Song Exploder - The xx - Crystalised

Episode Date: May 6, 2026

The xx formed in 2005, when they were still in high school. They signed to the UK label Young, and put out their first album in 2009. It won the prestigious Mercury Prize, and was named one of the best albums of the year by Rolling Stone, Pitchfork and more. Since then, the Guardian has named it one of the best albums of the 21st century. This year, the three band members, Romy Croft, Oliver Sim, and Jamie xx played together as The xx for the first time in 8 years. I spoke to them in between the weekends at Coachella, where they were opening their sets with the song “Crystalised.” It’s the first song they ever released, back in April 2009, when the lineup also included Baria Qureshi on guitar. I spoke to Romy, Jamie and Oliver, here at my studio, about how they first found each other, and how they made “Crystalised.”For more info, visit songexploder.net/the-xx.

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. The XX formed in 2005, when they were still in high school. They signed to the UK label Young and put out their first album in 2009. It won the prestigious Mercury Prize and was named one of the best albums of the year by Rolling Stone, Pitchfork, and more. And since then, The Guardian has named it one of the best albums of the 21st century. This year, the three band members, Rami Croft, Oliver Sim, and Jamie XX, played together as the XX for the first time in eight years.

I spoke to them in between the weekends at Coachella, where they were opening their sets with the song Crystallized. It's the first song that they ever released back in April 2009, when the lineup also included Baria Koreshian guitar. I spoke to Rami, Jamie, and Oliver here at my studio about how they first found each other and how they made Crystallized. I'm Jamie, I'm the producer, and I do all the electronic stuff on stage. I'm Rummy, and I play guitar, and I'm one of the songwriters, and I sing.

And I'm Oliver, I play bass, I sing, and I'm the other songwriter. Oliver and I met in nursery school when we were three. And then we met Jamie when we were 11 at the first day of school. I didn't know anybody else that came from my... previous school. So I was on the hump for some friends quickly. And I gravitated towards these two quite instantly. I just felt like some kind of similarity of like a strangeness probably. I felt similar to. This is wonderful, fascinating to hear this now. Jamie and I used to go skateboarding together and we used to watch a lot of skate videos together and discovered a lot of amazing music.

There was a video that Jamie showed me that had Portishead and Mazzie Star and The Cure. I think that was actually an amazing way of discovering music. And then my uncles were DJs. So I inherited my decks when I was 10 years old, playing records, playing my parents' records. And then I learned about the sampling of those records and all of that. We didn't really start making music together. Like we started independently. Jamie was making his solo music.

Romney was making hers, I was making mine. It was just such a private personal exploration, connecting with music. It was such like a shy, I remember a moment of us sitting together and I was like, I like singing. Then Oliver and I were kind of trying to, along with Baria, who was also in the band at the time, trying to find a way to play live. We were gigging me, Romi and Baria for quite a while. for a period of time, I was watching these guys do it and going to the gigs.

Yeah, we begged Jamie. He said, please play drums in the band. Please play live drums because it was a great drummer. I didn't really know what to do because I didn't want to play drums on it because it sounded so good as it was. It wouldn't have worked because these guys were a lot quieter than they are now. You just wouldn't have been able to hear what was going on on stage

if there was a live drum kit. That was one of my main things that was stopping me from doing that. I'm really glad that Jamie said no. at first because it kind of forced Oliver and I to, we figured out a way to make electronic drums, simplistic ones first. And I think because of the limitations, I mean, a lot of everything we'll say is probably come from limitations.

You know, Oliver and I were like writing two electronic drums from the eight track that I had. It had like drum beats in it. So we sort of would use those. Or I remember making some really simple drum beats on like a weird program on, drummer on my computer. What is that program? It's called it.

Hammer. or something. Very basic drum machine. I really remember that and then just we had that, burnt it on a CD and then we gave it to the sound person and said like, it had to be like track three and it would go like one, two, three. Eventually we said to Jamie, please, can you like help us

and make some beats? So you made some beats and then eventually. Eventually I went on stage and started playing the MPC. Having Jamie play the MPC live in the band was a very big turning point of the fluidity of it being live feeling but still electronic. And MPC is a music production centre, so it stands for. And it's actually meant for making full tracks on them, usually hip-hop. But I never did that because I always just wanted to use it as a live tool,

playing it live, tapping the buttons. I think when we started writing crystallised, we only had about four songs. You know, we were playing pub sets for about 20 to 25 minutes. And Jamie had just joined the band. I remember the very, like, earliest demo was Romi and I playing two acoustic guitars. It was in front of the program on... Photo booth. Photo booth, the most roundabout way to go.

It worked, so we'd like filmed ourselves. So it was the video and then you could extract the audio. At that point, songs very much started as like words on a piece of paper. We sort of used to share lyrics back and forth, like poems. I remember my first lyric was inspired by something my mum read in a paper about how you can have your ashes compressed so hard that they turned into diamonds. Which is really macabre, but that was the first lyric. You've applied the pressure to have me crystallized. Those first lines are crystallized, you know, I thought they were so visual and you've got the faith that I could bring paradise.

reacted, then I'm sort of in my second verse trying to write something that has got a similar pattern and wanted to use an interesting word like crystallizer, there's like paralyzed and, you know, other words that are kind of bouncing off what Oliver had said. I'll forgive and forget before I'm paralyzed. Do I have to keep up the pace to keep you satisfied? mine and romie's writing was very much like a patchwork rather than like sat in the room together but so many of the songs from the outside must really sound like we're singing together you know two parts of a love song sang at each other you know rome and i being best friends and not only that

both being gay, you know, it's not directed at one another. It was kind of making each other's perspectives, kind of just hoping they would fit. Sort of a shared space, both individually saying our perspectives on it, but never really asking like, oh, what's that about for you necessarily, just reacting to each other's lyrics. Then you could sort of like create things and then send it back and forth between each other, have that distance from each other, but the closeness. Yeah, That autonomy to be able to make things separately was a big thing for me. And the way Oliver and I sing together kind of comes from a place of like, oh, you go first, no, you go first.

So then we sing together. So don't think that I'm pushing you away when you're the one that I've kept closest. The first time I really remember was us trying to figure out what the song was and how to play it live probably for that weekend's show. I was also trying to figure out my new toy, which was an MPC. and we plugged a microphone into it and got Oliver to sing like an ooh, just a note, just to see how it worked

and then recorded it into the machine and started messing with the pitch live and that became the intro of Crystallised. So that sound is still that same sound from that first day of just trying to work out crystallised. It really feels like it's such a deep dive into memory to remember the creation of this song. I know that in terms of my personal,

no connection with playing the guitar. I've never really been that interested in, like, full chords. I really love melodic guitar. But wanting to be able to sing confidently and play the guitar, there was a simplicity to the instrumentation of it because a lot of what we wanted to put on the album was exactly what we could play live. And I wouldn't feel confident to play that full intro riff and sing.

I had to be, like, move to just running single notes. My conversation. My conversation with the XX continues after this. When it came time to record this song, we'd actually done a few different versions with different producers, like our label and management had set us up on like different speed dates. Like we'd done a version of the song with Diplo, who is the most exciting person ever to us. And I think we'd done another version with a producer called Lex, but it wasn't quite right because I think, you know, the space in the music often ended up being filled by that person's

like sound and their signature. especially because we were all so young we didn't really know what we were doing but it felt like we were just handed over to these different people we all just really loved the sound of the demos they just had like our feeling of the live show and we were just like we'd hear some of the versions back

and be like oh we just like how the demo sounded before and then you kind of get people saying oh but you should work with them because you know they've done this and I think we were all just quite like oh we don't really be really bothered about that. We just want it to sound like us. It was really useful to have gone through all that

and hear all the different ways that things could be filled out and I was learning a lot at the same time but definitely the back of my head I was like, I could do this. We didn't think it was an option for Jamie to produce until we had worked with other people.

And then Xcel employed Roddy MacDonald to be the engineer at their new studio which was just in the garage of the headquarters of Excel. And that sort of opened the door to the possibility of maybe me being able to do it because he had all of the engineering skills. It kind of gave me the opportunity to try and prove myself.

And I remember feeling excited at the idea of Jamie doing it because I know he would keep it sounding like us. Everything was so exciting. We had this space for free. We'd worked out how to do all these songs structurally because we played them live so much. it was the MPC stuff first so that the groove was right to record the guitars over and I just literally played it in like I would in the band

so I was playing it live just do the whole thing in one go we were all talking about rumble drums which is a term I think we just made up from listening to a few different bits of music it's those tumbling rumbling drums I remember you're like tapping on a table to kind of like get the idea across

I was working out how to make electronic production feel live and feel organic trying to work out how to make every click every rim sounds slightly different like it would if you were just hitting a snare so it was like painstaking and I play on the car

and then borrow The Chariya plays the second guitar part, and then Oliver joins with the bass. You've applied pressure, there are me crystal light, yeah. It's interesting to me how sparse the verses are. That I could bring paradise.

There is just always a part of me that when I listen back to that, because I almost don't recognise that person. It hasn't element. It has an element of finding like an old diary from being a teenager. You know, that is not how I sound today. When we recorded that, I was 18 and I'm 36 now. So I'm 18 years later.

Wow. When we were kids, their voices sounded. If you were to pitch one up or one down, they would sound exactly the same. I like to think that we learned to speak at a similar time. You know, we grew up together learning. So I like to think it's kind of interwoven with that that we sing in a similar way. So don't think that I'm pushing you away

when you're the one that I've kept closest. Hi, yeah, yeah. Hi, yeah. I feel like that's like a melody that Oliver brought to the song. There's quite a lot of that. I realized in our first album, I don't know what it is. It might have just been that those are the moments where you play the more complicated.

guitar part so you can do the words at the same time. Quite possibly, yes. I kind of love the playfulness of it just being a free melody that doesn't have words and people can sort of sing along with it. And that particular time I was really obsessed with not using any pre-made sounds. So every sound is sampled and layered from records that I owned. And that was just fun for me. In theory, I think we've talked about,

the vocals at the same time, but I don't know if we actually, you know, I remember being a conversation of it being like a nice idea that we sort of recorded everything in live. I think that was aspirational because it had been written live, but I don't think we ended up doing that in the end. Oh, let me play you Oliver's vocal stem because you can hear Rami singing in the background being picked up by his mic and vice versa. You say I'm foolish. So we did sing it.

At the same time. Oh, that's a nice discovery. Nice. Thank you for showing us this. Hi, yeah. And I've done things in small losses. So don't think that I'm pushing you away when you're the one that I've kept closest. There's a part towards the end of the song where we sing our individual parts that are different over each other.

singing our pre-choruses. Mine is things have gotten closer to the sun and I've done things in small doses so don't think that I'm pushing you away when you're the one that I've kept closest. And mine is glaciers have melted to the sea. I wish the tide would take me over. I've been down on my knees

and you just keep on getting closer. Glassias and closer to the sea and I wish that I'd like me over. So don't think. I'm pushing me always and you just keep on getting closer go slow It's still now

one of my favourite parts We've just performed it But I have to block him out completely in my mind and just sing my part and not try and think about what you're saying because I'll start seeing your part but that I kind of look back on fondly

as like, that's an interesting decision that we did that and I love it now but do you remember why we did that? You know, in hindsight, the song to me is the avoidant and the anxious. And, you know, that moment feels like a moment of like conflict with the resolution of coming back together and singing in unison. The person in the relationship that feels scared of intimacy takes, you know, a step back. And then the other person in the relationship who feels scared by that,

step back, takes a step forward, and that kind of like cat and mouse chase, which is all too frequent because I think those two characters often attract one another. And without, you know, getting to therapy and personal, you know, I definitely relate to that anxious role. And yeah, I kind of see very much this song as like a tale of those two characters. But with a resolution and a compromise of, you know, that final refrain of just go slow. You know, it's not that I'm not in this. It's not that I don't care, but you're going to have to match my kind of speed and how we do this relationship. This album to me is peering into other people's relationship.

and building my own expectations and my own fantasies and excitement about it. I felt such an embarrassment that I hadn't been in love. Like it made the songs less honest or less vulnerable, but it was still such a personal thing for me to share my kind of fantasies and my feelings. I think Rummy grew up a lot faster than I did. and you were writing from more of a place of experience, I think. I have always been drawn to romance and the euphoria of that and the heartache of that.

And I think that I was writing from some experience at this time. Still very early love and lust and longing. But I think we definitely spoke about it not being so specific without time, place or gender. I think this song for me feels very open to interpretation, which I love. We've all grown up together literally from a young age and throughout this band and throughout this process. And I feel very nostalgic hearing this song again and it's really lovely to be able to talk about it. You know, we've been re-learning how to play all this old music and going into the projects and the stems and like reconnecting with the decisions we were making then.

And I've actually really enjoyed that as we are working on a new album. to just reconnect with those decisions and that sort of naivety and the simplicity of that time. And I think it's nice to learn from ourselves again. When you say it's half our life ago, that definitely does bring up. I can't believe it's been that long and I'm so grateful to be able to still play this music. And now here's Crystalized by the XX in its entirety. Visit SongExploder.net to learn more. You'll find links to buy or stream crystallized,

and you can watch the music video. This episode was produced by me, Craig Ely, Mary Dolan, and Kathleen Smith, with the production assistants from 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, subscribe to my newsletter, which you can find on the Song Exploder website. You can also get a SongExploder shirt at songexploder.net slash shirt. I'm Rishi Kesh Hurway. Thanks for listening. I wanted to tell you about a big year-long series from This Day, a history podcast here at Radiotopia. 2026 is America's 250th birthday.

And over at this day, they are in the middle of a big, series called 50 Weeks that shaped America. They're doing deep dives every week on the stories from 250 years of U.S. history that brought us to this very complicated moment. Some of them are new perspectives on huge moments like the Civil War or Prohibition, and others are less discussed stories that still had a massive impact, like the Transcontinental Railroad or the so-called hardhat riots of the 1970s. So as we head to the 4th of July and beyond, this is a great time to start listening to the podcast if you aren't already. Check out This Day. Go to Thisdaypod.com or find This Day wherever you get your podcasts.