Song Exploder - girl in red - Serotonin

Episode Date: May 5, 2021

Marie Ulven is a singer, songwriter, and producer from Norway, who makes music under the name girl in red. She just released her debut album in April 2021, but she already has a big fanbase and she’s gotten a lot of critical acclaim from two EPs and singles that she’s released online, including a couple that went gold. The New York Times included her work in their best songs of the year in both 2018 and 2019, and she was nominated for Best Newcomer at the Norwegian Grammys. "Do you listen to girl in red?" has also become code on TikTok, a kind of shibboleth, to ask if someone’s a lesbian. In this episode, Marie breaks down the song "Serotonin," a song that started as a video she posted to her own TikTok in the early days of lockdown in 2020. You’ll hear the original version she recorded on her own, before collaborating with Norwegian Grammy-winning producer Matias Téllez, and later, with Grammy-winning artist and producer Finneas O’Connell, in order to finish the song. For more, visit songexploder.net/girl-in-red

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 Hirwe. Before this episode starts, I want to let you know that there's some frank discussion of mental health issues, including panic attacks, medical fears, and thoughts of self-harm. There's also some explicit language. Marie Ulvan is a singer, songwriter, and producer from Norway, who makes music under the name Girl in Red. She just released her debut album in April 2021. but she's already got a lot of fans and critical acclaim from two EPs and singles that she released online, including a couple of songs that went gold.

The New York Times included her songs in their best songs of the year for both 2018 and 2019. Last year, she was nominated for Best Newcomer at the Norwegian Grammys, and this year she won their award for international success of the year. Asking, do you listen to Girl in Red, has also become a kind of code on TikTok, a sort of shibble to ask if someone's a lesbian. In this episode, Marie breaks down the story. song Serotonin, a song that started as a video she posted to her own TikTok in the early days of lockdown in 2020. You'll hear the original version she recorded on her own before she started

working with producer Matthias Tellez, and later with Grammy-winning artist and producer Phineas O'Connell, who helped finish the song. My name is Marie, and I am the artist behind Girl in Red. My mom's house is in Horten, in Norway, which is a very small town, like an hour outside of Oslo. That's where I grew up. That's where I learned everything when it comes to music. And yeah, that's where I became who I am. So it was the beginning of quarantine and I had gone back home to my mom because I was really mentally ill and I was completely dysfunctional. So I had to stay there. I was going through some really weird stuff. Like I thought I was going to die, whether it was from like blood clots or like heart attacks, just like all these like weird.

health issues because I just had a feeling of illness. I really believed those feelings of illness to be real. And it was just really hard being home also because I was suddenly leaving my everyday life and also the world was ending. It felt like, at least to me, I don't know, it was a lot of things changing very fast. I think I'd started therapy in January or something of 2020

and I found out I had OCD, which made a lot of sense, but then I could no longer meet my therapist, so we ended up doing Skype calls, which weren't really working for me, and then calling on the phone, and I was like, I can't even see you, and I don't feel like you understand what I'm going through right now. I remember starting thinking of this song, because I just talked to my therapist, and I'm pretty sure that's when I realized I don't want to talk to my therapist anymore. I was in my room, And then I started filming a TikTok messing around in logic like I always do. And the first thing I wrote was the intro.

And then I remember I recorded this really cool guitar thing. And then I was like sporadically filming some parts. And it ended up just being this little TikTok thing that, you know, didn't really take over the world. But it was just a beat at that time, really. TikTok videos are fun to make. Not necessarily like the editing part, but I think it's more of like the activity of just staying busy with something is good, especially when you're in a really bad place.

It's good to kind of be a little bit distracted when it's very easy to spiral into your own mind. I have actually never had a TikTok turn into a song before. But after I made that TikTok, I just felt like there was something there. I was excited about the guitar. I was excited about this bass, and I was just excited about the beat. And I started singing like, I'm running low on serotonin.

Chemical imbalance got me twisting things. Stabilize with medicine. There's no depth to these feelings. I feel like I learned about serotonin in like pop culture. I also actually talked to my stepmom And she just told me serotonin is this thing that levels your mood and your emotions. Your brain is just like this science project, really. And we're all kind of our own testing rabbit to our own brain,

this science project running by itself. Dig deep can't hide from the corners of my mind. I'm terrified of what's inside. And then I was like, I don't know what to do anymore. I'm going to take this to the studio. Creating an album all by yourself is a very daunting task. I knew I couldn't do it all by myself. But it was really important for me to feel like I have full creative control

and to not sit in the back of the studio and watch someone do something without me saying anything. But I also don't think it would be as fun to do it all by myself. So my A&R person, his name is Will, he texted me and suggested that Mattias Tellas, this guy in Bergen was the right guy for me. Really on the beginning of the studio version of Serotonin, I started getting all these like rap ideas, like faster lyricism. We did that together and made this like darker universe and this rap part. So this is me singing over the audio from the computer, creating voice memos. I was in a total different headspace at that time.

I was about to get a dog and it was summer. I was feeling a lot more hopeful, but reflecting what had happened earlier that year, I fell into lyrics that were a lot darker than maybe I had. had anticipated. I get intrusive thoughts, like cutting my hands off, like jumping in front of a bus, like how do I make the stop when it feels like my therapistates me, please don't let me go crazy, put me in the field with daisies, might not work, but I'll take them maybe. When I think back and I hear those lyrics, especially hearing me perform them without anything

playing in the back, it's like, whoa, just like, girl. But also I find it a lot easier to write about things that I have to have. been very hard when they're not that hard anymore, especially about like intrusive thoughts. In therapy, I learned that having intrusive thoughts does that mean that you actually want to do them? It's just a thought and a thought is just a thought and you don't have to do anything about it. So when I realized that, I was like, oh shit, finally I'm able to say this stuff in a song because the weight of it was kind of lifted.

I've been breaking daily But only me can save me So I'm capitulating Crying like a fucking baby That was the first take And I was like I will never be able to replicate this take

It's not even perfectly sung But like The energy is perfect And after we made that The song started clearing up A lot more And we added a lot of weird Percussions

Like we added like a bus crashing And then together we really found the very euphoric chorus. We started out with a four on the floor beat, like, dun, done, dun, dun. And I was like, no, no, I don't want a four on the floor beat. So we added those to sort of make it less four on the floor, like a running kind of beat instead. But then it took me a while to get the second rap part because the first rap part leans so heavily on the lyrics

and it leans so heavily on the rhythmic part. It was hard to get meaningful lyrics in that exact same rhythm on the second part. Intrusive thoughts like burning my hair off, like hurting somebody I love, like does it ever really stop? When there's control, I lose it. Incredibly impulsive, so scared I'm gonna end up doing something stupid. And then I totally lost track of it. We both lost track of it.

We ended up making like 13 versions of that song. For a long time, we were really lost on the entirety of serotonin. I felt like I needed just like a fresh set of ears that could just be like, oh wait, let me try some shit. And then we sent it to Phineas O'Connell. Finius O'Connell and then he added some more percussion in the rap parts. Yeah, and he added this really cool synth that gave it a lot more energy that made it so much cooler. Like, Finney's really cleared the path to the DNA that I had initially felt when I made that TikTok.

I'm breaking daily when I'm a saba, I don't want to be sikala. I don't la be la da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da the mumbling part is just full on rambling because I had not written lyrics yet and I was in the booth and that was all I could get out and then I sent that to Phineas and he said what if you keep that rambling in there? Like I thought it was really funny and I was like, oh, I immediately liked that idea because it was so strange and so weird and like I don't know, it was kind of fun and the song is so dark but also being able to have fun in the midst of it all. It's like the way I coped with my mental health now is like laugh about certain things. So keeping that random, rambling

part in the song, that feels so innately, like, serious, I just thought it was a good move. But when I miss a balla, I don't want to be cicada. I don't love it. And then it has this gigantic outro. That was a timpani. And I've been using a lot of timpennies lately. Me and Matai said that the timpennies are like the old-fashioned sub-hit before we started like using like 808s and that's kind of what we were going for. And then I made this guitar thing that plays the lead melody there. I dubbed that with a bunch of vocals and then Phineas dubbed my vocals with even lower vocals and it just became this like big release.

Listening to the outro in the context of the album is incredibly moving to me because it's just this song with so many emotions that in the end I couldn't even put anything else in there and it just feels like this release and kind of like I don't know, coming to terms with everything

that goes on in my head. Can you can't know the heart if you can get blood pro? I was at an ER talking to a doctor. I felt like to live every other. That's like an audio clip my friend recorded. I'm saying, I feel like that I'd be a tonne in your body.

I'm saying, can you feel it in your body if you get a blood clot in your head or something? It felt like my heart stopped beating and that my body got really heavy. I had just had a major panic attack at a hotel in Bergen while making the album. And hold on, I'm just going to tell my dog to go to bed.

Like you say. Like you say. Okay. There she goes. Like you say. Yeah, so I had just had like a major panic attack and I decided to put it in the outro because it felt like, okay, here's a song where I've sort of like been really honest. And I've also maybe added a little few bits and pieces to make it all sound okay and good. And here at the end is like the reality.

At the end of the day, I need to live with all of this shit every single day. Like, I did get something out of talking to my therapist for four months. Like, I did learn a lot about myself, and I also learned a lot about mental health. And I think that's how I was able to go from, I can't go through a day without thinking I'm going to die, to be able to sing about it and rap about it. And now, if I ever get a weird thought like that, I am able to, just let go of it and then fall asleep. Definitely think I need to get a new therapist,

even though I don't think I'm going to die every day. The mental health, it just moves around. If it's good, then it finds somewhere else to eat you alive. And now here's serotonin by Girl in Red in its entirety. Serotonin, chemical imbalance got me twisting things. Stabilized with medicine. There's no death to. these feelings what's inside.

Or visit songexploder.net. You'll find links to buy or stream serotonin, and you can watch the music video. You can also watch Marie's original TikTok where the song first began. 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, Rishikesh, 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 Manzukas, Josh Molina, Minjin Lee, Ken Jennings, John Roderick, Austin, Clion, 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. This episode was made by me with editing help from Casey Deal, artwork by Carlos Lerma, and music clearance by Kathleen Smith. Special thanks to Phineas and Tini Lieberson. Song Exploder is a proud member of Radiotopia from PRX, a network of independent, listener-supported, artist-owned podcasts. You can learn more about our shows at Radiotopia.fm.

You can follow me on Twitter and Instagram at Rishi Hereway, and you can follow the show at SongExploder. You can also get a Song Exploder t-shirt at songexploder.net slash shirt. I'm Rishi-Kesh Hirway. Thanks for listening.