One Song - The Weeknd's "Can't Feel My Face"

Episode Date: September 5, 2024

One Song Nation – you don’t have to worry no more. Diallo & LUXXURY know you can go without learning how The Weeknd’s massive 2015 hit, “Can’t Feel My Face,” made him into a global megastar. On this episode, they break down how The Weeknd collaborated with Swedish powerhouse songwriter Max Martin and his team to make a diamond-certified, chart-topping, dark R&B song, and peel back the layers on those Michael Jackson-inspired vocals. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

One, two, three. We can't wait to talk about this song Because we love it Because we love it We can't wait to talk about this song Because we love it Because we love it We can't wait to talk

About this song Because we love it Because we love it We can't wait to talk About this song Because we love it. Because we love it. But we can't sing it.

Yes, we just did. We just did it. We kind of did, though. We turned it all I said. We kind of did. Thank you, Toronto. And the Ethiopia community. Luxury, today's song was a massive hit.

A massive hit. It peaked at number one on several charts, including both the Billboard Hot 100 and the Canadian Hot 100. It's like the first time we ever cared about the number one song in Canada. But listen, it hit number one. in a bunch of other countries too, South Africa. It went number one in Mexico. It went number one in Denmark.

It went number one in Ireland. That's right, Diallo. It was Rolling Stone and Billboard's Song of the Year in 2015, nominated for two Grammys. It was the song of the summer, and it was really, in a way, the song that seemed to define the 2010s. So with all that said, don't worry no more. We know you can't go without knowing how this song was made,

and you'll never be alone after this episode. You know why? Because it's one song, and that song is Can't Feel My Face by the Weekend. I'm actor, writer, director, and sometimes DJ Diallo Riddle. And I'm producer, DJ songwriter, and musicologist luxury, a.k.a. the guy who whispers interpolation on the internet. And if you want to watch one song, please go to our YouTube channel and watch this full episode. All right, let's get into it.

Let's get into it. So, Diallo, before we get into breaking down, can't feel my face. I wanted to ask, how did you discover the song? And how did you discover The Weekend? Oh, man. Well, listen, I have liked The Weekend ever since. House of Blooms. I loved that EP. That EP was massive. We have talked in the past about... My relationship with trilogy is a lot like my relationship with Jay-Z's reasonable doubt. Because I was buying

the mixtapes and I was hearing all these great J-Z songs. As they were coming out. As they were coming out, and then when I went to buy Reasonable Doubt, I was actually disappointed that some of those songs weren't on there. You know, there was a song called Reach the Top. I was like, this mixtape version sounds grimy and dusty, but when I have the nice, clean CD version on Reasonable Doubt. And then when I got Reasonable Doubt, Reach the Top wasn't on there, probably because they couldn't clear the sample. So I was disappointed. That's a little bit of how I felt about trilogy.

Yeah. You know, because he signs to Republic, which is under Universal. So it's like a major signing. And then they just kind of re-released these three, you know, mixtapes for the lack of a better word, that way. It's not the same. I'd already heard my favorite songs. It was House of Blues, Thursday. Thursday's so good.

So good. And echoes of silence. And so I was already like, hey, give me more. Like, I want more from you. Like, he was doing songs with Drake. So, like, everybody was, like, catching up with the weekend. But I liked him because I felt like, as opposed to a lot of R&B artists, like, this was, like, an artist who was technically, I guess, doing R&B.

But it felt like it rose from all. alternative music. Like even the sample of Susie and the Banshees that we've talked about on this song before on Glass Table Girls, like it felt like I'm part of a hipster alternative scene that produced an R&B star. Right. It's so interesting that you say that because for me, that's how I heard about them too. And in the blog house era, we're going to mention, we're going to be talking about blog house a little bit in the 2010-ish zone. This is when we've talked about it on previous episodes.

I think, yeah, yeah, yeah, as maps might have been one of them. This is an era where a lot of people are getting new music, journalism, and the song itself as a download through the blogs, and it's a promotional tool. And through, like, you know, media fire. And that's right. It's post-Napster, but pre-Spotify. Yeah. And it's SoundCloud even, too.

And it's international and cross-dust. So we have so much, because it's the internet, we have a Toronto R&B singer, who I am finding, for me, in Los Angeles here, I think in Los Angeles at the same time, too. Yeah, no, I was actually in New York at this time. I was writing on Jimmy Fallon, but every day you would go to Hype Beast or you go to your favorite. Disco Workout? Disco Workout, which was your. blog. There was a Scottish Friction, which was the one that I really liked a lot.

Big stereo. There's so many great blogs. And you would get new music, and it would be this interesting... And some places would post like one song a day. Some places would post like 20. Right. And then you just click on you, download the MP3. And then you would walk around with like Donald Glover rapping over animal collective beats. But that's the thing. It's this mashup era. It's the fact that SoundCloud was this middle ground where you could release something immediately and not have to think about or worry about clearances for samples. And that was a huge tool. That's why so many rappers came out of this era. SoundCloud rappers, yeah. SoundCloud rappers, pre-Spotify. But before that, blogs and blog house, as a quote-unquote genre, was coming out of a similar thing where you could just make something and put it out and distribute it globally in the time it takes to upload the actual thing.

You have to worry about the rights. I think there are a lot of, like, really cool alternative. I'm going to keep using the word alternative, but they were. They all felt sort of like a little rough at the edges, a little unmanaged. and for that reason. Do you mean the music, like the recording quality? Well, I also mean the artists in general. Like I consider Odd Future somebody I discovered during this.

Similarly, I feel like the weekend came along at this time. And he's sort of like, you know, left of just what you would expect somebody to be. And childish Gambino takes off. And I just, this was a period where it seemed like everybody could remix. Yeah. And he was part of that. That's a huge part of where he comes from because his access to the technology, both for the making of the music and distributing.

of it gave him the ability to really experiment and try to mix things that hadn't been mixed in quite this exact way before. I also want to point out that we're going to talk about the weekend in general, but we are going to talk about this song. And this song can't fill my face. Even when it came out, I was like, oh, I think I know part of why he's doing this song right now. The year is 2015, and the weekend started doing a residency in Las Vegas, you know, at Dres. And I think you have to mention the fact, the importance, if you will, of Drey's. Dres nowadays is like a place where all of us can go and we can go see, you know, Rice and Tiller, you know.

But like there was a time when Vegas was not booking hip hop and R&B. It was an idiom town. And I do feel like Dres doesn't quite get the props for being sort of the first place to say, hey, we will book black music. We will book that rapper. We will book R&B. I'm sure there were like concerns. among these hotels that, oh, if you invite that artist, you're going to invite in crime and

violence and Tupac got killed on the strip or whatever. But I really do feel like Dre's in booking not just the weekend, but a lot of hip-hop and R&B artists, they sort of made it okay. And they showed, hey, not only is there not violence, these people are on vacation, too, but there's also like, there's a lot of money to be made. And so now when you go to Vegas, there are R&B, you know, like Little John is like a residency. You know what I mean? Like, it's not just drays.

But I bring all that up just to say that the weekend goes to Vegas at a time in his career that is earlier than when most people would go to Vegas. Like Vegas used to be that place that are an artist basically retired. Right. He goes to retire. Right. Yeah. And he's like full on, like, on the come up. And while he's there, he records this song.

And I always felt like, you know, from its, we're going to get into it, from its cocaine references that I think are pretty safe to say are there to the fact that it's like a disc. disco song, and I do feel like disco dance, even like retro funk has a place in Vegas that doesn't always, it's not naturally going to spring out of like New York or Toronto or even L.A. the same way. I feel like, can't feel my face sort of grew out of the fact that he had this residency. So he starts his residency at Drey's. I believe in April 2015, this song leaks in May. You know, he's not there long before he's recording this song that feels very Vegas,

you know, to me. And then this song proceeds to blow up. And can I just add on, it's only a second album. The dude is 25, you know? He's still posting on, like, the blogs just four years earlier, five years earlier. Yes, he has opened up his own lane in Vegas for younger artists to just be like, no, I don't have to be in my Celine Dion phase of life. Like, no, I'm going to go there and have fun and be influenced by the city and by the strip.

Yeah. But, and ironically, or appropriately enough, maybe, this is the moment and this is the song where he does go from post-internet to just pre-global fame for the rest of his natural life. Yeah, I think, look, he was a popular singer before, and he would have probably been either categorized as, like, alternative R&B, maybe he would have been thrown in with electronic artists. After this point, he's definitely a pop artist and a pop R&B artist. And let's just say, for the record, to be clear, the weekend is one of the three or five, depending on which lists you're looking at, biggest artist on planet Earth. Absolutely. Like, by streaming numbers, by sales.

numbers, it's insane. He is the biggest. Absolutely. Next to Taylor, he's next to Drake. He's next to Bad Bunny. They're all kind of competing depending on what week it is, Billy Elish. But he is one of the biggest artists. And he could have gone away.

Let's also rip off the bat. He was friends with Drake. There are people who say that he wrote a good portion of some of those early Drake albums. Yeah, tell me about Toronto. Tell me about the Drake connection. Well, yes, let's back up to the Toronto of it all. Because obviously, you know, Able, which is his real name, was a part of the scene there.

And Drake is obviously like, you know, the 800-pound gorilla on the Toronto scene at the time. And Drake is still actually quite early in his blowing up and sort of taking over hip-hop. And the weekend comes along and they become collaborators. And they work on some great, great songs, some massive hits together. This is a song called Crew Love off of Drake's Take Care album

featuring The Weekend. Say no fucking sing alone. And to be clear, you know, there's obviously a lot of controversy about, like, the degree to which the weekend wanted to give up these songs. Like, I heard a lot of talk about how Drake essentially gave him, you know, my way or the highway sort of, you know, if you want to be part of this crew, if you want to roll with me, if you want to be part of this rise to the top, you know, these are my songs now. That happened apparently a number of times maybe one too many, which is when, from what I understand, the split. That was the big falling out. Right. And I think that, like, people sort of expected the weekend probably fall away.

You know, like, they thought, like, oh, he's not down with drinking more. He'll probably fall off. He lost his coatail, right. A little bit, a little bit. And sort of the opposite happens. Like, he becomes this mega superstar on his own. Right. And in becoming a superstar, he reps so many different groups.

Obviously, he's reppping Canada. I think there's something distinctly Toronto about the weekend. Like, he's part of that large immigrant community that had so much flavor. and culture to the city. And he's Ethiopian. And, you know, like, I have a lot of Ethiopian friends. I talked to them before we did this episode. And to a person, they were all like, I love him.

I love Abel. You have so much pride, right? You know, and he shows a lot of love to the motherland. I know one of them was like, in general, Ethiopians are proud of those who are out there in the world doing big things, especially when they big up Ethiopia. And there's a lot of weekend pride, especially among the younger generation, who just seemed to really love him.

But, you know, he always shouts out the motherland. And he always sneaks in a few bars in the same notes as traditional Ethiopian music. I think you were asking me earlier like, hey, does he like loop in some of his traditional Ethiopian rhythms and vibes? And apparently the answer is yes. Yeah, I think that's so interesting to me. I don't think it happens on this song. We'll get into it in a little bit. This is an incredibly international song.

Can't feel my face. This song, you have to remember, comes out of this. So this is an Ethiopian Canadian artist. He's working with a team of Swedes, Americans. by the way, an American Indian songwriter, an Iranian production team, they're channeling French and American influences. It's like he goes from being this level to international superstardom with this international team. So I think that's really interesting.

I think that's really cool. And listen, there are some influences from around the world, and we've mentioned Ethiopian music. There are obviously influences from Prince and Michael Jackson that are here. Big ones. And the thing I always liked about the weekend was that he was clearly, at this point, especially, he's clearly doing pop, but he's doing dark pop. Like, the single right before this one is The Hills, which is one of the darkest songs to ever, in my lifetime,

make, like, massive gains at radio. When I'm fucked up, that's the real me. What a dark lyric! You know, and I'm just listening to that. And to me, like, there's a couple of things that make it dark. Like, the notes are dark, but then also look what they're doing with his vocal. Yeah, it's distorted. It's a distortion.

Thank you so much. It's in the red. It's a distorted voice way back in the, mix. And that's part of what makes it moody and atmospheric. Yeah, the minor chords like you were saying. Yeah, man. I told a friend, it's like, you know, especially at this period, his voice is sounding more and more like Michael Jackson. And it's almost like he's doing songs if Michael sang about Michael's drug addictions, which Michael would have never done. No, I mean, Michael might have been, you know, in some layers of some of his lyrics. But you're right, he didn't directly address what we know what was happening behind the scenes. Absolutely. In my research, I saw it described as dark R&B, sometimes dark pop.

And I found this great quote from Consequence who described, you know, his earlier work as being, quote, haunted strip club music. Like, that is dead on. I love that. I love the idea of dark R&B. And I think that, listen, Abel, he started off as more of like an underground dark R&B artist. But this song, Can't Fill My Face is really sort of him challenging the traditions, I think, in like, the pop music canon. Like it's weaving in disco. I think there's like a stem in there called disco guitar.

You know, like it's going up against funk and dance music. Because, you know, we're still in 2015, like some of the biggest songs on the pop trot are just straight up EDM songs. You know, and we've talked about Uptown Funk and we've talked about Get Lucky. So there's a lot of retro songs that are sort of built like the EDM songs of the era. But they're bringing in the songwriting and some of the literal sounds of natural instruments. There is a literal guitar in this. Yes, it is. And weaving them together in a new combination.

Exactly. It's not all 303s, 909s, 808s, but there is that influence of, oh, these are the songs that are like rocking the club. What if we do something that's slightly more organic for the pop charts? One other thing that I want to point out is that there were a lot of people chasing off the wall era Michael Jackson at this time. Yeah.

You know, I could name off a bunch of songs. One that really sticks out to me is Chris Brown's Fine China. Like, it was almost like they were like, hey man, can we just do a Michael Jackson song with you? And then he released, fine, China. You know, you could hear the influences there. Yeah, the strings are there. And into this cultural milieu, we can't fill my face.

I practice in the mirror, as well as the album that is on Beauty Behind the Madness, like we said, only the second weekend album. Now, luxury, what can you tell us about this album, how it got made, and how is the weekend sound changing during this period? Right. So there's an important person that enters the picture, and it's not the first time he's entered the equation on this show. Definitely not the last either.

We talk about unsung members of the song creating process every episode. Sometimes the word unsung has double quotes, because Max Martin is very sung. He's just not necessarily known to the general public. But if you know music... But if you know music, if you listen to our show, we mentioned him on the Britney Spears episode. We mentioned him on the Abba episode because he is Swedish.

Max Martin is a Swedish man who has the most number... one singles for a producer in history. And as a songwriter, he has the third most number ones after Paul and John from the Beatles. This man is a living legend of songwriting and hit making. Insane. I mean, more than Quincy. More than, if you can believe it, more than Quincy Jonesy. Oh man. Quincy, call us.

We'll help you out. So tell us more about Carl Martin Sandberg. So Mr. Max Martin has been dominating the pop charts for about 25 years. It's Brittany. It's Backstreet. It's Katie Perry. It's Pink. It's Usher.

It's Taylor Swift. It's Ariane. He's got hits for all. All of these people. And that just hits number one singles for all of these people. But the week is number five, people are like, man, why did we work with him? Poor guy. We feel bad for him.

He's falling. He's falling off. The story of how he gets together with the weekend, I'll tell you about that in just a second. But interesting to note that the weekend is the first time he'd ever written or done a hit, I should say, for a solo male artist. Everything prior to that had been, you know, boy bands or female pop singers. And by the way, he was making great hits with them.

And he made incredible hits with all of them. So Max Martin is interesting. think about how in this story, Max Martin is carry-on, kind of a legacy of hit-making as mentorship, because he himself was mentored by a very important person called Dennis Pop, who started a studio called Sharon, which is legendary in Sweden. Max Martin starts as Dennis Pop's one of his, I don't want to say, understudies. Well, Max Martin starts off in a group called It's Alive. He starts off in a band. You're right. He is a rocker. A glam funk metal band, which already has built around three genres. Isn't that cool?

No. Everybody go listen to It's Alive Today. They're putting it all together. So he comes out of this legacy of we're going to learn how to make hits, we're going to make hits, and we're going to teach these other people how to make hits. He does the same thing early in the 2000s where he puts together something called, there's two different groups, MXM and Wolf Cousins. These are both publishing companies and production teams.

And this is important because this is a story of one of these teams. So I'll get to some of who these individual writers are who help write this song in a moment. But first, let's go back to the story of how the weekend connects with Max Martin. Okay. It all comes through him doing a song with Ariana Grande called Love Me Harder. Love Love Me Harder. I did not know that was the connective tissue. I mean, that's such a great song.

And I forgot. When that song came out, I used to love it. I used to spend at a place called Boulevard 3. And at the beginning of the night before, like, the party was really jumping, like, I would try and play like emotional songs so that I as a DJ could like start to feel like, you know, just to carbonate. Yeah. It's just to carbonate a little something inside, and that was one of my go-toes was,

Love Me Harder. It's just listening to it in the room, too, I'm reminded of how much I love The Weekend's voice. It's so emotional. Beautiful. I don't know what to call it, like tool, object, thing, beautiful thing in the world. Instrument. There you go. Thank you.

It's a beautiful instrument. And when it's married, by the way, which is what this story is about right now, when it's married to incredible top-notch production and top-notch melody creation, which is what these sweets do. Ariane's no slouch. And she's working with Max to cultivate the same thing. What an incredible song. This is the first song the weekend does with Max Martin.

It's also the first song he does with two songwriters that are part of the song we're talking about today. Can't feel my face. He's working with Savin Ketka. And he's working interestingly with Peter Svensson, who I don't know if you know who that is. Peter Svenson, we've talked about peripherally on this show because he's in the cardigans. The Cardigans great band and such a cool connection that one of the Cardigans started working with the weekend. and did the songs we're talking about right now. So what's also important about this story

is that it is the first time that Abel's worked with this type of pop-making machinery. So it should be said that the Swedes famously have lots of musical math as it's called. It's quote-unquote formulae, but not formulate. In other words, I don't want to imply that this is an assembly line pop. What they're making is incredibly crafted.

It's sort of like Michelin 3-star cuisine. It's like impeccably crafted music on the production, on the melody, on the lyric side. So typically this group solicits very little creative input from the talent. You know, Britney Spears walks in, a back street boy walks in. They're given a top line, and just to get the language out of the way, that usually refers to the lyric, the melody, but also how it's sung, the phrasing, the syncopation, where to place the notes, maybe little like emphasises or kind of

interesting sounds, like famously the mai, the mai, famously comes out of the Swedish choice to have literally the syllable sound like a, the vowel to be a and not e. That is how specific these Swedish songwriters are when they craft the music. So Abel walks into the situation, and this is not how he's used to working. He's not crazy about it.

He pushes back a little bit on the lyrics that he's handed. And they collaborate, and it's one of the first times, actually, that Max Martin is kind of like, okay, and there is a back and forth, and there is a sort of iterative process to get to the final thing he does. Good for you, Abel.

Exactly. I think it kind of garners him some respect in the Max Martin circle. So they went back and forth. Max Martin liked the changes. He kept them. And at this point, they both kind of have,

I think, epiphanies about their working process. I think Max is like, okay, this is a special artist. He's also contributing. He's not just showing up the latest Disney princess that we're making a star.

And Abel, for his part, is thinking, man, if I want to be the biggest in the world, I found a quote, If I'm going to be the biggest in the world, I'm going to need a handful of songs like this one. So this puts an idea in his head. I want to go next level, and these are the guys that are going to help me do it.

I mean, that makes so much sense, because if you think about the weekend, I always come back to the Selton John quote that I thought was so good. I think it was for the Time 100 list in 2020 on John wrote a piece about the weekend, who I guess he met at an Oscars party. And in that excerpt, he has this great quote. He says, he has so many different types of music tucked into his sleeve that he incorporates into his vision. He's not interested in commerciality for commerciality's sake, but he's one of the biggest dreaming artists like Prince. He marches to his own beat.

That's an exemplary way for an artist to be. That one part, like Prince, he marches to his own beat, I don't think anybody can deny that. And nobody can deny that the weekend found a lane that we'd didn't know existed, and absolutely continues to drive just a Mac 10 truck down that lane. He's a true artist with a vision, I think. And I think this is a moment of two visionaries finding in each other something very that they respect a lot. And I found a quote, Max and I have become literally the best of friends. I don't do that with many people.

It's not that I can't, but a collaboration is a relationship. It's like a marriage. No new friends. To go back to it earlier. No new friends. It's like a marriage. So these guys kind of get married in this moment. And their first collaboration for The Weekend himself, for the album Beauty Behind the Madness, is the song In the Night.

And there's something about this music. All of it just sounds, it feels like euphoria music, like the show Euphoria. Like, I don't know, in my mind, everything I hear all sounds like that Labyrinth-y sound as well. But, like, it's very dark. It's very dark. Ironly because Sam Levinson did Euphoria and then he later did The Idol. But we will not have time to dive into the idol and the madness that was there. And The Weekend is collaborated with Labyrinth as well.

So there are connections there. Speaking of labyrinths and haunted experiences, one of the things I do love about living close to Universal Studios is that they have the score. It's not a paid ad, by the way. It's not a paid ad. Although it should be. Please don't click that little plus 15 seconds button because it's not an ad. The weekend had a haunted house there in 2022 based on his album After Hours.

And it was awesome. And I was just like, how much impact do you have to have on pop music? I dragged my older kids. for the thing. I dragged my older kids for the thing and I was just like, this is almost like if I went to like a Prince haunted house or like a Madonna haunted house, like, I feel like they're always going to remember this because there are all these

animatronic weekends and they're like guys dressed like the weekend and they were doing like crazy stuff. It was like a haunted disco. And I got to say a haunted disco? Like how fun does that sound as long as the blood is fake? Almost this fight is Weirwolf Bar Mitzvah. Look at this. My goal

record from that novelty party song. We're wolf for mitzvah, spooky scary, place becoming men, men become spooky scary. There you go. All right, well, we've come to the recording of the song, Can't Feel My Face, and after the break, we'll dive into how this song was made and hear those MJ-inspired vocals that only Able, and myself, could recreate. We'll be right back. Welcome back to One Song, Luxury, walk us through it.

Tell us how did Can't Feel My Face get made. All right. So this song is written by five people. It's got Abel and Max Martin, who we've already mentioned. I already mentioned Peter Svenson from the cardigans. I alluded to Savin Ketecha. And there's a fifth writer named Ali Payami. And he's an Iranian Swedish songwriter who's also part of the Wolf Cousins, this whole like Max Martin coterie of producers and songwriters and kind of next generation. Are they called the Wolf Cousins? Some of them are Wolf Cousins. Some of them are MXM. They're all kind of coming out of the... MGM casino and check out the newest exclusive. The price is right fortune pick. BetMGM and GameSense remind you to play responsibly. 19 plus to wager. Ontario only.

Please play responsibly. If you have questions or concerns about your gambling or someone close to you, please contact connects Ontario at 1-866-531-2,600 to speak to an advisor, free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with Eye Gaming Ontario. These corporations that are based in Sweden, there's like an LA unit which I think is mostly the Wolf Cousins, but there's some New York overlap, New York's, maybe MXM.

I mean, we're in L.A. Can we go hang out with the Wolf Cousins? I want to. These are like the top songwriters and producers on Planet Earth. I bet you somebody in their circle is listening. We want to come hang out with the Wolf Cousins. We want to come hang out with you. We want you to explain who is a wolf cousin, who's an MXM, what city is where, but we know y'all are hella-talented. Hella, hella, hella, hella-talented. So Able, according to the splits, we always talk about the songwriting splits is a 40% writer of the song. Good for him.

The other 60% is split among the four. And Sting. Well, three Swedes, one American. Three Swedes, one American. And Sting. Somehow, Sting, still collecting 5% on this. I don't know how that happens. The running thing with this show is how Sting manages to whine his way.

Every songwriting split. He's got the best lawyers on planet Earth. But I mentioned before, so Savin, who's from Texas, and he's an American, Indian person living in Sweden. So part of this hugely, a wonderfully international team, are working together, collaborating. and I alluded also to the Swedes being very melody-centric. So he has a quote I found where he literally says, we work melody first.

That is Max Martin's school. We will spend days, sometimes weeks, challenging the melody. In other words, can we do better? This one's great. Can we do better? The goal is to make it sound like anyone can do this, but actually it's very difficult. Dude, can I just say, I did not know you were going to say that.

Yeah. Can we beat this melody? Yeah. Because when Bashir and I work on comedy, we will write three pages. everybody thinks it's hilarious. We come back in the next day, and I swear to God, the first day we say is,

can we beat these jokes that we were working, that we loved yesterday? Yes. And sometimes it feels like you're like murdering a perfectly good unicorn. Right. And by the way, we might decide three days later, oh, you know, we're going to put that unicorn back. But, like, it's exactly the same process

writing a comedy script. You've got to make it seem like, oh, that joke was obviously there. But then when you look at the process, it's so not like that. And I'm sure you have similar options as well. in songwriting. For example, in songwriting, let's say you leave the song, you go to bed, you wake up the next day, you listen back as kind of

your saying, and you still love this melody but it's not the chorus, but maybe it's the pre-chorus. You know, you can sort of move things around. There are elements of it that might still work, but there are other parts that you're like, maybe we can top this. Or sometimes you save it for later, you save it for another song altogether. There's often

options of rearranging or saving it for something that's maybe more appropriate, but the idea of like, can we do better? Can we do better? Yeah, That's how you get the excellence. By the way, in that writer's room, sometimes you'll sit there for 30 minutes, 45 minutes, and there's complete silence.

Yeah. And maybe somebody's bold enough to pitch a new idea, but, like, it can be painful. It can be really painful. You spend days on a scene. So it's actually encouraging to know that, like, one of the best, you know, songwriting teams and Able are out there doing the same painful stuff.

Well, and it's vulnerable, too. We mentioned the Able quote about it being like a marriage with Max Mark. It is you're very vulnerable in the room. First of all, you're, like, you're singing. The singer may be the most vulnerable. of all. But everyone's throwing out ideas with other people around and you have to make a choice in the moment like, am I, is this idea

that I'm about to pitch good enough for these top-notch? And of course, over time, you get the comfort to be like, you know what? No one's going to fire me. No one's going to keep me up bad. Once you make the room, once you make the comedy room as a comedy writer with us, like, we liked you. So you don't have to be shy. You don't have to be nervous. We're not fucking judging at this point. You can have nine terrible ideas and one home ride. There are

people in the writer's room I find who will pitch 10 ideas and two will be great. There are other people who only pitch one within three hours, but it's always, it's consistently great. So everybody has their own way of getting to that magic one or two. So that's also related. One last point about the Swedish method. They will spend months crafting, like working on maybe one or two of their best songs across the year. Any given writer may have participated in six, 12, maybe 15, maybe 20 songs. I don't know the actual number, but it's not a numbers game. It's about, we found something that has something special to it.

Let us spend a lot of time getting it as good as it can possibly be. I think everybody's got their own method. remember in the Abba episode, we said that Abba would, like, you know, they would stay until the song was basically complete. Right. And some people are like, you know what? All I can, old dirty was like, all I'm giving you tonight is me and Mariah go back like babies and pacifiers and I'm going to sleep. That's good enough. So everybody is a little bit different. Everyone's a little bit different. But getting back to how the song got made, Ali Payami says, quote, I was sitting in a room with Saven, Abel, Max, and Peter. And I'd been listening to some modern disco-y influence tracks. And we started jamming. Oh, I wish I knew what songs they had listened.

I know me too. Obviously, there's no way they can say that without getting sued. So we will never know. But go ahead. It was very natural. There wasn't a moment like, I have an idea. Let's do this. It just came together naturally.

Very simple song. Apparently it only took them about 40 minutes to actually get the main ideas together. And as he says himself, it's not quote unquote, super advanced. But my God, it is rich as we're about to get into the stems. It is filled with melody after melody and moment after a moment of just pure candy, for lack of a better word. Yeah. I'm dying to hear these individual parts because there are a lot of harmonies going on here, and there are a lot of little fun parts that are in here, and I can't wait to talk about them.

So why don't we jump right in with the first thing you hear on this song is a very low synth chord, and I think we can start with a synth. So the song, as you mentioned, starts with this synth, and then Abel comes in with the vocals, but underneath, while he's singing, that synth is kind of changing and evolving and becomes this really interesting blend of sound. So I'll play you the part that's usually under the vocal by itself. A little menacing. Menacing or is it like Anya? There's some Enya in there. I feel like I could be in a spa listening to this. I could be sailing away, sailing away, sailing away as I listen to this. Exactly. Yeah, I'm like getting that nice deep tissue massage right now. But then it has that crescendo and the white noise comes in. A lot of, by the way,

when I think about dark pop, I was thinking about that idea. You know, I was working with this artist called Major around this, not a little bit later, but he was working a little bit in this sound field. And what I learned from him, because I watched him produce, is he would take a lot of sounds and just EQ all the high end out of it.

So it has that dark kind of underwater sound. And as we've been listening to the weekend, preparing for this episode, I'm like, I was hearing a lot of that. So one of the things that makes dark pop dark is literally cutting out all the high frequencies in the EQ. So when they come in, like in that moment, it's very like, it's noticeable, like, ah.

Yeah, you can crescendo with the highs. You can crescendo with those highs. Here's another moment a little bit later in the song with those synths. So one thing I'll point out that you're hearing there is something called side chain compression, which is a tool that happens a lot in electronic music production, where those throbbing, those are ducking. You can do it on the right din-on or pioneer mixer, too, as a DJ. And it ducks under the drums, so the drums hit harder.

So now I'll play that same thing with the drums. So you hear how combined the drums just punch more. And our ear kind of tricks us into thinking that the synths are consistently just doing this, but they're really... Yeah, their waves, they're peaks and valleys. Little wavy undulations are taking place in there. And then it crescendos towards the end. Sometimes you're better off dead.

There's a gun in their mouth and it's pointing at your head. You know, I love the weekend because I feel like his Pet Shop Boys, Tears for Fears, Influences, are screaming out at us through those sense. Those are such fun sense. These big, dark 80s synths, a lot of melancholy and the minor chords. Dude, I was listening to the sense all by itself just because it just, it fuels me up with so much like, ah, I can do anything.

Exactly. And just to give context of what you just heard, that is the very end of the pre-chorus right before we're going into the chorus, so I'll give you a little bit of context. Without it, she told me you'll never be in love. We're going to get back to that, yeah, exactly, that pre-course. That's a very important part of this song, very important part of the story.

But that was just to give you context of what that crescendoing, undulating synth, where that was in the song. So those same sense from the intro, the first undulating with the first little peak of white noise in crescendo. They come back in the middle eight, which is actually a little longer than eight. I'll talk about that in a second. But aside from that, those are all of the synths we hear in the song, aside from, of course, The low hum of the bass. Yeah. Sounds like whale-like.

I mean, it sounds like a submarine for sure. That is very underwater. That's like the underwater thing I was saying. I'm done, yeah. I heard you say it. I'm glad you heard me say. I feel heard. I feel heard.

I feel seen. I'd be listening sometimes. So that's happening underneath in the intro, going back to that for a second. That is kind of anchoring those floaty sins at the beginning and give us a little bit of rhythm before the drums kick in. So I'll just play that for you in context.

That's happening under these sins. that I played a moment ago. I mean, even before the crescendo, I'm so satisfied and happy with that sound. I legitimately love the sense on this song. Also, there's a stem in here called Extras, which has a lot of, it's extra. Like, it's very extra.

There are so many fun parts, and I think we were listening to them and we were having a good time because there's some things in there that I'd never noticed before. One thing I really like about this extras thing is that there are so many, like, different flavors and like shades of stuff that I didn't know was in the track, but now I know it's there.

For example, there is a crackle. I thought, I was like, man, maybe this is corrupted or something like that because there was like a crackle. Then I realized that that crackle is supposed to make it sound like a record. It's supposed to make it sound a little more extra disco. Atmospheric. Totally. Can you play us a little bit of something with the crackle?

Yeah, no, this is one of the fun things about the show is stuff that you would never have noticed in the mix because it's so buried, but now you'll never not know it's there. Yeah. Yeah. So here's the crackle Diyah I was talking about. It literally is when you put a record on before the music starts.

The context also from our experience of playing records is that we associate that sound with the experience of physical media for music. So a lot of this stuff is really subtly taking place. In the disco era.

In the era of the 70s that we're talking about. So it's very subtle stuff. When you sample things as well, it'll be especially an older hip-hop. With samples from records, you'll hear that too. So a lot of this evocative

sound, evocative material is going on. So in the mix, I'll play it and you'll be like, I don't even hear it. But again, here's the crackle by itself, and then I'll play for you where it takes place in the song. I'll just add... Sounds like you got a skip in that record, too. Here is what's going on when that's taking place.

It happens a few times, but it's right there in the entire verse. And it's one of those things that, like, you may not hear it, but you're... But your ears pick up on it. It does give it a little bit of a retro feel. It's a little bit of information that maybe it's subconscious. It is adding something. It's adding something in the mix, absolutely.

And also the very beginning of the song, there's one more thing that's underneath that intro synth. And it's this sound, which, again, you may not have noticed. It's this. It's an 808 kick drum that's tuned to provide bass content. Sure. I mean, my childhood would not be the same without the tuned 808 bass. And by the way, I might have this wrong, but whether it's 808 kick drum or whatever 808,

I feel like the 808, any song that's got, mm-mm, mm-mm, mm-mm, I always felt like it was mimicking. I know that it's played on buttons and keyboard keys, but I always felt like it was mimicking a keyboard base. Right, sure. You can't make that, I mean, nowadays you can make anything that anything, but like the original pioneers of that sound

and felt like they were putting a bass drum with a keyboard bass. And that's how you were able to elongate it. Tell me if I'm right or wrong. Well, it may be an accident of history that because when you're mixing something, it takes up EQing is the art of determining, okay, what fits in this space. You can't have too many things, especially in the base area, or it's just muddled garbage. So it may be the case that when the 808 machine started to exist and it was being used for recording purposes, when it started to be used in songs in production,

maybe they found early on that, wait a second, it's either one or the other. This kick drum or at least this particular way it's tuned and recorded, we can't have bass in addition to that, but it could be just a practical thing. That, hey, listen, we can't have both so we can only do one. Hey, wait, check this out. We can actually also tune the bass.

The 808 kick, I mean. So it replaces the base. We don't need both. Right. Again, this is completely speculating. It's a fun story to chase. It's a solid theory. Solid theory, but they do technically take up the same space, so you can only take one.

It is only one or the other. When you listen to this, you do hear him doing audibly something that sounds somewhat familiar. Yes, yeah, it sounds especially familiar, I've got to say to me, and I'll tell you that story in a second. But this is also going on in the verse, in the second verse, very buried, but very there. Yes. And not dancing. Who does that sound like to you? It sounds like Prince.

It sounds like James Brown and, you know, maybe Fred Wesley. Maybe also. Maybe Fala Couti. These are all great choices. Oh, no, no, what am I thinking? It sounds like Randy Jackson. Okay, so close, so close. Sounds like Tito.

Sounds like Marlon. Marlon. Marlon Williams. Sounds like Marlon Wayans. It sounds like Marlon. Famously did that in everything he's ever done. No, obviously, it sounds like MJ. Do it dance.

On the floor and around. So take my strong advice. Just remember to. But you know what? I don't think that that's a bad thing because by this point, you know, MJ had been gone for about six years, you know? And so we were probably overdue for something that sounded and felt like that. Yeah.

And we're going to talk a lot more about Michael Jackson when we get to the vocals in just a few minutes. But first, we're enjoying all these crazy extra sounds. One more of these, I'll play for you. Here's something else that takes place in that half-time bridge section I was alluding to before with the synth that's also in the intro. There's also this underneath everything, helping with that crescendo that brings us back to the third and final chorus. So rising, rising. Very EDM rise.

Yeah. And very drops. It should be noted that it's also very edium that they add a ninth bar. Usually your middle eight or your bridge is literally eight bars. But there's this extra ninth bar where you're like hanging. Because it's like a surprise, whoa, wait, how it's about to happen? Look, we were talking about the blog house here. And I feel like from that period, like a day and night, Crookers remix,

honestly through LMFAO and Uptown Funk, which we talked about sort of does it organically with real instruments. Me and my DJ friends, we always would call that the jet plane. We always felt like there was like a... The rising jet plane, yeah. And then you did the drop. Once your ears are attuned to it, it is on everything. Oh, it's everywhere.

Especially in that era. Absolutely. That was the era where everybody had to have the... the jet plane. Really, it's just a, what is it actually? I mean, they're called risers. It's probably a synth that's been, you can do it a lot of different ways. You can get white noise on a synth and you can change the envelope, the volume envelope, so it gets louder. Yeah. Really? Yeah. But you can also add something so the actual pitch rises. There's lots of ways. If you use any sample source, let me say it that way, one of the choices you have will be like risers and falls, which are DJ tools. And there's millions of

of choices and they're all a little bit the same, but a little bit different. Hey, it's all the nuance. And they give you ways to get into the next session dramatically. So I'll play for you now in the mix where that was. So you can hear the drama that's being built for the final chorus of the song. I'll count it to three, two, two, three, three, three, two, four. One, two, three, that's the extra bar. It's that extra measure.

That's the extra bar right there. That's the ninth bar of your eight bar. bridge. We're going from drama to drums. Play some of the drums that make up the driving beat of this song. The drums are essentially a four-bar loop. They do sound like they could have been from a sample pack. And they're dope, and they're real simple. Here they are.

It could be anything. Wow, wow, wow, wow, wow. Keep going. Raskate. Yep. Roll. Bounce. This is a 108 BPM kick and snare,

kind of funk beat. Like the line between funk and disco is thin, but the tempo makes it a little more funk because it's a little slower. Listen, I think that disco and funk are obviously because of when they sort of came about, there's going to be a lot of like, they're definitely siblings.

Yeah. To me, what makes this more funk is first the tempo, but also the fact that it's not emphasizing the kick every four on the floor. you hear the snare, the two and the four, the backbeat is kind of equal. So when you think about the Billy Gene beat, like, boom, it does a similar thing. That to me is the quintessence of this type of like straight up like Rick James. They're all kind of equally emphasizing the kick and the snare.

It's not kick-centric. So this to me is a little more funk than just. To you, that's the difference between funk and disqual. Well, it's, look, I'm never going to go on record and say like here. No, no, no, we just have some mics around here. Just go on the record. Okay, because we're recording. That's the difference between disco and funk.

record. That is the only difference between disco and funk. Clearly is not what I mean, but it is a big line in the sand I will draw. How about that? I'll give you that. That's my controversial statement. I think of this song as disco. I can see an argument made that it's more funk, but you know, like I feel like there's, the fight will be in the nuance between the two. Let's talk about the bass. Yeah. So there's two bases, right? Because we heard one base. There's a synth base in just the intro and in the bridge. But then the rest of the song, we got a proper straight up Bernard Edwards from chic style bass line and it sounds something like this and by the way i couldn't find any notes on who is playing this this sounds like a performed bass guitar but who the hell knows all i do know is that we also

hear in there the same side chain compression happening we're on the synths so it's a little bit of a throbbing thing again same effect i'll now play the bass and drums together and you'll hear the drums punch more because of what was done to the bass so it's a really subtle thing when you're listening together you didn't even notice it but uh just you know it's kind of a production trick it's called side chain compression. It's really the cornerstone of so much electronic music and disco and there's a lot of undulating, a lot of throbbing. Right. Oh, by the way, actually, now that I'm saying it out loud, it should be noted that it is a differentiator between modern disco funk and at the time. So one thing that makes this modern, even though a lot of these things are evocative

of 70s and 80s music, at the time they hadn't really discovered side chain compression yet. It wasn't really being used, if at all. And you start to hear it more in the electronic era because as you mentioned, it's sort of an artifact of DJ tools, of using the mixer. So daft punk kind of famously, and French touch music is where it becomes ubiquitous. Music sounds better with you with all their filtering. All of that like kind of 90s French touch music and late house music starts to add this as a staple of the genre. And I'm glad you bring that up because as retro as this song might sound, there is enough new stuff and new ideas here that make it modern. So it's got that thing going where it reminds you of something, but it still feels fresh.

Yeah, and it's these little details that are participating in that. And by the way, continuing on with the bass, it does have a second baseline that's layered in it. There's a kind of octave up and a third. There's a harmony that starts right after what we just heard. Very subtle, but adds a little harmonic richness. And here it is. It's very subtle.

It's on the dun, dun, dun, but it's this note. Dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, and it's just like a third above. But if you're listening for it, it sounds great. It's really, and it's very subtle, and it gives it a little bit harmonic richness, because there are no chords being played. I love that. So this is the only. harmonic content we're getting.

And then finally, in the bridge, we have this halftime thing happening underneath it. Yes. Which I think harkens back to the earliest weekend material. Oh, interesting. Yeah, you're right. I feel like he would often do something that was kind of like groovy, and then he would go halftime and get extra melancholy. Yeah, and it's dark, and I'm going to play it with the synths and the vocals just so you have the whole vibe.

She told me don't buy me no more. So it's emphasizing more of a half-time. Yeah, that's when he's going back to the House of Balloons. You know what I'm saying? Like, he's like, I haven't forgotten where I've found from. Absolutely. I'm a pop star. I'm about to be.

A little wink and a nod to like the original fans. I'm about to be a global megastar, but I won't forget you. Dark R&B and Blog House. I've forgotten Toronto and Diallo. Disco workout. We still love you. Disco workout. Let's get into the guitar.

Let's hear some guitar. There's a really subtle rhythmic thing. He's just playing. one note rhythmically so I'll play it isolated and then give you some context and that's in here so that you could maybe call that an ostinado

just this repeated figure while other things change underneath it so it gives it this insistent sort of like tension building sound and very and the fact that it's high as well that's happening underneath the second verse I can start saying that about anything in my life that doesn't change just an ostinado it's just an ostinato bro

it's just an ostinato bro it's just an ostinato from California that happens a few times in the but that is the only guitar part in the song. So we have actually now at this point heard everything that isn't the vocal. And I'm glad we're talking about the vocals because this is somebody with just an iconic voice.

We've said a lot about Michael Jackson, but it wouldn't even work if Abel didn't have just an amazing voice. It's a truly special voice. It really soars over everything. It's smooth and clean, and it's simultaneously high and thin. Excuse me, high without being thin, I was going to say.

It's rich. It muddy and dirty it up with the way that they treat the vocal. They don't treat these perfectly clear, clean vocals, very nicely. And we, the listener, are better off for it. I'm just going to go into the first first. Yeah, play some. And I know she'll be the death of me.

At least we'll both be now. And she'll always get the best of me. The worst is yet to come. We're going to stop and talk. Let's talk about some lyrics. We can't go any further without talking about the lyrics of this song. Okay. What is the song about?

I don't understand what the song is about. I'm a little young naive. I was like, I can't believe that. that Abel and the Swede got away with this. Like, this is like, there's, listen, Camio did a song called Candy, and it was pretty on the nose. I was going to say on the nose.

They're giving me a heart attack. It's the con of lock. I mean, like, by the way, there's your thing about, like, making weird vowel sounds. Like, they rhymed heart attack with like. So there you go. But, look, the song is about cocaine.

It's about cocaine use. This isn't even one of those things where it's very subtle. And I liked when, I think he won a Nickelodeon Kids Choice Award. Oh, God. And then he goes like, man, I won a Kids Choice Award about doing so much blow that my face is numb. Which tells you a lot about 2015.

Well, in 2021, Mix Mag plays the song and it's top 30 songs about cocaine list. Oh, for sure. For sure. I mean, like, it's weird how, like, people will write 100 odes to weed, you know, and there are even songs that are reportedly about heroin, even though you don't often hear the name of that drug song. But like cocaine to have been such a major player, usually for the worst, in so many musicians' lives, you don't often hear a sort of unapologetic, unjudging. An ode. A loving ode. I mean, even white lines, the original version was all about

we love cocaine. And then when they were like, don't do it. Then they added in, don't do it. Kind of after the fact. Get higher, baby. Get higher baby. Yeah, don't do it. Guys, we want this on the radio. Oh, we got the solution. Here, play the song, but don't do it. It's great. You're going to love it. It's the best, but don't do it. In a weird way, the week is very mature about it because he says the worst is yet to come.

He's basically saying, like, I'm enjoying myself right now. At some point, this is going to go terribly for me. But very few people is open with it as the weekend. And we're going to talk about this in a second. But I think that's another reason why, with his openness of like, yeah, I'm going to work with the Swedes. and yeah, I'm going to do a song that sounds like retro disco, but with electronic touch. And yeah, I'm going to sing about a sort of rotten drug.

Like, all these things sort of make him sort of stand off from sort of like the rest of like the R&B community. Yeah, that's a great take. It's interesting. Yeah, when you give it that context, it really kind of tease up the layers going on in the song. Because you're right. On the surface, you could say it's so on the nose, as we pointed out. We don't not know what it's about. But when you add all those layers to it, it's interesting.

Play some more vocals because the vocals are such a big part of it. of the song. Yeah, so just going back to what you were saying earlier, you're hearing a lot of reverb in the verses, and it's interesting because that changes throughout the song, how the vocals are treated. So that was a little bit of the first verse. And then in the pre, the first time around, he does this. And now we get to the part in the pre-chorus, which is where arguably the hook of all hooks of the song comes in. And here it is. We both know we can't go without it. She told me You got to talk about this hook. We got to talk about this hook because when I hear this hook, I immediately, my brain goes to two things.

And I'll play them both for you. So the first thing I hear is, yeah. So that's don't stop to you get enough by Michael Jackson. And it should be said that Michael Jackson, we've alluded to the Michael Jacksonness of this gentleman throughout this episode. But Michael Jackson is a big part of Abel's life. he is a huge fan, as he said, before concerts in his dressing room, he plays the record for energy,

off the wall for energy, quote, quote. But specifically, he plays this song for energy. But this quote from LA Times in 2016, Michael is everything to me. You're going to hear it in my music. Off the wall was the album that inspired me to sing. It helped me find my voice. Don't stop to you again enough.

I kept singing that. I found my falsetto. I love that. In fact, my own experience with Off the Wall is it's the first R&B record that I remember like, sitting there and looking at the cover and then looking at the inside and then looking back at the cover was off the wall. There's just there's there's magic in that album exactly and uh this is a quote from

rolling stone it was the ooh that changed everything that single ecstatic syllable slipping out just before each chorus transformed able from a cult r&B singer to a full-on pop star so I think there's some truth to that but I also hear another melody in that buildup yeah what else you hear I also hear this I mean, very similar build. Is that a Max Martin? That is another Max Martin song. Oh, wow. So it's really interesting about this moment.

Yeah. The convergence of the Michael Jackson influence, the Max Martin influence. And the EDM influence. It's all happening. I don't know if you guys caught it, but that was that crescendo there. There's that crescendo. Jet plane taken off. The jet plane is taking off.

So it's all kind of converging in this pre, which is arguably like the part of the song that is arguably maybe out of a song with 20 or 25 hooks, and it may be one of the biggest. It's so hooky. So the first time we hear the chorus, it's a little different from the second and third time. We'll be talking about that. I know that you have some thoughts about that.

So this first chorus sounds like this. Unlike the verse and the pre-chorus, which is drenched in reverb, this is relatively dry. It's got maybe a little slap back, but it's not that big wall of sound, Phil Specter, revered, the thing we've just heard. I can feel my face when I'm with you,

but I love it. But I love it. Oh. And it's interesting how much we hear the breathiness, too. Obviously, that's a big part of the sound is the intimacy that we feel there. But it's ironic that in a song, which usually the energy, right, is the verse is the lower energy, the pre-builds, and the chorus is the maximum energy. No, he reversed it.

And the vocals are a little bit doing the opposite. He's kind of most chill in the chorus. The verse is like going super high, super strong, and then he gets to the chorus. He's like, oh, yeah, by the way, I'm cool. He's just peaked in that, uh, uh, uh, that's the peak. Uh, uh, uh, that's the energy peaks. He's like, yo man. He goes down.

I had never thought about before. That's really interesting. Yeah. So then in the second verse, it's doubled. And there's like a new melody, which is introduced. I'll just play that bit for you now. All the misery was necessary. When we're deep in love, this I know.

This I know. Girl, I know. So that's so MJ to me, like the syncopation, the placement of the notes. Yeah. Can you play us one of my favorite parts of this song? And fight me, bro. I think this is my. favorite vocal in the whole song.

I think this is the best vocal. It's towards the end when he harmonizes and he layers his voice, but towards the end when he does the, I can't feel my face. It's a completely new melody. Yeah, it's like a call and response with the first chorus. Max is like, here's just another chorus. This is what they do in Sweden.

Just another chorus. This is the Max Martin Way. If you go back and listen to Britney Spears does it, the Backstreet Boys. I always said Ludacris does it. He gives you about four choruses perverse. Yeah, you'll get this sort of. of brand new melody that emerges in a later chorus and becomes a new hook.

So chorus two, we have this response thing happening halfway through. It sounds like this. Oh, I can feel my face when I'm with you. But I love it. But I love it. And then we get to the next level with the brand new melody of the call and response thing with this. It is the best part of song. Yeah, it might be.

But I love it. Don't you think I feel my back? It's not the first time we have a harmony stack. We have some harmonies earlier. But that is like the chorus harmony stack that was withheld from us maybe in the first chorus when it was chill and just no reverb and just him singing kind of at the lowest energy. There's the energy. The energy bursts in the second half of that second chorus. So, okay, fight me.

This is my favorite part. And it's kind of a silly one, I have to admit. But this is like one of those things that when I heard it in the mix, I was like, I know exactly what happened. The end of the song has this very strange moment, and I'll play it for you now. But this might be my favorite part right here. Right here. I love that part of the song. So that's your favorite part, which goes into my favorite part.

So it's almost like we're married, like Max and Abel are married in many ways. What do you like about the abrupt cutoff? You're right, because in that second chorus, we had this second idea added, but in that third and final chorus, everything is thrown in there. Yeah, yeah. So you have all these melodies, and our ear can tolerate that because we've built up to it. If they'd started with that, it would have been chaos and cacophony. Where would you even go?

But at the end, our energy, we're at the max point. And what's so funny to me is when I heard that abrupt ending, which I'll play for you again, I was like, I know exactly what happened. This is how the song ends, for real, in the song. Yeah. I can tell you exactly what happened. This is speculation, of course. But from my experience, as a producer, you will copy and paste different sections of the song. because for many reasons.

One, because you come up a good idea and you know structurally it's going to happen again and you're kind of speeding up the process rather than re-recording it a second time, you'll just cut and paste chorus one into chorus two and chorus three. Are you thinking that they didn't actually have an ending? So he was just like,

Thanos-style deterioration. I think that's exactly what happened. They copied and pasted that chorus because it ends right on the end of that bar and they just either forgot or accidentally muted the part that came after it. And they're like, that's actually dope. Let's leave that.

I'm telling you, we went full circle. So I said he looked like Thor, but he was actually like that. That's when he snapped his finger and the weekend's voice dissipated. And it's perfect and it's so dramatic. This is the actual song playing. This is the actual song ending.

It is possible to not notice it. The thing I ever really noticed how abrupt that was. Maybe it's been a few years. Maybe I noticed at the time. And I think it's the type of thing that maybe most of the music and me had the other song going by that point. Yeah, that's true. I was probably fading out into something else.

But there are some radio DJs that are like, Did I get the, like, is my version broken? Is my MP3 broken? Exactly. What's really cool about the way these Swedes write songs, look, this is top-notch craftsmanship, is we're playing with energy or playing with dynamics. We're having opposites take place.

We're having peaks in valleys. Like, breaking it down like this, you can see across what feels maybe like a simple song, not a lot of things are happening that are different. Not a lot of chord changes. There's only one bass thing. There's only one guitar thing, right? But it's these peaks and valleys of energy.

in dynamics, which make it nostril. Again, we should say that, like, the weekend had, he occupied three of the top three R&B positions on the chart. Like, he's a hitmaker in his own. And I just think the case you're making is that he gets with the Swedes and then he has

another hit. But I think we want to make it very clear that we're not saying that it's just the Swedish method that arrives us at this song. No, I mean, I think it's really interesting because what's unusual about this Max Martin production or the team, those team of Swedes. This is very unique. We don't know exactly in the room and it doesn't really matter who exactly contributed which moment of which word and which lyric. But we know as a team, these five songwriters at the top of their game created this beautifully

crafted perfect pop song, which is still to this day can bring you chills and give you the feels. And what's interesting to me is that I think it was a change for both of them. I think they both compromised. Abel was starting to compromise his My Way or the Highway Vision, which he was like, you know what, this isn't working as big as I'd like it to. I'd like to be a global number one star. And part of that compromise, which he's talked about, is that working with Max Martin, he found someone he can trust that would get him there, but also he's not giving up too much. And the same things happening from Max Martin's side. I think Max Martin, unusual for his process is like, you know what, this is not just another artist coming to me who doesn't know what they're doing. He knows what he's

doing. And I think to me that marriage of what they both bring to it is why the song is so incredible. I love that. All right, D'allel, so as we wrap up this episode, what is the legacy of Can't Feel My Face and of the weekend? For Can't Feel My Face, again, I think, you know, the legacy is just a song that is archetypical of the mid-2000s when we were all just dancing to get lucky and can't fill my face. Even a song, like, Can't Stop the Feeling, had sort of like this Michael Jackson-y, perfectly good for a wedding-type vibe.

There was a lot of retro sounds around that time. I think this one, for all the reasons we've pointed out, was very different, very fun, and very original. But I want to talk a little bit about the legacy of the weekend because his story is still going, obviously. He's at the peak of his powers, arguably, right now. And as a fan of the weekend, I continue to root for his success.

I'm not Ethiopian. I'm not Canadian. You don't have to be. For his success because I feel like, you know, to a certain extent, my taste run very much aligned with his. And I see him, maybe it's the creator in me, I see him trying to bring in these very untraditional influences into not just the pop mainstream, but the R&B mainstream. I want to bring up one point, which is that in preparing this episode, it was very clear to us that The Weekend has a reputation of being a pop artist more than R&B artist. I think that's because more than somebody who came up with a specific R&B audience.

Like Siza, at this point, Siza is like one of the biggest pop stars in the world. But to say that she's an R&B artist or to say that Miguel is an R&B artist when he's got major pop songs, it's funny to see how much the weekend doesn't really get associated or included in the R&B conversation. I do think part of it is is Canadianness and part of it is through the music that he became, you know, first on our charts. He really did come up sort of differently than your traditional. Oh, I was singing in the church, you know, style of R&B artists. And so I would ask everybody to give the weekend his R&B flowers

because I think that he deserves it. He's been making music that is, you know, very strong and it's rhythm and blues connections. And I just had to get that off my chair. You know, you also made me think about, there was a quote I found that he just made me flash to, which he says, you know, he was kind of opposed to pop music just like philosophically because of it's sort of punk

sort of punk background he can kind of see that sure he would literally said his earlier producers quote would try to structure the songs make it more of a song and I was always a punk I hate major chords he said literally this is a quote from him I hate major chords I hate structure I want the song to be eight minutes long and it would kill them and after working with Max Martin he goes

my headspace now is I love choruses a chorus is not easy and that's I kind of can relate to that because as somebody with a like a better word punk or post punk or metal background like a rock background and then I came to LA to try to write pop music. I learned very quickly it is not easy to write what seems simple on the outside. And part of what makes the Max Martin Swedish, all these people we've been talking about this whole episode, what they do, the craftsmanship they bring to the ostensible simplicity of pop music.

Yeah. Is it really, it's treating it like the art form that it is. And it's interesting that Abel himself came to appreciate and understand this and embrace it and marry that with his own background, with all of these influences you're talking about. I love that. And another kind of thing to your, The exploration of what genre is he, with all of the caveats throughout this show, if you've listened to a bunch of episodes.

Yeah, we've got to reject genre in general. Genra is a bizarre construct, we've said many times. So to say, are you R&B, are you pop, is a little bit missing the point. It's a checklist, kind of like we were saying before with the funk disco stuff. We also have to point out that he's worked with a who's who of collaborators from, like, the electronic music side. He's worked with daft punk. He's responsible for...

Calvin Harris. Yeah. He's worked with... This is Aflstein. And not unimportantly, one of my favorite records of the past couple years is Don FM, which he did with One Otricks Point Never, who's a kind of esoteric, kind of avant-garde electronic music producer. We would be remiss if we didn't mention, by the way,

that the origin of the title of this song is probably from this. Just fucking sell it there. All right, but it's going to take me a year. I can't feel my face. I mean, I can touch it, but I can't feel it inside. That's right. That's Bobcat Galtway from 2001's Blow with Johnny Depp and Paul Rubin's, aka Pee We Herman. We're not saying us from that, but we're just speculating. It's probably from that.

Okay, luxury, it's time for one more song. This is a segment where we share a deep cut or a hidden gym with you, the One Song Nation, and with each other. You go first. Here's a track I just discovered that I'm really into. This is Katana by Samara Sin. It just scratches every edge for me. Oh, I love that. And by the way, that sounds just like something. Oh, my gosh. Oh, do, do, do, do.

Right. Shocking blue love buzz. Yeah, yeah. It's a great song. Play your song again. And here's Katana again. Yeah, that's definitely would have reminded me of. But it's a different song, and I love it.

I'm going to buy that song. That song is great. That's great, right? Yeah, so the similarities there, but to be clear, we're not saying that that's an interpolation. Yeah, I mean, so look, you guys know that I'm musical borrowing is kind of a thing. I'm interested in, like, why do things sound familiar? Sometimes it's the interpolation because it's the melody. Sometimes it's a sample because it's the same recording.

Sometimes it's chord changes. You know, right now I'm like really working hard on something which is coming up with an overarching thesis. But these days, rhythm is really very prominent to me. So what you're hearing that's similar is the fact that it's the bass being played and the rhythm is nearly identical. But the notes are completely different. But the more I like kind of look into this stuff,

the more I'm like, man, it's the rhythm of the melody sometimes more than the melody itself that can make you think something sounds familiar. Anyway, I'm going to keep on investigating and get another year to work on this book, so I'm done when I'm done. Awesome. What about you, Diall? What you got for your one more song?

For my one more song, I'm going with Gabrielle Poso. He is an Italian percussionist by way of Puerto Rico. He's rid with some of my favorite people, including DJ Jazzy Jeff, at Osolade. This is a song of his called La Bola. He's been the percussionist on so many songs that I like by artists I like, and I'm just always like, oh, this guy's name keeps popping up. and then I come to find out now that he is an amazing solo artist,

so feel free to check out his entire catalog. Gabrielle Poso is amazing. As always, if you have an idea for one more song, you can find us on Instagram and TikTok. You can find me on Instagram at Diallo, D-I-A-L-O-O, and on TikTok at Diallo-R-R-W-R-Y. And you can find me on Instagram at Luxury-X-U-X-X-U-Y and on TikTok at Luxury X-X.

You can also watch full episodes of One Song on YouTube right now. Just search One Song Podcast. We'd love it. you'd like and subscribe. And if you made it this far, I think that means you like the podcast. So please do not forget to give us five stars. Leave a review. Share it with someone you think would like the show.

It really helps keep it going. All right, luxury, help us in this thing. I'm luxury, the producer, the DJ, the songwriter, the musicologist, the guy who switches up his own tag sometimes. And I'm actor-writer-director and sometimes DJ Diallo Riddle. And this is one song. We will see you next time.