Switched on Pop - Listening Differently to Lorde | with MARIAN HILL

Episode Date: April 19, 2018

Samantha Gongol and Jeremy Lloyd are songwriting duo Marian Hill and they are here to share their annoyingly sharp insights on music. They come bearing the wistful pop of Lorde's "Ribs," and we deconstruct its primordial roots in classical composers like Scelsi, Beethoven and Haydn. Then, we turn to Marian Hill's new single "Differently" to uncover the subtle musical shifts that outline a complex dialogue lurking among the track's sparse, funky textures. Songs Discussed: Lorde - Ribs Broken Social Scene - Lover's Spit Giacinto Scelsi - Memories Ludwig van Beethoven - 9th Symphony Franz Josef Haydn - Creation Kid Rock - All Summer Long Miley Cyrus - Party in the USA Marian Hill - Mistaken Marian Hill - Differently 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 musicologist Nate Sloan. And I'm songwriter Charlie Harding, and I'm really pleased to be joined by some guests here. Do you mind introducing yourselves? I'm Sam. I'm Jeremy.

And we're Marion Hill. We're very thrilled to have you here. Thank you. Yes, we have Marion Hill in the studio, and we're going to talk about their music, their new releases. But before we do, Marion Hill has brought us a pop song to deconstruct together.

Indeed. And that song is, drum roll, ribs by Lord. It's my favorite Lord song and one of my favorite songs because there's like a genius structural thing going on that I've never seen anywhere else and that always twist my mind around. Okay, let's pause. I don't want any earth-shattering insights from Marion Hill yet. I want to first listen to the question. to the chorus of ribs together.

Okay. It's like cathedral music. Okay, now we can begin. Marion Hill, what drew you to this particular song? I'd been listening to it for a bit as I was getting into Lord when that first album came out. And it wasn't until several listens in that I realized the verse and the chorus have the same lyric. The first verse and the first chorus. then the second verse and the second chorus.

And the difference is that the melody is totally different and double-timed, and it's repeated. So you get this crazy kind of meditative effect where you, like, get the words really slowly and you're like sitting in them. And then the chorus comes along, and they're faster and repeated and they're really sinking into your brain. I've never seen anything like that where, like, if you're not looking for that, it feels like a totally new chorus because the melody feels so different. Wait, I'm speechless here.

I've just listened to this song like 300 times and somehow not notice this. It's so sneaky. Can we confirm this back together real quick? Sure. Let's just spin the verse of ribs. Okay, there's the verse. Let's cross-reference this against the chorus we just heard now and confirm if this is the case. Well heard.

It checks out. Oh, man, please don't take my PhD away. I swear I deserve it. Okay, so that's cool. What meaning do you see there? She's loaded those few lines with so much meaning lyrically. I think that's one of the things Lord does best is just. just like drives you crazy getting old for her to sing that.

She wrote this song, she was like, 17 or something. She's always been an old soul. Yeah. Yeah. The lyrics really sit in and it adds to this meditative quality of the song. And it's also interesting because it keeps it moving in a sense too, because once you get to the second verse,

we just have the second verse lyric repeated on the second chorus. We don't get that first chorus lyric again, I don't think. It also keeps moving. And then the end is just this whole new, like, B section that feels, or C section, I guess, that feels like a chorus in and of itself. That's kind of like the play out of sorts. I feel like I'm going to leave this podcast with more questions. That is absolutely our intent.

No, that's really good. I think it speaks to the power of repetition too. I think, especially in pop music, we use repetition mostly for the choruses and for a very specific reason, but we often shy away from repeating verses. And I'm not really sure why that is. We've returned to it on the choruses. It's generally frowned upon if it is different. Right.

Or we allow just a slight twist whenever identical are exactly the same. But this is really bold. And I really appreciate that they took this risk because most people don't. Certainly if there's some anxiety here about getting old, doing it slowly and then speeding it up again. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Totally. Yeah, absolutely. I love it. Okay. So now we're digging into one of the central themes of this song, aging, which as we've already discussed is kind of insane coming from someone who's only 17 years old right in the song. Nevertheless, it's a powerful anchoring sentiment here. And with that in mind, I want to return to the very beginning of the song because this is such a fascinating moment, I think.

It's so surprising. Let's just listen to the very opening of ribs now. Yeah, you describe this as a cathedral, Charlie. I like that. There's something ethereal sort of. heavenly here. I have an interpretation of this, but I'm wondering if anyone can illuminate for me just like technically what is happening here, because it's such a unique sound and I have no idea how it's being created. Do you all have any ideas? Um, producer. Yeah, I mean, it's vocal sample

manipulating as far as I can tell. He's chopped up some harmony parts of hers and he might be reversing and doing them forward and there's definitely panning stuff happening and they're definitely being faded in and it gives this kind of meditative building like a moment is beginning to me this whole song feels kind of like a moment frozen in amber like trying to like hold on to this moment of her youth and there's all these like specific descriptors like being in a car laugh until my ribs get tired the title lyric and i feel like the beginning adds to that it's like we're just going to stay here and live in this moment. Yeah, I'll just add that the he in this case is the producer Joel Little who worked on this album with Lord. And I love this metaphor of something encased in Amber because I have a similar

reading. To me, this is like the primordial ooze of childhood. You know, it's like that innocent space before we become, I don't know, self-conscious humans or something. And it just feels something very innocent and free to me about it. Yeah and like everything's new. Everything is fresh and bright and sharp and I did once make music for meditation and it sounded a lot like this. Not as interesting though. Well that brings us to an early interjection of something we like to do on the show called classical masters. Because speaking of meditation there is this composer who I couldn't get out of my as I was listening to the beginning of this song. Cool.

And his name is Jaquinto Chelsea. Any Chelsea heads in the room here? Anyone? Nope, not at all. All right. So this is a fascinating character from the annals of classical music history. 20th century composer, Italian count, raised in a castle. Not too bad.

But kind of an odd person, sort of a mystic almost, and used all his resources. towards composing this really ut-ray, very introspective music that to me sounds a lot like the start of this Lord track. It's very kind of ruminative and sort of slowly developing. Let's have a listen to a piece by Chelsea that's actually all about this experience of aging. And this is actually one called Memories. And it's for solo cello. Let's have a listen. So in this song, he's tuned the cello so that all the strings can play the same note at the same time.

And then he just creates these slight microtonal variations up and down, putting us in this, again, sort of like primordial trance state or something. Yeah, I think it also feels similar to ribs in its nodding towards a strict rhythm, but it's kind of like waffling around the edges, which gives you this kind of, we're not there yet. we haven't arrived. We're kind of letting this texture happen. Yeah, both are doing a lot in playing with space. In the instance here, in the Chelsea, we have a cello probably in some sort of chamber hall. And so the reverberations of the cello

sound really add to it. So just to demonstrate what I'm talking about, here would be a cello totally dry in a small room. And then you put it in a chamber hall and you add this reverberation and it creates a sense of space. And you have the same thing happen. in ribs where there's these focal chops and synthesizers, which on their own would sound pretty boring. But when you add in the reverb and probably some other delays, all of a sudden you're just waffling around in giant space. Totally. And we could reach even further back for these primordial sounds. We could go to Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, which starts with this sort of like cauldron of creation. And speaking of creation, we can go even further back to

Franz Joseph Hayden, who has a whole oratorio called Creation. That's a whole oratorial called Creation. similarly begins with this moment of like the cosmos coming into being. It makes me wonder why we gravitate towards certain sounds to depict certain emotions or certain feelings. I took a music class in college and I forget most of it, but I remember we sort of touched upon that by the strings, why do we associate certain sounds with feeling a certain way. It's a great question. I mean, ab zero scientific or cognitive basis for what I'm about to say. Bring it on.

I wonder if it's not like similar to what we heard in the womb, just sort of this washy, just nonstop, like, a rhythmic. Muted. It's just like ocean of sound that we're bathed in. And I do think, I mean, I'm about to also speak without a basis in research about the subject. We're all going to try. I think there's an interesting thing. Harmonically, there's like the overtone series, which is this kind of universal thing.

They open intervals that we're getting in both of these. They feel simple and open. In contrast to if you have like tighter more layered chords and there are like thirds and sevenths and whatever, then it feels intrinsically more complicated. Unresolved. Yeah, exactly. I love it. That opened up many more doors than I was expecting.

And it's such a powerful way of situating us in this theme of aging before we even know what the song is. is about. I think there are other subtle ways that she reinforces this kind of youth and age dichotomy. One that I really like is something she does with the vocals at key moments in the song where she'll actually double track her voice, which in itself is not that unusual, but it's the way she does it where she'll double track at the octave. So we'll hear a low lord, and she has an amazingly low voice, which I love. And a high lord at the same time. Let's have a listen to one of these kind of high-low moments.

It's like future lord, past lord, present lord. Yeah, I mean, and as much as I hear the low voice is sort of more mature and knowing and the high voice is more, I don't know, innocent and that's all I got. No, yeah, I hear that. it is a very commonly used technique, but I think in this context certainly lends itself to, yeah, that feeling of anxiety and this question that she's asking, or that she's wrestling with, really. And I think that it's an octave and not a harmony also adds to that feeling that it's not like a different part. They're both singing the same things, but they're different voices doing it.

And as a listener, it kind of throws us off a little bit because you don't actually know which one to tune into. So your attention is constantly flipping back and forth. And I think that that in terms of inducing anxiety or inducing anxiety about aging, it kind of does that because you don't know where to pay attention to. Right. Present, past, future. And that's a good point because I think harmonies sort of would reflect this because they fit together. Like it sounds like they're supposed to be there. But there's tension in this.

And it's not quite distracting, but it's certainly, right, as you said, sort of draws your attention and you don't quite know where to focus. Yeah, the voices are far apart. Yeah. Is that a technique that you've used in Marion Hill as well? Yes. Yeah. That's why it's so interesting in this context. We have not used it to evoke aging specifically.

Yeah. I freak out about it, but not in song yet. Is there a particular song that comes to mind that we can play a clip of here? Trying to think when we... Yes. Mistaken. Of course I'm mistaken. Yeah.

I've been trying to shake it. I was a little surprised when you picked this song at first, but then I was listening to it more. I saw more and more resonance with your music, which we'll get to in a moment. And especially the kind of attention to vocal production and sort of using all the different sounds of the voice is something that Lord does really well.

And I think Marion Hill does really well as well. Thank you. I feel like they've in similar production worlds. The two of them really defined sort of a moment in pop and like a style of pop music and he was one of the first people that I remember to really use space and silence in their music and Jared can certainly talk more. Well yeah, well and I can I can just remember when Lord's first like the love club EP came out and was all over hype machine. I was in college and listening to it all the time and a few

months later was starting to formulate what would be Marion Hill stuff. So it was definitely like this first Lord record, this song specifically that I loved, it was stuff that was really in our heads as we were starting to define ourselves and like definitely as Sam was saying, like the minimalism and the space and the songwriting of what they made. Cool. Yeah, that's another parallelism in the aesthetic I didn't think about. For Royals, for that to appear on the radio, I mean, that was pretty... It's like drum track and vocals. Yeah.

I mean, that was pretty crazy. And it's harmonically really interesting, too. Yeah. So you're like, well, if they can do it. Yeah, exactly. That was a lot of silence for the radio and something, or a lot of space and minimalism. That was something that we sort of wrestled with too and worked out.

But she paved the way, for sure. Finally, I think there's something in this song that really gets at the experience of age and that's that the song references another song. We can listen to the first verse of this song and hear the lyrics, The Drink You Spilt All Over Me, Lovers Spit Left on Repeat. And Lovers Spit is another song. It's a song by Broken Social Scene.

Lord showing her indie bona fides. Totally, totally. So this is a track from the early 2000s indie rock collective broken social scene. We hear, I think, a lot of oral continuity here. It's a similarly very kind of spacious, spacey, washing texture. Meditative. It similarly feels like a frozen moment to me.

It's not dynamic in that way. It's not like a lot of ups and down. It's just like we're here. Sit in this. I think it's clever of her to use this reference here because I think the experience of listening to music is like something that we really connect. with age, whether when you're young and listening to music and it feels so liberating in

such a rush. When you're old, you're listening to music and it feels kind of nostalgic and reminds you of your youth. It's a brilliant insertion here. And it brings me to a topic that I've always wanted to discuss on this show, which is what we might call songs that reference other songs in the song. Yes. It's kind of like a parallel to sampling, but it's not sampling.

but it's not sampling. Right. No, no, right. It's a sampling that occurs in the listener's head if they know the song. But you still are like adding that song to the song in a way. Right. So this would be a very rarefied category of lyrical references to other songs. I think you got a book there, man.

There's probably so many examples of these, but the ones that come to mind are utterly random for me. I'll share them with you very, very quickly. The first. This one defied. That's kid rock. And this one defies your category because this is not just a reference to Sweet Home L&M.

This is like a total homage slash remake. Probably they had to license. There's no way. Yeah. That was definitely cleared. Fair enough. Okay. So maybe that one was a stretch.

It was the first thing I thought of though. The same thing. Right. So maybe we'll have a subcategory within the subcategory. category of songs whose entire commercial raison d'etra is tripping another song. What is that called an interpolation? Yeah. Yeah.

And then there's our next example. What's Jay-Z song? So good. We all need to know. So good. Which song? You got a caller. I don't know.

I think it's very clever. This is, sorry, this is Miley Cyrus party in the USA. It's very clever because you get to put whatever JZ song you like there. Yeah. And she references Brittany, I think, in the second verse. Yeah, the second verse is the Britney song. That's exactly right. Yeah.

So you get to slot whichever one of your choosing there. Is your favorite. Yeah. I think Jay-Z and Britney Spirits have been on a stage together. Though there's a danger, I think, in that you might want to just stop listening to Miley Cyrus and start listening to Jay-Z. For me, it's dirt off your shoulder that's on. For me, it's Lucifer, I think. Ooh, cool.

I think in all these, and there are many more. Actually, I would love to create like a playlist of songs within songs, meta songs. Meta songs. But I think these songs all have something in common, which is like by referencing another song, you create that feeling of nostalgia and youth for the listener. Yeah. Because our memories are so associated with music, it immediately puts us, you know, wherever we were when we first heard that song.

So you're like creating a memory of a memory, and so you're just making more neural connections of your youth. Well, it also situates the song in time with, like, that song as a reference point. And obviously, it was released, like, when Lord was, like, five or six or something. But that song has a specific time stamp, as does this one. And it, like, situates it more in a chronological world. Totally. Okay, right.

So there's layers of nostalgia. So we'd love to hear from our listeners out there. Any songs within songs? Within songs. We'll create a master playlist. But for now, let's take a quick break, but don't go anywhere because we're going to be back with Marion Hill to talk about their own song differently on Side B. 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? 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.

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That's this week on America Actually. Every Saturday in your audio and video feeds. Welcome back to Switched on Pop. Nate and Charlie here with Sam and Jeremy of Marion Hill. And let's get right into it. Let's listen to your new track from the upcoming album, Unusual. This is Differently. I have had so much fun with this song.

Oh, thank you. Awesome. It's been, yeah, it's just been such a treat analyzing this. And I had kind of a revelatory moment that I want to share with everyone. It might be obvious to other people out there, but as probably the Lord's song already evidenced, we're not always the best at listening to lyrics. And this song really behooves you to do so

because I didn't get at first what I now understand is going on in this song, that there's two narrators in a way. Or I should say there's the narrator of the song, we meet in the verse, and then there's the narrator sort of ventriloquizing the other person that she's talking to. Yeah. In order to understand this, let's just listen to the verse for a second. I know the story.

I know it well. Know how much you miss him. I can see how far you fell. I know about her. I know she's new. But try. I see you from a different point of view. I know you.

Who are you talking to here, Sam? Yeah, so we're talking to a friend. It's about someone coaching their friend through a breakup and going through all of those various frustrating emotions. And just because we have a tendency to sort of vilify your ex, you know, when we go through this end or focus on the new person that they're with and just sort of throw all these accusations and these insults their way. And the narrators are saying, let's rise above this.

It's not actually about you. It's about him. And by the last chorus, we go from the narrator saying, I don't want you to talk ill of this person. And by the end, it is uplifting. And we want you to be strong and understand that you should just walk away. So it definitely takes you on a journey. It's hard for me to memorize.

There's a whole narrative arc here. And as Sam was saying, in the beginning and the verse, our protagonist talking to her friend. And then at the end of the verse, she says, I know you want to see his face and I know what you want to say. And then we get to the chorus. And what I understand now is you need to put quotation marks around. Yes. I know. It's hard for me to talk through.

I know. I know. I didn't explain it. Put quotation marks around the entire chorus because this is what the friend wants to say. Correct. Right. Exactly. Let's spin the chorus.

So this is such a brilliant way to construct this song. We have like these two voices separated by a verse and a chorus and these two different perspectives, the knowing narrator and then the kind of in the moment emotional state. And it blows my mind how you've like created these different musical and lyrical structures for each of those verse and chorus sections and each of those different emotional states. So when we start in the verse, for one thing, we've got a very specific rhyme structure here, which I love. I don't wanna jump your gun, but the rhymes are definitely

more spaced out on the verse, which I think gives it this more conversational and also like thought out. And it's just slower pace. Right. And then the chorus, the rhymes are like a mile a minute. Yeah. in a much more just like urgent, emotional saying stuff way. It's like A, A, A, A.

Yeah, right. Because then it follows, I know about her, pause. I know she's new. Not a rhyme, but try to see it from a different point of view. There's the rhyme, yeah. Exactly. Whereas in the chorus, well, first of all, the rhyme scheme is just the same rhyme over and over again.

Yep. Which is great. So it's like, whoa, we're in a very different place now. Yeah. me, does she kiss like me? Do you wish that we ended differently? Tell me, can she sing like me? She a king like me? Are you lost at sea? So now it's like just this E, E, E, E, E rhyme over and over again. Like the woman can't stop thinking about these things. There we go. I feel like that E is the most abrasive vowel and sort of putting on this other

character, it's really appropriate to sort of have this thing that's like itching at you and kind of like, E, E, E. Yeah, that's interesting. Absolutely. Totally. And like it gets a little more personal here with Sam singing, come on. And it's like a little more intense and, and visceral.

Totally. It's way less like thought out. Yeah. Right. Right. Yeah. More in the moment. And there's a musical change that happens too that I didn't really notice

until I was listening to this song for the thousandth of the time. There are probably a few, but I want to focus on what's happening in the base. Yeah. So if we listen to the bass in the verse, it's basically going upwards, right? It's going like a minor triad, G, B, flat, D, you hear it going up. So we have this ascending, bum, bum, bum,

but then when we get to the verse, it's very similar. In fact, the first two notes are exactly the same. Bum, bum, but then it doesn't ascend, bum, it drops down to the same D, but this time an octave lower. Boom, bum, bum. I feel like we have to apologize because it's interesting to look at the notes, but we have absolutely gutted your beautiful production.

Oh yeah, I don't have any access to those incredible sounds. So now I'm going to kind of riff on something you said. If the narrator in the verse is kind of like in control and then the narrator in the chorus is sort of like more in the moment and more emotional, maybe the bass does something similar because the bass in the verse is like very tight and always like trying to rise up and then the bass in the chorus by contrast

is almost like angry. It's like descending down. It's fat. It's more legato. I don't know. There's two very different personalities at play here. Yeah. And I think it's also the chorus base is way thicker.

The verse space part is this synth part that has like sharper edges and it's very particular. And then the chorus base is just this really thick, deep like you're in the club thick bass that I feel like has a lot of swagger to it, which is kind of the like white hot anger and jealousy that the person is feeling and just like letting that drive them.

I feel like the deeper sub is more of a like primal emotional thing. The verse to me sounds like a much more sort of common hip-hop sort of bass sound. And when I get to the course, I'm like, oh, I'm in like deep house. Yeah. Love it. That's really cool. Yeah, I think about that. So if these binary bases weren't enough,

there's even another level to this story here, this drama. Let's pick up towards the end of the song, right before we get to the final chorus. We have this, frankly, kind of astonishing build section that's going to take us into the final chorus. So let's have a listen, because I think it's basically signaling, okay, there's something important about to happen. Let's have a listen to this build real quick.

So let him Whoa. Whoa. Okay, so you better have some payoff after that bill. And we do. We have a final chorus that, as you pointed out, kind of flips the script on the dynamic so far. Now it's no longer, do you wish that we had ended differently?

Now it's, I don't wish that we had ended differently. It's declarative. Yeah. Let's spin the final chorus. I can see you're missing me And you wish that we end up Even if she sings like me She's a king like me

You'll be lost at sea I know You are never there for me And I'm sure she'll see What I fool you'll be We know Even if you're missing me I don't wish that we

And a different way You totally change your vocal quality So it's really clear to me That it's like you've gone from The protagonist to like the ventriloquist and then sort of back to like, okay, this is the first voice. Yeah, it's funny. It's something that I think I do to varying degrees of success, depending on the song.

But because there's so little EQ on my vocals, like it's really, I mean, there's just a little bit of compression, I think, but there's really no effects added. It's like, yeah, it's like really important to me as a vocalist to evoke a very specific moment and feeling, because I can't hide behind the production, really. It's so stripped down and bare. So it's important to me that I do that. I would try to. Thank you for noticing. Well, it makes me think about going back to that cello that we were talking about. You can put a cello in a different space to get it to sing differently.

Same, you can put a synthesizer in a space to sing differently. And frequently, the quality of vocals that we hear in pop music we enjoy because of all the things that have been done to them. And there's some beautiful moments in here where you've added some delays and things. They add some interest. But really, you're having to use just the strength of your instrument and just the space of your vocal cords to be able to invoke different characters. Yeah. That's very beautiful. Thank you. Thank you so much. Totally. I love it. In this final chorus, we have a new vocal timbre. We have these new sort of confident, empowered lyrics, and we flipped the baselines. Yes, I'm glad you noticed that. I was really

proud of that. Oh, that's the payoff thing. I feel like that's my like archaeological discovery here. So we've established that the verse has this kind of ascending, very tight baseline, and the chorus has this baseline that goes down and it's kind of fat and sludgy. And I didn't notice this at first, but in the final chorus we have a switch. The chorus doesn't get the fat sludgy bass. It gets the tight ascending base.

And then, and also I should just even further to clarify that within the chorus, in the first two choruses, there's this structure of the fat sludgy bass for the chorus lyric and then for the like vocal chop that happens after we go back to the verse tight figure and that is flipped.

the last chorus. We switch to the sludgy for the chops and we like rock out with that to the end. Oh, such a good payoff. We have to hear it one more time. We got to listen. We got to listen. I can see you're missing me and you wish that we in a differently. Even if she sings like me, she's a king like me, you'll be lost. I know you were never there for me and I'm sure she'll see why I fool you'll be. We don't. Even if you're missing me, I don't wish that we and a different it's amazing. Thank you. It reminds me,

there's so many parallels here to the Lord track. I don't know how intentional they were when you called out that tune. So in the same way that she puts the verse in two different contexts between the rest of the course, you've done the same thing here, but rather than lyrically, you've done it musically.

And by flipping the script, you've piqued my interest in the final chorus, right? Keeping people around for a full three-minute song is always the challenge. And I'm back on that last chorus and, oh my gosh, there's something entirely new. Yeah. That's the fun thing about this song,

is if you don't finish listening to it, you don't understand what the song's actually about. It's got payoff. I think it's so interesting too, and I think it's just sort of a testament to how Jeremy produces, but if you listen to most pop songs on the radio, by the final chorus,

you just add elements to differentiate it and to make it sound bigger. But in this case, we actually stripped it back, which I feel like is pretty unusual. Well, I think it's because the lyric was so important. Yeah. That I just wanted the production to just be like, listen, Like this is this is the thing

I would also be remiss if I didn't talk about Just briefly when we're talking about this sludgy bass The origin of the sludgy bass was from our session with boy wonder on this song He's a producer that I've admired for a long long time and like studied basically Who's done like countless Drake hits and like work by Rihanna and But we came into the session with this song Lyrically finished But there wasn't that sludgy bass line yet there wasn't that big bass line yet There wasn't that big thick 808 line yet.

And at the time, I'd been sitting with it for a while, and I was just like, I can't figure out how to make, like, it needs a switch up somewhere, and I don't know what it could be. And then working together with him, we found that subline. And he actually had the idea also of this thing where it's offset the second time around, which I have grown to really love. So it's like, da, da, da, which is another thing that makes it feel more like impulsive and, Mm-hmm. Yeah. I have one more thing.

I would be also at an absolute loss if I did not point out. I know about her. I know she's new. There's a meditation bell in this song. Oh. I don't know. I don't know if it actually is. I'm sure it's some sort of sample.

I don't think it actually, it's fun. It's, I forget even what it's called. It's just like some hat sample that I've really loved for a while. It's all over Act 1, our last album. Less so on this new one. I think this is one of its only appearance. it just because I used it so much on the last one. And there's a new sound on unusual that's,

I'm not sure what it is either, but it's like a similarly like symbol thing, but the one on unusual you can hear in subtle thing in other songs and it's like this bong. So for me it's not just the meditation bell sound, which is amazing. It's throughout this, there's just all of these beautiful sounds.

There's like a puzzle of sounds that you can uncover each time that I listen to this. Thank you. Whether it's the delays that are happening on your vocal, there's some terrifying screech that happens in the chorus. All these things, it's like, oh, grabs your interest, which are beautifully deployed because the song is so minimal. And so every single time where a listener might sort of be like,

okay, I get what's happening. Nope, you surprise them. And so I would encourage anybody who's listening to go in and find each of those little moments. The first one is that bell for me. But there's dozens of them. Thank you so much. That is very much exactly what I strive to do when I produce.

An important thing for me also that kind of speaks to that is that I want you to be able to, to anybody to be able to hear and identify every sound in the song. Occasionally I'll do it, but it's rare that I will have like kind of a wall or a big stack of things that it's unclear what's what. For the most part, I want you to be able to be like, I love that ding. I love that specific sound and for it to have its space so that you can, hear and appreciate every little element. We have only scratched the surface of this masterfully constructed song.

There's so much more to talk about from the juxtapositions of heavy and light sounds to the three-hour conversation we could just have Sam about your voice and the various jazz influences and the incredible control you have. Alas, we must save those for another day. perhaps when the next album drops, we can have you back. We'd love that. Until then, where can people find your music and see you perform, Marion Hill? Yeah, so our album unusual comes out May 11th.

So until then, you will have to just be satisfied with the four songs we have released. Yeah, well, we have another, I'm not sure when is this going to air? Oh, yeah. It's Thursday. Great. So we have a new song, Wish You Would, that will have just come out. Differently is out now. subtle things also out. They're all on Spotify, Apple Music,

wherever you want to go. And we also are about to go on tour all around the United States and Canada. We have a stop in Toronto. So if you like what you're hearing, come check us out. We're almost certainly playing a city near you in the next month. Amazing. Jeremy and Sam Marion Hill, thank you so much for joining us. That was really, really fun. And I sincerely hope we can have you back some time. Yeah, thank you. This was a pleasure. I we have conversations like this as we write.

Like we love to like dig in deep and I'm all about there being meaning behind production choices that tie in with the song, et cetera, et cetera. So it's really fun to have such a long conversation about those nuanced things that we spent a lot of time on and then don't really think about otherwise. Very true. That was the best validation of the reason why we do this project. Yes. And it was mutual validation because that was the best validation.

of why we put all this new on stuff. Totally. Switched on Pop is produced by me, Nate Sloan, and me, Charlie Harding. Big thanks to Marion Hill, our editor, Bill Lance, and our designer, Luke Harris.

We're a proud member of the Panoply Network. You can catch more episodes of Switched On Pop on our website, switchedonpop.com, on Apple podcast, where we'd love you to leave us a review and on Spotify, where you can catch

some of our fun playlist of the past and a future playlist, please, if you have ideas of songs, which reference other songs in their lyrics, send them to us. You can reach us on Twitter at switchdownpop.com. On Facebook, if you haven't deleted all your accounts, Facebook.com slash switch on pop. You might want to consider that. And I think that's about it.

We're going to be back again in two weeks. And until then, thanks for listening. Thanks for listening. world. You've heard the best

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