Switched on Pop - What it means to make music in 2020

Episode Date: June 16, 2020

The pandemic has upended the art and business of making music. Producing, performing and releasing — every aspect is new and uncharted. The need for social distancing means that it’s unsafe to collaborate in small studios or perform for large crowds — not to mention finding the right thing to sing about in such a charged moment. We’re telling three stories about how artists are working within these constraints: Ricky Reed and John-Robert have found a way to generate a creative spark remotely, Jacob Collier has defied the laws of physics to master live performance over the internet, and Dua Saleh has released a powerful new track that helps support the protests in Minneapolis. Everything is radically different than it was a few months ago, but these stories shine a light on why making music matters more than ever in 2020.  SONGS DISCUSSED Lizzo - Juice John-Robert, Ricky Reed, Zach Sekof - Favorite Boy Bill Withers - Lean On Me performed by Ty Dolla Sign & Jacob Collier Jacob Collier - All I Need D’Angelo - Feel Like Making Love Stevie Wonder - You And I performed by Tori Kelly and Jacob Collier Dua Saleh - Body Cast Dua Saleh - Sugar Mama Dua Saleh - Moth Dua Saleh - Smut Sister Rosetta Tharp - This Little Light Of Mine MORE Watch Nice Live on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC24tNtu1NuD9yZ9t2YUATIQ Dua Saleh's "Body Cast" BandCamp campaign: https://duasaleh.bandcamp.com/track/body-cast Listen to Dua Saleh's new album Rosetta: https://duasaleh.bandcamp.com/album/rosetta Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

If you're tired of endless scrolling to figure out where to eat, same. I'm Stephanie Wu, editor-in-chief of Eater. We've just launched the new-ish and way better Eater app. It has all the restaurants we love, gives you personalized picks wherever you are, and serves up smarter search results just for you. You can find my list of the best places for martinis and fries in New York City. And save your favorite spots, share lists, follow editors, and book right in the app. the Eater app at Eaterapp.com. It's free for iOS users. Welcome to Switched on Pop. I'm

songwriter Charlie Harding. When shelter-in-place orders started back in the spring, musicians' livelihoods were totally gutted. Many of their main sources of income, producing, performing, and releasing music, they were all upended. And for public safety, music, unlike a lot of other businesses, will need to be shut down likely well into next year. I talked with Vox's science reporter Brian Resnick. He told me about how we still need to wear masks, maintain distance, and limit interactions for the sake of our health and everyone else's. Which basically means that there's not going to be any hanging out with co-writers in small

music studios performing in front of large crowds at music venues. So over the last few weeks, I've been seeking out stories of how musicians are adapting to this moment. I don't mean to sugarcoat anything. It is hard out there, and it can be hard to stay creative in this time. But in my reporting, I found three really moving and uplifting stories that I wanted to highlight that show how artists are working within these constraints. The first story is about how musicians are trying to catch the creative spark that comes from intimate collaboration while physically distant, and how songwriting isn't just about making art. It's about staying connected.

Hi, I'm Ricky Reed. I'm a record producer, artist, and owner and founder of Nice Life Recording Company. If you've heard of Ricky Reed before, it's likely thanks to Lizzo. Ricky co-wrote and produced much of her Grammy Award-winning breakout album, Because I Love You. In addition to his collaborations with Lizzo, Ricky's credits are seemingly endless. He's worked with artists like Halsey, Jason Derrillo, Leon Bridges, Maggie Rogers, and Kesha. I'm used to producing in front of people.

You know, a session would be like myself, artist, engineer. It's like a minimum of three people in the room, but often anywhere from five to ten, it's like, yes, we're in studios, but like used to being around people and having some sort of feedback. One of Ricky's newest collaborators is a young singer-songwriter from Virginia. Hi, I'm John Ritt. I write songs. I also produce them. just about a week before venues were shut down in California, I happened to walk into a venue in Los Angeles just as this singer is belting out the chorus

of this really great song called Yours. And yeah, it was John Robert. The crowd was going absolutely berserk over his soaring vocals and his raw, youthful emotion. John Robert moved out to L.A., you know, essentially at the same age if somebody would move out somewhere for college, but without classes or

a dorm or any sort of built-in way to meet people and know people. So to sort of mimic that collegiate life, Ricky helps John Robert get set up with another musician roommate and invites him into the nice life recording crew. And things are going

remarkably well for John Robert. He's preparing to release his debut EP called Bailey Barely New Me. He's getting a bunch of early press. And then Corona hit. and basically all music in Los Angeles, as well as everywhere else, goes dark. I decided to move back to Virginia for a bit. I was scared, but really said the EPI was going to be touring and things I wouldn't be able to see my family.

So John Robert retreats to Shenandoah with his family. Back in Los Angeles, Ricky's in the same mode. He's got to take care of his family. He's got to figure out what to do. Like anyone else, I was terrified when this thing started. I have a three-year-old girl and twin one-year-old boys. In the middle of March, the bottom was falling out of the economy. Live music was slamming to a halt, and every day things were changing so much.

It was frightening. Ricky scrambles to try to keep his whole recording business going. He's got to keep a nice life alive. I immediately start going into overdrive. and sort of like pushing everybody on my label way too hard. We need to set up this. We could do this kind of thing. And eventually got in over my head to the point where I was not even really taking

care of myself or taking care of my family too well. What I started to settle into was like, okay, I need to be producing records. I need to be doing it at home. So Ricky makes a hodgepodge professional recording studio in a spare room in his house. and begins producing from home in the same way that so many of us are staying connected with our friends and family over video chat. For me, continuing to create music in this time is just an excuse to stay close to all the people that I miss.

John Robert, Jr., Lizzo, everybody, all my co-writers, because I'm an extrovert, I need to be around people, and I'm not here for John Robert. And probably a lot of other artists, it's going to be. got to feel pretty frightening. There's already so many walls for an artist, and you take away the ability to just be in a room and give people energy, receive energy. It's just an even more difficult time. Ricky decides to turn these video calls into a YouTube live streaming series called

Nice Live, where he starts to invite members of the Nice Life roster to collaborate in front of an audience, members like John Robert. Ricky's hosted 14 of these now, and they're starting to take on a comfortable sort of chummy vibe. All right, we got our people. How we doing? Welcome to Nice Live. I'm your host, Ricky Reed. Broadcasting inspiration. In Nice Live 11, Ricky's joined by John Robert and another young producer, Zach Seacoff. It's pretty scrappy. John Roberts, tuning in from his parents' unfinished basement, snuggled up in his grandmother's hand. and Zane-Sone blanket, and Zach's at home in his living room, while Ricky is sort of this madman behind a series of machines broadcasting the entire thing live.

I have no idea if this is going to work. I really don't know. Ricky springs it on the guys that they're going to be making music in a really quite unconventional way. You guys are collaborators on a song that I'm about to work on. You guys are working on something together tonight. They're about to be co-writers on Ricky's newest pandemic project, a song he's cooking up with John Robert called Favorite Boy. Ricky's created this sort of musical puzzle that we're about to see come together. A few days before the live stream, he'd sent John Robert a loop from a guy he found on YouTube named Knobbs. Let me show you guys what we started with.

It was this. So the first thing he does is he asks John Robert to craft a melody and write some lyrics. for it. Now John Robert, is it just this loop? You just wrote to this by itself, yeah? Yeah. That's an over statement. Didn't know him at all. I don't want to listen to the instrumentals too many times because I like what it initially inspires out of me. I find the melodies that I think, like you just get like a little bit ahead of dopamine. You know what I mean? with the endorphins. You just kind of, hmm. So what you're about to hear? Here is the work from Knobb's and John Robert completely unedited without any exact stuff

yet which I'm going to start to integrate. Great uncle died but I hardly knew him. That's an overstatement didn't know him at all. I got no tears. Truth told I'm hardly sorry. Should I miss a stranger? It doesn't mind. Then Ricky reveals the next piece of the puzzle.

He's given Zach some very incomplete musical clues to fill in the missing pieces of favorite boy. Instead of sharing the same loop to write along to, he's just given Zach the key and the tempo of the loop, no recording, and none of John Roberts' vocals. So I got some things from Zach, not least of which is this amazing guitar loop. I have no idea that's going to work. I know it's in the same key. Nice bass. We even gave us some drums, right, Zach? Yeah, sure.

Oh, my goodness. I mean, you just, like, put Zach's drums in, and all of a sudden it's... Like, are we done? It's great. Wow. And then Ricky gets a text from yet another collaborator with more drums and bass filled out.

This is insane. What happens with this on top of the vocal? Just see what... Great uncle died, but I hardly know that's an overstatement Did know the next hour, Ricky takes all of these parts. He puts them together. He plays with the loops.

He adds more drums. And by the end of the two-hour live stream, the song is basically done. Let's see what we damn get. John Robert and Zach Seekaw. I mean. So I was like listening at the dinner table like sneaking like, you know, sneaking down listening to it.

It's like, oh shit. This is a record. And with me, before COVID, during, after, that's always going to be the only thing that and like, you know, my child's laughter are like the only things that can take me out of this moment of terror, really, and just transport me to another place is like wanting to work on an amazing song. What I love about this live stream is not just how it all comes together in the end. it's that the final product seems to have a life of its own, autonomous from its makers. Ricky's kind of this wizard behind the curtain, leading his guest to create something in a new way, and while Ricky can't recreate the magic of being together in a room, by working separately, not being with each other,

there's a different kind of creativity that comes out. Ricky and John Robert are still collaborating remotely. John Robert's EP was released, and you can watch future installments of Nice Live on the Nice Life YouTube Channel. So the other day I'm doom scrolling through social media when the most delightful thing pops up. This live stream of Thai Dala sign performing a live version of Bill Weathers lean on me together with a friend who was in a totally different country. I couldn't comprehend how this was happening, given how hard it is for me just to have a face time with my family without stepping on each other's words. But it turns out, Thai Dollar Science friend is one of the internet's most beloved and truly gifted young musicians who seems to have mastered live collaboration over video.

Hello everybody. My name is Jacob Collier. And I'm calling from North London, calling from my lockdown location, my family music room. and I'm a multi-instrumentalist producer, kind of arranger, composer, musical human being, and trying to figure things out just like the rest of us. If you don't know, Jacob Collier, he's celebrated for inventing new corners of music theory and blending his polymathic musical skills to re-harmonize iconic songs like Ray Charles' Georgia on my mind.

and his own releases are equally mind-boggling and catchy. Here's a taste of his newest song All I Need, which does things with harmony I've never heard before. Because every time I think about it, can't stop thinking about it. Everything Jacob makes totally whows me, but this live stream had me totally befuddled. So I had to ask him about it. I've heard that you've kind of figured out, you've sort of gamed this system and you have figured out how to do a live performance. What is going on? Right. I was determined to crack this one because it just felt like so silly that we had to wait for technology to fix a problem that is not fixable. So I figured that human beings are much better at doing that than computers. Why don't we bend?

Just to describe what is the problem that we're addressing? The problem is that when two people get on Instagram live or FaceTime, for that matter, there is a small amount of latency which exists. in physics because you're basically sending data across the ocean. You know, for example, right now I think we're about 9,000 kilometers apart or whatever. I'm in London, so I guess it's X amount of milliseconds, maybe 100 milliseconds or sometimes even less of latency. Now, when you're playing something, especially when it's something rhythmic, that amount of latency breaks the whole thing.

And so really what the Instagram latency thing is, it's kind of just an excessive version of drag, except that it's happening in the opposite direction. I'm like preemptively dragging. As in like I'm playing ahead of the beat for a tick around, but it sounds like they're just being super, super expressive from my end because they're just being so drag. They're so behind the beat, but it kind of comes out right. When you say drag, what do you mean? If I go, I'm trying to think of a good example now, there's a song by DiAngelo.

Well, it's not by DeAngelo, but he covers it called Feel and Makein' Love. There's a horn line in that that goes, Like that. So if you play that, it's like, okay, that's fine, sounds in time. But if you go, and you drag behind the beat, just that small amount,

the tension between what time is for the drums and what time is for the horn line is so magnetic for the listener. It unlocks this whole zone of your brain where things are possible by bending time. Okay, so what you're saying is to perform on Instagram live rather than dragging time and being late, you're kind of arriving early at any given moment. Can you give me an example of how you do this?

You know, say, for example, it's like, if I'm in three beats in the ball, one, two, three, one, and you sing, happy birthday to you, right? Happy birthday. Then if you sing that now, which you don't have to. I'm not going to make you do it. I would hear it like this. Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday.

That's how I'd hear it. You just broke it. And so what I have to do in my brain is I have to compensate for that psychologically. I have to stay in time with myself. I have to listen a particular comma of an amount of time behind myself so that I'm interacting with you within your time frame and responding, but I'm staying where I am. So essentially I'm perceiving the music that's being played in two simultaneous tempos,

one which is in the future and one which is in the present, and basically making that latency composition in my mind before everything I hear by a certain amount consistently so that it will come out with zero. latency. Thank you for introducing us to the rhythmic multiverse. I didn't know that such a thing existed. How did you train yourself to do this? I like these kinds of challenges. They make you think about music in a new way. I've got one of those brains that enjoys doing that. I suppose you have to get started. There's not really a hack for it other than being rhythmically aware

and kind of being a bit courageous. You just have to try. Reason with me here, did you like sit down for 10 hours and try this and you finally got it. Yeah, it wasn't exactly a 10 hour thing. In fact, I got on a live stream with Tori Kelly. Okay, so you're going to do the thing where you don't listen to my time and stuff? Yes. Okay. Should we make a plan as to who's going to sing what fit or should we just see what happens?

Let's just see what happens. Two, three. And I hadn't figured it out yet, but I had by the end of the live. I had by the end of the live stream. And when I watched it back and I saw that there was no latency, I figured that this is probably worth doing it up a few times. And so it's become almost like a little series on my Instagram. Whenever I have a moment, I'll do what I call it, hashtag Insta Live Duo. Let's go.

That was beautiful, bro. Hey, Lino. It brings me great joy because obviously as a musician who likes to perform, I really, really miss that buzz of like, you know, X,000 people are in the room and we're going to make something work. and we're going to make something happen. And the fact that I have to do a little bit of a mathematical puzzle to make that possible is is nothing compared to the joy that it brings to me to just communicating with someone in real time. But now you're one of the probably few people that have this gift to be both in the present and in the future at the same time.

I'm just curious for your collaborators, though, who haven't been able to play music with other people. Has this been a unique and joyous experience for them? I think so. I mean, it feels almost impossible. until it's done, as Nelson Mandela might say. It's a funny old game. But as far as they're concerned, they sing along to me in their idea real time. So they sing along to me as if I'm in the room and it kind of figures itself out by magic. You do things that I've never seen happen before. Your audiences, they truly are an orchestra. I love that feeling. I recently realized the most joyous

instrument to play on stage is the audience, saying it's a wall of human beings. And I'm lucky enough to have a pretty musical fan base too. So yeah, I've recently got into a thing where I'll split the audience into different groups, all of this, I guess, without saying a word, I'll try and do it just with gestures alone. So it really feels like the process belongs to them. And then I'll feed notes and those notes will go up and down. And then sometimes we'll do rhythms and we'll do grooves. It's always very spontaneous, but that really is something I miss.

And I can't wait until we can get back out. We'll have to train your entire audience on the rhythmic multiverse so that they can all collaborate together over video chat. That would be, if you can crack that one, then kudos to you, sir. I'll call Instagram's engineers. Perfect. It's been a lot of fun talking with you, Jacob. I really appreciate it.

Likewise. I'll be sharing the rest of my conversation with Jacob Collier and the switch-down pop fee tomorrow as a bonus piece where you're going to hear harmonies you've never experienced before in your life. 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 host.

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. Immigration may be Donald Trump's signature issue. President Trump is now targeting 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 criminals of criminals. alien 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 violent 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 order 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. When I first started reporting this story more than a month ago,

the context of music in this moment was frankly different. Now, in addition to addressing the pandemic, we're also amidst one of the biggest movements to fight racism in the U.S. the civil rights era. And there's been an outpouring of music that stands in solidarity with Black Lives Matter. The other day, I stumbled upon this song called Bodycast, and I found it deeply moving. For our third and final story, I'm going to hand the mic over to the creator of Bodycast.

My name is Dwaal Saleh. I'm a non-binary artist based in Minneapolis. I'm also Sudanese-American. I'm also Sudanese American. I started making music. about four years ago. I was in college at the time. I was doing a lot of slam poetry. I was just playing around with the concept of music because something in my body and spirit was calling me towards melodies.

I have a friendly neighbor. She want to be my savior. Her daddy always warns about my family's behavior. She wonders about my flavor. Those chocolate-coated layers. She looks me up her down, I'm never like a glacial, bodacious belly flop. I'm never like intentionally being like,

oh, I'm going to make a song about this, or I'm going to be radical in this way. I don't know, like it's usually an emotional place that I'm writing from, and it's usually not from the same kind of critical lens that my poetry or my music theorizing would come from. It's more of like a natural emotional response to my realities. I'm still

I'm still I'm still I'm fulled I'm a I'm a I'm still kind of baffled at the thought that this is my full-time job

because I wasn't trying to jump into music I was just like playing around with it while I was doing slam poetry and like it got more real for me once I got a lot of people sending me private messages, especially from Sudan, about their identity and the importance of

my visibility being non-binary, and black and Sudani, how that has lifted up their self-esteem or has helped them get through difficult times. I don't know, after getting those messages, I was like, okay, I have to be serious about my messaging. I have to be more serious about what my words imply and how I talk and how I talk and how I address identity and reality in media because people are actually going through it and people are scared for their lives and people are using music as a means for survival. I wrote body cast initially because I was mourning the loss of Jamar Clark in Philando Castile who were brutally murdered by police departments in both Minneapolis and St. Paul.

But I was also anxious about the way that police departments were surveilling youth who were at the front lines the process. So I was thinking heavily about the surveillance state and the police state and the violence that are next on my community. The samples was from a video of a woman named Angela Whitehead, who was from Billings. The video was Angela Whitehead confronting police officers who walked into her home unannounced. They didn't have a warrant. They didn't knock on the door. They didn't ask to come in. They didn't have any viable reason to check out the scene or arrest her or anybody within the household. When she was basically reasserting her rights and reinstating that she's allowed to be loud and she's that allowed to be aggressive being in the comfort of her own home.

Lately, I have plastered on the mine. County ain't on shit. They got bodies on the line. So I was exasperated. with the county, with the city, with just politicians in general and their reformist efforts because they had already put in body cameras into the city of Minneapolis and someone still got murdered, Jamar Clark. There was already infrastructure in hand to try to put sensitivity training for police officers. In St. Paul, they murdered Philando Castile. So I just was just like

disgusted at the thought that policing was a safe and viable option for black communities. Bitch, I never said it. I never said it. Snitch and you'll regret it. Switching up the setting. Stitch upon your lips. I know you read it. Bitch, I never said it.

I've never called the police officers on anybody before. I once saw a woman who was scared for her life. There was a domestic violence dispute between her and her partner. When the police came, I watched them arrest her. I called 911 dispatch one time, but I hung up the phone out of anxiety because I was like, what if they kill me? I called my mom instead. I was displaced by a violent regime that used police force

to commit an onslaught of genocide on my own. slot of genocide on my people in Darfur. Just like from the inception, I just don't trust police opposites in general. Unfortunately, I could have written the song at any point of my life, and it would have been relevant, which is frightening to say the least. No, I never said it. No, I never, now I never said it. Snitch you might regret it.

Switching up to setting. Stitch upon your lips, I know you're ready. It's kind of alarming how much more support you can get as an artist than you can get as an organizer who doesn't have a lot of visibility. I wanted to help my community mobilize in any way that I could around the murder of George Floyd. So I used 100% of the proceeds specifically on band camp, a body cast. to fundraise for Black Visions Collective. It's a grassroots abolitionist group, and they are helping me through both Black Visions Collective

and Women for Political Change to redistribute funds to black youth, especially those at the front lines of the protests that are happening in Minneapolis surrounding George Floyd's murder. I don't know what the song can contribute outside of the donations that we've accrued. Talking about my Rosetta EP, I've named the song Rosetta after Sister Rosetta Tharp, the inventor of Rock and Roll.

I found out she was queer probably way too late in my life. Like, I was already excited that a black woman invented rock and roll, but finding out that she was queer kind of cemented her in my heart for the rest of my life. And it's kind of a project that is imagining, queer love in a way that's complex and radical because there's room for complexity. I tell what Girl you was playing with My Cuts My Rosetta EP

My Rosetta EP comes out on June 12th And I'm a little overwhelmed Just considering I'm kind of like juggling a lot just because I am trying to help redistribute things with Black Visions Collective, not just money, but like resources. And it's just coming at a weird time, especially since there was a national uprising and the global pandemic that has ensued. I don't know. I've just been having like breakdowns and stuff.

So I'm like, I'm not really prepared for my own project to come out. But it is what it is. And I guess capitalism doesn't allow time for breathing. Duas Salle's album, Rosetta, is out now. Go take a listen, and we'll link to the bodycast band camp page in our show notes. Before we roll credits today, I want to share one more thing with you. The pandemic has changed how fans are experiencing music too, and I'm talking even beyond live streaming on Instagram.

Our friends over at Reset have dropped an episode this week about music concerts in video games like Minecraft and Fortnite. And if you're thinking, wait, how does that even work? You should check out that episode on the Reset Feed. If you don't know it yet, Reset is also a Vox show. It covers how technology is changing our world. And if you haven't listened, you definitely should head over to their feed and take a look. Switched on Pop is produced by Megan Lubin, Bridget Armstrong, Nate Sloan, and me, Charlie Harding.

Editing, Mixing, and Mastering by Brandon McFarland. Abby Barre does social media and Iris Gottlie makes beautiful illustrations. Executive production by Nishat Kerwa and Liz Nelson. We're part of Vox.com and the Vox Media Podcast Network. You can catch us on social media at Switched-on Pop. And we'll see you next week as well. Until then, thanks for listening.