall out. Now, you know, I was a history major. And so anytime you throw a date or a year into a song, I'm on board. Yeah. I'll come to your concert. But here's what I like about this. He says, 1855 and 1901.
Starting point is 00:47:37 I want to say between 1855 and 1901, uh, Paris hosts, essentially the World Fair, the Exposition Universelle, knows it five times. And there's this quote from him that I love. He says,
Starting point is 00:47:50 this song is a song about Paris. Paris in 1901 was better than it is now. It's still nice, but 1901 was better. This is a fantasy about Paris. And he literally sings about, watch them build a material tower, which you know what that is.
Starting point is 00:48:05 And he says, think it's not going to stay anyway. Think it's overrated. Like, there's so much like, Parisian like stuff. And in that era, famously, the French, Parisians hated the Eiffel Tower. The joke of the time was the best place to be in Paris in 1889 was at the Eiffel Tower,
Starting point is 00:48:20 so you couldn't see it. I just love how French. I love how France this whole song is. And again, to hear the isolated vocals, you realize just how punk he's like pushing out those words. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Listen to the Acapella really brings that home for me too, especially as we start from
Starting point is 00:48:39 the drums and bass and kind of move upwards. We have this basis, which is one, it has all the things we've already talked about, but so much of it is that French touch and electronic in a rock context. But now we are definitely not French touch anymore. These vocals are very punk rock. They're very just human. They're very kind of natural sounding. And the vocals and melodies and lyrics are just evoking. They're just no two people probably hear the same thing, you know, in a way that's so different from your, you know, sort of typical pop song. Totally. Now, I'll make a grand confession to everybody who's listening. I've always thought 1901 was called 1901 parentheses falling. I did not know what he was actually singing in the chorus. So why don't you just hit us with the
Starting point is 00:49:20 chorus? And I'm sure I'm not the only one who thought he was saying, falling, falling, falling. We are wrong, those of us who thought he was singing falling. Please play us the chorus. Maybe we are. Maybe we're not. I've listened to this a few times. It's an open question what's happening. Really? Yeah. The internet. I'm not certain. Play it for the people listening. I'm not certain. Folded, folded, folded, folded. No, listen. Folded, folded, folded, folded.
Starting point is 00:49:50 So, for those of you not... What do you think it is? Listen, when you isolate the vocals... Yeah. Okay, so the internet and many people claim he's saying, fold it, fold it, fold it, fold it. And when you listen for the D, you hear... Okay, well, don't beat me up.
Starting point is 00:50:04 I thought it was the other... I'm not beating up. What I'm saying is, fold it is... And I hear the D now. Like, if you play it back again, And if you are listening and you do the back button for 15 seconds, you'll hear the fold, you'll hear that D in fold. But I can also see why I, for these last two decades,
Starting point is 00:50:21 thought it was fall in, fall in. Oh, I thought, what do you think it is? I think it's probably folded. I think a third thing altogether. I kind of thought you're about to get there. What do you think it is? I think it's fall dead. Play it back.
Starting point is 00:50:32 Listen again. Folded, falled, fall dead. Listen, the third one. The fourth one. The fourth one. I think that fourth one is fall dead. Falled, folded, folded, folded. Because it's definitely different than the first three, and he's got a French accent.
Starting point is 00:50:46 Yeah. It might be folded. It might be, I don't know, maybe it's fall. Also, in another part of the song, he says fall out. So it wasn't wrong to think fall in. But now that you said fall dead, I think that's my preferred answer. I think I'm going to get on genius and correct everybody. Not to get too dark, but is he talking about falling out of the Eiffel Tower?
Starting point is 00:51:04 I don't know. It could be. You could be falling out of the Eiffel Tower. Now 1901 is about falling out of the Eiffel Tower. Tower? Did I miss something? I mean, it's brilliant. If it's true, listen, we got the lyrics corrected on that Warren G song when he came through. So maybe this is a case where this podcast will make, you know, will make the internet stand up. Mr. Mars, Mr. Mars, all dead. Toma, come on the show. If you are listening and you are, if you are friends with Phoenix,
Starting point is 00:51:31 or maybe you are Phoenix, maybe you are in the band. More likely, mathematically, you are a Coppola, just in terms of how many of them there are. If you are a Coppola, please come on the show. Is it fall dead, fold it, or fall in? Or something that we have not even hit upon. I'd love to know. No, there's a great quote from Toma talking about how he is a French person speaking in English. Quote, we're singing in English, but singing about stuff that probably makes very little sense to Americans because it's thought of in French.
Starting point is 00:51:57 We love that it's weird and there's something very French about it. And I really love that idea that, like, yeah, at the end of the day, he speaks pretty good English, but he thinks in French and there is some translating going on. And it's probably he's got some words that just come out of it. I remember being in France, I spent my junior year abroad in France. Humblebrack. And a little humble brag. But I was, by the end of it, I was dreaming in French.
Starting point is 00:52:17 It's a crazy phenomenon, which gave me just a teeny bit of insight to an actual bilingual person. There must be some crazy, interesting combination of words and phrases that just kind of come from both languages and sounds. So it sounds like that's what happened here with some of these lyrics. When I was in France in 2001, when I was in Paris, I was kicking it with the Moroccans, man. You know, like we were just blasted a lot of Tupac and hanging out.
Starting point is 00:52:39 That's awesome. The best food in the world, too. Moroccan food in Paris is so good. Oh, dude. They thought I was one of them. We can't get out of this without playing the top part of the chorus, which is what everybody screams drunkenly at one in the morning when you're dancing at Electric Fields.
Starting point is 00:52:54 Shout out to Electric Fields. Great party. And I'll be anything you ask more. Going, hey, it's not a miracle we needed. I know I wouldn't let you think so. Fall dead. Fall dead. Folded, fall dead.
Starting point is 00:53:12 Faulted, fold it. Listen, you're hearing some very, very light reverb on that. And then at the very end, you get the only delay. Dead. It's so clearly dead on that last one. But, you know, he's got a French accent, so maybe he said, did. Fold did. He was saying it right now.
Starting point is 00:53:29 I think it might just be full. I have to hear it one more time from my own. Fall dead. As he's saying fall dead. The lesson here, never trust anyone with a French accent. You mentioned earlier about how this. Is that the lesson? That is the lesson.
Starting point is 00:53:44 Undisputed. Fight me. I'm not sure. You mentioned earlier how this song was placed in dozens of ads, TV shows, video games, and really Phoenix was one of the first bands that I could think of. To really realize the power of song placement. Tell us a little bit about your experience with getting song placements and ads
Starting point is 00:54:02 and how Phoenix plays into that. Yeah, no, this is a really interesting moment. Now, it should be said that they decided to give this song away as an MP3, as a free. Remember that when that was like a big thing? a big marketing move. In 2009, free MP3 from like,
Starting point is 00:54:17 but it's also like a real choice because that means that people won't pay for it if it's a hit song. So it's a brave choice in a way to try to break the band, one that obviously paid off in dividends. But getting the MP3
Starting point is 00:54:28 through the blogs into the, you know, hard drives of music supervisors, among other things, obviously paid off because the song gets used in, what is it, a Cadillac ad.
Starting point is 00:54:38 Eventually it's in rock band and guitar hero. It's in Gossip Girl, Melrose Place. So smart move, it pays off. Smart move. And I have to say that personally, like, I had a similar thing happen to me in this moment where my publishing deal,
Starting point is 00:54:51 I have to thank from a placement of one of my songs in an ad. Amazingly, it was sort of like lightning only struck the one time. But I had a song. It was used in a Pontiac ad for the Transformers movie with Megan Fox. And I'll just play a little snippet from that. Killer3.com and enter for your chance to win a Pontiac Solstice GXP. Plus VIP treatment at the Hollywood premiere of Transformers with the star of the movie, Megan Fives. If you watch on YouTube, you'll say this 15 seconds of content in this ad is a perfect storm of Transformers and sexy Megan Fox and it's my voice and it's explosions.
Starting point is 00:55:29 This is the placement that got me signed to a publishing deal that led me to come to L.A. to start this phase of my life where I'm like living in L.A. making music. and Billboard had me come be on a panel to talk about the musicians' perspective of having your song get placed because it was like, this is the new radio. Do you know how your song got discovered to be placed? I was hustling my music. I was hustling my demo, and I sent my demo. Shout out to Heather Kramer. A physical demo?
Starting point is 00:55:58 I sent a physical CD. Oh, my God. You're like, I'm getting so many triggering memories of the CD burners and the mailing address and going to the post office. But I did send one CD to. Heather Creamer and Danny Benair. Thank you guys for signing me and starting my career in music. And it led to this placement, which is like, you can't get a better placement. Got it. So you actually said it to somebody. And they were like, they're like, they're like an agent. They're like, hey, why don't you use this? And the person, the music supervisor for the
Starting point is 00:56:25 commercial was like, oh, this sounds good for Transformers. Yes. And then Heather passed my demo along to Peter Lloyd. I love getting all these names in here, who signed me to my publishing deal. My entire LA career begins in this moment. And again, It's the blog house, the music placements. This is the age of radio is dying, terrestrial radio. This is the age of Napster. This is the age of iTunes. All of this is new.
Starting point is 00:56:48 So suddenly there's a new way for me in San Francisco with no music industry contacts to kind of break through and get heard and get seen and get signed, which is really just such a crazy moment that I'm so lucky I was able to participate in. So Diallo, why do you think 1901 still has such a lasting impression to this day? Listen, I think it's a great song. You still hear this song when you go out to certain electro-themed nights here in L.A. And even when I went to, it was at the Echoplex, it wasn't Electric Fields, which sort of, you know, specializes in this genre. But it was just a random night at the Echplex.
Starting point is 00:57:23 This song came on. And I swear, 20-year-old's, you know, Gen Z kids, when it gets to the, hey. Yeah, they all knew it. It was as cathartic for them as I remember when you would take all the music out with a halfway there. Oh, live it on a prayer. Like when this song, when 1901 was new, when this song was new, I got, hey, I was doing Bob Misfas. I was doing open format clubs. Like you could always take out the music and everybody would sing that Bon Jovi part.
Starting point is 00:57:54 Nowadays, you can take out the music in 1901 and everybody sings and screams that song. That's amazing. Just put the volume all the way down and the crowd does it for you. Yes. That's incredible. And I mean, like Phoenix, this is a group, their legacy is secure. You could argue that they are in some ways the biggest French band. Yeah. Just pure band of our lifetime. So their legacy is safe. They've already, you know, play Coachella a million times. I do want to say something about their remixing. There are so many good Phoenix remixes out there. But one of my favorite songs of all time is the classics remix of Listomania. I would encourage people to just go out and listen to the whole song because it starts really quick. quiet and then it builds up to this thing and then there's like this really enjoyable midsection and just for you know our legal purposes i can't play that much of the remix but i am going to play the breakdown for you real quick and encourage you to go out and listen this is one of my favorite
Starting point is 00:58:47 songs favorite remixes of all time listomania classics version let's go i feel like i've spoiled a great movie by showing you the final scene but the route it takes for it from the beginning to get to that point in the song if you're listening too loud in your headphones or Heaven forbid you ever hear it in a club. I guarantee you you'll have some of the same chills run over your body that I feel when I hear that song. Great remix. Yeah. I remember busting that one out too.
Starting point is 00:59:22 I remember one thing in the moment when that remix came out. It was a moment. We're talking about this whole episode has had this sort of theme about like obviously rock and electronic and where the lines are. I remember thinking at the time as I was making remixes myself. I remember thinking, oh, I wouldn't, I don't want to use that that rhythm, which is called the clave. Dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, done, done. Yeah. It's like a two, three clave.
Starting point is 00:59:41 Calvin Harris uses it on so many songs. I remember thinking that it was corny because to me it was a little too electronic. It was bringing a little too much from that genre in. And it was just like a balancing act that in my mind for my own work, I was like, I would never do that. And then just like a year or two later, I started using it all the time. I've always kind of liked it and I understand. Well, yeah, it's just like putting too much, you know, fudge on your Sunday. Too much hot sauce on your red beans and rice.
Starting point is 01:00:10 All of these. I'm very hungry right now. I am a little bit too, actually. These are all little micro choices that sort of lead to the selection of genre. Like putting that in there, whereas the other things we've been listening to earlier in the episode that are kind of like harder and more abrasive and they're sort of distorted, like those remixes that were sort of more the rock camp. This is sort of more like, okay, and probably broadening the audience.
Starting point is 01:00:31 I think like adding the fact that that's such a sonically beautiful song, this classics remix is really gorgeous. I think it paved the way for like our new disco era. But I remember how significant that remix was. So I'm glad we played it. Okay, luxury, it's time for one more song. This is the segment where we share a deep cut or a hidden gym with you, the one song nation and with each other, sometimes for the first time.
Starting point is 01:00:52 Luxury, my man, why don't you go first? Okay, well, I'd love to give some props to one of my favorite artists of the past 10 years. Another real big influence on me. It's kindness, which is just a one-person operation. It's Adam Bainbridge, but they go by kindness. And this song is called Sian, from World You Need a Change of Mind. What's the name of the song? The song is called Sayan.
Starting point is 01:01:21 It's about my favorite color. That's awesome. As Philippe Zadar helped produce that one, and I just love its breakbeats on the bottom, and synths and vocals, and it's very indie rock meets electronic production. It's right in my lane. Well, in that same vein,
Starting point is 01:01:36 mine is definitely a hardcore, electro remix of a rock song. My one more song this week is By the Rakes, and this is the Sebastian remix to their song, We Dance Together. A sign that we should move together somewhere war. Where they tried to help a few. So I'm just his heart.
Starting point is 01:01:59 This is where the unification of Diallo and Blake is just perfect. I love this. This is everything that we share. I just like that hard. It's got a throaty low baseline. Turtty low is definitely going to happen. Guest appearance by throaty low on this episode. As always, if you have an idea for one more song,
Starting point is 01:02:15 you can find us on Instagram and TikTok. You can find me on Instagram at Diallo. I-A-L-O, just six letters. And on TikTok at Diallo-R-R-O, riddle, 12 letters, I'm sorry. I haven't counted the letters, so I'm a little bit nervous right now. You can find me on Instagram at L-U-X-X-U-S-U-R-Y.
Starting point is 01:02:33 That feels like seven. And on TikTok at L-U-X-U-X-U-R-Y-X. That feels like nine. And now one song officially has its own Instagram and TikTok. Go follow at One-Song podcast for exclusive content and all the music debates that you love. You can also watch full episodes one song on YouTube right now.
Starting point is 01:02:52 Just search for One Song Podcast. We'd love it if you'd like and subscribe. And if you made it this far, I think that means you like this podcast. So please don't forget to give us five stars, leave a review, share it with someone you think would like it. Really helps keep the show going. Luxury help us in this thing. I'm producer, DJ, songwriter, and musicologist, luxury.
Starting point is 01:03:10 And I'm actor, writer, director, and sometimes DJ Diallo Rill. And this is one song. We'll see you next time. This episode is produced by Casey Simonson. Our associate producer is Jeremy Bimbo. engineering from Marcus Homme and Eric Hicks. Additional production support for Mazat Boykin. The show is executive produced by Kevin Hart, Mike Stein, Brian Smiley, Eric Eddings, Eric Waddings, Eric Wael, and Leslie Guam.

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