Song Exploder - Bleachers - I Miss Those Days

Episode Date: January 31, 2018

Bleachers is the moniker of Jack Antonoff, a songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, and producer. He won two grammy awards as a member of the band fun., and another for his production work on Taylor Swift’s album 1989. He’s also co­-written songs with St. Vincent, Carly Rae Jepsen, Lorde, Sia, and more. In June 2017, Antonoff released his second album as Bleachers, Gone Now. In this episode, he breaks down a song from that album, called “I Miss Those Days" and traces the process of making it—from the original demo, to a version he discarded, to the final song. songexploder.net/bleachers

You're listening to Song Exploder, where musicians take apart their songs, and piece by piece, tell the story of how they were made. I'm Rishi Kesh Hirway. Bleachers is the moniker of Jack Antonoff, a songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, and producer. He won two Grammy Awards as a member of the band Fun, and another for his production work on Taylor Swift's album, 1989. He's also co-written songs with St. Vincent, Lord, Carly Ray Jepson, Sia, and more. In June 2017, Jack Antonoff released his second album as Bleachers, Gone Now. In this episode, he breaks down a song from that album called I Miss Those Days. It traces the process of making it from the original demo to the final song.

Hi, I'm Jack Antonoff from Bleachers. So the way this started was I bought an emulator. Things called the Emu 2. It was one of the first, like, sampler systems. It's like a big machine. It takes floppy disks. I put one of the floppy disks in not knowing what it was and just held down one D note. So that is me just holding down a D and there's this ARP on the emulator,

playing the piano pattern. The machine is so from a different time that when you switch between sounds, it takes about 45 to 60 seconds. The screen literally says this will take a minute. It's the most un-user-friendly machine that breaks every five seconds. Basically, like, whenever I can get it working or on,

I'll just hit record and just get as much out as possible. And then I found this patch on it that sounded like Christmas. That is Christmas to me. Like, when you play that, I just get this rush of every Christmas thing in my mind. I feel so much love and hope in Christmas, and I'm Jewish. I don't know if people who actually celebrate Christmas feel this way, but I just see it from afar and it's perfect. And I love Christmas music. So I found this sound, and it made me want to be very sincere. If you listen to

the demo, I was like, all right, let's just loop that. And then I just started like talk singing. When I'm writing, sometimes I'll put auto tune in my voice and just sort of like not care about pitch. and talk sing. You're talking about getting older, so much she haven't done yet. Just light a fire, keep it quiet, say I'm a runaway train. I'm a runaway train.

Hey, that's all I'm into lately, just a runaway, runaway, runaway, run away, runaway, and sometimes when you have an effect on your voice, you can say things that you would otherwise feel embarrassed to just say in your normal tone. And so I just started telling these stories, just looking for anything that jumps out. in the van and we took it all the way down in Florida

you know I never really left that street nights and weekends break in on the street and then I just kept capping it with I know I was lost but I missed those days that first demo that was from day one and I remember thinking like oh that's kind of nice for like a chorus that's like a big bow on everything I'm saying

but I couldn't think of any lyrics at times something starts going la la la la la la lost but the melody in the verse was so in many ways not melodic It's so just like sits in one place that I wanted a just grand melodic line and so I wrote the so that's two 12 strings

and then two regular guitars stacked and that was cool but it wasn't it wasn't it wasn't it and actually if you listen to the song it ends up sitting very far in the background and the thing that really plays the line is the tubular bells which are gorgeously out of tune

the tubular bells are pretty Christmas to me the one bridge too far was at one point I tried to put sleigh bells As soon as I laid that down Like me and my engineer were just like Oh, it's disgusting So it's good to know the limit I didn't actually write about Christmas

But it's a Christmas song to me Because it has things a lot of Christmas songs have Which is this super joyous Friends and Family feeling With an incredibly depressing lyric attached About versions of yourself That are just lost in the wind You know if I have a song called

I miss those days, it buys me some space to say some pretty gnarly things in the verses. And so I was like, oh, I'll tell these very sad stories taking pieces from a past. And then I'll cap it off with this super universal statement. I miss those days. But the lyric is, I was lost, but I miss those days. Because what the song is about is the quote, unquote, worst times in my life, which now are so precious. 16 in a van driving myself to Florida, my first tour. No one's coming to the shows.

No one cares about the work I'm making besides me and a couple friends I've convinced to get in the van with me. I can see all the ways I'm trying to put on a show but I'm not connecting with myself. And you think you're such a mess, but what you don't realize until you move into better phases of your life is being that messed up or lost is also a great freedom, kind of nowhere to go but up.

Because all that shit aside, everything was wide open. at my house in New York, I have a tiny drum room. And a lot of times I'll play the kick and the snare separately. Because I'm not a good enough drummer to just make it feel great. I'm more interested in the sounds I can get. And then I'll mix it together like one person played it. And they sort of jam them all together and get sloppy on top of it. So even right there on that fill, you can hear it's two drum kits.

Because the backbeat stays. And then another drum kit just comes rolling on top of it with a totally different tone. I don't like to use symbols. There are symbols in this song, but they're harder to control. I like to use, like, a voice. I like to take the last line of something that hits on a one and use it as, like, a symbol. So I sing, miss those days.

So the A's of days, cut that out, pitched it up 12-smitones, re-verbed it. It's like, here's the next part, which is what a symbol does. It's always fascinating wherever you're at to visit the worst time of your life, because it always changes. I'm really talking about in the verses. Specific moments talking about 9-11. Can't shake that. Those days when I'm sitting my sister's real tight,

watching a city burn into the night. I'm not sure that we were meant to survive. Before 9-11, I had a pretty simple life. I had a nice family. I went to school. My sister was sick, but it was still everything looked and felt contained to a kid. It all looked right.

9-11 happens. Shortly after that, my sister dies. Shortly after that, my cousin was killed in her house. who was in the war, and just one after the other, it was this moment, the before and after moment, before simplicity. And then things get complicated, you sort of, the bubble burst here in the real world.

And that's something I wanted to talk about in this song. I'm talking about those things very specifically. I never thought I'd write a song like this because it's so direct. Like, if a cop was like, what happened, tell me just the most direct feelings about this time period, or that time period. And I wasn't trying to impress anyone or be poetic.

I would just say this. and it made me nervous that it was a level of sincerity that would almost ring insincere. That's why I went through so many different versions. This one is the vocoder because I was just like, I don't even want to hear myself saying this. I'd rather be a robot. I'd play it for people and they would just be like,

just make it sound like you. And then I just realized I'm either going to do it or I'm not. So this is my voice. It's a little bit of reverb, slightly compressed. Just more in line with the song. I miss those days. A favorite part of I'm making this song was around the time that I put the saxophone in. I was like, I hear just a swarm of bees roaring sax coming in.

Like, I hear Evan Smith, is my sax player. I hear him just playing like his head is on fire. And that comes in the post-chorus. And huge baritones. When I heard that sax, I was like, okay, it comes off as irony, but it's that space right beyond it, which is just actual sincerity. And it's so sincere. that it's sort of hard to even accept.

But I like the way it feels. You know, I'm not trolling anyone. I don't like that. There's no cynicism. The song ends with a fade-out. How did you decide to end it that way? This song, to me, I didn't feel like it was supposed to end. I used to think of a fade-out as something you do

if you can figure out in the song. And then I realized that's actually a very potent move for certain songs. Certain songs are meant to sort of go on forever. As the song fades out, I'm just sort of like walking off into the distance, and I'll pick the story back up when I find a reason to miss the days I'm in right now. This song, it sounds like New Jersey. It's where I'm from. It's where I grew up. It's where I'm talking about a lot.

I wanted it to sound like that. You know, blaring saxophones, Jersey beach culture and Springsteen and it's big and it's hopeful. It just feels like barreling down the Garden State Park where the New Jersey Turnpike. You just fly down the beach. the highway and sort of a dream. You know, Springsteen, I think he said blues and the verse, gospel in the course. And what I've learned from Springsteen specifically is that you can stand up there and that you can tell your whole story, but also still speak to everyone.

The whole thing is like a message in the bottle. And, you know, all the things you're afraid to say in life, you put in the song and then you send it out. And then someone in Australia or Duluth pops their hand up. They're like, oh, me too. I was also messed up, but I miss those days. you're not alone in that feeling because so much of the hardship in life

is thinking you're alone in the feeling. If you wake up in the morning with a weight that you can't describe and nothing's technically wrong in your life and you don't know what it is, no one sees that at the supermarket, you're alone on earth. Until you talk about it with someone

to find out you're actually not. And now here's I Miss Those Days by Bleachers in its entirety. Visit songexploader.net slash bleachers to learn more and to find a link to buy this song. I have a new album of my own coming out on April 24th.

It's been about 15 years since I last put out a full length, and this is the first one that'll be out under my own name, Rishi Kesh Her Way. I started making Song Exploder when I was feeling lost in my own music career. And then for over a decade, I've gotten to have these incredible conversations about the process of making music, talking to other artists, and it made me completely rethink my relationship to music and my way of writing songs. And this album is the product of all of that. It features contributions from some of my favorite artists, including some folks that you may have heard on this podcast, like Iron and Wine, Kevin Morby, Vagabon, Fenlily, and the producer Phil Wine Rope.

I'm going to be on tour playing in cities across the U.S. starting in April, and I'm trying to bring the spirit of the podcast with me. So every show that I'm playing will begin with a conversation about the album with a different amazing guest moderator in each city, like Adam Scott, Samin Nasrat, Jason Manzuckus, Josh Molina, Minjin, Lee, Ken Jennings, John Roderick, Austin Cleon, and more. They're all going to be my conversation partners on stage, and then I'll play with my band. The album is called In the Last Hour of Light, and the first couple songs are out now. You can listen to the music and get tickets for the shows on my website, rishikash.co, or just go to songexploder.net slash live. That's songexploder.net slash live. Thanks. Song Exploder is produced by me, along with Christian Coons, with help from intern Olivia Wood.

Carlos Lerma creates original illustrations for each episode of the podcast, which you can see on the website or on our Instagram. Song Exploder is a proud member of Radiotopia from PRX, a curated network of creative, independent podcasts made possible by listeners like you. Learn more at Radiotopia.fm. If you want to share your thoughts on this episode, you can find Song Exploder on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter at Song Exploder. My name is Rishi Kesh Hereway. Thanks for listening.