Switched on Pop - Julia Michaels’ Songwriting Superpowers

Episode Date: May 4, 2021

For nearly a decade, Julia Michaels has penned hit songs for the biggest acts in pop music. She is adept at turning people’s vulnerabilities into memorable hooks — think Justin Bieber’s “Sorry” or Selena Gomez’s “Lose You to Love Me.” There are countless others, but all of them share distinctive traits. Where many songwriters might turn to the simplest, almost nursery-rhyme-level lyrics to get the message across, Michaels does the opposite. She crams as many words as possible into each phrase. Her lyrics sound spoken. On her own hit song, her 2017 debut solo single “Issues,” she sings, “Bask in the glory, of all our problems / ’Cause we got the kind of love it takes to solve ’em”; it earned her a Song of the Year nomination at the 2018 Grammys, along with a Best New Artist nod. Her rhyming may sound accidental, but that’s the pop-song illusion. Michaels’s idiosyncratic phrasing has symmetry and her rhyming is indeed purposeful, all to illuminate her primary subject: the infinite recursions of human relationships. After releasing three EPs and countless singles of her own, Michaels has just released her first full-length album, Not in Chronological Order. On this week’s episode of Switched on Pop, Nate and Charlie try to identify Julias Michaels songwriting superpowers and then Charlie speaks with Michaels about how the vagaries of the heart inspire an endless stream of songs. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Good Girl Jasmine Absolute, hypnotica, irresistible. Discover it today and let you turn to showrun for its essence. Welcome to Switched on Pop. I'm songwriter Charlie Harding. And I'm musicologist Nate Sloan. Nate, we were hanging out the other day

in person for the first. time in basically a year. Breathing all over each other. Fully vaccinated. Staring deep into your piercing blue eyes. And of course, what were we talking about? Admiring your luxurious mane of hair as it cascades down over your chiseled Nordic features. What? Oh, we were talking about Julia Michaels, our favorite songwriter in the game right now. Yeah, you've said this a couple of times that Julian Michaels is your favorite songwriter. Who is she? Why is she your favorite songwriter? Well, Charlie, I realize, as you asked me, that I do not know much about her.

I know that I love the way her musical mind works. Yeah. I know that she's written huge massive number one hits for the likes of Justin Bieber, Selena Gomez, and herself, Julian Michaels. And she's also worked with Brittany, Christina Aguilera, the chick, Shakira, John Legend, Keith Urban, Demilovato, Haley, Fittorne, D'Lieh, D'Ala, Lady Gaga, Troy Savon. Those are at least a couple of the artists

she's also written with. And them, and them too. Yeah. And I actually went back to our catalog and found out that we have broken down, I think, 13 songs that she has either written or performed. I mean, that's got to be a record on this show, I would think.

So the short of it, she's just like one of the most significant working songwriters and artists in terms of number one songs. And to your point, there's just something musically that grabs our ear. I think her style stands out when you're listening to the pop charts to the point where, I mean, honestly, one of my favorite things about doing the show for the last, I don't know, six odd years, is that when I listen to the top 40, I have this different approach.

And I can actually say to myself, oh, this sounds like a Julian Michael's song. Yeah. And that's because it does something different than a lot of the other pop. hits. And I hope we can like dig into that a little bit today. That's what I want to do. I think we should have a detailed study of what makes her work excellent and distinctly Julia Michaels. And then wonderfully in the second half of her show, I actually get to speak with Julia about her debut full length album, not in chronological order. I want to live in a world where all your exes are dead. I want to kill all the memories that

you're saving your head be the only girl it's ever been in your bed i want to live in a world where all your your exes are dead. I'm so excited. I can't believe I'm talking to the face that talk to Julian Michaels right now. It's very, uh, yeah, this is going to be fun. Where do we begin? Like, I just made this bold claim that I can tell you when a Julian Michael song comes on the radio, even if I've never heard it.

Like, how might we back that? up. Help me out here. I want to start with, do you remember the first time that you heard, either a song written by her or a song with her voice on it? I think it was in the context of our show, and it might have been when we were breaking down bad liar by Selena Gomez. Is that right? One of my favorite songs. Maybe, but I think you're wrong. It's got to be sorry. It's got to be sorry by Justin Bieber, the world beating mega hit. You know what I really? I really, I really, realized today listening to this for the first time in a minute. What?

That opening little riff is so distinctly her voice. This came out in 2015 before her breakout song issues that made her her own star. But her voice is leading Justin B. Rosari, one of the biggest songs of the last decade. I think a lot of people probably heard that song and heard her voice, but it's a little disembodied. I think what we want to accomplish today to think about maybe three qualities that are distinctly her musical fingerprint. The first one that comes to my mind

is that she has this way of upping the melodic stakes. Yeah, this is definitely one of the identifying features of a Julia Michaels joint. It's like a song that unfurls itself over the course of its structure. And I think a really good example is that track, her like breakout track is a soul artist that you mentioned earlier issues. Because when you listen to the verse and then the pre-chorus and the chorus of this song, it just like expands and expands and just like fills up your chest and your brain as you listen to it. I'm jealous. When I'm down, I get real down when I'm high.

I don't come down. Yeah, we can just take those opening lines. You know, they're very clipped and staccato. Da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da. Yeah, I think that you can even zoom in at a more micro-level. She's just like, I'm jealous, overzealous. Like, short, short. And then the next line, when I'm down, I get real down.

When I'm high, I don't come down. And so she's starting to sort of elongate that melody, give us more. You're kind of leaning in closer to feel like, where are we going to go? Where we're going next is to the pre-chorus, where that elongation gets even more stretched out. The note lengths themselves start to expand and stretch. No, you don't Judge me Because if you did, baby,

I did you do. It's like almost Kind of become a little operatic Totally. But there's still one further level To ascend to And that's the chorus, which is where in a Julia Michael song, you get your

big emotional payoff. Because I got issues But you got them to And yet it's not quite that simple. So there's a big, anthemic, like, skyscraping chorus. Right. And yet there's this other little thing

that's a nice Michaelism. At the very end, we got a little taste of the very beginning of the song. Yeah, I got issues. Yeah, because I've got issues. And one of them is how bad I need you. It's like another one of those little

rapid fire staccato lyrics that we had at the very beginning, just like, because if you did, baby, I would judge you to. Right, right, right, right. It's like the song expands, expands, expands, and it's like, and then it contracts, and then we get back to the verse, and we're back to this.

Ticada, diga-da, ticka-da, tick-da. It's something that I hear in a lot of her work. I like this way that she sort of starts at the atomic level of the melody, just like, I'm jealous. Mm-hmm. We're zealous. Yeah.

And then it just builds and builds and builds. there's a very similar sort of phrasing in the song, I miss you, which we discussed on the show years ago. It's not supposed to talk, but I'm getting ahead of myself. I'm scared when we're not. Because I'm scared you with somebody else. There's a little thought, and then this bigger, longer thought,

the little thought, longer thought. And it just, it's sort of, it's breathing. It keeps you on your toes. I mean, earlier I said her song, stand out. That's, I think, one of the reasons. It's kind of unpredictable. A lot of songs you turn on, and you kind of know exactly. where they're going. And that's not a bad thing. I think that's part of the pop machine is like,

oh, this familiarity. I can almost tell you what's going to happen even when I've never heard before. Her songs aren't quite like that. They're like, take these weird detours and left turns, and you're like, wait, what? What was that? Yeah, I think that brings us to the second quality, which is what I'm going to call knock, knock, a drop big thought. Oh, that's dark, Charlie. That is the nadir of your dad jokes. I am so. stupefied. The point being, she has this way of establishing an idea

and then jumping in and taking us in a direction that we don't expect. It can be melodic, it can be rhythmic, it can be in the lyric. There was a song on the radio that was a mega hit the first time I heard it, I'm like, Julie Michael's song, absolutely. It was

Luzi to Love Me. You promised the world and I fell for it. I put you first and you adored it. Set fast to my forest and you let it burn sing off key in my chorus because it wasn't yours yes yes talk to me about this song please listen i don't know how you go from writing justin biebersari to selina gomez's lose you to love me and be on either side of that relationship but we're not here to gossip what we're

here to talk about is what is going on in that phrasing do you know what i'm talking about I mean also another one of those little funky staccato passages There's your interrupting Interrupting cow or whatever your horrible joke is She says like you promised the world I fell for it Establish this sort of metric pattern That da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da You promise the world and I fell for it

I put you first and you adored it falls it up I put you first and you adored it Another writer might just do another. Da-da-da-da-da-da-da. But instead, she does... Sir fires to my forest and you let it burn. Sing off key in my chorus. Because it wasn't yours.

And I'm like, wait, wait, hold on. You've just taken me into this forest. And they let it burn. Sing off key in my chorus. And then finally sort of come back around because it wasn't yours. And I'm like, okay, we've concluded the thought despite these interruptions. Like, I'm with you. It's surprising it's off-kilter, but in the most satisfying way.

This interrupting thing feels like a musical version of the way that people actually talk. Yes. Because people don't talk in like, you know, Iambic pentameter. They say one thing and then they suddenly think of something else or they get distracted and it changes midstream. Right. It's very conversational. And that increases the emotional stakes of the track. That's very true.

There is a way that her lyrics are just kind of, they're casual, and they often are hiding the creative rhyming and meter is making them great by just sounding like something you could have said. Another song where you can hear this is 2002 by Anne Marie, which we've covered, I think, on this show before when we were talking about sort of millennial nostalgia. And yet I didn't even realize that this was yet another Julia Michael's song. She does this same thing. And it has another level because she's referencing all these 90s, 2000s hits. She sings, I Got 99 Problems singing Bye, Bye, Bye, Hold Up. If you want to go and take a ride with me, better hit me, baby, one more time. It's like the hold up actually holds up the rhythmic flow and switches it up.

Yes, exactly. This chorus, it's pretty goofy. It's a little juvenile. It's peak nostalgia, and yet just musically, I really dig it. Similar kind of thing where we've got to establish an idea, which I think many other songwriters would repeat to make sure you got it before you move on to another thing. Oops, I got none of any problems singing bye, bye, bye. You want that flow to repeat, but no, hold up.

And then she borrows the flow from another popular song if you want to go and take a ride with me. We finally get the resolution better hit me, baby one more time, and the bye, bye, and the one more time are finally sort of coherent. We get that conclusion with the interrupting thought right in the middle. Okay, so we've got raising the melodic stakes, interrupting the flow. I'm not going to repeat your knock-knock joke. No, no, you don't have to.

Give us one more hallmark of a Julian Mike. James jam. I call this one two and five. Basically, why say it in two words when you can say it in five? Julia Michaels has a certain verbosity to the way that she writes lyrics, and it results in some really unpredictable rhymes. You could say it's downright sesquipidalian. Excuse me? No, I won't excuse you, not as long as that joke still lingers in my synaptic pathways. So verbosity and unpredictable rhymes. I like this.

Why say it in two when you can say it in five? A good example of that is the song I clearly wanted to talk about since the beginning of the show. It's bad liar. The lyrics of which are like one single run-on sentence. Almost like a James Joyceian stream of consciousness. I was walking down the street the other day trying to distract myself, but then I see your face. Oh wait, that's someone else. I'm trying to play it.

trying to make it disappear. But just like the battle of Troy, there's nothing subtle here. In my room there's a king-sized space bigger than it used to be. If you want, you can rent that place. Call me an amenity. And it moves from literary allusions to the Battle of Troy to dropping these extended metaphors, like in my room there's a king-size space. If you want, you can rent that place.

Call me an amenity. and then amenity. That is not the kind of word that you usually hear in a top 40 pop song, nor is serpentine, which is the end of the pre-chorus. I just feel like she and Justin Tranter, her writing partner, are writing these songs and just having so much fun, like trying to jam in as many $2 words as possible. And then we nerds out in the,

the, you know, listening public are just like go-go-gaga for these multisyllabic rhymes. It's like, it's so fun. I'm totally with you, Nate. Rhyming used to be with amenity. I don't know how you get there, but it works. And I love the run-on sentence quality. There's even a moment where it's very clear that two parts of the verse had to be spliced into each other because there was almost too many words in Sleada goes.

sing one line and then sing the other and they're pushed together. Right, there's no place to take a breath. Too many words. You know, I so often think that songwriting is about using an economy of words to find just the subtlest way and the simplest way, the simplest, you know, fewest words possible. And yet, I think that Julie Michaels is in company with other songwriters who I really love from the past who also are verbose. I think about like Paul Simon and the song The Boy in the Bubble. I think of the boy in the bubble and the baby with the babbling heart. And I believe these are days, lasers in the jungle, lasers in the jungle somewhere.

Staccato signals of constant information, a loose affiliation of millionaires and billionaires and baby. Love that baby with the babu and heart. And I believe in the staccato signals of constant information affiliation. of millionaires and billionaires and baby. I don't know if it makes any sense to me. I've never really figured out this lyric. But all of the consonants and rhymes and the sort of words bombarding on each other

is incredibly satisfying. Yeah, it's like listening to this, it's about the pleasure of the words and how many you can fit in. I think maybe to sum up these qualities, the upping the anti-melotically or quality of interrupting herself. Right.

The verbosity, the two and five. let's listen to her newest song, All Your Exes, a single off of the new record, as a case study to see how she reveals all these qualities in one song. Perfect. When your friends tell stories about 2017, I know there's posts a daily vow to be considerate of me. Wish I could be blissfully. I know where you used to put your mouth and who you write your fucking songs about. I want to live in a world where all your exes are dead. to kill all the memories that you're saving your head.

Be the only girl. It's ever been in your bed. I want to live in a world where all your exes are dead. Okay. Can we work backwards? Sure, sure. Yeah, of course. The first thing I hear is that run on sentence, you know, why I use two words when five would do?

It's like, there's no place to take a breath. It's just like, bab-da-bab-da-bab-da-bab-da-bab-ab-a-b. Yeah, I love that line. I wish I could be blissfully unaware of where you used to put your mouth. Just an intensity of rhymes. It sounds like someone would say that, but they probably wouldn't because blissfully unaware of where you used. Just the density is, it's lovely. Okay.

So now working backwards, we would look for an interruption. Yeah. A place where the song interrupts itself and switches gears. And that's got to be the chorus, right? Yeah, so this song has to put your mouth and who you write your fucking song's about. I want to live in a world where all you... Yeah, so this song has this nice intro with the 12-string guitar, foxy kind of thing, and then just tempo drops, and we go into this like alt-rock kind of thing.

Distorted, fuzz, guitar. Yeah. A new, a totally new vocal rhythm and melody. And even when she's singing that new rhythm and melody, I find there's ways she interrupt herself again. She has this, I want to kill all the memories that you save in your head, be the only girl that's been in your bed. The way she jumps into that word, be the only girl.

Hmm. I want to kill all the memories that you save in your head. Be the only girl that's ever been in your bed. There's no room to hardly take a breath. Yeah. Interrupting cow. Okay, so we've got some two and five. kind of phrasing, we've got an interruption, and now we're looking to see if she ups the melodic

ante. I'm getting this in two different ways. One is a very strategically placed curse word that catches our ear just before this shift. And upping the melodic ante doesn't mean necessarily ascending to a higher register. It means finding ways of continually surprising our ears. And what's strange here is that she actually drops down in the chorus, not just in tempo, but also in register. Yeah. And it takes on this seriousness because she's wishing that all the person's axes are dead. It's not really just the melodic stakes that are being raised.

It's the emotional stakes. I think that's really what we're talking about here. Right. There's a kind of like tongue-in-cheek humor in the verse, I think, in that first. section. Yes. And then it's not so funny in the chorus. It's kind of like, this is like some real jealousy, you know?

Like this is like some real emotional honesty here. It's what I so enjoy about her songs. You have this casual language, often with really detailed minutia about everyday life, that forms a through line and surprising narrative through a song about all kinds of emotional states that feel like they're on the borderline of polite conversation. So now everyone who's just listened to this is equipped to listen to the top 40 and find all the Julia Michael songs without checking the credits because they have this checklist of JM trademarks to follow.

Right. And now what I'm curious though is when you talk to her to find out if all these things we identified are plotted out like moves on a chessboard, or if they just emerge whole cloth like Athena from Zeus's head fully formed without any calculation, that's what I'm going to be fascinated to hear when you speak to Julia. All right. We'll find out 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. Okay. Ready? Ready. Do not sugarcoat something for me. No. No.

No. We'll dive into their stories and get valuable insights from top executives, actors, entrepreneurs, and other individuals who have inspired me so much in my own journey. Pretty tough is your front row seat to the women who have demonstrated the past. power in being unapologetic in their pursuits. I hope you'll join us. New episodes drop Wednesdays on YouTube or in your favorite podcast app. Hi, I'm Julia Michaels. Hey Julia. Super pleased to be speaking with you. I guess I want to start off by asking, you've been in the songwriting game for a minute, you've put out three EPs, and this new album, not in chronological order, is your first full length. Yes. So why now? I think I just wasn't ready yet.

I've always found people that can just dive right into their first album so honorable. Like, that's incredible. But I think with me, everything takes a little bit of time. It took me a long time to realize I wanted to be an artist. It took me a long time to feel comfortable with people potentially relating to things that I was talking about. And it took me a long time to fall in love with something super healthy and then to talk about it. Did you have an idea of what you wanted to communicate? with this record? With my past EPs, I've always sort of glorified toxicity. And now that I'm in a

relationship with somebody where it's very different from what I've experienced before, I realized that for a long time I thought toxicity was what I deserved. Like I wasn't good enough for love or that I deserved a certain kind of love. And then someone comes in and you realize that Love is actually really easy and not complicated, and it can be passionate without the chaos. And I wanted to write about that. You know, I'm 27 now. I have a different perspective on life and love, and, you know, you grow with every day, hopefully. And I feel like that's what I've done with this album.

I feel like we hear that on the latest single, Love is Weird. the third door of my dresser first one hit me hard second was a feather playing operation trying to put me back together yeah love is weird is basically just about how

it's just really strange how you can go from again yeah loving a certain kind of person and a certain kind of love and then you know you spend two months three months crying over this relationship and then all of a year later you've found yourself again

you're healthy you're you're you feel like you can, you know, go on. And you're in the park with somebody new. And you're asking really deep questions and you're psycho-analizing one another. And you're like, oh, I actually think I could really fall for this person. You feel all these butterflies. And yeah, it's basically just a song about love being weird, but also you being hopeful that it can change and it can be beautiful.

You did an interview with Zane Lowe about this song. and you mentioned that this song came at the end of a studio day. I did. You had 30 minutes left, and you wrote a song in 30 minutes. How do you train to be able to write a song in 30 minutes? Does this always been the case for you? No. A good majority of my bigger songs have been written very fast.

I think that's because you're not really focusing on the technical side of things. you're just really focusing on your subconscious and it just being very conversational. For Love is Weird. For example, we wrote a song called Rapped Around and we had 30 minutes left in the studio and I was talking to Billy Walsh about Love just being really weird

and he was like, that's a song. And then John Ryan picks up the guitar and starts singing. And then we all just, you know, perspective, perspective, perspective, wrote this song super quickly. What is it about that, the idea that you want to work from your gut and your memory, why does that yield such positive

results for you? I think it's just the most relatable. Even though you haven't shared the same experience as somebody, you've experienced the same emotion. So even though my situation may be different from someone else's, they've felt love so they can equate their situation to, you know, what I'm feeling and then just like blend it out essentially which I think is the most fun way to do it. It's surprising to me because over the many years I've listened to your music, it's gotten to the point now where I can hear a song that you've written for somebody else and I know it's a Julia Michael song like very quickly.

That's funny. I'm curious from your perspective, do you have a sense of what a Julia Michael song sounds like those things that come out of your subconscious? I mean, I always am a bit comedic. I always try to throw fun words into songs. I feel like ever since I heard Mary J. Blige put percolate in a song, I was like, my life goal now is just to put really large words into songs and people be like, what is that, you know? Is there a word you're proud of here on this record? I put Ottoman in a song called Little Did I Know, and I also wrote along a line in Little Did I Know that said, you can't spell drama without consonants, just why? But I've had a few that I've been really

proud of, like in Bad Liar, we say amenity. In my room there's a king-size space bigger than it used to be. If you want, you can rent that place. Call me an amenity, yeah, which I think is just so funny. I don't know if I have like an identifiable sound, but I think I'm definitely quirky in my approach to lyrics and I'm always trying to push boundaries and see what we can get away with. That's fun and interesting. You also have a certain way with melody. The two things I always find are your rhyme scheme surprise me in the first verse of all of your exes. There's a spot on your chest just for me. It's personally addressed. And anyone there before me should be a criminal offense. There's a spot on your chest. There's a spot on your chest.

just for me, it's personally addressed, and anyone before me should be a criminal offense. So chest addressed offense. I feel like you have a way of rhyming where you don't always play by the rules. No, I've always felt a little allergic to like Moon June rhymes. Like things that you would like expect people to rhyme with, you know, like far and star. It's like, I always just want to see what we can get away with. And usually my melodies are just me trying to fit as many words in a melody as possible. Like, I think more about how to get the lyrics in there more than I think about how to make them melodic structure interesting. There's a verbosity. You like to use a lot of words. Yes. I mean, that's a really weird melody, which I'm very proud of. And we did that very, like I said,

very quickly. My favorite line is, people in my past, I put them in a coffin, laid them all to rest, but I still think about them often. We were on our toes trying to make a good impression, now we're kissing under Lamposts and we're asking deeper questions. People in my past put them in a coffin, laid them all to rest, but I still think about them often. We were on our toes trying to make a good impression. Now we're kissing under Lampost and we're asking deeper questions. It's like, you know, sort of addressing one thing and then addressing where you are now. Thinking about interesting words and phrasing reminds me of this conversation.

We had a few weeks back with the artist J.P. Sachs, who you obviously know, not just from co-writing if the world was ending together, but also by falling in love in the process of writing that song. And when we spoke, he told me about how there was this one phrase that you had done as a scratch vocal that he was supposed to then come in and actually sing. he just couldn't get the phrasing right. And he's like, that's it, Julia, you're on the song. It's a duet.

This is yours. It's been a year now. Think I figured out how I just think about you without it ripping my heart out. And I know you know we know you went down for forever and it's fine. Yeah, he just couldn't get the timing right, which I thought was really funny because we had done it the same way on the first half. So I just was like, here, let me do it. And then you can just like copy it. And he was, I sang the song down twice.

And he was like, I'm keeping this. You're crazy. And so I literally never even went back in to redo a vocal. What you hear is literally, I sang it. And then I was like, I have to go. I'll see you later. Nice to meet you. Oh, wow.

Yeah, never see you again. Little did I know. Yeah. Ha, ha, ha, ha. Beautiful story. You had mentioned that a lot of your earlier music was about toxicity. and your other single here is all of your exes, which is not not about toxicity.

No. But it's also a little bit tongue in cheek. Don't tell me to make nicer I should try to empathize. I'm confident I've got them accurately demonized. You tell me not to worry on the only thing you see. Well, yeah, I fucking better be. I want to live in. Lee, tell me about the story of all of your exes and how it came together.

I was nearing the end of my album, and there were a couple of songs that I wanted to sort of take off. And I remember looking at JP and being like, you're one of my favorite writers. Do you want to spend a couple days with me in the studio? And he was like, sure. So we were writing something. I don't remember what. And we left that day. And he was talking to me about how maybe one day in our future.

we'll be able to talk about the people from our past openly that have shaped our present. And I was like, no, I don't give a fuck about anybody you've ever been with. I don't give a shit. And he was like, baby, you can't just live in a world where like all my exes are dead. And I was like, yes, I fucking can. And I sang the first two lines of the song in the car. And I was like, we are writing this when we go to the studio. tomorrow. And that's what we did. And yes, it's satirical and comical and aggressive, but it's really masked in, like, insecurity. And it's basically like the idea of you being so intimate, as intimate with somebody else as you are with me and as deeply in love with someone else as you are with me, physically and emotionally hurts me, you know, like just that idea that you could,

love someone like this is like, ouch. And so I wanted to write about it in a funny way. The song starts in one place and goes in a very different direction. Yes. Why did you want to be Wisfully

I think of where you used to put your mouth And who you write your fucking songs about I want to live in a world Where all your exes are Why did you want to change up the tempo? Like it's such an unusual choice I think because the song is so dramatic I wanted something that felt dramatic

It just felt like a nice little Sprinkle of dramatic effect I think It works, it's fun It's very startling I'm curious that because on the record you have a large musical variety you have acoustic pop you have alt rock there's some really fun house music even some drum and bass references and i'm curious about how do you go about choosing the soundscape and the just sort of the genre to fit the emotion of a song

you know it really just depends sometimes it's just a feeling sometimes i just don't want a song to feel super sad like for undertone but you always in that It's a song sort of about reminiscing, and if it didn't have the drum and bass, it would be a sad song. So I just didn't want that to happen. I wanted it to still feel like you could, you know, drive down the beach at sunset with your top down, and you could, you know, be in your feelings, but still feel like you could hit 70 on the freeway. Sort of in the same way that all of your exes, sure, it's a little bit tongue-in-cheek, but as you said, there's some real vulnerability in there.

Definitely. I feel like oftentimes some great punkish rock guitars are really good at covering up our insecurities and making things safe to say that otherwise don't feel so safe. Absolutely. I did that a lot on inner monologue. Yeah. Sometimes I miss you and then I remember that I deserve much better. Cover my tattoo about you with another and now I'm feeling much better. On this record, you work with some other great songwriters.

you are a songwriter who also works with other songwriters. Yes. What is it about the collaborative process of songwriting that makes you, when you're working as the performing artists, want to work with songwriters on your record? I mean, I've been working with songwriters for a really long time. My favorite part about what I do is collaborating. I always love that there could be a melody that you may not think of

or a lyric you may not think of, or harmony even, that you may not think of. And someone that you work with really well can complement that and vice versa. And it's the same reason why I like to work with certain producers. You know, they may hear a certain drum sound or a certain string that I may not hear or may not think of. I just think that's the best part of what we do,

the best part of songwriting. I think people overcomplicate songwriting sometimes. People think it has to have some brilliant metaphor for some, you know, interesting imagery. And I don't think people realize that they can come into a room and they can talk about what they're feeling. And then we can easily say that on paper. And I think a lot of people don't do it

because they're scared of their feelings. And if they do do that, then it makes them extremely vulnerable. But I'm always one for vulnerability. I think those are the best songs. In past interviews, you've talked about how fame was not the goal, that you are fundamentally an introvert into it for the creative process. And I'm curious, do you think that you're being an introvert is sort of your songwriting superpower that helps pull out that vulnerability? Maybe. I think growing up, I was always that way, and I think

it's made me extremely observant, and it's made me really empathic, and it's made me able to tap into other people's emotions really quickly. And I think that's why, like, you know, when And I'm writing with Gwen Stefani, for example, and she's reading something down on her journal, and she says, I don't know what, and she keeps reading down this journal entry. I'm like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, stop.

That's the most beautiful thing I've ever heard in my entire life. If we don't make that a song, I will hate us forever. You know, and someone will be saying something in a conversation, and they'll say one word or two lines, and I'm like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. how have you not made this a song already? We have to make this a song. I think also writing for as long as I have, you just make yourself emotionally susceptible to everything, which I think is a superpower. I want to check back in with you now having heard Julia break down her process. What do you think? Have we just totally overthought this entire thing? I mean, as usual, yes, we have.

Absolutely. And yet, you know, there was that moment where she was talking about, she said, I don't like doing moon June rhymes. Yeah. And she likes to fit as many words in as possible to a melody. That is, that's what we, that's what we heard too. Yeah. And so on one level, I hear that, as she says, she is kind of going from the gut, going from the heart, you know? Right.

And yet I see this approach that is. very deliberate and that has this clear set of expectations of like this is what makes a good song to me and I am going to follow that through so ultimately it's like yes it's it's it's about following your heart but her heart has a lot of words in it and a lot of great rhymes and a lot of surprise interruptions so it's like I don't know it's it's it's both I to me. Both and. I dig it. The head and the heart. It's all, that's what makes a good song. That's what makes a Julia

Michael's song. Switched on Pop is produced by me, Charlie Harding, Nate Sloan, and Charlie Myers. We're engineered this week by Bill Lance, social media by Abby Barr, illustrations by Iris Gottlieb, and our executive producers are Josh Akhrwa and Hana Rosen, or a member of the Vox Media Podcast Network

and a production by Vulture. You can find more of our shows anywhere you get podcasts, and at our website, switchonpop.com. tell us your favorite Julia Michael's song on Twitter at Switch on Pop and check out our little videos that Abby puts together on Instagram, Switched on Pop. They're really fun. I don't know how she does it, but I like watching them. Iris's amazing illustrations are in there.

It's really fun. What else? We have another episode coming out next week every Tuesday, y'all. This time I think it's kind of a secret slash we're still figuring it out. And it's going to be great. It's a secret to us. That's the best kind. That's the best.

That's always the best episodes. Whatever drops. Until then, thanks for listening.