Song Exploder - Sarah Kinsley - The King

Episode Date: February 23, 2022

Sarah Kinsley is a singer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist. Her most recent release is an EP called The King, which came out in 2021. When she made it, she was in college  in New York— and actually, at the moment, she still is. But the title track on The King was written at a time when the pandemic had shut things down, and she was back in Connecticut, living with her parents. In this episode, Sarah tells the story of demo’ing the song in her childhood bedroom, then recording it in the studio with producer Jake Aron, before it went on to become a hit with over twenty millions streams online. Sarah’s performing at the Song Exploder show at SXSW on March 16, along with Perfume Genius, Kimbra, and more. Hope to see you there. For more visit, songexploder.net/sarah-kinsley

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. Sarah Kinsley is a singer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist. Her most recent release is an EP called The King, which came out in 2021. When it came out, she was in college in New York City, and at the moment, she still is. But the title track on The King was written at a time when the pandemic had shut things down, and she was back in Connecticut, living with her parents. In this episode, Sarah tells the story of demoing the song in her childhood bedroom and then recording it in the studio with producer Jake Aaron

before it went on to become a hit with over 20 million streams online so far. Also, on March 16th, Sarah's performing at the Song Exploder Show at South by Southwest, along with perfume genius, Kimbra, and more. I hope to see you there. Here's Sarah Kinsley on Song Exploder. My name is Sarah Kinsley. I had been in college for about three years. and it was exciting and riveting.

And then I went home for this uncertain amount of time. I was at my parents' home in Connecticut. A lot of my old books are on the shelves, you know, the same sort of a bed frame, and my walls are kind of covered in the same things. And nothing has changed. And I was craving the feeling of being, like, overwhelmed by life and by music and art and people,

and I missed that feeling a lot. So 10 or 15 days before my birthday, I remember being really moody that day because I was just thinking so much about like, I'm turning 20, you know, this is the sort of shedding of a decade. I had written this list of things that I wanted to do before I turned 20. Stay up all night to watch the sunrise from my window,

dance in the rain barefoot on my driveway and go through the street. And then the last thing on the list was like, write the song of my youth, of my life so far. You know, something really big telling myself to do, something to remember the past few years by. And then I got this piano idea. This piano on my parents' home. My phone is always propped up in front of me on this upright piano that I've been playing since,

for as long as I can remember. I get really sucked into the instrument and I just feel like sometimes once I start playing, I forget everything, but I've never gotten the feeling ever before in music where it feels like something has fallen out of the sky and into my fingertips. I had grown up with the piano. It was like my introduction to music, so it made perfect sense that that was the thing that would be the catalyst for the rest of the song. And then... I can't believe you're making me listen to this. That recording is just hilarious because it's from the day that my brain figured out what the pre-chorus melody would be.

And you can hear me mumbling like a fool. You can hear my fingers going up and down the front. fretboard because I know that there's a really, really sick chord, but I don't know where it is. Before I even finished writing it, I just started producing a demo on my computer. I had this horrible little drum rack of like, that I programmed. And I found a couple synths. I don't have a bass, so I would cheat by just tuning my guitar part an octave lower. But I knew exactly how I wanted certain things to sound.

I recorded it in my childhood bedroom in my closet. I had this makeshift setup of like three really thick blankets kind of taped to my doors. And I would just put my mic there. Kind of wonky demo together. In between the half demo phase and then the final thing, there are so many big decisions to be made. I had never worked with another producer or collaborator on any of my own work. And so that was a big decision. I landed on Jake Aaron, who has a studio in Greenpoint in Brooklyn,

and we had a great phone call. And I just, I loved his earlier work. And it was a relatively short phone call, but I remember feeling very amped and thinking like, okay, we are going to turn this into the thing, you know? So one of the first things we did was we brought in an actual drummer, which was crazy, because I had also only ever sort of programmed MIDI drums.

But Jason Berger, who played with Big Thief, came in. And then we went to this other room in the same building of Jake's studio. And I remember this squeaky clean white piano in the room, and it was all miced and set up. But when I had made the demo, I had found this piano sound for the introduction and I loved the sound. So I was really hesitant about giving that up and replacing it.

But I remember going and sitting down and playing one note. And it was exactly the same as what I had programmed. Jake had a friend who was in a different studio there and he was sort of listening to me. And I just remember seeing him nodding, like furiously like, like, yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, it was so validating. Jake played the bass part.

I played the guitar parts, and we kind of wrote those simultaneously. We had to go back and forth about the rhythm of the bass during the chorus, like maybe five times. I wanted it to move faster, but Jake was like, no, no, I think we should go just on the beat every four. And it was so great.

I played a lot of classical music until I was in high school, That was my whole life for a long time, and I played the piano and violin, and I loved classical music. The chord that I played in the synth is like this really lush, really layered chord, and it was something that I learned about, like, impressionist music or, like, romantic music, which made use of these kinds of chords, and that was a huge part of the king. My favorite lines of the entire song were the first ones that I wrote, which was that first verse,

I built a time machine to see you again. It felt like a really guttural, very expressive way of admitting to myself that I was longing for something that I didn't have anymore. I built a time machine to see you again. And I was just thinking, like, who am I talking about? To hear your phone call your voice down the hall

the way we were. I was speaking to my... in the past saying, you know, I wish I could call myself and hear my own voice and know what it was like to feel so abundantly happy like I had and what I had known. So tell me before we get older, let's do... Those background vocals during the verses are from my first demo. I'll just sing into the mic over and over again on loop and then eventually something comes out of it. I really wanted to keep the background vocals

as how I had recorded them. And we did, and Jake mixed them in, and it was great. There's more background vocals at the end. I'm singing like, again, again, and we did like a bunch of layers of those. We talked a lot about layering when we were in the studio. The fact that the meaning of the song was about the multiplicity of life, or like me talking to myself,

I feel like that influenced with kind of production choices we made. You know, we layered tons of instruments. That piano arpeggio, the idea came in D-flat major. I tried playing it in other keys, and I would go back to that original idea and just sink into it because it felt so right. So the hardest part to sing in the song is the chorus, because it's

it is so high when I think of just the word the king I think of this greatness and I thought about this a lot after writing the song like why the king there's so many connotations immediately imbued into the word

you know it's gendered it has to do with power it has to do with status there's a lot of things like wrapped up into it but when I think of king of your heart I think of living in a way that's loving and loving very powerfully and in a way that's sort of unashamed.

It was really funny when the song came out because I remember people saying like, it's about love. This song is about loving someone and it's about wanting to be the king of their heart and giving yourself to someone. I was like, yes, that's true, except it's about myself. I would love to say, and I think I can very peacefully and, like, surely say that I am the king of my heart. And now, here's The King by Sarah Kinsley in its entirety. Visit songexploder.net to learn more. You'll 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, 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 Manzuchas, Josh Malina, 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. This episode and the show's theme music were made by me, with editing help from Craig Ely and Casey Deal,

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.