Switched on Pop - Pop is the Sound We Need Right Now (with Electric Guest)

Episode Date: November 26, 2019

Electric Guest (Asa Taccone and Matthew Compton) take a left turn towards pop on “Dollar" — a song about making more out of less, something too many people find themselves to do right now. The music follows the same principle, turning cheap synths and canned horns into a symphony of sound. We chat with Asa about how the track — equally inspired by Stevie Wonder and Bertolt Brecht —came to be and why pop can be a balm in dark times. Songs Featured Electric Guest - Dollar Stevie Wonder - Uptight (Everything's Alright) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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It's free for iOS users. Hey, everybody, before we dive into the show today, we just have a quick but joyous announcement to make. Charlie is back. He's sitting next to me as we speak. It's so exciting. Staring deep into his eyes. It's kind of freaking magnetic.

I'm sorry, what do we want to say to the people out there? Well, I am very happy to be back. I especially want to say thank you for everybody sticking around and listening to some amazing guys. host these last couple of weeks. I want to thank Andrew Salenzzi, Natalie Weiner, Dallas Taylor, Sam Sanders, Estelle Caswell, Anil Dash, Gina Delvac,

Megan Lubin, James Bennett the second, Allegra Frank, and again, all of the listeners, because this made it possible for me to take a parental leave, which was a really joyous time. But we have one other announcement, and that's perhaps controversial Charlie and I are also

having a baby. A book baby. A book baby. This is grotesque. So yeah, Switched on Pop is now a book. It's a book about how popular music works and why it matters. We wrote this as a definitive guide to contemporary pop in which we pair iconic modern pop songs with the musical concepts that define them. For example, syncopation with Kendrick Amar's swimming pools and harmony with fun and Janelle Monase, We Are Young. It also has really fun illustrations by the amazing Iris Gottlieb.

You can check it out, pre-order it on our website, Switched on Pop. dot com slash book and the due date comes out of this book baby yeah it's going to be out on December 13th so great holiday gift again you can get it at switchedonpop dot com slash book it is great to be back all right enough of that on with the show welcome to switched on pop I'm musicologist Nate Sloan and I'm songwriter Charlie Harding and today we are blessed to be joined by a band that you may know from their work with The Lonely Island. It's my dick in a box, babe. It's my dick in a box.

From their collaborations with Portugal the Man and Carly Ray Jepson, me, I'm a fan going back to this head I hold and their latest song, Dollar. That's right, we're here with Asa Ticone of Electric Guest. Yeah, yeah, thank you for having me. We're so excited to break down this song, Dollar, from Electric Guests' new album, Kin. The other half of electric guests. Who loves this particular podcast? Can't be here. Here in spirit, looking down upon us.

Now, we have been digging on Dollar for the last few weeks, and something I love about the song is that it captures like two sides of a coin. It's about economic anxiety, and it's about celebrating life in spite of that. Now, this song and this album also represents kind of a left turn for y'all and a lecture guest, more of a pop direction, pop with a capital P. I just want to ask, why do you choose the sound of pop for this song and this album? I think I spent a lot of years kind of hiding sonically, and in pop, for all the four, flack that it gets, there is just no hiding. And in that way, it's really courageous to me. The vocals are much more up front in the mix, and you kind of sink or swim pretty immediately.

You know, I'm not like hiding behind some crazy reverb that you can barely hear anything or obscure it. I've always considered myself pop, but to really kind of go for it in an unabashed way. I think you're speaking our language. We are all about celebrating the immediacy and the sort of like vibrancy of pop music. And this song does it well. Let's start to pick apart some of the musical elements, some of the capital P pop elements of this track. I just want to dive in with the first sound we hear.

It's that keyboard part. It's what we're looking at right now, which is this Motu rack, which has these kind of very default piano sounds, or very cheap, wannabe expensive sound from the early 2000. Let's get a little taste of that opening keyboard. So that was kind of it, but I did run it through. It has some modulation. It's got a little kind of phaser on there.

Make it a little more interesting. This keyboard is playing some really lovely chords. We're hearing some thick chords with lots of extensions, sevenths. Yeah, totally. I kind of wanted to have a little bit of a church feel. And something that didn't make the, unfortunately, because I guess human beings just don't have any attention span anymore. So like the label was like, you can't include this intro.

But I had this intro of this woman that I had kind of chopped up. I had found this YouTube clip of this gospel singer who was going into tongues. And it was really wild. It was like this 11 minute performance of him kind of, you know, just wailing. And the intro of this some elderly church woman kind of introing him was amazing. And I was like, oh, I really want to chop this and make it the intro of the song. So we did, but the video was so obscure and had been taken offline. Atlantic looked for a month down this rabbit hole and couldn't

find the person. They were able to find the artist that song it, but he had no idea. And anyways, I ended up getting an older woman who was actually on Broadway, who was like, I think she was big mama and, like, Porgy and Best famously in like the 80s to come over in this room. And she ended up re-recording this woman's intro, which made the video, but it's not on Spotify. That's all we got to say. And the track, I'mma just let you hear. I'm a little confused now

because we've got cheap old pianos, YouTube samples, resampled and re-recorded, and yet you're hearing pop. Where are you going with this? I appreciate your confusion, Charlie. To orient us, let's dig a little deeper into this keyboard because I'm going to propose a sort of interpretation of your track.

and you can take it or leave it. I alluded to a certain duality in this track. Economic anxiety and like celebrating life anyway, I got a dollar in my pocket. That's a powerful sentiment. That's like that might be all you need. And I feel like the keyboard and the way it changes over the course of the song

kind of reflects that duality. Because when we first hear it, it sounds kind of... Cheap. It sounds cheap. Let's be honest. Totally. I already know where you go in it. I like it. It sounds.

Because in the beginning of this song, you're just talking about, hey, I'm poor, I'm struggling here. Totally, totally. Yeah, you think I'm nothing but another fool, and your word is not mine, a cheap kind of keyboard sound. Let's fast forward to the pre-chorus. And we'll talk a lot more about this pre-chorus because we're obsessed. But let's just talk about the keyboard and how it sounds when we get to the pre-chorus. All right, so similar keyboard line, but the sound has changed. Totally.

Yeah, what are we hearing now? Same terrible Motu early 2000, but a little bit more of that expensive sound, you know? Like trying to get the class factor just up a little bit. That part I played on some kind of default like Hammond B organ thing and tried to play it a little different. You're right, it's the same chords but the inversions are different, so it just has a little bit, it perks your ear and a little bit of a different. way. Okay, so we've got now in the pre-chorus, we've got like a little more expensive version of the sound, and the lyrics are getting a little more confident, too. All this other bitterness can fade away. I'm going to keep on going to a better day. Let's keep following this thread. What happens with

the keyboard part in the chorus? As I remember, everything drops out and it goes back to the cheap sound. I think so. I mean, and this is what we'll discover. My ear tells me that it like goes in between, cheap and expensive. Nate, I think you've been tricked by some horns. Charlie is correct. And yet, my hypothesis still stands. Because what happens over the course of this chorus, you have that cheap synth,

and then halfway through the chorus, the cheap synth gets a glow up. Now we've arrived at, like, a real inflection point in the song, because what I think is cool is after this chorus, chorus, it's like nothing is the same anymore. We've reached a point halfway through the chorus where we have this explosion of sounds, we're feeling flossy.

And from that point, we like return to sections we've heard before. We have another verse, another pre-chorus, but they sound a lot different. What are some of the changes we're going to hear? Well, there's the introduction, the rhythm changes a lot. One thing that happens to, even though some of the drums are programmed, we tried to play as much as we could on it. So all the percussion is real. And then there's actually a live drum track that happens halfway through the first chorus

and it goes throughout. And it just adds an acoustic body a bit to the rest of the song because we didn't want it to just be synthetic. We wanted it to be a weird confusing mashup of feeling alive in a certain way. And kind of the only way you really get that for me is to have this blend. But yeah, I mean, added that church choir, there's a lot of really rhythm on the bass, there's some guitar, there's a bunch of elements that get out of. Yeah.

Yeah, what I dig about, like, if this song is sort of like always seesawing between sort of like, I'm broke or no, I'm rich, you know, as the song progresses past that first chorus, it feels like it's gaining more and more sort of confidence and, like, taking some of some moments from the verse and the pre-chorus that we heard originally and flipping them on their head a little bit. Like I was hoping we could highlight some of those moments actually, because when we get to verse two, again, it's like you are expecting the same melody you get in verse one. But then there are these little switchups, these little changes that kind of keep you on your toes and keep you feeling like, oh, this narrator is like feeling himself. Totally.

That was the point. All those little garnishes where the beat drops out and harmonies come in or where it goes to full acapella. I think the moment in the song that people respond to the most. We just started playing this live too. We kind of just had our first run out in the world. It was really interesting. The line, everybody's a model, is like, it's just whole crowds. I think that seems to be the line that resonates the most with people.

All right. Let's get there via the garnish. I love that. Making me hungry. And the second verse on the line, I'm like, oh. The best moment of the whole song for me. I just love the kick drum. here because it flies by in like 64th note's like thrr kind of thing it's amazing awesome yeah yeah totally

those little moments like show that you're gonna you're gonna make it you're gonna get through like you don't need money to have a good time and that continues yeah let's get to that everybody's a model because again it's a moment's like you expect a certain sort of musical setup for the pre-course and then there's a switch up I love this as well because it reflects what you at the beginning, which is that when you're making an honored bashed pop song, you can't hide, and you're just front and center there. Just you. Totally.

Totally. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I just thought it was like the one line that deserved a full dropout. Actually, when we were in the studio with Portugal the Man, I kept thinking like, damn, we're almost down to an acapella. Like it would just be literally bass for the demo. was so compelling and I started to think that like if if just those structural elements are that compelling like to actually just keep subtracting you know so my I used to like this is actually extremely

if you look at the tracks it's in tons of parts in the song like way too much there's way too many ideas and mixing it was a nightmare because it was kind of about like making room for for things and and but for this album as a whole it really was about subtraction and that's a pop thing you know which pop can get criticized for. It's like, oh, it's so simple, and yet it's so elusive and difficult to do. And so I think, yeah, a lot of it was just like, is it compelling with bass and a vocal?

It also has narrative importance because if in the beginning of the track, we're starting with cheap stuff, you're a little quieter, like not quite as certain because we're talking about anxiety about being broke, all of a sudden here, we're like, shh, I got this. And so the confidence is coming out. And that sort of other side of this duality

in the message of the song that like, I'm just gonna celebrate today. I'm owning this moment. And it's a great transition from pre-chorus into chorus, we really claim that. And now we sail into the chorus, the second time in the chorus, we don't have that dropout that we had the first time.

There's like a little more confidence now. And then after the second chorus is our favorite moment in any song. It's the bridge. I'm really sorry to go there, but is there Glockenspiel on that song? There's a bunch of weird bells and stuff. That's not what Nate wanted to talk about.

No, I mean, I could talk about the Glock. I could talk maybe like a triangle part in there. Yeah, the triangle was crucial, honestly. It's just so celebratory and I struggle with the lyrics a lot because the It's a Celebration. Like I had a bunch of different lyrics there and I was like, is it a celebration just too, is it too corny? Is it too? And then like the dude that was producing with me, this guy Lars Stofford, who's great, was just like, no. Like this is your time.

You know what I mean? Like, just go for it, you know? And I've wondered if we're back to the pop aesthetic there. It's like in pop, when you're in doubt of whether you should say something corny, you should say something corny. Totally. And it's the same thing with volume. Like now I used to always insecurely be tucking volume. Now I'm, if I don't like a sound, often I will turn it up. And it's really interesting what it doesn't always work. But yeah, that same theory where you're like, instead of being insecure, let me actually step even more forward.

I think this is one of the important tensions of pop. is on one end it has to be entirely polished and at the same time absolutely relatable. And so it is raw and perfect. My ear went to was there was a little bell, Glockenspiel, little fill that's like really strange and unexpected, and it sounds like a bad toy piano. My favorite sound in the whole thing, which is the sonar sound.

Let me play it. I just love this. I had never, not because we're so unique, but I realized once we kind of finished it, I was like, I don't quite know another song to run. another song to reference. So even like the mixer was like, what do you want to sound like? And I could explain certain things, but in terms of likening it to another song, I didn't really

have another song that had the same palette. The only thing I kept thinking was the Justin Timberlake song, Suit and Tie, which like isn't like it at all, but it's odd. The world that it lives in is odd. And, you know, the thing was supposed to be this faux expensive, you know. Yeah. No, I'm sensing the theme here is, like, you know, it's like, I'm sensing the theme here is, like, like, you know, kind of just like, you've just got scotch tape and, you know, some glitter,

but like you're going to have a party and you're going to look great doing it. There is that rawness that is that like, it sounds like, hey, I can make this in my bedroom. I mean, you have to be extremely skilled and you have to like know your stuff, but it fools me into thinking like, oh, this is just someone having a good time. And that's, I think, that that tension of rawness and polish is a silly little sonar sound. And we had the philosophy, like, my friend Cole, MGM, who's a great producer. And working with him, he'd always be like, if you would laugh, like, kind of low-key embarrassed, like he's like, oh, that's a great thing.

If you're like literally, like, literally. And I think that that joy, like, it really was genuinely fun to make the record. And we didn't. My theory was kind of like, have you heard that the kind of lore story about Picasso where this woman is, at a cafe, and she's watching this guy doodle something on a napkin, and she kind of looks over, and he goes to crumple it up, and she's like, oh, wait, like, can I pay you for that that napkin drawing? And he's like, yeah, $30,000. And she's like, what, you did it in, you know, two minutes? And he's like, no, it took me 50 years. And I think the same ethos for

us where it's like, I'm such a control freak. I've wasted decades of my life endlessly noodling with sounds and trying to control everything to try to get the song right. And that's always going to be there. So the idea was to really lay off of that and not over intellectualize it in your head. And I do think with this particular record that translated. It's similar to the COO quote that we've talked about, which is that people will complain, hey, you just wrote a song on 15 minutes. And she's like, yeah, it took my whole life to be able to write a song in 15 minutes. Yeah. It's all the composite work that all comes together. So just to recap, the necessary elements of a great pop song are corniness, embarrassment,

and everything as cheap as possible. I love it. This is very encouraging. I feel like this might be a good place to take a quick break. And when we come back, I want to look at where this song came from. Like, what you're talking about here is certainly in the universe of this song, but it's also something that I think a lot of people can relate to right now. So I want to know like where the song came from, maybe what some of the musical inspirations were. 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. 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 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. We are back with electric guests and we're talking about their track, Dollar. What was on your mind when writing the lyrics of this song? You know, there wasn't, I mean, a lot, a lot was on my mind. I think it was the general state of the country. And I think it's a pretty difficult and uncomfortable time for us right now as a country, a lot of transition. And I wasn't, personally, I wasn't hearing what I

considered to be most people's experiences right now, which is that we're all, it's deeply difficult to survive in the United States. People are struggling and suffering. And that was what I was hearing in all my close friendships and especially touring. You go around the world. And in the States, it was like touring seven years ago was vastly different than touring today. People would tell me, like, I had to work two months to get this ticket. I'm like, this tickers are $30, you know. And yet in the arts, what I was hearing was like, I have tons of money. I have tons of everything.

It felt more exclusive than it did inclusive. And without getting to my high horse, I was just like, damn, this is an odd. The arts is supposed to be, for me, the place where you take off the mask and can exhale and go, that's right. That's what being a human is. That's what this shared experience is.

And it started to feel like, I started to literally be stressed out by the art. I would see a video and be like, I don't look like that. I don't have friends like that. And so I think it was just tripping me out. The only song I could reference that I listened to as a poignant moment was the Stevie Wonder, that, baby, everything is all right. The sentiment of it is like, I don't have a dollar in my pocket, but I can make my girl happy still.

You know, I'm a poor boy. Everyone was just like, oh, just something along those lines would be nice to hear. Haven't you made Nate's Day? Because we were just, as we were on our way over, here are talking about Stevie Wonder. Yeah, yeah. Uptight, Stevie Wonder, amazing track. And I wonder if it's like a larger thread in Stevie's work too, you know. Economic insecurity comes up in tracks like, living for the city. I wish off songs in The Key of Life. What's cool about those songs is that they're like, yeah, they're still upbeat and positive and like recognizing the hardship, but also helping you get through it. Totally. That was the, what you just described was the thesis statement for the album. It was an acknowledgement of the suffering that we're all in as much as we're all pretending not to be some of this, at least. And what I think summed it up well from my father's a theater director. And when I was back home in Berkeley, California, in the Bay Area, he was like, you got to sneak in and see the first line of this play, this virtual rec play. And we went in this dark theater and kind of just in the back. And one of the character says, like, will there be singing in dark times? And then he kind of answers himself. And he says, yes, there will be singing in dark times.

And so I think it was like, is there room for some levity right now in such a difficult time? And I came to the conclusion that there was. But without an acknowledgment of the suffering, then you bum people out. Right. Because you could listen maybe just to parts of the chorus of the song and it would be in the like Kesher, Black-Eyed Peas, like, we're just living for tonight. Tonight is the night.

We're all having the best time tonight. but you've brought it within a context of why we need tonight. Like we need tonight because we don't know what tomorrow's going to bring. And we're going to live the world that we want to be now, regardless of what we might have. Totally. I'm really glad we've established the connection between Stevie Wonder and Bertild Breck now. I was waiting for that moment.

And now I'm... Everyone listening. It's just not that this is relevant, but just because I was looking it up, does anyone here know how old Stevie Wonder was when he recorded? recorded that song uptight? No, I'm actually curious. Any guesses? He's young, right?

He's like 22. I'm going to go Price is right and just bet over you. I'm going to say 25. 15. Shut up. No, 15 years old. Yeah. But not when he recorded it.

You must have been older. No. 1965. Oh, my God. We should all give up. I guess I was I'll say. It's done. Yeah.

Yeah, I don't have any profound conclusion to draw from that. It just kind of blew my mind when I learned it. So taking that idea, I want to, like, zoom in on one section of the song, the pre-chorus of this song. This motherfucker might sue me. It doesn't sound good. It has to be sung. It has to be sung. I mean, have you ever heard a sweeter motherfucker than that?

It's a descending major second. I struggle with that too because it was just the, I didn't, without thinking of it, I usually have a bit of a melody, some kind of chordal thing, and then I riff nonsense over it. And I often find that I keep the nonsense because your brain is working on some different frequency where you're not intellectualizing it. And yet, thematically, even, you can sing about something that seems just really intrinsic to the song. And so that was, all those lyrics were just full off the bat.

I wasn't even thinking sung. This motherfucker am I assuming, this motherfucker, that motherfucker am I boo-mey. And then everything else was like, blah-da-ba-da-da-ba-da-ba-da. And I tried a million ways not to do it. And then my friend or the producer was like, you got no, that's the song. I mean, it's a beautiful, when it's sung like that, it's a beautiful multisyllabic word, you know, like four-sixteenth notes. We were talking about this section.

We love this pre-chorus. Like, da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da. You brought up Brecht, so we're going to bring up Bach here. We were talking about, like, there's something kind of similar in the structure here. Something in classical music is sometimes called like antecedent and consequent. Think of a song like Bach's Minuet and G. Like antecedent, consequent. So something similar here, maybe, like.

This motherfucker might sue me, and that motherfucker might boomie. There's another element because it goes down, it's like kind of like a little negative. This motherfucker might da-da, it's like, oh man, but then you're climbing up. I'm gonna keep on going to a better day. All this other bitterness can fade away. Like a more like lame in way to put it would be like a call and response in a certain of a certain way that lyrically is telling you something. Moments of struggle, moments of confidence in that way, totally. the motherfuckers are literally bringing you down,

and then you're like pulling yourself up, like pitch by self. No, no, no, no. Totally. But it also captures that duality, again, in the song, and it keeps coming back to that. It's like broke, rich, poor, wealthy, you know, despondent, ecstatic. Totally. I'm curious what you're going to say about the end of the song.

There's like a bridge. I guess I don't even know what you'd call that really expensive part. Don't I know it that part and then in then into the what I would consider a breakdown afterwards where you sing in the chorus But it's different chords totally sparse kind of 80s style That's that that's the part that live is is fun that breakdown I feel like it's it just makes that final chorus Sweeter it's like that it's you need a moment of doubt because things have been pretty like upbeat and solid up till that point Totally even if you just take the chord progression that starts at the be very very beginning of this song. It's like an F minor chord with some business, you know, and then a G minor

chord, and then an E flat major chord, and then a C minor chord. So there's some variation to that loop, but if that's like the first loop you hear, you know, that's three minor chords and one major chord. And the key of the song happens buried in the middle of that. We're an E flat major. It's a happy song, we're in a major key, and yet it's surrounded by minor chords, Which fits the theme. To me is very, you know, in the spirit of Stevie Wonder, in that where you're, like, dancing around some key, you know what I mean, like by the notes you choose to play or not play.

That's also kind of a gospel thing, too. And, like, you started the song with gospel. Stevie Wonder is, like, coming from a deep gospel and church tradition. Maybe that's part of this, too, is, like, there's that duality and a lot of religious music as well, the sacred and the profane, heaven and hell. There's another thing here that I feel like has been bothering me in the best way. You know, there's like a thing in a song that you just, I guess that's an earworm.

But for me, it's actually the high hat. The pacing of the song, I never know quite how fast we're moving. Like, when we start the song, the chords are kind of moving in a way where you can count it really slow. Yeah. You could just like one, two, three. Or it can be one. two, three, four. There's all these different subdivisions of the beat,

but it's kind of hard to know exactly which is the song actually in. Are we in a slower tempo? We're in a faster tempo. The hi-hat sort of tells me, oh, we're moving really quickly here. And the vocals at the beginning is telling me, no, actually we're pulling back.

And I think that has that tension for me, that same theme. My mentor is Danger Mouse. And he just pounded that particular word into me, tension. He would tell me, for years, like, that doesn't have tension, doesn't have tension. And it's such an elusive word. It's difficult to know quite what makes it.

But hi-hats, to me, are one of the most powerful ways to incorporate tension into music. And I hated the second verse of this song. One of the reason why there's those garnishes in the second verse is because I struggled with the temple a lot. The minute that everything dropped out, and I wanted to keep the rhythm groovy, so I kind of insecurely would drop things out

and have a lot of little ear candy just to get away from the fact that I was always unsure about the rhythm. But one interesting thing about this song, and this is a very modern thing, which I usually am cringe, but we did it in this song, is that the song was 5 BPM slower originally. And it was a lot, it was like 9, or maybe even 7 or something, a lot slower. And when we shot the video, which my brother directed,

we shot everything in slow-mo. And on the very last day, we went back home to the Bay Area, did this whole kind of ode to San Francisco where we grew up. And on the very last day, he was like, do one in regular time. And we played that regular time, like 90 BPM. Molasses. And it was bummed everyone out. But of course, me, I couldn't sleep for like two days.

I was like, we have to speed this song up. And then we did the last minute in like I said, a kind of very modern way. We just like did the whole track up. And so it really helped what I thought was the overall vibe of the song. Well, and that's what I love here is that on one hand, And this is the verse, this is where we're really talking about the greatest feelings of insecurity.

And behind you is this high hat that's like, and it's like, oh my gosh, something's chasing me. I've got to run away from this thing. It also establishes like something fun's going to happen. But it doesn't happen for a long time. And so that tension really does bring out the core themes in a very somatic, just felt way. Like I don't know where I am, whether I'm in the molasses or I'm running as fast as I can. Sweet, totally, yeah.

That ticking hi-hat is like the grind, and it's also the party, depending on the context. You know, something that strikes me as we're listening to this track, too, is that there's never, like, any gender specified in this song. It's very sort of universal. Is that something that was intentional, or did that just kind of happen? You know, a lot of the things that you brought up today haven't actually been intentional, but what I realize is that, like, all of my neuroses go into everything. And so, like, yeah, lyrically, like, I'm not. great at lyrics. They really take me the longest part and it's really, I hate it kind of. I'm never writing for anybody, like, oh, I got to please people in that way, but I am writing,

I'm of the old school mentality where like if you don't have something to say, you should probably just chill out and then wait till there is something to say. Because I think that one thing that I've noticed that's been a little bit, a shift in music is that, I go into a lot of sessions and people are like, let's do a song like this, as opposed to like, I went through this, and so I wanna say stuff. And I just, I guess I just come from an older way of doing it

where it's just like, you know, oh, I feel like this. So I have to, you know, I really, I wanted to get a certain sentiment out. And so with all the songs, like, there was always a specific sentiment behind it. And not that gender was necessarily a part of this, but definitely I didn't, I, I, I, wanted it to land in a certain way.

There's only one gender in this song. This motherfucker, man. But I mean, that's also, hmm, motherfuckers are not, that's not really, I mean, anyone can be a motherfucker. Totally. I just want to sing that over now. It's also kind of like, it's almost like under your breath, you're like, this motherfucker man, you know, like this, this guy.

And each of the pre-courses are different. So like, you know, a certain motherfucker, might be the guy that kills you, or a certain person might be the one that sues you. Different generives for different burdens. This has been such a treat. Before we go, you have made such a banging track with one of our favorite artists. In fact, an artist that we sometimes refer to as sort of the patron saint of this podcast, and that's Carly Ray Jepson.

Your song Feels Right is just like two and a half minutes of pop bliss. We hold her up as like the Paragon of Pop Perfection. Did any of that, like, rub off on the writing process for this album, for this song? Doesn't she represent something that I wish was more, you know, like, not in vogue, but she's just this unapologetic pop thing that's like, there's just not a lot of her. You know what I mean? Where I think that there's been eras where, you know, people embraced what I think she's going for. But she's pop in just such a lovely way.

and she's exactly that as a human being. I'm sure if you guys have met her or done anything with her. She recorded that song in this room, you know what I mean? Just like she lives 10 minutes up the street, you know. We're in the same room as St. Jepson. Yeah, she just came over a bunch of days. She was really chill. There's no AC in this terrible room.

Did she sit in this chair? No, I didn't have that chair at the time. She sat on that couch, though. For the record, I'm touching the couch. Not for so. But she's, but to answer your question, she's really lovely. And yeah, there was, there's like an innocence or something that the way that she approaches pop that's real, there's a purity there that I really loved that, that yeah, I had, I'd

wanted to go, you know, in any good life or any good career, isn't it just you trying to be more authentically yourself. And that was kind of like the arc for us has been like, I think I've always been just scared to be more pop, but that's who I am. And so like I think, yeah, we just, we wanted to just really be out there. And that in the same way, she just nails it. What else can we say? Like, this is, these are words to live by. You know, you don't, you don't need much. All you need is a dollar in your pocket. All you need is a cheap, crappy synth and just a right to be corny and and like maybe you'll get by despite all the the struggle and the hardship out there like at least we still have funky music and then that sentiment it really says to me that we can work with

what we have to have the best time we can despite the conditions around us that hopefully when this dancing's done we'll go and work on fixing totally totally hell yeah hey so thank you so much for joining us thank you guys you guys are this has been great it's been great man Switch on Pop is produced by me, Nate Sloan, and he, Charlie Harding. Brandon McFarland is our amazing editor and engineer, and Megan Lubin is our production fellow. Bridget Armstrong is her producer, and Liz Kelly and Nashak Kerwa are executive producers. You can find more episodes anywhere you dig podcasts. And we'll be back in another week with some hot, fresh new take on the latest jam.

As always, we are a proud member of the Vox Media Network. hit us up on Twitter at Switched On Pop, and until then, thanks for listening.