How to Become The Music Industry's Most Sought After Collaborator w/ Aaron Dessner

0:00Propel Fitness Water with Gatorade electrolytes, zero sugar, and vitamins. Propel hydrates better than water to help you get the most out of your workout and get back to your best self. What propels you? Propel with Gatorade electrolytes. This episode is brought to you by PayPal. You know how a mom's bag has everything? Sunscreen? Snacks? A stapler? The new PayPal app is like that, but for your money. Shop, pay, manage your account, and earn rewards all in one place. And with purchase protection on eligible items, biometric security, and pass keys, you're protected at every step. Download the new PayPal app to get started.

0:41See paypal.com slash protection terms. This message is brought to you by Apple Card. With Apple Card, you earn unlimited daily cash back on everyday purchases, like groceries, merch, or tickets to the game. Plus, it can be used anywhere MasterCard is accepted. No matter your team, no matter where you shop, Apple Card is here to help you tackle game day. Apply In The Wallet app on your iPhone today. Subject to credit approval, Apple Card is issued by Goldman Sachs Bank USA Salt Lake City Branch. Terms and more at AppleCard.com. If you want to make a great record, you should probably call Aaron Dessner.

1:17The longtime guitarist and songwriter of the beloved indie rock outfit The National and producer behind some of the most defining pop records of the 2020s, Dessner has become a trusted collaborator of everyone from Taylor Swift, Gracie Abrams, Mumford & Sons, Ed Sheeran, Noah Kahn, and Bon Iver. But his multi-decade legacy in music also goes even beyond all of that success. Dessner first got his band going by co-founding independent label Brassland to put out their records, and he has also played a pivotal role in founding festivals like Boston Calling, Eau Claire, and the Nationals Homecoming Festival in Cincinnati.

1:53So today on the show, we are going to go deep with Dessner about a few things. One, the art of collaboration. And two, how he's managed to create a lasting career as an artist, producer, composer, and even businessman in an industry where longevity is never a guarantee.

2:14Welcome back to On the Record, a music business podcast from Billboard and Sickbird Productions. I'm your host, Kristen Robinson, and I'm thrilled to welcome Aaron Dessner to the show. As I already noted, Dessner has made his name first in The National, an indie rock band that he shares with his twin brother, Bryce Dessner, among others. The group emerged from the Brooklyn scene in the early 2000s, and I've been putting out critically acclaimed projects ever since, notching four top five albums on the Billboard 200 in the process, including my personal favorite, Trouble Will Find Me from 2013.

2:47From there, Aaron expanded into film composition, including his score for A24 films like Come On, Come On. He also did Transpicos and Cyrano. He created a side project with Justin Vernon of Bon Iver called Big Red Machine. And then around the time the pandemic hit, he started working on this little album that you might have heard of called Folklore by Taylor Swift. This album suddenly made Aaron Destiner the most sought after songwriter and producer in pop. He now has credits across four Taylor Swift albums, as well as Noah Kahn's The Great Divide, Gracie Abrams' Daughter from Hell and The Secret of Us, Ed Sheeran's Minus, and Mumford & Sons' latest, Prizefighter, and will surely be remembered as one of the collaborators that shaped the sound of popular music in the 2020s.

3:31Not bad for a guy who already had an illustrious career in a rock band for the last 20 years. Plus, Dessner is now at work on a new independent label and publishing company with Interscope Records, where he now signs the next generation of musical talents. All of this being said, he's one of the most exciting creatives in the game right now, and I can't wait to learn more about his career to date. Please welcome to the show, Aaron Dessner. Aaron Dessner, welcome to On The Record. Thanks for being here. Thank you. Thanks for having me. I'm so excited to have you here because we're going to be talking a lot about collaboration, which has really defined, I feel like, your entire career, actually, being in a band, being in the National for so long, also doing all this great collaboration over the last what what year is it 2026 six years or so yeah yeah yeah I feel like I'm a born collaborator because I'm a twin so it's built in it's like built into my psyche I mean you guys have collaborated together throughout your entire music career when you were kids was that always the like we're gonna stick together and make music together or did you ever have those moments as a twin where you're like I need to do my own thing we were we shared a room until we were 18 and went to college and pretty much did everything together like same played all the same sports and played music at the same time and so at some point he was bryce was more geared towards like his brain just gravitated towards notation and music theory and reading music and then like composition and i was much more like emotional and a little bit more melancholic as a person so i would like play more emotionally and try to write songs and try to figure out like exactly like how paul simon was finger picking and like do all these things and then we would play off of each other yeah we were super competitive also so like almost almost to the point where like we both would like be running scales at the same time to see who was faster and like there is definitely like a in a i mean it wasn't like mean to each other but it was definitely we were pushing each other so pretty quickly we developed like a lot of agility which doesn't make you a good musician necessarily it just was like it's great training it was great training so we're like all right and i do believe though like as a producer you sometimes have to pick up an instrument that's not your favorite top instrument and have to have some level of dexterity with that so that's probably helpful it's super helpful for me like it's kind of why I can hang I think because a lot of times I'm in the room with people who I think are far more gifted like I do think in certain ways and so but like I can hang instrumentally for sure in most situations um and that does come from like ancient uh as a kid just like being kind of cultivating, not virtuosity, but just, you know, totally playing a lot.

6:27Just doing your reps. Yeah. Yeah. So I've often heard from songwriters and producers that when they're maybe building a room of collaborators that, you know, you kind of want to have people who are good at certain things. So maybe you pull in one songwriter because they're just incredible melodies, but then this other person is incredible, like can pick up any instrument and play it at the drop of a hat. I'm wondering what you kind of see as the thing that you bring. That's a great question. I feel like I bring in sort of unguarded emotionality or something where it's like, don't have a big ego.

7:06So I'm not kind of like telling people what to do or having some giant creative direction that I'm pushing. it's more like giving other people space to like to be emotional and to be vulnerable and being able to like harness that musically it's very rare that I've been in a situation where I get stuck where there's no idea it's like just um maybe I'm not answering this super well but I feel like I bring in a musical current that's emotional essentially and that people find meaning in more often than not so it's like they kind of like and that can take different forms sonically but it's just basically um like thinking more from a place of like heart rather than intellectually or commercially or like this is roxy music meets the cocktail tins i just don't think like that although maybe it'd be cool if i did but i just don't i know noah khan recently said to rolling stone he described you as like like a therapist almost and like really allowed him to open up and i know you guys worked on the great divide together um i'm wondering like is that kind of an intentional approach of like i want to intentionally set this tone of like i will listen to you i will hear you or is it just something that happens innately due to your personality it's interesting i mean i feel like noah or gracie or taylor or some of these people would probably answer that question better than I can but it's definitely like my entry point to serious music and probably how I ended up being in this life of music was because I needed to to express myself through it and be emotional and found it therapeutic um to make music not really knowing what it's for so I'm still oriented to that where like don't actually really care if something becomes a song or if we like if Noah comes and we hang out and we don't make any songs it's still like a nice day and you get to be for you know develop friendship and I still really do value that and I think people might people feel it whereas I think a lot of times in music it because it is an industry it is a business like it becomes like industrialized to a point where like a lot of people are used to sitting in writer's rooms or going on like speed dating of like sessions with people i've never really done that like hardly it's like i haven't really done it so it's i think probably when people like know i have come to long pun it does feel relaxed it It feels like it's my, I literally live there.

9:56And then we're just in a beautiful space seeing what happens. And it does, it's therapy for me to do that. And I think it rubs off, you know? And I do, I tend to connect with people that are making music, which is really emotional, you know? So. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I guess to turn it on the other way, because you're saying like maybe Gracie or Noah could maybe answer that question better. what do you think Gracie and Noah and Taylor three collaborators of yours what do each of them bring to the table that you find to be particularly their special sauce I mean they're all brilliant to a point of like I mean obviously Taylor's um has gifts that are just so exceptional and kind of otherworldly, where you almost feel like she's the brightest person you've encountered, or in most rooms, like the speed of creativity and ability to say things in an interesting way, like to give voice to her emotions and to certain narratives in such brilliant language with the musical mind that she has, where she's able to really hear a song.

11:14She'll hear the entire architecture of a song, sometimes within minutes, you know? And it's like watching some master painter create a masterpiece within minutes, you know, and elevate something you've done. Like a lot of times it's in the past, like with folklore, whichever record she would be connecting with the music and elevate it to a place I never could have imagined was possible. So she, yeah, she's just one of a kind, really, and has worked so hard at it for so long that you're like, you can feel that in her presence. She's a craftsman, yeah. She's like master craftsman. And then I think Noah is, without a doubt, one of the most gifted lyricists and singers I've encountered where he's kind of like, you know, call me when you miss the climb from a hole that has no bottom.

12:15Like he's just like you're making music and then suddenly he writes things where you're like full body chills. And then his gift as a singer and he's as good a singer as I've ever heard. And I've been around major people and just been able to be in the studio when people perform and Noah has amazing capacity and writes from this place where you really feel he needs to write the songs that he's writing and they're just authentically, he's so in them and it's just really, it's like get out of the way is the feeling I have, like let it happen. So I don't know, I can speak about him forever. And then Gracie, similarly, she is just one of my favorite songwriters and lyricists and singers where she has this, you feel like she's right in your ear.

13:12It's so intimate and so vulnerable and so authentic where she's coming from and having made a lot of music with her actually in the room where we're doing it simultaneously writing. and she's processing and writing lyrics while I'm making the music and we're guiding each other. And she's another person who thinks so quickly and sharply on her. When she finds her muse or when she has a thread, it's like surgical. She's just like a laser beam almost where you're just like, whoa. But they all, I mean, there's a lot of nuance to any artist and they all have them, you know, Gracie has this, these turns of phrase that are uniquely hers, you know, I call them Gracie-isms.

14:01There's just ways of like saying things that feel just, just you couldn't think of it, you know? Yeah. Yeah. Well, so you've mentioned Long Pond, which is your studio. Also, you live there. How much do you feel a sense of place impacts the music that you make and how creative you feel? definitely like long pond itself it feels like a instrument in itself where it's there's a lot of inherent magic there that i think was is this it's in the hudson valley which is a very historic corridor of the united states where the hudson river comes up from new york city and there's these tiny dutch towns dot the river bank going north and more than 200 years of artists coming out of New York City.

14:47We're sort of woodshedding up in the Hudson Valley and then in musicians, but there's kind of a long history of creative creativity through there. And you can drive two hours and you're in New York City. You feel like you're very much in the countryside and like the grocery store is 30 minutes away. And, um, at night there's like coyotes and a giant black bear on the other side of the pond. And there's, you know, I tell people like, be a little careful because there's a large lynx that likes to hang out in front of the door of the studio. It should be like the mascot of the studio. Yeah. But I think it just feels like you're kind of like not on vacation, but it's like a place you might just go to go, you know, check it out.

15:33So that helps a lot. And then the studio was built. There was an old horse barn there. There's an 18th century house in this old horse barn that we took down to build the studio. and we were very intentional about placing it so that you can see water all the time. And there's a lot of air and light and just it feels good to be in there. And I think most people that have come to collaborate, they really benefit from the space itself and just like feeling like in the super high church ceilings and it just feels good. So I feel like I got lucky a little bit with that Because there was intention, but it's even nicer than I could have dreamed of.

16:16Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that feels like one of those, I guess not a forever home because it's a studio, but it's also your home. So it feels like one of those, it's a culmination of, okay, I've been successful. I can do the thing I exactly want to make so I can make my music in the place I want to make it. Comprehensive. Witty. Speculative. Critical. Insightful. Profound. Wide-ranging. Hopefully doesn't take itself too, too seriously. I'm David Remnick, and each week on the New Yorker Radio Hour, my colleagues and I try to make sense of what's happening in this chaotic world. I hope you'll join us for the New Yorker Radio Hour wherever you listen to podcasts.

16:54Thoughtful. Exquisite. Just, you know, real.

17:02What were you doing before Long Pond? Where were you frequenting? Well, before Long Fun, I lived in Brooklyn from, I went to Columbia and then I just stayed basically in the city and moved to Brooklyn in the late 90s. And I bought a house in Ditmas Park, which is like this Victorian neighborhood in Brooklyn. Kind of looks like Buffalo or something like a freestanding houses. And they have little garages from the 1920s. And I turned my garage into a studio. Like when around the time the National made Boxer. And that was kind of the place that I, that the band worked and that I, like when I produced Sharon Van Etten's Tramp, it was in there and like early records that I made were all there.

17:45And I knew when I moved upstate that I wanted to create something that was like that, but on a much larger scale, but that had that kind of like intimacy, which still, you know, like even though Blanc Pond's much bigger than the tiny garage, it's still the same way of working, basically. After doing so many outside collaborations, you came back with the National Midden Album in 2023. I imagine y 'all are probably working on more stuff now. I'm wondering how the outside collaborations have fed the National and the sound that you're going for nowadays. The National is starting to brew. The old engine is starting to...

18:28We're tuning it up. And I think that we've made all kinds of different records over the years. We love them all. I think we recorded every sound check for like 18 months before we stopped touring in October 2024. and basically we were improvising on stage and just kind of playing like we used to play a long time ago, like in the beginning, searching for things. And I don't know if that'll be the direction, but I think in general, I think everyone wants to come together without a preconceived notion and just, like it might be a really avant-garde, strange experimental record. It might be like a really loud rock and roll record, but I definitely will be something in between those two things.

19:19So I love it. I can't wait. Whenever, whenever it happens, I'm there. Okay. Thank you. I'm excited. Like I miss, I think that the band, it's like a family. It's literally a, like another family. So when you go away from it, it can be healthy to get some space, but then at some point you all, everyone is like, wait, where are my brothers? You know, it definitely feels like that now. So it'd be good. Yeah. Yeah, you need the distance a little bit to make the heart grow fonder again. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, I remember I listened to a past interview that you did where you were talking about 2019, kind of like pre-pandemic.

19:53I think it was 2019, somewhere right before everything changed and the world went into lockdown. And you were coming off of a tour with The National where you were just really exhausted. And I have thought so long and hard about how exhausting touring must be for an artist. I recently got to see Noah Kahn, actually. And I was like, oh, my God, he gives every ounce of energy that he has on that stage. And got to see the Heiress Tour twice. I felt the same way. I mean, it's like a feat of athleticism to see the Heiress Tour. I know you've reflected before about how Taylor Swift is such a hardworking artist.

20:32I mean, obviously Noah Kahn is as well. I always wonder about how people keep the creative juices flowing while in such peak exhaustion. And I wonder in your period of exhaustion where you're coming off of your tour, how you were feeling creatively. Did it feel like the creative well was being run dry? Yeah, I mean, I think when you're on tour, it's not even if you are comfortable and you're at a level where like the National got to the point where we're playing arenas and there's 40 people in the crew and it's like you're comfortable. you're still after five shows or something you're basically running on fumes because to be like on stage for three hours or two and a half hours from 9pm to 11 something and then like takes you a while to wind down and then do it again in some other city in Taylor's case like more than three hours even if you're healthy about it you do you hit a wall of exhaustion like I'm sure Noah having been on tour for three months you know has hit the wall yeah literally um figuratively yeah crazy um I over the years I learned that it would be healthy to to bring we started bringing we called it mini pond it was like a the tiny long pond it was just a pelican case and I would set it up backstage in a room and like try to be creative yeah um and that did Like that's where I made most of the music, which became folklore was made before the pandemic on tour with the national in like little weird rooms and arenas in Europe where I would like Bella Blasco's amazing engineer came on tour and we would just go in these little rooms and like make stuff.

22:18So I think, but for a lot of people, especially I think from a lyrical point of view, I think when you're performing and you're doing like having that thing of thousands of people looking at you every night and giving these performances, you're not, you're probably not going into your tour bus or your hotel room and like writing a song. I think you're then, you're going in there and like spacing out and falling asleep. Yeah. Coming down from an insane high. Yeah. Yeah. And it's mentally, it's not, it's not, it's like, it's such an, such an amazing thing to do and so special and this communal catharsis.

22:53But it's also like, there are adverse effects, even if you're not like drinking and doing bad things. Yeah, yeah. I'm glad you brought up folklore because one of my favorite songs of Taylor's is Peace from that album. And to me, that sounds like it also could have been on a Big Red Machine album. Yeah, totally. I told you before we started filming the Big Red Machine, that first record in particular is one of my favorites. So I'm just selfishly wondering if you can tell me more about the making of Peace. Totally. I mean, that's a very astute observation because I think on the first Big Red Machine record, there's a song called Forest Green that has harmonized bass lines, which actually it's Justin Vernon playing these like harmonized bass lines, which I, it's like, that's one of my favorite pieces of music I've been involved in.

23:49and Peace is based on a, he had given me a folder of starters, starters he calls them, like just random. In the case of Peace, it's like this, that pulse that you hear at the beginning was from Justin. And then I wrote three harmonized bass lines to it that have like mixed meter. And I think it was like a lot of folklore and Evermore stuff. I just did it to do it. I didn't know that there would be a song really. Well, it was because I thought somebody would, this would be hard for someone to write to, you know? And it has some weird little like extra bars and things that I just accidentally probably did.

24:31But when I, when Taylor approached me during the pandemic, she kind of said like, send me anything. Like even the weirdest thing. Cause I think in my head I was like, well, I don't know if I have anything that she might be able to dig into, but Taylor was clear. She was like, no, no, I'm interested in weird shit. So that one, I was like, okay, here's three harmonized bass lines and a pulse, you know, with no clear structure. And she was like, it was actually, I think maybe the second or third song that she wrote and sent me a voice memo of. And I was like, holy shit, it sounds like Joni Mitchell just like saying or something, you know, it was like this like crazy thing.

25:15So you're right that the music could have felt, it was definitely Big Red Machine adjacent or something. Yeah, I love that. Yeah, I mean, Renegade was also such a good collaboration of y 'all's, actually did end up on a Big Red Machine album. Yeah. That was definitely, Renegade was definitely like written in the wake of, I think I made the instrumental around the time of the Grammys where Folklore won. Mm-hmm. And Taylor had written to it. But we didn't know what she would be doing next or what record would come. Ultimately, it was Midnight's that came. And Renegade kind of was like, let's put it on the Big Air Machine record, which was awesome.

25:59And I'm so proud of that. Yeah. You brought up the Grammys. You won Album of the Year for Folklore with Taylor Swift. But you have won Grammys before with The National. I'm wondering how you compare those experiences. I think it was Best Alternative Album with The National to winning Main Category Best Album of the Year for Folklore. Yeah, it's funny. Like, I think of Orbiter, like how stiff and awkward, you know, the red carpet that I know is singing about just like his first time losing. Our first time losing was the national, like was nominated for Trouble Will Find Me, which like national fans typically rate that higher than Sleep Well Beast, which was ultimately won the Grammy.

26:49I mean, I kind of put them on the same level, but basically we had gone in 2014 or 15 to the Grammys. But it was the first time the National was nominated for Trouble Fighting. I mean, we were dropped off. I think we didn't realize that you kind of have to know where you're going. So we were dropped off like under an overpass and we walked in our tuxedos like a mile. And by the time we got there, we had like sweated through our clothing. And we're just like, and then we're sitting in the pre-telecast. We didn't know that there's the real Grammys and then there's the like pre-Grammys. I mean, it's all the real Grammys, but you know what I mean.

27:29Yeah, the televised. Yeah. So we're sitting there and we're like, and then Vampire Weekend won, which is great. And they're amazing. And then, but they got up there and they were just like, thank you. And then left. And we were like, that's it? Yeah, it's like, we just walked a mile. So the next time we got, like a couple of years later, we got nominated again for Sleep Well Obesan. And we didn't go. Well, Scott went our basis. But the rest of us didn't go because we kind of felt like, well, we're never going to win. It's just like we're going to like sweat through our clothes. Like, let's just like not go.

27:59And then I was in the shower and my like three year old daughter ran upstairs and was like, daddy, you won a Grammy. Because our friends have been watching and she was like, is that bad? And I was like, no, I think it's OK. But it was just we weren't there. So it was kind of funny. so that compared to winning with Taylor was a very different experience because with Taylor it's like first of all the main album category is that's the like intense sort of thing of like it's this high drama and a lot of expectation and I don't think I understood how big that was or what it meant or how competitive it was because I sort of really come from this indie like more that world where like the Grammys aren't super yeah relevant like Sufjan hasn't won a Grammy or like you know but it was amazing it was just it was such a crazy feeling to be there was the pandemic Grammy so it was kind of fun because you didn't have to be around like tons of people everyone was just like wearing masks and sort of like I was sitting with Taylor a little bit and it was just fun we were just like talking through wear masks and um but yeah different experiences oh my gosh i forgot that that was the pandemic that was such an it was honestly an odd thing to watch it i know it was fun for the it was actually as sad as it was like that he didn't have all the gallantry it was also kind of interesting you know it was like very hermetically sealed yeah i mean that must be nice for some of the biggest stars to be like okay there's not like a ton of people who are in the stands watching and you know it's a little bit more.

29:40Just you had to be there if you're supposed to be there and that's it. If you're a songwriter, composer or music publisher, joining a performing rights organization is essential for your career. And there's only one PRO where you truly belong. ASCAP. ASCAP represents over 1.1 million music creators and publishers, including this episode's guest, Aaron Dessner. Their mission? Ensuring that you get paid royalties whenever your music is streamed, broadcast, or performed live. So what sets them apart? ASCAP is the only American PRO founded and governed by music creators. Because they put creators first, 90 cents of every dollar that they collect goes directly back to their songwriters, composers, and publishers.

30:24Not to private equity or to major corporations. Last year alone, they collected a record-breaking total of about$2 billion on behalf of their members. And beyond royalties, ASCAP also supports you with career building workshops, cutting edge technology, and vital advocacy in Washington, which protects your rights in an age of AI. Writers can join for free now. Visit ASCAP.com slash on the record to get started. You mentioned you come from like kind of the indie rock world. And I was kind of thinking in preparation of this, how bands like The National are so critically acclaimed, get typically such great reviews from, you know, the likes of - I did not review all the Pitchfork album reviews before this, but I imagine they're pretty good.

31:12Most of the time. Most of the time. But yeah, like coming from this place where critical acclaim and being big but not gigantic is kind of the goal. And then moving over into doing more collaborations with folks who are signed to major labels, working for more commercial popular music. I wondered if you had any moments where you were wondering whether that was the path you wanted to go down. Because I know sometimes in the indie scene, it's like a little bit more like, you know, are you working with the biggest pop stars in the world? Is there some sort of like negative connotation to that at first?

31:54Tell me about your thought process and moving through the worlds. It's been an interesting dichotomy at times because when the Nationals started, it was still really the heyday of, you know, coolness and indie rock and things like The Strokes and Interpol and all those bands were, those were the big things when we started these very critically acclaimed and popular records. records but it was like we were kind of chasing something we wanted to make music that was you know like in that world kind of it was really kind of what we were listening to and we were signed to 4ad which is like you know pixies and that kind of legacy but over time as the band got bigger and bigger and you start hitting your head on this weird glass ceiling of Of like, it doesn't actually, at some point, like all of like genres and labels, like it just doesn't matter so much.

33:00I don't really care what lane someone's in if you're making something that you believe in together. Which is really, because my first real exposure to massive mainstream music was through Taylor. and she couldn't be more credible and sort of craft oriented. So I didn't really, and also it was the pandemic, so I was so insulated from what it meant. And I think I just, and she actually, I think, did a really beautiful job of not protecting me, but she was kind of just, we never talked about 1989 or any other record that she had made that was so gigantic. We were just making what we were making. um so but over time it was a crazy thing to suddenly be very recognizable to people because yeah um of having been on stage as they were being photographed and you know and those kinds of things and that was a it took me a second to get used to that um but and i think but i would say i still try not to worry about like the commercial aspect of things because it just you can't control the outcome you can only make what you want to make and most of my experiences have been really positive where like like Gracie for example Interscope has been I've never felt pressure from them and they've really allowed her to develop and make what she wanted to make and kind of you don't feel like pressure to try to make hits it's just like make the songs that you want to make that's not always the case yeah that's great that she has that it's great that she has it and it's allowed her to grow yeah um and they took a long view and then it was amazing when the secret of us blew up the way that it did because it kind of felt like earned at that point it is definitely an issue where you like that is in the room sometimes with certain artists where it's less the artist more like the machinery around them and the pressure of like especially if they've already had hits, you know?

35:07And so in the kind of parasocial world that we live in where everything is like so fast and the data is so readily available, it's like people are, it's a little bit like a, it can be overwhelming when people are like thinking that way. Yeah, I find it so fascinating. Like what you're saying, becoming more, I guess like more of a public figure in being a producer because that's usually a role that's behind the scenes that people don't always know what a producer looks like. And yet you were an artist before. You just kind of entered like a mainstream consciousness in a way that you hadn't previously.

35:43Yeah. Like I think I'd been used to being obviously recognized as being in the National and all that stuff because it had been and having had success in that way. But it's not comparable to the wider world of... Of Taylor Swift. Yeah, that level of media and all that. And then having done all this other stuff since, I'm fine with it. It was awkward at first. Yeah. It was just kind of like, get used to it. Yeah. With phones, just that feeling of being more exposed. What I love about where music is today is that songs, you never really know what's going to work. You just have to make, like Noah's record is a good example where Orbiter, nobody would have said Orbiter would be a weird hit.