Song Exploder - Joy Oladokun - Look Up

Episode Date: January 12, 2022

Joy Oladokun is a singer and songwriter from Arizona, now based in Nashville, who’s been releasing music since 2015. Last year, she was named an Artist to Watch by NPR, Spotify, and Amazon, and she was #1 on Vogue’s list of New LGBTQ Artists To Listen to Now. She put out her third album, In Defense of My Own Happiness, in June 2021. It includes the song “Look Up.” For that track, she worked with Grammy-nominated songwriter and producer Dave Bassett, and while they were working and talking, they recorded a couple long voice memos. Joy sent me those voice memos, and in this episode, in addition to the stems of the recording, and Joy’s story about how it was made, you’ll hear the actual moments in late 2019 when the song was first coming together. Joy explains how the song was inspired by the different, and maybe opposite ways that she and her partner see the world. For more, visit songexploder.net/joy-oladokun.

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. Joy Laddikun is a singer and songwriter from Arizona, who's now based in Nashville. She's been releasing music since 2015. And last year, she was named An Artist to Watch by NPR, Spotify, and Amazon, and she was number one on Vogue's list of new LGBTQ artists to listen to. She put out her third album, in defense of my own happiness, in June. 2021. It includes the song Look Up. For that track, she worked with Grammy-nominated songwriter and producer Dave Bassett, and while they were working and talking, they recorded a couple of long

voice memos. Joy sent me those voice memos, and in this episode, you'll hear the actual moments in late 2019 when the song was first coming together. And Joy explains how the song was inspired by the different and maybe opposite ways that she and her partner see the world. My name is Joy LaDocoon. The day I started working on this song, I was on a trip to L.A. to work on some songs with some people I hadn't met before. And it was December. It had been a long year. And it was one of those things where I was like, I don't want to go to school today, you know. I wish I could sleep in or, you know, watch a movie or go back to Arizona and see my parents. But instead of

I was in LA writing music. I do get tired of writing sessions, but even if everything goes topsy-turvy and this session is awful, I still kind of feel like you learn something about yourself or about the world. And so I try to enter into each one as fresh as possible,

aside from the general feelings of, man, I'm tired and I just wanted to be Christmas, you know? I wrote this song with Dave Bassett. When Dave was introduced, to me, my publisher gave me the sales pitch. It was like Dave has worked with X person. Like, there was some selling point. And I don't super care about those things. I tend to, when those things come across my desk, listen to the music and see, like, could this person help? And I just listened to his work, and I just thought it was all, I don't know, it was all meaningful.

It seems like Dave consistently asked the artist, what do you want to write about? What do you want to say? And so I went from being like, sure, I'll write with this nice white guy, to like, oh, this is someone who could be a helpful conduit for something that I have trouble accessing on my own. When I first got to Dave's, I sat down and I honestly picked up a guitar pretty quickly, which is not usually the case. But we were getting to know each other while playing guitar. It was this weird soundtrack to the conversation of getting to know someone. And I think as I started to talk about some of the things that I was thinking about and going through and processing, we were landing on some of the initial chords. And then eventually we were humming things into our cell phones.

Kind of like that one, but that also like when you're like... I'm trying to content-wise, my girlfriend and I have been having lots of conversations. I'm, like, pretty pessimistic, and she's, like, the eternal optimist, and it's really beautiful. I think at that time, the things that are happening now in my career were not happening and we're not on the horizon, and I felt lost at sea a little bit. And so a lot of the conversations Rachel and I and my girlfriend were having were around how do you hope for a future and an outcome that you, can't see or that you don't totally understand. It's very easy for your brain to convince you that everything is going to be wrong always and that things will be hard forever or like if things are good, don't expect them to be good for too long because they're going to just crash down. I really am

a bit of a pessimist and my girlfriend is just this incredible optimistic person who is able to acknowledge that life can be hard but still hope. for it to be good. So I think that it was just on my mind because it was like, what do I need to sing to myself? How do I craft this song into an eternal lesson for myself?

That's a great theme right there. I mean, I'm sure it's been recurring in your stuff, but that's... So Dave and I are having another conversation. You can look at anything in two different ways, you know? Yeah. You know, I start thinking about what he says and these wires crossed my brain.

And I'm like, the broken roller coaster. So this is the feeling, this is the emotion, this is the image. I moved from there to, like, hiding out in the backseat of your car and, like, how, like, I used to as a sort of lonely high schooler slash college student put on Manchester Orchestra records in my car and like avoid talking to people about what I really wanted to talk about. And then into the you tell yourself it's raining because that is my ML of like to say it's stormy, it's gross, there's no hope. You tell yourself it's raining the clouds are in your head.

You tell yourself it's better. Too far together done good. To jump before you fall. As someone who can live in my head, I can lose the forest for the trees, so to speak. I'm coming in, I'm talking about my life and my partner and my brain and how it works, and Dave was able to hear it and help organize how the idea would translate top to bottom. Dave has a live room in his studio, so I went into the live room, sat down in front of a mic and with a stool and stuff and played the guitar.

I like really natural guitar recordings, like all the noise and stuff. Sometimes your life feels like a broken roller coaster, a thousand useless moving. Sometimes you spend your nights too scared of getting closer, hiding out in the backseat of your car. That's a melitron. It's sort of like a tape synth thing where you can choose sounds and the sound he chose was like vibes.

So it plays a little tape sample of a vibe each time you press a note. And so he just played that little bell thingy and it was beautiful. Sort of dances around what the guitar is already doing and then some of the vocal things that come in. So don't tell yourself it's raining. your head you tell yourself it's bad to jump before you fall again before you lose it all again

look up I always like to joke when I'm recording the vocals for a song that I just wrote that I've never heard this song before it is true you're sort of like performing something and connecting with something that you have never super heard in its complete version. And so I just stumbled through it twice because I'm like, I've never, none of this

is familiar to me. Look up. Do you see the sunlight? Look up. There's flowers in your head. There's somebody loves you. You know troubles is always going to be there. Don't let it bring it to your knees. Yeah. Look up. I wanted the bass to be this marriage between like a bass sound and a little growlier guitar sound. I love 60s and 70s, dusty, low country vibes, which it's music that to me sounds like it was made for driving. Just music to drive to. I really just like pianos. And for a lookup specifically, it gives it this emotional gravitose.

that I don't think it would have if it was just sort of this blackbird rip-off tune, you know, on the guitar. In the lines right before the chorus, I think the goal was to sort of mimic my racing negative mind. That's the reason for sort of the cadence change and then the jamming those two lines, like the jump before you fall again, before you lose it all again, because that's how my brain is. Like it just sort of ramps up and ramps up and ramps up until I'm like making a weird decision or I feel deregulated. And the hope for the pre-course was to sort of make it feel like that. But then you hit Look Up and it's like this breath of like, oh, take a second. You tell yourself it's bad to jump before you fall again, before you lose it all again. Look up.

In this song in particular, I can't help but think of Rachel and Rachel's voice simply because it really is something I've learned from her to be like, oh, I had an awful day at work and people were tough. Let's go on a hike and like enjoy nature or like, let's play with the dog because, you know, the dog's goofy to like find those like sweet, beautiful moments in the midst of what can be big or small chaos in your life and say like this is good. Sort of an incorruptible good, you know. I think that's why I went with sunlight and flowers in the hair, you know, and people who love you.

Look up. Do you see this sun, there's flowers, you know troubles always going to be there. Don't let it bring it to your knees. The rhythm on the track is all samples. We found a cute soft kick that we liked doing that sort of four on the floor pulsing. And then Dave added some shakers and clicks and just little like percussive elements that kept the movement going without distracting from the more important parts of the track. That is another melaton. I think that's like the cello patch.

And it's dope because that's why it's a little like wobbly and weird feeling because it's just tape. And it's just a recording of someone playing the cello that someone's stuck inside a box and now Dave gets to play. After we finished this song and I left Dave's, I thought about it a lot because it was one of those days where it's sort of like, I even started by saying

I didn't super want to go to work and I left was something that I really treasured, which is really cool. I was maybe going to go back out to L.A. and do background vocals with Dave, but because we couldn't travel, I was home. And I, during that time, had started taking really seriously, trying to have sort of like a full-service studio vibe upstairs

and cutting the background vocals was actually one of the first things that I did on my own for my project. And I, like, I ended up producing a few songs on my project and stuff like that, but it was doing the background vocals for Lookup, where I was like, oh, I think I could do this. I like to play songs for Rachel on the guitar. Sometimes the songs help me communicate my feelings or, you know, like help her understand.

Like, oh, she's been trying to tell me this, and this is finally the clearest way she's ever said it, you know? And it's honestly part of our language with each other. So I came back and I played it for her just me and my acoustic. Mondays aren't always bright. Some days you lose the fight, but life can be beautiful if you let it be. I think that people really do teach us a lot, specifically the people that we allow to be close to us. You know, if you can have care and if you can have fresh air and if you can have self-compassion, I think you can get a lot done.

Those are all things that I've learned from Rachel. And so it was one of those moments where I like played it and like there's just sort of like emotional like, thank you for helping me learn this. Here's Look Up by Joy Alatican in its entirety. A broken roller coaster, a thousand useless moving parts. Sometimes you spend your nights too scared of getting closer, hiding out in the backseat of your car. You tell yourself it's raining, the clouds are in your head.

To yourself, it's better to jump before you fall again, again before you lose it all again you see the sun no trouble's always gonna be there don't let it bring it to your knees aren't always bright some days you lose the fight but life can be beautiful if you let it be so keeps taunting blank page for your poetry if you let it be on tell yourself it's raining die in your head It's to jump before you fall again, before you lose it all again. Lucy the sun.

No troubles always gonna be there. Don't let it bring it to your knees. Sometimes your life feels like a broken roller coaster, a thousand useless moving parts. No trouble's always gonna be there. Don't let it bring it to your knees, yeah. Trouble's always gonna be there. Bring it to your knees. Visit SongExploder.net to learn more about Joy Alatican.

You'll also find links to stream or download this track. 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 Kaysh 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 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, Rishicage.co, or just go to songexplor.net,

slash live. That's songexploder.net slash live. Thanks. This episode and the show's theme music were made by me. Editing help came from Casey Deal and Craig Ely, artwork by Carlos Lerma, music clearance by Kathleen Smith, and production assistants from Chloe Parker. 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 Song Exploder. You can also get a Song Exploder t-shirt at songexploder.net slash shirt. I'm Rishi-Kesh Hereway. Thanks for listening.