Switched on Pop - AJR Conjure Broadway on 'OK Orchestra'

Episode Date: March 30, 2021

Adam, Jack and Ryan Met, better known as AJR, started playing gigs on the streets of New York City. The sidewalk hustle taught them how to grab the attention of the least forgiving audience. Now on their fourth studio album, OK Orchestra, they’ve honed an ear-stopping sound that combines modern pop with broadway bombast.  Their platinum-certified single “Bang” pairs a carnival-like horns section with skittering trap style hi-hats. This strange pairing worked. Peaking at No. 8 on the Hot 100, the song is their strongest commercial release so far, despite sounding like nothing else on Billboard. It is a coming of age celebration (“I’m way too old to try so whatever, come hang / Let’s go out with a bang”) with lyrics that lament the pedestrian parts of adulthood: eating healthy, paying taxes, and remembering your passwords. Like its broadway influences, “Bang” takes little moments and makes them sound larger than life.  Switched On Pop’s Charlie Harding spoke with Jack and Ryan Met about the making of “Bang,” their latest single “Way Less Sad” and the showtune influences on OK Orchestra. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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It's free for iOS users. Welcome to Switchdown Pop. I'm songwriter Charlie Harding. And I'm musicologist Nate Sloan. Mr. Sloan, is today your birthday? Samara your birthday. Today is my birthday. Happy birthday.

Making a podcast. Don't do it. If you sing that song, I will. All right. Well, I don't want to get in any trouble here. but I'm kind of already underwater because a few weeks back when we were talking about

the weekends blending lights and analyzing some 8-0-8 baselines, we made a brief allusion to the song Bang by AJR. I remember this. Yeah, you called it post-rock polka. I think I was thinking of it as kind of like a poca trap kind of sound and

we got some blowback. Wait, wait, no, no, no. You, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, you called it Poka. You called it post-rock Poka. I thought you did. No, no, no, no. Don't try and twist this. Don't try and fake news this around you. That was your appellation. I'm going back to the tape. We're fact-checking this. All right, let's go to the tape. Let's go to the tape.

Yeah, and now we're in like a very different style than Ariana Grande's R&B. We're in some, I don't know what we call this, post-rock polka or something. Okay, you doctored that recording. That sounds like your voice. Pitch shifted, you know, deep faked this. I don't, this, oh gosh, okay. We got called out for this. Okay.

Because this is not post-rog-Poca. There's more going on here. And, you know, AJR actually putting out a new record. They've just put out OK Orchestra. Bang was a huge hit last year. Went platinum, went to Brayette in the Billboard. it was ubiquitous. And we actually have the opportunity to speak with AJR.

And I'm just feeling like kind of awkward and I don't know what to do. And I'm just, I wanted to come to you and be like, how should we think about this song bang? Like it's a little carnival-esque like with fresh ears. What am I want to say to them? Like, I feel like I threw them under the bus. You're feeling the need to make amends. You know, Selena Gomez is a bad liar and I'm a bad musicist. This was some lazy adjectival word salad.

And also, I own apology to all the polka fans out there for For real. Maligning an incredibly vivacious and historic musical genre. But tell me a little bit who is what is A.J.R. Maybe that will help me come to come around the horn. Well, AJR, of course, brothers, Adam, Jack, and Ryan met. They're from New York City. your hometown.

The three brothers started out playing music on the streets and eventually put out a bunch of records. They're now on their fourth. Okay, orchestra. And they're known for high entertainment value, lots of energy in their music.

And, yeah, man, I don't know. This track, like, it has just, like, it's carnivalesque to me. It reminds me of, like, for the benefit of Mr. Kite off of the Beatles, Sergeant Peppers or something. And of course, Henry the Hors dances a war.

This is what you'd call a music hall vibe, perhaps. What do you mean? A music hall was like the vaudeville stage in Britain. It was like where you would go

to see comedy in theater and music. And a lot of the music had this kind of jaunty brass and drums, peppy kind of feel. And because the Beatles grew up with it

as kids and Paul's dad, I think, was like in a musical band. Like that was, that seeped into their sound and probably a lot of other musicians as well. And maybe that's like a little bit of the vibe of catching here as well because Bang does feel like this is a big celebratory kind of we're all marching along together. As I said, yeah, high energy, high entertainment value here. It's very theatrical, you know? It feels like a show. It feels like, dare I say,

a little bit like a Broadway musical. Yeah, you might. I know you have a fondness for the musical theater world. I am. I'm a lover of the Great White Way. I have written maybe a musical that we don't need to get into. And I love the drama. And I love the theatricality of this style of music.

And I think you get that in AJR. And in doing so, maybe they're tapping into a really, long history in American popular music where hits songs draw on the theater or actually just come right out of the theater. That's been going on since the beginning of the popular music industry. Right, right, right. Are there any songs that you're thinking of in particular? One that comes to mind is one of my favorite songs ever. And the version I love is by Nina Simone. On her 1965 album, I Put a Spell on You. It's Feeling Good. Oh, yeah, I love this one.

The descending horn bass line, her exceptional vocal. Yeah, it's beautiful. So you know the song, but what you might not know is that it originated in a musical, actually a British musical. Actually, a British musical that was meant to kind of bring back this musical tradition that we were just talking about. Huh. And when you listen to the original cast recording of the song, sung by Siamen. Grant. I mean, you can hear it's the same tune, but man, it's sung in a very different way. It really speaks to the difference between these two worlds, between the dramatic world of musical

theater and the more kind of immediate and visceral world of pop. Let's check out that original cast recording for a sec. Fish in the sea, you know how a feel. River running free, you know how a feel. That is theatrical, orchestral. That is almost operatic. Yeah, very different vibe than Simone. No, she sings it in this different way, and the arrangement is so different, right?

It's like kind of groovier and slinkier. And this song has such a long legacy. I mean, everybody covers this. every American Idol contestant sings it at some point and lots of musicians sample it into these radically

new contexts like some of which are very surprising like Flo Rida how I feel I'm not even ready for this oh if you know how I feel

dude that's fun I don't know if it doesn't just this but I mean, it just to me, it speaks to, like, even if you might not be aware of it, the musical theater tradition is, like, such a integral part of the sound of contemporary popular music. And so I would love to hear, like, if that's something that AJR thinks about when they're putting these songs together, like, what's their background? Is this a conscious choice? Is it unconscious?

Like, where does the sound come from? I'm super curious to hear more and to think about their position as part of this much longer story. So Polka No More, I want to get the real dirt on AJR.

Okay, well, I feel like we can potentially redeem ourselves. It's the day before their album release. When this episode drops, the album will be out. And I'm going to be speaking with Jack and Ryan from AJR this afternoon. I think what I first need

to do, Nate, though, is checking with, are we excused from the terrible label that we gave bang? See if we can revive ourselves in your musicological pedigree. Fingers crossed, Chuck. Okay, guys, so I have an admission to make. Nate and I, on a previous episode, absent-mindedly labeled Bang as post-rock poca carnival trap and got some real blowback. And so, Jack, Ryan, I just want to start with an apology. especially since Nate identified that perhaps musical theater is the more appropriate influence here. Oh, wow.

Well, I like Carnival Trap. I didn't hate that. I'm surprised you got blowback for it, but I'm wondering who gave you blowback, too. The carnival stands. Yeah, yes, sir. But, yeah, we're huge fans of musical theater. It's kind of ingrained in us. That was kind of our first love of music, because I think they can be so unabashedly genuine.

And I hear a lot, because we write songs for other artists, a lot of what is thrown around is, no, that feels too genuine. It feels too sincere. Like, we got to cloud it in some kind of, like, irony, you know. And I think what we love about musical theater is that when the lead character sings the want song, it's just like, I'm not going to apologize for it. I want this.

You know, you sing it really loudly. And so for us, Bang was kind of like the evil villain walks in in, like, Le Mizz or wicked or something. The villain walks in, you need to pay the rent or something, and that's the song that plays in the background. And we thought, how do we take that vibe and make it palatable for people that listen to the radio and listen to Spotify playlist in 2021? I want to talk about the sounds and how you craft this world. But to start, Jack, what is this song Bang about? Bang, I guess, is another version of a topic that we really, really like. like to talk about. And so, you know, every, every artist has their, kind of their lane that they go

off and they say, oh, that's the artist that talks about this. They talk about this. And we have many, many times touched on growing up in whatever way we've approached that. And this specific time was really that exact moment from being a kid to basically having to be an adult. We've moved out. It just really doesn't make any sense anymore for us to keep living as children. It's time to mature. even though we really, really don't want to. We're very, you know, we're heavily resisting it, but it gets to that moment where you just have to do it. I get up, I get down, and I'm jumping around.

And the rumpus and rock is a comfortable night. Been a hell of a ride, but I'm thinking it's time to grow. So if we're going to do it, then we should do it, you know, with a bang, and we should try to be positive and go out in style. That's really the kind of thesis of the song. Right. And Jack, so you and Ryan lived together in New York City, and the song almost feels like the, okay, yeah, we're moving out of home, we're moving in together. You have this very winky line about bringing quinoa into your kitchen. So I got an apartment across from the park, but quinoa in my fridge, still I'm not feeling wrong. Is that to you, is that like the ultimate symbol of adulthood is like now I'm going to start eating healthy grains?

Yeah, that idea is we definitely went through a couple foods. We literally sat down in a bed and said, okay, what are the adult foods? Cale was, you know, kale came up. And then I think Pukinua in my fridge is just like, you can kind of understand what I'm saying, but also you kind of can't. It flowed really well in that lyric. So I guess, yeah, quinoa bowl feels very adult to me. I definitely wasn't eating it until recently when I saw other adults eating it, you know?

I regret to inform you that upon my searching, there are other songs that reference quinoa i thought there wouldn't be any others gucgiumane has money machine ah dawful with the quinoyed in my blending machine glass animals has melon and the coconut but yours is the most popular according to a genius put kemwa in my fridge still i'm not feeling grown all right so we have this this world of show tunes big over-the-top sounds right how you do you unite these things to take your childhood love for this craft, which is, it can be cliche, if you will?

Right. Yeah. How do you translate that into a contemporary pop production? Oh, that's a great question. And it's something that we try to do kind of every album, because we're always drawing from stranger influences, whether it's musical theater. We're really influenced by, like, Israeli hip-hop production. Are we hearing Israeli hip-hop production?

How is that making its way into it? What does that sound? Not bang specifically, but it makes its way into a lot of our albums. They have, do you know Israeli hip hop at all or no? I don't know. Please give us an interview. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So they are very big on tempo switchups. They're very big on vibe switchups throughout. Any given song is going to have like three or four totally different vibes, but they meld so well. They're so good at seamlessly doing it where, you know, two seconds after it switches up, you're like, oh, wait, the tempo just kind of switched up. It's really expertly done.

Exactly, yeah. Like, you can do tempo switchups like in sicko mode. It's basically two songs in one, and that has a really profound effect. But you can tell here's where one song ends and here's where the other starts. The Israelis have some ability to make it all one fluid song

and make you never bored of the vibe. Is there an example? Yeah, Tudobam is the perfect example. So keep it going and let's do the bomb me like I feel in love in Brazil. I know you're not afraid of asking. You got me more. Okay, so that was a fun detour, but let's go back to modernizing the Broadway thing. Ryan, how do you make this work for your audience?

It's a tough thing because now we're playing for bigger crowds. It's a tough thing to know, are they going to think this is as cool as we think it is? And so I think you have to dress it up a little bit. I think that's the best way to put it. If you have this Broadway sound, you have to dress it in clothes that appear like they belong with everybody else. And so, okay, I'm hearing trap drums, let's say. That's kind of like the most basic thing probably we did for bang.

Originally, it was more of like an acoustic kind of drum setting. It literally felt Broadway. And then having the trap beat up rolling high hats and like more of a trap snare. Immediately, okay, now I understand this could only be made right now. It sounds very right now, even though it's juxtaposed with something that was popular like 100 years ago. So we've taken these contemporary trap drums. We've married them with these Broadway sort of orchestral sounds.

The whole thing is very over the top. You know, this song is literally called bang. I'm curious, Jack, what is it about Broadway that can be both so over the top but also perfect at communicating such as like an individual intimate moment? I think it's the same reason we love movies so much and we both went to film school. It's kind of in the same world where like it can be. really specific and very considered and applied to just one story and yet it can be accessible on an enormous level. And so like, let's say something like Finding Nemo, right? It's technically

a story about fishes and in Australia, but in a way bigger sense, it's about fatherhood and losing somebody you love. And so I think the best songs, and I think Broadway, the best Broadway songs, the One Day More's of the world, are really good at, okay, there's a specific story about the French Revolution, but also it's one day more until whatever you can relate, you know, to whatever

you want it to be, and you can relate on any level. One more day before the store. Do I follow where she goes? And I think a lot of people sometimes make the mistake in pop music of thinking, the way to be most relatable is to go

the broadest. And the most, the most broad thing you could say is don't leave me. You know, I love you or something. And I think often we try to stay away from that because I think often the most relatable stuff can be the most specific stuff if you strike the right nerve. Perfectly said. I'm shocked. Jack is silent. Yeah, that's it. Yeah, and I think that's probably really ingrained in what you're talking about in pretend you know this song everybody, where we just don't have the ability to boast or, you know. We so often try to write lyrics that are kind of cocky or flexing, and then one of us just shuts it down.

We re-listen and we get shivers. And we're like, no, no, no, oh my God, turn it off, turn off. Yeah. If I'm right, you all used to busk together, right? Yeah, we started out street performing. And what about being a street performer do you think has taught you in terms of being now entertainers with a much larger audience and, you know, the thought of trying to write singles and hits that are going to get played on the radio?

Is that something we're hearing translating on bang? Do we hear your busking experience? Yeah, well, I mean, I could just start off the first part of that question. It was literally throwing us into the deep end of the pool. That's exactly what it was. It was performing to an audience that wants nothing to do with you, you know, the businessman that's on his phone that's just trying to bypass you so he can get to work. Our job was to be interesting enough and be, you know, exciting enough to make him be like, okay, I can be a couple minutes late for work. And we did that at times. After we got good enough. So then it was the idea of, okay, if we can do that at this young and age, then imagine what we can do when people actually pay money to go see you. So we kind of got that out of the way and got those nerves out of the way. And then it really did prepare us for the live, you know, on stage performing. But in terms of bang, you can talk about it. Yeah, I think it affects every song we make. And I think bang is a really good example of what makes you turn your head. And that was the thing we were most excited about. We wrote the track first before we had any top line. And that's actually

really rare for us. Most of our singles, we've come up with the concept first and then the track follows. And with Bang, we just kind of had a feeling this track, this boom, boom, bum, bum, would make people turn their heads. I was skeptical at first, by the way. You were, yeah, Jack was skeptical. In terms of a single, it was the weirdest production that Ryan had ever brought to me. He literally just had the horns. Dada-da-da-dum-dum-dum. And I said, Ryan, like, when it's time to make a Broadway show, that's the first thing that's going in.

Like, that's number one. And he said, no, I really think this can translate. I was like, okay. And then we put it away for a while, and then we brought it back when it was time to actually really write. bang. And as soon as he put the trap drums over it, I was like, oh my God. Okay, now I'm imagining a party. Like now I could see people dancing to this. This is so sick. Maria, you have a podcast now and you need to start acting like it. What's the first step as a podcaster? Well, you have to ask lots of questions. I'm Maria Sharpova and I'm hosting a new

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Udi-Ladid-Doh, thank you all for coming. The song is this coming of age story. It's really bumbastic. And as we established, it's also quite intimate. It feels kind of like your ode to New York City. One of the things that's fun about your productions is that it's riddled with Easter eggs, lyrical and musical.

I was hoping that we might be able to crack a few of those open. One of them, of course, being the background voice, that announces, here we go. Here we go. What's going on? Yeah, the story behind that, okay, yes. So we had written the song and we had a placeholder, I think one of us going,

here we go, and metronome, or here we go, trying to do an imitation of someone with a much lower register. And we knew we'd wanted it to be someone else. So first we tried our dad, who does a lot of backup vocals on a lot of our songs that we put out. He does, like, a lot of crowd vocal,

because he has the lowest voice out of any... He's an awful singer that Ryan Autotunes, like crazily, like, to try to get... You're throwing your dad under the bus. Right. Yeah. He knows. Yeah. No, no. Yeah, he's fully aware. But so that didn't, it didn't work. And then we asked a neighbor of ours, who was another guy who had a lower register. And that didn't work. And we said, okay, like, what should we do? What should we do?

And then we realized that about four or five years ago, during one of our New York shows, we had remixed the phrase, the phrase, stand clear of the closing doors, please, which is the phrase that is the famous New York City subway phrase that plays before the doors close. And we did that on stage, and I guess the video got out on YouTube, and the guy who does that voice, the guy whose voice that is, he wrote to us, he wrote us an email saying, hey, I love, I'm a big fan of you guys, I love what you did. Let's keep in touch. And then, like, four years later, we were like, who should do this?

And it kind of hit us, oh, my God, like the best voice actor ever that we hear every day. He's available. So we wrote to him, and he sent it back the same day, and we dropped it in. Here we go. And it was like one of those rare moments that was like, the light started glowing of that was the missing piece. You know, that's what the song needed. And it's become every single person's favorite part of the song.

So we're so happy that worked out. I mean, it's kind of a magical moment. I don't imagine that the voice of New York City. And I mean, if anyone has the voice of New York City, it's probably the New York subway guy. Right. That doesn't end up on a track very frequently. So that's special.

Yeah. You also have these other Easter eggs. Again, sort of thinking on the Broadway world, you will often have musical, interconnections and lyrical interconnections between your larger body of work. So for those who are really big AJR fans, you can geek out and find these sort of inner references. Another one you mention is you have the announcer say, metronome. Metronome.

Man, I'm up to something. And then we get these ticking sounds. That's a sound that seems to recur in your work. Yeah, that's an allusion back to The Click, which was our second album, where the kind of the heartbeat of the entire album was this metronome. And it was this metaphor of should I go for more clicks this year or should I follow the click in my ear, which is to say, like, should I go for the easiest, lowest hanging fruit of getting famous, or should I figure out exactly what I want to do in this life?

And even if it takes a little bit longer and if I have to sacrifice more, should I go for that? But to answer your question, yeah, we love diving deep into, you know, Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings and the MCU and like all these franchises that have Easter eggs. I think that's so fun, and I think it's kind of fun to bring that over to music and reward fans that have been with us for the last eight years, because it's, especially for like a pop band like us, it's rare to keep fans for that long.

And so we feel really grateful that we have fans that listen to every, you know, meticulously to every lyric of every song in every album, and we want to reward people that do that. I caught another one was the lyric You can lie here forever is another reference to your song Karma Yeah I think we did a post

I forget how many Maybe there were like 12 Easter eggs in bang Remember that of like all lyrics That had come before Is Charlie blown away That's nuts We just think that's

It's so fun to watch people Try to figure it out And be kind of the mastermind behind And be wrong so often too Our fans, that's our favorite thing. It's like, no, I found the Easteries. It's this and this, and this is a secret meaning for this. And we're like, no, that's not it at all.

Try again. You know, it gives them something fun to do. So there's this world building that's happening in your work. And maybe we could sort of carry that on into your next single off of OK Orchestra, which is the song Way Less Sad. What is Way Less Sad communicating? Yeah, so lyrically, we wrote this song about kind of where we're at right now. both as a society and also just where we're at mentally,

where we've kind of figured out how to kind of be happy, and the answer was lowering our expectations a lot and lowering the bar. And we're now kind of at this place in the song, and on the course of the album, it's towards the end of the album, where we're not all the way better. Our problems haven't all been solved, but we're not all so doomed like we were last year anymore. And so the song is kind of pondering like, are we allowed to celebrate that little win?

And in the song, we're basically saying, yeah, yeah, come on, we could celebrate that little win. Yeah, I'm curious. I mean, Jack, for you, it seems to be there's this contrast of very sullen moments and then joyous moments in this song. Can you speak to how you feel the music sort of paints that arc? Yeah, that's something that we do very often and something we're very, very comfortable doing. Like we had said before, we're not really ones to flex and say, this is great, this is going to be great, because that's just very unrealistic to who we are. So in our music, we naturally kind of jump to a lot of juxtaposition. We feel that that paints a really, really cool picture.

In music, that's realistically how life is, you know, wondering, should I have, you know, this is really great in my life. I'm feeling really good. Oh, but this is really bad, so I can't be fully happy. But no, no, but this is really good. Oh, but God, I should move because I'm not really excited about where I am. And I think that that's just the most realistic look at life. I think that's why, I mean, I've been looking through a lot of YouTube comments on the video, and that specifically is what fans really were drawn to in this specific song.

I think a lot of them were like, this is probably the most realistic look at depression or a bad day or just life in general. Is that trade off and like, what should I do? So I think we're just trying to go as realistic as possible with that. Ryan, yeah, could you speak to that as well? Was this a song that you were writing, wanting to speak to that larger feeling? or is this also a personal experience that's going on? So let me take you back because the story of this song is kind of interesting

and then I'll lead to that. Sure. So it started eight years, eight years ago? Eight years ago. Yeah, eight years ago with a sample that we found from My Little Town by Simon and Garfunkel. And it's at the very end of the song during the fade out.

It's this horn line. And we remember hearing it growing up and it was one of our favorite songs. We had to turn the volume up at the end of the song in order to actually hear our favorite part. Yeah, and we just thought, like, why isn't this the main hook of the song? And so at a certain point, eight years ago, we decided, oh, we're going to make a track where this is the main hook of the song. And we made this, like, disco track, and then we kind of forgot about it for some reason.

Then fast forward a few years, Kaigo, his label reached out to us, because we do a lot of writing for other artists too. His label reached out to us saying, do you have, we have a track that Kaigo made, do you have top line? like do you want to write a song over this track? And that's when we ended up writing, Don't you love it? No, I ain't happy yet, but I'm way less sad. And we sent it back and they were like, no, that's okay, we don't want it.

And we said, okay, that's fine. We'll take it for our collection because we thought that chorus is kind of a good little nugget. And then fast forward a few more years, Cardi B's label Atlantic, reached out to us saying, do you have a track for Cardi B and Top Line? because she's looking for a new single.

And that's when we pulled out that Simon and Garfunkel sample, turned it into more of a hip-hop song. For some reason, we thought Cardi V would want the Simon and Garfunkel sample. Personally, I thought it would be really funny if she cut the song, and in interviews to say that they sampled this certain Simon and Garfunkel song. I would have thought that would have been a really cool interview moment. But anyway, so she didn't want it, and she ended up putting out a wop instead. So we realized we totally missed the mark.

We missed the mark on that, yeah. I'm glad you guys anyway. So they didn't want it. And then we were like, oh, okay, that's okay. We'll take it back. And so at a certain point, we took this Kygo chorus, this Cardi B track, married them together, and then made it actually about something. In the arc of the song, we have, I feel like, the lowest moment in the pre-chorus where it's just a total downer.

Actually, sorry, in the chorus, the chorus is a downer. Don't you love it, don't you love it? No, I ain't happy yet. But I'm way less sad. Like, what have you done? You've, like, you've really brought me down. And then it's actually in the post-course where we have this, like, big, bombastic, what feels like almost like an orchestral EDM moment where we get to all just enjoy this feeling.

I remember you guys did that episode, I think, with Emily Warren about, like, the death of the pop chorus, right? And she talked about how now, like, pop choruses go down. And then there's the big payoff after. We kind of wanted to do a play on that. So the first chorus is a breakdown. where it gets emotional and you realize, oh, there's some emotional gravity to the song. It's not just a party song.

And then it explodes into the post chorus. And then from then on, it's pretty much all just like happy, happy. Now that we've established, this is an emotional concept. Now it's okay to dance to it. One of the reasons why I thought it would be fun to chat with you all is you like to break down your own songs. You have series on YouTube where you just dive into the session. And if you want like a whole other level of,

depth. You can go watch hours of you guys just like getting into the weeds. And there was this moment, Ryan, I think you had said maybe in talking about breaking down bang, how you feel like in pop music, it's often seen as cool to be like, I don't know, like I didn't even try. Like the song just came out. There it was. It's a great hit. Boom. Whatever. And you take a really different approach. You have a very different philosophy. I'm wondering, Ryan, if you could speak to it first and Jack as well. Sure, yeah, I honestly don't even remember saying that, but I'm sure, I'm sure I did. Yeah, I think a lot of times, also in the world we come from the alternative, you know, world, it's kind of cool to be like, yeah, I go on stage and I do whatever, or I, yeah, I just threw down a couple instruments and put it out.

I think we take a lot of pride in that we've considered each detail of the song. And I think a lot of times when people talk about the album is dead, you know, and, oh, nobody listens. to full albums anymore. I truly believe that's because the wrong albums for the streaming age are actually being made. I think a lot of times now songs are just like pure loops where you kind of know from the 40 second mark, okay, the rest of the song is kind of going to be all this vibe. Not sure I really need to finish it. I'm not sure I really need to listen to the rest of the album. I kind of can guess what's going to happen. And that's a vibe unto itself, but I think we really pride ourselves on the fact that you don't know what's going to happen. There's always going to be

some weird payoff in the bridge or towards the end of the song or towards the end of the album. There's like a real reason that you have to invest yourself in this song and this whole album and listen all the way through. Jack, is that why when I'm listening to Way Less Sad, it feels very sonically connected to bang? It feels like I'm being introduced to something. This is part of a continuous work. Oh yeah. That was definitely on our mind. I mean, kind of on a base, in terms of the horns as well. You know, those bombastic, massive, you know, explosive horns. Yeah, I mean, I think that's something that we think about in all of our music.

Let's just try to, you know, make it connect. Let's make sure people, let's not quite bring it to an end. So there can definitely be, you know, a chapter two that we can latch on to. I think that's something that we absolutely think about. You have this record coming out tomorrow. Actually, I think, you know, by the time this episode drops, it will already be out in the world. Okay, orchestra. How did you go about thinking about me?

making an album for the streaming age to sort of counter this issue of things that just aren't sticking? Yeah. I think it's good to look at like Hamilton. Hamilton has a crazy amount of streams. That makes no sense in the streaming age why Hamilton would have so many streams. And it's because there's a story that you can follow through. There's a payoff. There's a reason to listen to it in order. And I think we really consider that when we're making albums. We start the album with an overture. that's like an electronic version of a pretty like standard Broadway overture where it sample songs and it creates a whole new original piece of music. There are arcs and then it ends in a way that relates back to the rest of the album. I think we really think about it as one cohesive thing.

Yeah, and I also, I mean, I don't know if Lucky's the right word, but we've gotten lucky because we have especially low attention spans, you know, in general, maybe even lower than the average person. So I think that that definitely crosses over to when we're writing music. You know, if we've done a quarter or third of the song and we like that, and like Ryan was saying before, we're generally going to get overly bored with what we did. So we're going to want to totally switch it up and do something new. So you definitely hear constant switchups throughout the album. And I think that was kind of by accident when we first started writing. Like when we were writing the click, you know, we kind of did a lot of switchups just because we really wanted to do a lot of different things.

And then we realized, wow, a lot of other people have, I guess, attendants fans too or they want to latch on to that as well they want to hear a million different things too so that kind of has benefited us throughout these years yeah there's definitely a maximalist sort of production technique which is there's there's all this little ear candy to keep you interested but at the same time it seems as though each of these songs acts almost as a character you know you spoke of bang sort of being like almost like the villain song way less sad right feels like that's the idea that's coming towards the end of the album there's there's there's some resolution that we sort of like have found our emotional catharsis and it's being just kind of even keeled.

Right. You called the record OK Orchestra. I'm guessing this is a nod to radio head. I guess in a way, it's so funny. And this is so not believable, but we were coming up with names for the album. And we originally had a different name called Mad Orchestra. And that was after we had bang. And we really assumed that a lot of the album would sound like bang.

and that ended up not being true at all. Like we assumed, okay, let's kind of cross over that villain, like weird bombastic soundage to other songs. And I think a lesson that Ryan and I have to learn over and over again is we can never plan what an album is going to sound like. We're literally going to go, you know, maybe the themes throughout, but in terms of like sonically production-wise,

the songs are going to be pretty different throughout. So you can't call it an entire album mad and angry. So that just didn't work. So we needed a more general word. And then I think we were literally like at the dog park one day, and we were like, okay orchestra. That sounds really great. And I think like a day later, we talked to our manager, and he was like, oh, you know, okay, computer. And we were like, oh, yeah. I know, I know. It's one of the most famous albums written. But no, it honestly was

not a nod. It just actually worked really well in that moment. And now, I mean, I guess now we could say it's a nod, you know, afterwards. Yeah. I mean, it feels like it's communicating sort of the exact opposite of what, okay, computer was trying to establish, which, of course, you know, becomes one of the most successful albums, critically, of the last many decades, and marks a transition from studio-recorded music into computer-recorded music. And yet, when we're listening to Bang, when we're listening to Way Less Sad, I hear definitely the influence of contemporary computer-sequenced music, but it's all orchestra.

You're taking us sort of back to an older style of production, it seems. How do you put that together? How do you mash those up? Are you going in the studio with big orchestras and tracking them? How does this come together? No. No, not at all. We've recorded orchestra once in our life, and it was for Neo Theater. And it was truly the coolest moment of our entire life.

It really was. It was amazing. We went into a real studio with a real orchestra. And then this year, with the pandemic, it felt wrong to actually put all these people in the same room. And so we had to do it either all digitally with synthesizers and samples and stuff. or get a cellist that's in Santa Fe and a violinist that's in L.A. and record everything remotely, which we did for a couple songs. But to be honest, the sound that we've stumbled upon this orchestra stuff,

I think it's just what looks best on us. It's kind of just like, like, Jerry Seinfeld, he has a quote about why he doesn't curse in his stand-up. And it's just, he says it's like it just doesn't look good on him. It's like he's wearing a vest that doesn't fit. him or something. I think we found that making music that's too electronic and too to the grid feels wrong and making music that's too acoustic feels wrong. And we found some hybrid of like mixing hip hop and very old-fashioned dense orchestral sounds that just kind of looks right on us.

It's also such a shortcut to emotion, you know, we've found. Like, I mean, violin alone is such a, I mean, this is kind of a dumb thing to say, but violin alone is just the epitome of tears. You know, if you're trying to get something across and make someone feel something in a song, as soon as three violins come in, that's just going to put a stamp on it and say, yep, that's going to do it. So that's something that we've really found. There's really emotional songs on this album that just have an outro of pure strings that just make you want to cry. So we've felt we've really played into that for sure.

It seems like a logical point for you all to end up at from a love of musical theater. to an early start in busking. Like, you know, anyone who's playing music for people on the street, like probably actually just wishes they had the giant orchestra behind them supporting the music, and now you can do it.

You just throw it, you know, you call up someone from Santa Fe and then you saw someone from elsewhere, and you put it all together in computer, and now your digital orchestra can travel anywhere. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, in retrospect,

it kind of seems obvious that we would end up here, but it took, like, 15 years of experimenting with all different types of genres to end up here. I want to end with a clip from your song,

three o'clock things, which has a nod to another popular musical. You noted earlier the success of Hamilton as an album, and I hope OK Orchestra does the same for you all. Jack Ryan, thanks for joining me. Thanks so much. Thanks for having us. This episode of Switched on Pop was produced by Bridget Armstrong, Lee Sloan, and me Charlie Harding.

We're engineered by Brandon McFarland, illustrations by Iris Gottlieb, social media by Abby Barr and our executive producers are Nashak Kerwa and Hana Rosen. We are a member of the Vox Media Podcast Network and a production of Vulture. Hit us up on the socials. You know where to find us. It's at Switch on Pop on Instagram and Twitter. We love hearing from you and we're always posting fun illustrations, excerpts from shows, random stuff. You know, I mean, I don't need to describe Twitter to you. You know what it is. And we will be back in another week with a piping hot episode exploring a song that we immediately knew we had to cover on the show.

As soon as we heard it, the texts were flying fast and furious. It's Silk Sonic. Leave the door open. We'll see you there. Until then. Thanks for listening. Attention Spotify. Has arrived at the new Good Girl Jasmine Absolute of Carolina Herrera, A fragrance intense with character Gourman and addictive. Imagine a jasmine-envolventy, toffee caramelized and tonka-tosted.

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