Switched on Pop - The secret world of songwriting camps

Episode Date: August 8, 2023

Beginning in the nineties, pop songwriters have traveled to a 13th-century castle in the south of France for what’s come to be known as a “song camp” – a place where songwriters and collaborators can hunker down and spend a week together writing the next big hits. The castle’s owner Miles Copeland, former manager of The Police, brought songwriters to this far-flung location for a dose of creativity, and yielded massive success through the process: artists like Celine Dion, Britney Spears and Miranda Lambert have all benefited from songs stemming from these retreats. Over the last fifteen years, song camps have exploded in popularity from Peter Coquillard’s Bali Invitational, to Rihanna’s $200k LA camp, to the Anti Social Camp: a NYC-based event and the world’s largest songwriting retreat. This episode of Switched On Pop, we take a look at the secret world of song camps, and even manage to be a fly-on-the-wall in a camp with songwriter Nicholas Petricca of Walk The Moon, Julia Cumming of Sunflower Bean, engineer Will Campbell and producer Andrew Maury.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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It's free for iOS users. Welcome to Switched on Pop. I'm songwriter Charlie Harding. When I think about how pop songs are written, I still have the image in my mind of artists like Bob Dylan. The answer is blowing in the wind. Carol King. Or Stevie Wonder.

They're sitting in front of a piano or strumming a guitar on their lap and pouring words out onto a page. And then, of course, there's cloud. Fabrators, famous songwriting duos like George and Ira Gershwin, Lenin McCartney, Nile Rogers and Bernard Edwards, Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis, or even Pharrell Williams and Chad Hugo of the Neptunes.

But of course, the vast majority of pop songs aren't written this way anymore. Now writers are often put together into group sessions, with strangers, largely in Hollywood songwriting rooms, turning out songs in a method that John Seabrook of the New Yorker dubbed the song machine, where a producer or engineer sits behind a computer making a beat as top-line songwriters improvise melodies until they land a hook, and then lyrics are paired with the best melodies. It's really a numbers game. A pop songwriter will generally work at least five sessions a week, writing 200 songs in a year, and if they're

at the top of their game, maybe 20% of those songs will actually get turned into records. Or maybe Maybe someone likes the song and they want to cut it, but it needs some punch-ups and rewrites, and the credits on the song balloon into dozens of co-writers. That can be fine if one of those 200 songs, workshopped or not, becomes a radio hit, because it can change your life. But really, you're not expecting to write a hit every time. At the very least, you might form a new relationship to make a new songwriting team, like Harry Styles has with Kid Harpoon and Tyler Johnson, who've collaborated on all of style solo

material. But frankly, this session writing method can be a slog. You're working mostly on spec and windowless studios that don't always spark creative inspiration. And really, this isn't the lifestyle you've imagined for yourself as a pop songwriter. When I was a naive Midwesterner in a small town growing up dreaming of being in music business, I kind of thought we'd be in exotic places and we'd be on private jets and we'd be living like a rock star, right? This is music industry veteran Peter Cookyard, who works for Milk and Honey and the Invitational Group and built a career for himself in publishing with the likes of The Who.

and he's managed songwriters who've penned hits for Beyonce, Brittany, and Rihanna, among many others. He's made it in music, but his childhood rock star lifestyle ideas proved to be wrong. That was kind of the myth and the dream that most gigging songwriters and music executives know is largely a fallacy unless you hit Jay-Z Beyonce of blood. But Peter had a vision to make this dream come true, at least for a select few working songwriters. I have incredible admiration for great writers and people with talent. And if I can get them together in a five-star villa or on a $40 million yacht and do whatever, it's like I'm so happy to be able to provide that experience. Yeah, I'd be pretty happy to go on one of those experiences. It turns out this is actually a thing, and it's called a songwriting camp.

Think luxury summer camp for songwriters by the water with a bunch of strangers and a new culture and, yeah, maybe even a thing. in a castle. The first camps I was aware of was Miles Copeland's castle camp around 92. Miles Copeland managed the police. He's also the brother of police drummer, Stuart Copeland. And together they were all very successful. He became a huge music publisher with his company IRS Records, which afforded him a giant 13th century retreat home. The Miles Copeland thing was he would bring his developing artist to his castle in the Loire Valley in France. And he would basically... bring it a bunch of top songwriters

and they would hang out for a week and they would write songs every day and that's the first time I heard about it and went oh my God, that's genius, I want to grow up and do that. I was like, I love to travel and I love music. So I was like, this sounds like the greatest combination of things in the world. Copeland has hosted these songwriting camps

since the early 90s in his castle. And they're not just luxury retreats. At least four number one hit songs have been written at the castle and countless songs written there have been recorded by artists like Celine Dion, Britney Spears, Cher, John Bon Jovi, Sting, and Ellie Golding. Here's the number one hit, Something Bad by Miranda Lambert and Carrie Underwood, written in the camp.

This camp was a hit, it's a generated hit, and like a great song, these camps were also an inspiration. Peter thought that there was an opportunity for more camps like these. I wasn't really aware of any camps that were going on. It wasn't really a thing. It was literally me going, hmm, I always love what Miles did with the camp. I just happened to build a house in Bali. Bali's really great. And I was living in New York at the time, and I needed a cheap excuse to go to my house more often.

So it's 2009. Peter's got this great vacation home. And one day he's hanging out with his pal who runs Island Records in Australia, who's just signed a new artist. And Peter gets this idea. Why don't we send them to my house in Bali and they can work on the record? And you and I should just go and make sure they're working, right? And then he said, well, well, if we're going to do that, why don't I bring a few other artists on the label? And I was like, okay, well, then I'll open the Rolodex.

I'll start bringing some more writers. It'll be a great networking experience. Like, we're going to try and meet singles for these artists, get him out. And so they invited some songwriters who pay their way to Bali for the first Bali Invitational. And kind of like writing a song, this was a creative experiment. I asked Peter what do you hope to achieve with this first Bali Invitational Song Camp? The goal is really, it's really about the relationships that go on into the future.

If you write a hit song during that period, that's great. What are the long-term relationships? Did they become frequent collaborators when they get back home? To me, that's the end game of these things. The hit song, as someone recently said, is the cherry on top, right? But, of course, Peter is a music industry guy. He doesn't run summer camps. He doesn't know what's going to happen the first time around.

It was sort of haphazard. There would be rolling blackouts of the studio. It was kind of crazy. but we wrote 29 songs, I think we had 15 cuts, and we had three gold singles in Australia the first year. He went with like one platinum and two gold singles, and we went, wow, that kind of worked. Maybe we should keep doing this.

This Midwestern kid made his rock star dreams come true and made that dream true for all these songwriters. And wildly, it wasn't just a party. I mean, 15 records cut with multiple gold singles. Clearly, he landed on something. To be honest, I'm kind of surprised, like if you sent me on a vacation, to Bali, how motivated would I be to get work done? So I asked Peter, what about this experience

generates so much new musical creativity? Creatives are inspired by a change of scenery, a change of venue, a change of chemistry in terms of the writers they get to interact with. Therefore, I think they're naturally drawn to things like song camps, because I think they draw inspiration from new experiences. And I think that song camps, for the most part, provide a really targeted focus dose of that. Peter loves throwing these events, and so he's done it every year since 2009, save for the pandemic. The Bali Invitational has become a staple in pop songwriting. Many of the biggest writers in the world have come over the years.

We've had Kesha and Demi Lovato and Nick Jonas and Armin Van Buren. Noah Cyrus's July, which is a billion streams was written in Bali a couple of years ago. It's been fun. Peter really just does this for fun. It's a side gig for him. But the word got out about the experience and the songs written there. And in the mid-2010s, song camps just exploded. Everybody and their mother are doing camps these days.

The publisher started doing them. Rihanna started doing like Rihanna focused camps. They're doing them at G-jam in Jamaica. And they're doing them at Black Rock in Greece. Artists like Rihanna and Beyonce and many others host their own camps to generate material for the albums. Publishers host camps with just their songwriters hoping to churn out dozens of new songs in a week.

Catalog owners are hosting camps to specifically place interpolations into new hits. And then there's folks like Peter who put together these song camps for relationship building. He's even grown the invitational group to camps in Montenegro, Transylvania, in Tuscany. And frankly, at this point in the story,

I'm thinking, must be nice, right? Because I would really like to go to one of these song camps, but I've got two young kids. I don't really have the capacity to take a trip. I can't really ask my wife, hey, can you solo parent while in Bali with Noah Cyrus and a bunch of songwriters? So I didn't think a reporting expedition was possible right now until I heard about a songwriting camp that was happening in my new hometown, New York City. You know, when most people think of a songwriting camp in the industry, they tend to think of major labels sending nine or ten writers out to a castle in the south of France. That's Danny Ross. He's a producer, songwriter, and professor at Berkeley, New York City.

He's the founder of the antisocial camp, a song camp that kind of has its own spin on it. Antisocial camp is unique in that it's the first ever front-facing global festival that is also a songwriting camp. So in addition to 120 recording sessions in three days, which means 120 new songs born into the world, there are also events every single day and night that include a Spotify industry showcase and a Grammy's Red Carpet Gala and a playback part. to hear all new songs as well as an education summit at Berkeley. Think of it more as like a South by Southwest for songwriters. How did it all come together? It came together at first because I'm a producer myself,

living in New York City, and during the pandemic, I was able to catch up with a number of other producer friends and talk about the craft and the trade. And we recognize that there isn't really a forum for us to do this. Let's create a formal community. So we created this community called the Anti-Social Producers Club, and it went from a handful of friends zooming to 75 producers with billions of streams and dozens of Grammys within a year.

And we said, whoa, there's really a hunger for community. And not only that, these are New York-specific producers. A lot of people don't know that most of the New York music community had left for L.A. over the last 10 years or so, as well as Nashville and Austin and Miami and Atlanta. But there's still a considerable group of talent. that is still here. And we want it to shine a spotlight on us who are remaining and want to reinvigorate the New York City music scene. I think especially since the pandemic, musicians especially are eager to get together in person. Zoom sessions have been occurring over the last few years

since the pandemic. I think musicians, producers, artists, writers, have some fatigue about remote sessions. They want to be in the room together, for real. And, you know, it's a great excuse to come to New York City and help revive a community here that is hungry for it. So this collective sort of emerged and evolved into this songwriting camp. And here we are today, three years into it, it's the biggest songwriting camp in the world. What's the profile of someone who is a part of the antisocial camp? There were about 1,000 applicants this year for antisocial camp, and that includes artists, songwriters, and producers.

But it ranges from folks who are doing quite well like Nicholas from Walk the Moose. Mobee, Andy Grammer, Sam Harris of ex-ambassadors, Grace van der Waal, Wolf-Tyla, producers like Alex Tumay, as well as up-and-coming artists who, you know, are doing incredibly well, but maybe don't yet have that kind of name recognition. Can you describe to me what happens when these folks get together? Yeah, and the amazing thing about the camp is that it's almost like our actual summer camp in that 200 people or so walk in on Monday morning not knowing each other. a session from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. You're walking into a studio in the Chelsea neighborhood of New York City. You know, you're at the artist lounge. You're doing your social interviews. You're meeting other people in the industry. And then you're going inside the studio where you're meeting

songwriter and a producer that you've never met before. And you're talking for the first hour about your life and your relationships. And next thing you know, people want to know intimate details about your life so that you can write a song that's vulnerable. Bearing in mind, you've just met these people. And then you'll pick up a guitar and start to work on a lyric or pick up a piano and work on a riff or the producer will come in with a beat or start a new drumbeat based on reference songs that you've gotten excited about in your conversation about your favorite artists. Over the next four hours, hopefully you walk out with at least a one minute completed demo of a song that is a verse pre-chorus and a chorus. And if you really, you know, like hit on that magic, you've walked out with a complete song. That's three minutes long or so. And either you're ready to talk release plans or, you know, mixing or otherwise.

You then leave that session, head over to a studio, let's say, in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, and you do the whole thing all over again from 2.30 to 6.30 p.m. And from there, you maybe walk on over to our gala at Brooklyn Brewery with 300 people in open bar, carpet, you're dressed up in a tux, you've changed in the meantime, and you're out with the entire New York City music industry with three, four hundred people. Then you're going to sleep at 12-1 in the morning, and you're waking up at 8.30 or so for your 10 a.m. session the next day. It's truly a bonding experience, and that's one way in which camps are a little bit more special. It has a high impact in terms of personality and collaboration.

And you do that three days in a row. What are some of the outcomes people have had from the camp? I mean, the best outcomes are when they love the song and they want to release it. And they are making plans with their management or their label to put the song out. And at the very end of the camp, everyone gets together. This year, it was at a venue in Brooklyn called Elsewhere, where we play back every single song that has been created in the camp. That's 115 songs, back to back to back, to back, to back, and so on. And there are 60-second clips, and all of this music didn't exist a few days ago. Yeah.

It's the reason I do it. It's the best moment of the camp for me because, wow, all this creative people got together. They built community, and they created all of this new material all because we decided that it was something that was worthwhile. When we come back, I'm going to go inside antisocial camp into a songwriting session to see how this all really plays out, how a group of strangers can write a song in just four hours. 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 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. Immigration may be Donald Trump's signature issue.

President Trump is now targeting production. predominantly democratic cities for ice raids and deportations. Dozens of protesters clashing with immigration and customs enforcement agents in Minneapolis Tuesday. We will begin the process of returning millions and millions of criminal aliens back to the places from which they came. But what we want to do in this space is talk about America and politics beyond the current president. So what do most Americans think about deportation and border security, period? I think that Americans are definitely against the kind of vital. Displays that we've seen in the street from ICE.

When it comes to the question of deportation, the answer is more complicated. My sense is that people want border at the border. They don't like the idea of having no idea who's coming into the United States at any given time. The view on immigration from the bottom up instead of the top down. That's this week on America Actually. Every Saturday in your audio and video feeds. What I find the hardest to believe about song camps is their output. Again, like you go to Bali or the center of New York City,

are you really going to be productive and write two songs a day? I asked Danny Ross, the antisocial camp founder, to put me inside one of the rooms so I could hear how these sessions happen. I want to see how a song gets made in four hours. So I head downtown to invite-only studios, and I go inside a small studio room with a sofa and three chairs, just big enough to fit five people. The last session left the room with a faint smell of cannabis and menthols

that stick to the maroon sound panels coating the room. I'm surrounded by recording gear, a giant desk, the biggest loudspeakers I've ever seen, and a few guitars and keyboards. I'm setting up my mics to be a fly on the wall as more musicians start to walk in. First, Will Campbell. He works at Invite Only and will be engineering the session, followed by Nicholas Patrika, lead vocalist and keyboardist of Walk the Moon, who you surely remember for their hit single, Shut Up and Dance. Will? Hey, nice to be sure.

Next is Andrew Mari, an acclaimed mixer for folks like Sean Mendez and Post Malone and Kimbra. He's going to be producing and running the session on his computer. And then Julia Cumming, lead vocalist and bass player of New York City's beloved rock band Sunflower Bean. Hi. Hi. I'm Julia. Nice to meet you. This is the first time they're all meeting, and it could be awkward, but they all know how to do a session.

So Julia kicks off the conversation with Nicholas to figure out how they can collaborate together. I don't know. What have you been making? What's your process been like in general or in here so far? I've been writing mainly for others this week. It's been a little different every time, as usual. I feel like in these, in this type of situation, I'm usually on bass starting. I don't know if you want to be on piano or guitar.

I love to start on some kind of synthy. Oh, cool. Yeah. So we could kind of, if you want to start on a synth and I'm on bass and we just kind of sing together and see what happens. That's cool. Both Julia and Nicholas have done a number of other sessions at the camp writing for both themselves and other people. And so they need to figure out what the goal of this session's going to be.

and they're quite diplomatic about it. Yeah, do you have an intention as far as, like, artists? Like, do you want to write for you today or for me? I'm down for either. Do you have an intention? Do you have an intention? Are you looking for something for you? I was kind of thinking that I might do something for me today. Yeah, let's do it.

Yeah, I think you should lead it. And if you'll allow me to just place and base and do however I can be a part of it, I'm down with. Great. And so they start jamming. Nicholas finds a keyboard, Julia takes out the studio's bass and tunes it up, and Andrew pulls open a drum sampler plug-in on his computer. It's bright and full of colors,

and Nicholas immediately notices and thinks it's really cool. What the fuck is that? That's really cool. This plugin? It's called XO. I take a drum sequence service. Very quickly auditioned like a million things. It's a really fast way to generate the beat.

They toy around for 10 minutes, picking out drums and learning this new tool, when Julia gently chimes in to growl the group. Is there anything you've been listening to or any, like, anything, any vibe that you're feeling today? Yeah, I'm kind of chasing a little something that's in my brain sauce. I'm not really, not really sure. Andrew sets a click track. Nicholas digs into his proverbial brain sauce and finds a beat, jams out an idea on his keyboard.

Do you mind if I play anything long or should I just let you get it to where you're going? Let me noodle for a moment. And then, uh, and then this jam on something. Okay, so. Yeah, thanks. And then he finds the synthesizer line, just enough material so Julia can start improvising on bass. Yeah, I'm kind of hearing the alteration of it, yeah.

It's a little sleepy right now. I'm not sure, like, how to energize it. Well, do you want to, maybe just some like songness, maybe just some like lyric and melody, it's just gonna give us some. I feel like we got excited when we thought this might be a little bit of like a vocal lead idea. Yeah, yeah.

Julia works out some melody ideas, and the whole group comments on the strength of her voice, but she can feel that the room isn't quite viking together. So she checks in to see if they can build out a concept to wake up the song. Is there anything you've been feeling like? Feeling lately? No. No, no at all. I have some tarot cards and a book about color.

Great. a whole bunch of witchy things. So we can always pull a card. Great. Honestly, things are off to a rocky start. There's a palpable sense in the room that this idea isn't really working, that they just take a pause. And so everyone takes a snack break, and they come back 10 minutes later.

And rather than trying to push through this idea, which isn't jelling, they just decide to start all over again. They've got now about three hours to write a song. I'm ready to just kind of... Move on. Yeah. Let's put this one like, you know, pull a post-it note on this one and try something totally different. Cool.

Yeah. Sweet. You don't want to start with anything in particular. Keep hearing a, like shuffle, like a triple thing. Nicholas walks over to a mini log synthesizer and immediately bangs out this riff. puts me in like Muse World. What world do you want to be? I don't know.

Maybe, can we get a kick? So teetering on the edge of like so many songs. It's like finding our little niche with it. Yeah. That's not, yeah. Or something, you know, it's like a little, like, it's feeling a little melancholy. And so Nicholas switches the riff into a major key.

And by brightening it up, all of this music starts to pour out of him. I'm honestly surprised at the speed at which Nicholas is working. He's just got the synthesizer idea, a little melody. And from there, the whole song structure emerges as everyone else in the room follows along. That's a good little starting spot. Things are literally starting to click. Will and Andrew on one side of the room start chopping up this idea on their computer keyboard,

playing random beats into the room at the same time that Julia and Nicholas start probing for lyrics. What does it make feel? Yeah. It kind of puts me in like a... like competitive kind of it feels like writing a word feel like I'm at this uh kind of turning point with myself of like being in a state of personal development and and noticing my destructive habits or like a kind of bright or pattern and like there's part of me that is driven to improve is driven to um it's like almost

It looks like an 80s thing. It's like coming. It's true on the nose. The room is sounding like absolute chaos to me, and yet both teams are zooming in closer to their production and lyrical ideas. It's like this image of like the final boss in the game. I like that. It's like it's a mirror in your reflection.

It's like the image of the battlefield or the court or the wherever it is that this, conflict is happening and like looking at the aftermath. And then all the noise quiets down and Nicholas emerges with a melody. This melody unlocks the song for Nicholas. May I share something? Yeah, of course. I feel like as I'm evolving definitely like boundaries this big lesson, you know, and being more conscious about how far to extend or open myself and

And of course, in this beautiful intimate moment, the producers have to drop the beat, drowning out the conversation between Julia and Nicholas, where Nicholas starts opening up about his last relationship. He says that boundaries were crossed in a serious way that ended things. But then they started to tiptoe uncomfortably back into being intimate.

Like, is it the temptation of being like, oh, that's cool, it's all fine, it's fine? Like, no. But like, are you two? tempted? I don't know. I'm just wondering if there's like some push and pull there, like some kind of conflict. Maybe the first verse is like has a little bit of that temptation, like wondering if it's possible. Then the, you know, the pre and the chorus is establishing, you know, your dimension. The second verse is more. It's like the red flags. Like, I see them. It's not going to work.

This is my thing. Julia starts structuring these relationship details into a story structure that begins to connect back to Nicholas' melody in the lyric, My Dominion. But at this point, the production and lyric writing is starting to really clash. And so Nicholas and Julia cut out of the room and they go to the silent drum booth to work out the lyrics. About 20 minutes later, they come back. Yo, what's cooking? Yo. The song is singing.

The song is starting to song. Excellent. It's begun to song. I don't know. It's being sunk. What's the plan? What are you thinking? I just want to try singing some shit in.

Cool. Will you play the vibe? You're my reflection, and you want perfection. The song is starting to song. They've got the hook. You're my reflection, my reflection. You want perfection I never meant. There's any protection from the only thing, from my stuff.

from myself, basically. From the only one that I can't run from. The only one on earth I can't escape, the only one I can't. Yeah, it's not what I want to leave them with, though. I want it to be more like, yes, kind of like self-deprecating, but not hopeless. Or is it from my reflection? There's no protection? I think that's better.

I think that's more what it's trying to be. No protection. From the rass. We are wrestling this motherfucker. song to the ground. Fuck, we're going to win. The only problem, it's 6.45 p.m. and the next session in this studio starts in just 15 minutes.

Are they kicking us out at 6.30? Yeah, we got into the session. But Nicholas is committed to figuring out the core ideas of the song in the final minutes of the session. You're my reflection. God damn it. Deep one more time. One more time, baby.

You're my reflection. You want perfection You're done Ablection I need protection Can be Without reflection Okay, wait, hear me out

I think we can finish it With the lyrics we have Without getting the priest done You know what I'm saying Because then we can leave Then you can leave this with a full song Yeah, I appreciate the No, I'm like

I'm like, you're like Yeah, totally, yeah You can put it all together Yeah But it is all there There's an alternative it, there's just like, won't you be the magnificent, innocent mess of a human eye?

Like, there's that thing. The magnificent, innocent mess of a human being. It's very pretty. Mercury. Yeah, it's a little pretty. I like it. Magnificent, innocent mess of a man. That's an innocent mess of a man.

That's cool. Mess of a man is deep. Mm. Mm. Mm. The magnificent. You're happy. He is so close, but Will works at the studio and needs to start prepping the next session.

I'm going to have to start packing up soon. Yeah. This will be, this will be. And maybe try and phrase it so you hit the first line of the chorus to make sure. Exactly. Totally that's what happened. Can you want one more? The mess of a man, like a little space after that.

Magnificent, innocent, mess of a man. Yeah, I think that's cool. innocent messomen So what's the thing we need most? I think that has all the ideas on it. Andrew's been diligently working behind the computer, capturing all the audio, and is confident they have all the sections

that they need to finish the song. Yeah, it's like, you know, the vocal flows and the sections are clear. Yeah, let me put a harmony on there. Sure. Yeah. It's just to have mercy, please. I'll touch this up tonight and put you guys

Can we do a quick text thread just so we're all in like you know plug-ins. Yeah, we do got to get out. Hey, guys. Hey. We fucking got this. We did, yeah. Nice work.

I literally might not be able to do this. I wanted to. That night, Nicholas took my reflection to an anti-social open mic. and tried it for the audience of the camp. Here we go. Here we have. Don't show the truth to me, like the sun it burns to see

what's become of me the beauty. And by the closing ceremony of antisocial camp, the song was ready for playback. It was the final song to play at AniSocial, and Nicholas says he's considering cutting it for his next project. So what did going inside a song camp teach me, and what can we maybe take out of this if we don't get exclusive invites into song camps. I think there's something really special, first of all,

about getting out of our usual context with new groups of people to find inspiration in whatever our creative pursuits are. But we have to be vulnerable enough to open up and see what might come from that experience. And if we are open with our collaborators in those new places, I think we can create new and beautiful things. And I really need to get an invite to that Bali camp. Before we go, I actually did a whole panel at the Anti-Social Song Camp with Nicholas Patricio and a number of other very great songwriters, producers, and engineers. I'm going to post that as a bonus episode. You can check it in our feed later this week.

Switched on Pop is produced by Rana Cruz, engineered by Brandon Wee-Farland, edited by Art Chung, illustrations by Iris Gottlieb, community management by Evie Bar. Our executive producer is Neshawak-Kirwa and a member of the Vox Media Podcast Network and a production of Vulture. You can find more episodes at Switchonpop.com. On social media, we are at Switched on Pop, and we'll be back again next week, reviving our series on wonders. And until then, thanks for listening. Attention Spotify.

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