Switched on Pop - Aussie2Aussie: 5SOS on Tame Impala (with Luke Hemmings & Calum Hood)

Episode Date: April 7, 2020

The band 5 Seconds Of Summer have just released their fourth studio album, Calm. Lead vocalist Luke Hemmings and bassist Calum Hood join us to talk about some of Australia’s biggest hits. In the first half of our conversation we discuss the catchy rhythms and vocals in Tame Impala’s song “Borderline,” a song driven more by vibe than conventional structures. Then on side B, 5SOS break down their new single single “Wildflower” and its countless 80s references. One sound in particular, the “stab” or “orchestral hit” in "Wildflower's" chorus, truly evokes the 80s. The song’s producer, Rami Yacoub, had used the sound before on Britney Spears “Lucky,” as had 100s of other artists who first got their hands on this sample from an Australian inventor who forever changed the sound of music. Songs Discussed 5 Seconds Of Summer - Youngblood 5 Seconds Of Summer - Who Do You Love 5 Seconds Of Summer - Lie To Me (ft. Julia Michaels)  AC/DC - Highway To Hell Midnight Oil - Beds Are Burning  Tame Impala - Same Ol Mistakes  Tame Impala - Borderline Post Malone - Circles Slipknot - Before I Forget  Massive Attack - Teardrop  Tom Petty - Wildflowers 5 Seconds Of Summer - Wildflower  Fleet Foxes - Ragged Wood Cindy Lauper - Time After Time Oasis - Wonderwall INXS - Need You Tonight Talk Talk - It’s My Life Tears for Fears - Everybody Wants To Rule The World Enya - Orinoco Flow Stravinsky - Firebird Suite Afrika Bambaataa- Planet Rock Pet Shop Boys - Always On My Mind Britney Spears - Lucky  5 Seconds Of Summer - Red Desert  More Estelle Caswell’s Earworm Video on Peter Vogel’s Fairlight CMI and her playlist of Orchestral Hits Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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It's free for iOS users. Welcome to Switched on Pop. I'm songwriter Charlie Harding. And I'm musicologist Nate Sloan. And today we're joined by two special guests, if you don't mind introducing yourselves. Yep. This is Callum and Luke's here also. We're from the band called Five Seconds of Summer.

Hey, how you doing? It's Luke here. Yeah. Five seconds of summer, abbreviated to Five Sauce, five SOS, is so much fun. You are the first group to have your first two albums go number one. You have countless hit singles. Some of my favorites are Youngblood. Who Do You Love?

Lie to Me featuring Julia Michaels. You have done worldwide tours with One Direction. You are a stadium touring act in your own right. You have a really loyal and vocal fan base. Today, we're going to talk about some of your Nome music. But first, we're going to do something a little bit unusual. We are going to do a segment that we have never done before and we'll probably never do again called Ozzy to Ozzie. Yes. Some of our great Australian friends from the band Five Second of Summer have brought another

band to us that we wanted to listen to together and break down before we listen to some of Five Suss's music. So you have brought us Tame Impala, a musical project of the Australian song writer and producer Kevin Parker, who really defies genre. He's often labeled psych pop, but he's worked with people spanning Mark Runtz and Travis Scott and Kanye West. His music has been covered by Rihanna. Yeah, we're huge fans of Time and Polo. Obviously, being on the show, being Australians, we needed to kind of insert some criteriaism, as you might say. So, yeah, he was the first person to kind of come to mind in terms of modern Australia. He has a new album, The Slow Rush, which is a meditation on time.

You chose the song Borderline. Sick a listen. So what is it about this particular track, Borderline, that speaks to you? The thing that fascinates me just about Kevin. I say Kevin as if I know, but I've never met it before. He seems pretty approachable. Yeah, exactly. It's just the cultural impact he's had as an artist in Australia.

You know, we've had people who've stood in similar lanes in terms of that, which I would say, like, Angus Young is one and definitely Michael Hutchins is one. Peter Garrett from Midnight Oil. There's a certain energy and pandemonium around that band in terms of people feeling proud that he's from Australia, which I totally love and find endearing. In this song, for me, as a basis, it's the tempo and the groove that I love. I think within his album, there's total diversity within tempos, which I think creates a great body of work. So that's what drew me to this song in particular. I don't know how Luke feels better. What do you think, Luke?

I mean, I agree with everything you just said. I think he's an interesting one because I feel like he totally has a sound, which can be scary as an artist to have a sound, but it's just him doing it. So it's like he's doing everything, so it's going to sound kind of similar each time. but he seems to like step it up with the way it, like a way he mixes it, everything in together. And he steps it up with like Calvin was talking about new grooves and like new bass lines. It doesn't ever feel like it's like one really like cohesive piece of work every time. But then it's also like really diverse and it's really odd to have those two things mixed together. Yeah, he he had a conversation recently with Zane on Beats 1 about how he goes about creating his sound.

And I think, Column, you'll connect with this in particular. I almost feel like you're a drummer above anything else. Well, yeah, it's true. I believe so. Like, the rhythms for me are almost more important than the actual melodic chords and stuff themselves. Like, outside of drums and percussion and stuff, like the rhythm of the vocals, the rhythm of the bass line, all the rhythms going together is, to me, to me, that's like the cornerstone of Tame and Pall. I think a great example of this would be, like,

in the outro of the song, when we really hear that bass interlocking with the drums, in a really tight rhythm. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I think he's become almost notorious for adding a second baseline towards the end of the song to add to the dynamic of the song, which is a really cool feature to add.

Yeah, I love the idea here that the song is driven by rhythm first. Right, like rather than hooks or lyric, he's thinking about how to establish a groove. And I think that's one of the things that really defines, Luke, you put it in there. there's a really clear Tame Impala sound. Yeah.

I think that's one of the places we identify it. I could definitely sense that. Not that he doesn't spend time in his lyric and melody, but it definitely feels very, like he said, it comes with like the bass and the drums. And it's definitely, I mean, we even fell into that the last couple albums. Like, it's so important to have that down. And a lot of our songs that go down really well live now

have started from us playing as a band or like starting, like what groove or rhythmic pocket are we? missing on this album and then we go in and try and do that and then we'll do like a lyric and melody of the top lyric and melody is more important to me in particular and i think us as a band anyway but taking whether it was from hearing tamapal or just kind of like i don't know trying to fill in those rhythmic gaps for us it definitely is something we've thought about more and more you know the rhythm drives this track but then there's some really moving lyrics you know like will i be known and loved is they're one that I trust.

This song is the idea, I guess, of being on the borderline and just like always questioning. And another way that the song is questioning might be in the structure and form of the song itself. Where you think the verses and bridge and chorus belong is not always where they appear. Yeah, I love that. Yeah, I was playing this out and I was listening to what is called the verse. Well, the first thing we get, well, check this out.

Like, it's hard for me to tell if that's a verse or if it actually's the hook, because after this, we get some other material they call a bridge. The section just happens once before going right back into what, again, it's titled the verse in the lyrics, but now we get the title of the song.

So it sort of suggests that what we're hearing is a chorus, just chorus after chorus. Yeah, it's almost like one long chorus. Yeah, the whole song is one long chorus, yeah. That's the dream, isn't it? But then there's a whole other section, which they call the chorus. Yeah.

What do you think of this? Do you think that this song, which feels like kind of an experimental structure, and yet it's a single, and it's a really successful album from a very successful band? Do you think this falls within a pop sound? I mean, pop is, to me anyway, and to a lot of people, it's just like popular music. So people love this. So it's definitely pop. And the way it sounds to me is very, is dreamy, but it also doesn't show. shy away from melody. It doesn't shy away from, although it has an interesting song structure.

I even see those, I mean, it's different ends of the field, I guess, but I even see that Mike Postman one. And like he just, it's almost like he just keeps throwing awesomeness at you and just keep throwing like awesome melodies and parts and rhythms and stuff and just like keeps your ear time. And I think that's maybe not the reason that people connect with it so much because it's relentless in like earworms. I love that you pulled that out. I too, when I was listening to this song was thinking about Post Malone and realizing, I think, a lot of the sort of phrasing that is really popular in melodic structure, which is popular right now, feels like we might actually owe a lot to Tame Impala.

When you get these sort of internal small melodies that repeat again and again and again, and you can hear that in Tama and Pala, you can hear that in Post Malone. You can hear that in so many other artists. 100%. I just think it's, I mean, it can relate back to the smaller attention span we're getting, Whereas if you're going to have a three-minute song, you better have a few parts and a few melodies that change and keeps your interest the whole time. Yeah, for sure. I was really surprised to hear from Kevin Parker, who in a conversation with Click TV, did refer to his music as absolutely pop.

How pop do you want it to be? Very, very pop? I mean, I've always considered my music to be really pop. So I think that it doesn't really matter what sounds you're using. If you're starting with hook first or rhythm first or how you're structuring a song, it feels like what matters is sort of the intent. And the intent is for people to love this, to dance, to groove to it. And I think it's succeeding on that level. Yeah, 100%. I think even though, I mean, obviously it has like that 80s influence, like with the synths.

And it's definitely unique. 100%. There's no doubt about that. But it's popular in music by definition. He plays arenas. You know, it does very well. So I would, you know, I would call that popular music 100%. Shouldn't be a negative, I feel like.

Right on, yeah. It's like, you know, I think his strategy is get that rhythm, get that groove going. And then you can kind of start to sprinkle some weird stuff on top, and people won't mind as long as they're feeling the groove, you know. You can get away with some, like he's got some flute and pitticado strings in here. I've never seen an interview of him talk about this, but I was actually wondering, because it's just him that does everything

and as we've moved more into more of a production side of things or even trying to demo things ourselves I wonder how long he spends on each song because it sounds like he spends a long time but maybe he's just a freak at it yeah he says about his process that I think he works up until

the very end when somebody says that this is going to mastering and is being released in two weeks and you have to finish the music right so he's tweaking constantly definitely Okay, this has been a lot of fun getting to talk about your Aussie brethren, Tame and Paula, but we really want to get to dive into five seconds of summer.

We're going to do that right after the break. 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 podcast called Pretty Tough. Every week, I'm sitting down with trailblazing women at the top of their game to discuss ambition, work ethic, and the ups and downs that come on the path to achieving greatness. I have a few pretty tough questions for you.

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That's this week on America. America Actually, every Saturday in your audio and video feeds. I like bringing up this idea of what fits within a pop format. And five seconds of summer are a group that really sort of similarly belie genre. How do you think about the label pop? Is that something you wear comfortably or are unsure about? I remember the first time, like when I was like 15, and our songs went on iTunes for the first time. And in my head, we played at the start in the shows we could play with metal bands and really

heavy rock bands because that was the only people that were playing shows in the place we grew up. So we ended up doing that. And we were just a live band at that point. So in my head were a rock band, you know, or a pop punk band or whatever you call, like very, like angsty, I suppose. And then our music went on like iTunes or whatever and it was label Pop. I go to my manager. I'm very young and naive.

I go, how come it says pop on our thing? And he goes, no, mate. he's English. No, mate, it's just, that's just popular music. It means lots of people listen to it. Or whatever he said, and I was like, oh, okay, so like, the Beatles are pop and the stones are pop and everyone, like anything with a, when you can attach yourself to a melody is technically a pop song. I think anyway, like even some of those like Slipknot songs, it's going to sound ridiculous. But like the melody and before I forget by Slipknot is a pop melody in my head. even though it's fucking madness around it,

it's still something that people latch onto. I love that. So it sounds as though pop is a very broad umbrella for you all. Your sound has evolved quite a lot over your albums. And you have a new album out, Calm, just came out on March 27th. What were your expectations going into this project? I think at the very beginning, it came from a very pure place, And it was very impulsive, I think, in terms of the songwriting.

It reflected what music we grew up with as well. I mean, in Western Sydney, there was a huge movement of pop punk and punk. There were a lot of metal fans out there as well. So, like, even our first gigs were with, you know, these metal bands with guys in their 30s. And we'd have, like, 10 young girls at our stage, and then there'd be 50 old dudes over at the other stage, watching the metal bands. And that kind of influenced us in the way that we wanted to achieve something great with our music.

And I think especially with Australians, there's a big mental attitude towards just being the best version that you can in terms of a human and also a musician as well. So that played a big part. And then kind of as our career progressed, we were just fine-chaining in terms of how we wanted to articulate the message to our fans of who we were as artists and kind of incorporate the influences of all the artists that we love and add our spin onto it as well. So yeah. Tell me about the process of choosing some of the sounds for this album. What were you trying for? I mean, at the time, I was listening to a lot of massive attack. Massive attack was a huge

influence for me personally on this record. And I really wanted to. I really want to. wanted to try incorporate a lot more euphoric elements into the records. Because I think that's something that we haven't necessarily touched on. As we were talking about before, it's Tame and Palin. I've seen them a couple times play. And it's just a feeling you get when you see them live. It doesn't matter if you know them or not. It's the energy is totally reciprocated.

And I think in terms of sounds, we were using a profit. And we're using a Juno and the whorlets are for most of the key sounds. And then we were lucky enough to have a couple producers such as Happy Perez. He would take those sounds away and he'd just totally manipulate them. And it would come back kind of this total weird, flipped upside down hybrid of a thing. So up till now, we've been asking some pretty softball questions, but we're going to turn up the heat now. We're going to put you on the spot.

And here's a little trivia question for you all. What does five seconds of summer have in common with Cheryl Crow, Bon Jovi, the Bee Gees, Dolly Parton, Linda Ronstadt, Tom Petty, Beach House, Nicholas Jarre, Soccer Mommy, and Ghost Face Killer. You have five seconds for your answer. Holy shit. Dolly Pardon, I'd say a lyrical sincerity and storytelling. What was the other ones? Trail Crow, Bon Jovi, the Bee Gees, Dolly Parton, Linda Ronstadt, Tom Petty, Beach House, Nicholas Jarre, soccer, mommy, and Ghostface Killer. I would say Bon Jovi, we love a big, fat live show and a big ripping guitar solo, wherever we can sneak one in.

You're two good sports to, I can't, I can't let this go any longer. You, every one of these artists has a song title that is Wildflower. Really? You're in good company. I love that Tom Petty song. Yeah. You belong with a wildflower. We have a song called Wildflower and all those artists do, too.

That's what we have. Yeah. Ding, ding, ding, ding. So let's zoom in on this track, which we have had on heavy rotation recently. Is there a story behind Wildflower? Yeah, definitely. I mean, the main core, the album was written with Andrew. What, Ali Tamposi, Louis Bell, and Happy Perez. But we also, on the last album, worked with

a man called Rami Yacoub. And he is a great mentor in terms of how he's helped us develop our songwriting style. Yeah, people might know Rami Yacob as one of the collaborators of Max Martin in his early career, making songs for the likes of Britney Spears and Backstreet Boys. And he's also worked continuously with all the great acts, Selena Gomez, Dick Mnage, Donna, Demi Lovato, all these kinds of folks. Yeah, I think, I mean, he's great in terms of his melodic taste. Everything that he sings and everything is really based on intervals and the contrast of the melody, the dynamic of the lengths of the notes.

It's all very meticulous and thought out. But basically, the overview was to really just challenge yourself and push yourself. and think about things twice before you put them in, but also finding that balance of not losing what comes naturally to you. On Twitter, you called Wildflower a Frankenstein of everything that you love about music. And we thought it would be fun if we could break down some of its sounds and share the references that you're hearing

and the references that we're hearing. Right off the top, we have this beautiful intro. That feels like queen or... the Beach Boys to me, but I mean, not to tutor and horn, but that's what we're going for with the vocal group stuff. You know, that is so much better than what I heard. For some reason, my ear went to Fleet Foxes. Oh, no. But within the context of the song, I think the Queen and Beach Boys makes a lot more sense. I think, I think that's a good, that's a good shout, though. I like that. And then we move into the guitar tones here, which are pure 80s bliss.

Yeah, we're getting like Cindy Lopper time after time vibes here. What do you think, guys? I love that. I think there's a bunch of different guitar sounds in terms of what was inspiring us. I think a big one for me was Oasis. But also, if you go back into the 80s, I mean, in excess was a huge one, especially because they're Australian as well. tonally, I think they nailed a staple sound for their guitar tones. Talk Talk was a big one.

I was really taken by the way in which the chorus is phrased. It is really unique. A middle melody, there's a low melody, there's a high melody, quite unique phrasing. Kind of choppy. What's going on there? Yeah, so basically the basic idea in the room was to, Oscar Gara, as the producer, already had the track laid out and you hear the stabs in the chorus. And the basic idea was to write around the stabs, really, and leave the stabs kind of open and prominent as if they were lyric themselves.

So that was the first foundation that we laid. And basically, we just started singing as many ideas as we could. Once we hooked on to something that we liked, we expanded our own. that idea. Then we came back and we tried something different and kind of left no stone unturned. And because he had, you had a Swedish guy in the session, well, two Swedes. You had one Canadian. You had two Australians. So it was a total like culture like fuckery in the room and everyone was coming in with these strange ideas, which was awesome. Well, if everyone gets to sing a part, I call the low part. Do you want to?

I hadn't really heard any other sort of contemporary or nostalgic references. The closest thing I could hear that uses this same sort of style was this weird bridge section in tears for fears. Everybody wants to rule the world. Jesus, sounds good. You just forget. I mean, I'm hearing it through like a fuzzy speaker right now, and it's still, the guitar turns sound just stunning in that.

It's crazy. We love all that 80 stuff and that bridge. like with the keys and kind of the open ooze it's kind of it's definitely taking from that kind of vibe whether it was directly inspired by that particular song i like that i'm actually enjoying all the references where maybe it wasn't the thing that we thought of for like any of the songs but it actually has a similar vibe to it like it might not have been exactly what we're listening to like and referencing in the in the writing process of any of the songs but it's like really, it's super close and the same kind of genre pack.

Well, we'll throw one more reference out there and see if you're still so favorable, because when we get to the bridge of Wildflower, we're almost hearing this moving in kind of a new age direction. Gentlemen, I don't know what to say other than the thing that my ear immediately went to was Enya. And I mean it in the greatest way. I love that song. Yeah, I don't think anyone in our career has ever compared us to it. I think that's a great thing, to be honest.

Oh, that's fantastic. Colm, you recently posted to YouTube a short video breaking down all the stems of this song, the individual components. And when I was listening to that, I heard something that really took my ear. I'm going to show you this is just the drum. and purr together. And all here, you have all these loops, all these live drums at the top.

And with the chords here, the stabs. You mentioned that word before earlier. Stabs. What is a stab? Basically, for me, a stab is when, in terms of the whole band, accentuating a note or a pattern or a sound, all cohesively at the same time.

That's what a stab means for me. And you had described the potential kinds of layers that you think might have been in the stab that your producer brought you? Could you describe that? Yeah, I think Oscar would have used, I mean, without giving too much of the secrets way, there would have been a lot of layered sense. I think there was a profit in there. There probably was a Juno, and there was definitely a verbed-out piano keys sound.

Well, this stab, we think, has a larger history. We have a segment we like to do called Classical Masters, where we relate something from the present into the past. Here in particular, we noticed what we would usually call like an orchestral hit. You're calling a stab and it reminded us of a video that our Vox colleague Estelle Caswell made for her video series Earworm on YouTube. Here's Estelle. There are all types of orchestral hits. But the original actually comes from 1910 when Igor Stravinsky premiered his piece, The Firebird, at the Paris Opera.

Check it out. So what's crazy is how Stravinsky's Orrinxie's. orchestral hit made it onto hundreds of records in the 1980s. And he did that via one other important Ozzie who invented the first commercial sampler. I'm Peter Vogel. I developed the first commercial sampling synthesizer, which was the Fairlight CMI, back in about 1975. Ironically, the orchestra hit was a complete accident, which was sampled by me.

I just happened to have a vinyl recording of the Stravinsky Firebird Suite nearby when I was messing around that orchestra hit, which I think was right at the beginning of one of the tracks. And I thought, oh, that's a good sound. Peter called the sound Ork 2 and put it on an 8-inch floppy disk full of those other stock sounds. And obviously, a lot of people took a liking to it. So that's African Babbas Planet Rock, and the stock sound, Ork 2 on the Fairlight CMI became such a smash. You can hear it on the Pet Shop Boys, always on my mind. Duran Duran's Vue to Kill.

The Smith's Last Night I dreamt. New Order's Bizarre Love Triangle and even Britney Spears Lucky features the Ork 2 sample, which actually takes us back to Rami Jacob, who is also on your track, Wildflower. Oh, I actually didn't know that. That's really sick. I had no idea. Oh, damn. So this segment was actually called Ozzy to Ozzy to Ozzie then.

He said it the first. sample was I hear it correct it was on a floppy disk? Yeah, that's right. So this device, the Fairlight CMI, was this old computer. It was extremely expensive, very people could afford it at the time. This giant computer was run off of floppy disks, and it was the original sampler. It was the original, even sort of like digital audio workstation where you could sequence things on a screen. And so one of the famous sounds was this Stravinsky sample that just happened to be in Peter Vogel's studio. He recorded it in, and then it became the sound of the 1980s. It It was on so many sounds.

So when I hear the stab on wildflower, it brings me back into this whole sort of body of work that connects us Ozzy to Ozzy to Ozzy. I love that, I think. I mean, even on the last couple albums, I feel like at the start, because people keep putting us in like this space that didn't really feel very comfortable in,

as in people would call us one thing. We felt like, well, another thing, like I said, you know, angsty and teenagers. And I think on the third and fourth album, we kind of just let go of everything. Started, like, experimenting, particularly with, um, with Cowell playing more and more keys and keyboards,

um, and it being like, like you said, like a Juno or a prophet or something, like in trying all these sounds. Then you go, oh, who use this sound?

And you go like, oh, Ninus Niles uses sounds. All these rock bands have all these, like, cool sounds in them and they, like, opens up a whole new melodic pop. Yeah.

We've unpacked some of the Frankenstein musical elements that, have gone into this track, Wildflower. What else can people expect to hear on this album? So Red Desert is the opening on the album. It has like a very Crosby Stills and Nash, like Americana, Eagles type opening, vocally. Wildflower is like the lighter side of that song.

It's really odd how they came about in the same process because they feel like similar with the vocal, vocal style we did like the big gang harmonies and like big stuff like that. but it wasn't it's almost like complete end of the spectrum you can kind of hear some Depeche mode and like on the more acoustic verse stuff like we're trying to go like Jeff Buckler even like the storytelling of um the great Johnny Cash and it's kind of a weird mixture of like when we talk about wildflower talking about enya and talk talk and then like we've got the eagles and like

darker stuff like nine-ish nails and there's like Depeche mode and like I said like all those sing a songwriter kind of artist as well. In the same way that when you hear Taman Paula, you know you hear Taman Paula, here we are getting such a, as you put it, sort of a Frankenstein of references, and yet it is so clearly five seconds of summer. I've been playing it in the background for the last couple of days that it's been out, and every single time my attention fades because I'm taking care of my new little kiddo. Immediately something happens.

I'm like, whoa, whoa, got to go listen. And I'm like, pick up the kid and go check out what's happening in the track. That's awesome to hear, man. Glad that was a good listen. Well, guys, this has been a lot of fun. Thank you so much for joining us on Switchdown Pop. All right. Thank you for having us.

Thanks for going through his references. It makes me happy, to be honest. It makes me excited to make more music when we talk about stuff like this. Switchdown Pop is produced by me, Nate Sloan, and he, Charlie Harding. We're produced by Bridget Armstrong and Megan Lubin, mixed, engineered and mastered by Brandon McFarlane.

Illustration by R.S. Gottlieb, Social Media by Abby Barr, and our executive producers are Nashak Karwa and Liz Nelson. We're proud members of the Vox Media Podcast Network. You can find more of our shows anywhere you listen to podcasts. Hit us up on the Twits, on the Twitter. We love hearing from you there. We're at Switched on Pop. And until then, we'll see you next week with a brand new Piping Hot episode.

Thanks for listening.