Song Exploder - Remi Wolf - Soup

Episode Date: August 21, 2024

Remi Wolf is a singer and songwriter originally from Palo Alto, California. She’s been releasing music since 2019. She performed at Coachella in 2023, and has toured with Olivia Rodrigo, Lorde, and Paramore. Her second album, Big Ideas, came out in July 2024. I talked to Remi about how she and her collaborators wrote and produced the song “Soup.” How they used 80s gear to make 80s sounds, and how a fun anthem quickly turned into something pretty vulnerable.For more, visit songexploder.net/remi-wolf. 

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. Remy Wolfe is a singer and songwriter, originally from Palo Alto, California. She's been releasing music since 2019. She performed at Coachella in 2023 and toured with Olivia Rodriguez, Lord and Paramore. Her second album, Big Ideas, came out in July 2024. I talked to Remy about how she and her collaborators wrote and produced the song Soup. how they used 80s gear to make 80s sounds,

and how the idea of making a fun anthem quickly turned into something pretty vulnerable. My name is Remy Wolf. So I was on tour at the end of 2022 in Australia. I was holding koalas, I was chilling with kangaroos, and I was also in a lot of airports and in a lot of cafes. And in said airports and cafes, they play the song Walking on a Dream by Empire of the Sun.

I was hearing it everywhere, because they're an Australian band. And it was a song I already knew, but I regained an appreciation for it when I was hearing it in its natural habitat. The song is this huge four-on-the-floor bangor. And when I would hear it, I was like, this is such a smash. And, like, I would only want to hear this in a stadium or an arena or somewhere where, like, you're completely enveloped in, like, reverb. That, I think, was the first thought of soup, because I wanted to make something that felt huge, like it was created for a big space. Two weeks later, I went to New York. I went to Electric Lady Studios with my friend Jared, Solomon, Solomon Phonic, Knox Fortune, and Carter Lang.

And it was our first session together ever. Jared created a drum loop on the drum tracks, which was this drum machine that we were using from the 80s. Knox is playing chords on the profit, and Jared was playing bass. And the first thing that came out was doing business on the top of the roof. Those words literally came from us being in Studio D, an electric lady, which is on the roof, and we were doing business.

But it kind of ended up very quickly morphing into like this scene of me on a rooftop parting a little too hard, like way too high, way too drunk. And in that abandoning the needs of my partner, I was in a relationship at the time. And it was relatively new. And I think we had just kind of pushed beyond the honeymoon phase of it all. So it started to get really real. I was scared that I was going to be too much for this person. That feeling of, am I enough?

Am I able to control myself? And am I going to be able to do this? It is so at the top of my vocal register. Like, I am belting. I think I recognized immediately that it was the chorus because this can't be the verse, because I don't know where the hell else we're going to go. I knew that from the chorus, we had to go down, at least an octave,

in terms of just like where I was singing. So essentially what I did was I was like, okay, guys, we're going to go into the studio room, and we're going to sit in a circle on the floor, and we're just going to pass the mic around. And I'll get my voice notes out, and I'll make sure I record everything. Stay, stick around.

Please don't get in your car. If a plane's on the ground, it can never really get that far. I don't really get that far. The verse is your partner is kind of like, I'm going to go, and it's kind of me begging them to stay and telling them that I really want to change. and I'm like ready to do things differently for them. Now I feed and I'm getting better, better. I mean, I've had, unfortunately, plenty of situations where I've been in relationships with people

and just sometimes go into this like pure self-destruction mode, throwing my hands up to the sky and letting my demons fly. And it's unpleasant. We laid down some guitar, and we laid down a couple more synths, like some choreography one. It sounds almost like a weird piano that's been like welded with keys inside of it, and it just sounds strange. We were layering scents, and there was a lot of 80s stuff, which is, I think, why people

have this feeling from my music that it's very nostalgic and, like, throwbacky. And it's because we are using gear from those times. You're so patient with the animals too. If you gave me your keys, I'll go and pick up the soup. Making food for other people is one of my love languages. My mom is a chef and taught me how to cook really, really early in my life. I mean, the idea of it is like, I'm going to go get you soup when you're sick. reiterating that idea of like I want to be able to be there for you and like Knox is honestly

the reason why I gave myself the permission to open up lyrically in this song because I would say a lyric or he would like kind of shout out like a lyrical idea and I'd be like whoa that's really direct

and he'd be like yeah I think we should be direct and I was like okay I think you're correct So my big line in this song is, I don't want to live without you, which seems so direct and so simple, which is normally kind of a scary place for me to go. I think typically in my writing,

I'm able to express myself in like metaphors or in drastic imagery or even just like shock value lyricism. And I think it allows me to like hide behind something. like I'm the only one that knows the truth behind this song. And I think in some ways that excites me, but I think in some ways I use it as a crutch. But there are times when we need to kind of let that go and just lay it out on the table. So yeah, I think soup was like a big step, letting myself be seen a little bit more. Even people that are like really close to me, unless you're like really tightly in my heart,

will I share like these like nightmarish feelings, I guess, that I have at times? But I've literally said that phrase, like, I don't want to live without you. Or I felt that feeling before of being so deeply attached, feeling like your entire self-worth is being derived from another person. And I think that I've been in long periods of like deep codependency where I definitely feel that feeling and don't like expressing it because it's like embarrassing.

But then you've gone to put it in a song that millions of people are going to hear. Yeah. Everybody can say nana, nana, nana. And in my original intention in the song, to make it like this big arena song that everybody can kind of relate to in a way, a trope of those songs

is that there always is a Lala or a Nana or a Dada or something in there that is like a baby sound. And essentially, my plan for this song live is that this bridge is going to be a huge moment and I'm going to get everybody clapping and everybody's going to be screaming their nana all together, no matter like what language you speak, no matter like if you are two years old or 95, you can do it.

The arrangement of this non-anana section really took a journey. It used to be full of sense. and then we've uncovered that picking line. I think it adds like a little element of funk, which is kind of always something I'm attracted to. And I just am obsessed with harmonies. I love creating an instrument out of my voice to feel almost like another synth.

And I was belting, and they're the highest I've ever belted. And it's honestly a challenge that I really like, pushing my voice to its limits and seeing where I can go. I didn't have to go that hard, but I did. At the end of the night, it was like two in the morning. We kind of had wrapped up, and we were drunk, everybody. And I was like, can I play the OB8? And that's where we got the line, it's a very simple line, but it goes,

and you kind of hear it all throughout the song, this one recurring OB8 line, and drunkenly I wanted to play drums and I can play drums like relatively well but not drunken at 2 a.m. Horrible drums but nicely miced but the final chorus doesn't have any drums it's really letting that vocal speak for itself

for the first time I really wanted this euphoric release at the end of this tune that's so like tense We're really building so much tension. And then finally you're kind of able to like sit back and enjoy the vocals and the message and like the tones of these sense. Unfortunately, the relationship that I was in at that time did not work out. But getting to learn more about myself through that relationship and through not being in that relationship has been really important for me. I was a girl wanting to be on a journey of self-improvement, but not yet on it.

And I think the song was almost like a cry for help to myself in that way. But I'm trying to be a better person and trust the process. If I have the intention of improving, then it'll happen. Coming up, you'll hear how all of these ideas and elements came together in the final 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 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,

Rishikash.co, or just go to SongExploder.net, slash live. That's songexploder.net slash live. Thanks. And now here's Soup by Remy Wolf in its entirety. Visit songexploder.net. You'll find links to buy or stream soup and you can watch the music video. This episode was produced by Craig Ely, Theo Balcom, Kathleen Smith, Mary Dolan, and myself. Our production assistant is Tiger Biscop. The episode artwork is by Carlos Lerma, and I made the show's theme music and logo. 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. If you'd like to hear more from me, you can sign up for my newsletter, which you can find on the Song Exploder website. You can also follow me and Song Exploder on Instagram, and you can get a Song Exploder t-shirt at songexploder.net slash shirt. I'm Rishi K. Sherway. Thanks for listening.