Jacob Collier

26:50So with James Taylor, I mean, this song really is one of the greatest songs of all time. The sun is slowly sinking down.

27:16And I think what I did was something like So close your eyes You can close your eyes It's alright I don't know Love songs I can't sing the blues Anymore

27:42I can sing this song You can sing this song When I'm gone Love is the moment We went somewhere else But that note works in this chord But it also works in This chord as well, right? So that's been my pivot. You can sing this song. I could go, when I'm gone. Or I could go, when I'm gone. And then I go back to, but I can sing this song. So it's just a little like a window of color opens. It's like, oh, a new world, just for a moment. It's such a nice moment because it follows what makes that song distinct in the harmony, which is when it goes to the flat seventh. Yes, which is such a James Taylor move.

28:32Right, but it's so beautiful in that song. And then this just took it off, and I think you do it before the solo, and it just goes into space. You're right on point. The thing I love about James Taylor is he has this way of... He'll often kind of reassert his position in a key using what we call as musicians a plagal cadence. So it's like... That's what he'll do. it's like saying okay i'm in f and then i'm gonna go which kind of means it's like b flat f means like i'm really home i'm really home i'm really home and he does a thing called a plagal on plagal cadence where he'll go he'll be he'll be in one key and then he'll go into another key and then he'll do a plagal cadence in that key and it's a really comforting kind of harmonic instinct that he has and i really enjoy it but what plagal cadences do is they move you to into the darker side of a key.

29:26It moves you into the flat side of a key. Because you're kind of going into the dark side, onto the flat side. As opposed to... Right? That would be like the brighter side. You can go bright forever in that direction around what we call the circle of fifths. Or you can go darker and darker and it gets like, oh, into the deepness of the key. So one of the reasons why

29:55is surprising is because that is a really bright chord in comparison to f anyway but especially given the context of all the plagal cadences which is like darkening darkening it's like even more of a statement to say oh i'm gonna go here and suddenly it's i'm wearing that we're in this other key i think i'm playing this now in f on the album i think it's an f sharp but in this context it's a d d major which is like full of full of light you know in comparison to to the f But then some of these other James Taylor areas are much darker. And again, I can describe these things in theoretical terms, but foundationally, these are just like sensations that are familiar to me.

30:33And I think probably to many of you too who are listening and who love listening to music is that you're affected by the harmonic relationships. My kind of fascination and job as a musician and an arranger and harmonist is to try and understand the impact that some of these things can have on my songs and my choices so that I can control those moments of contrast or, okay, a little bit of sunlight here or let's make some fog or let's make this feel heavy or make this feel light. And I love playing with all those sensations. It's funny you describe it as going a little dark with the plagal cadence because when I hear it, even in James Taylor, to me it sounds like that's a gospel move.

31:10Yeah, it is very much a gospel move. If you think of the beginning of Aretha Franklin's You Make Me Feel Like a Natural Woman, that's how the piano starts. Yeah, yeah. Totally. It's also, I found, and I'm not sure if this was deliberate or if this, again, comes out of playing on a guitar, a lot of drone sounds in this. Yeah, yeah. On this. It's something you don't do as much on the piano. It's true. I think the guitar has that beautiful way of offering, like if you leave two strings going throughout your song, which I tend to do, I tend to play mostly on this guitar using the lower three strings.

31:48And these kind of just go, these are staying.

31:54They're there. So there's an automatic sense that there's a drone, which I've always loved drones so much. On the piano, it's harder to have these things ringing efforts. You'd have to play those notes again and again on a piano in order to get that same effect. But I think that the drone sense kind of grounds the sound of the guitar. And being quite similar to an open-tuning guitar anyway, and really being an open-tuning guitar, many people who play it with open-tunings I think also feel drones are of significance. I think Joni would be one. You know, that just having those certain notes that could keep going through the chords and other notes that change is a really beautiful way of making harmonic contrast interesting.

32:34So we know it changed your writing style. Did it change your singing? Yeah. I would say the thing that foundationally affected my style of singing with this album more than anything else, besides just the fact that there was a guitar, was actually the style of recording with these full takes. because I think that, you know, if I record my voice, as many of us do, in isolation, you know, you sort of go into the quote-unquote vocal booth having recorded the basis of your song and you do a performance of the song, you're not necessarily at one with any of the elements in terms of a performance aspect.

33:09You're reacting and so you're attached in that way, but you're not, there's not that sense of dualism. So here, if I sing and play the guitar at the same time, because I'm one person my phrasing will move along with my instrument my dynamics will be in line with my instrument I will naturally kind of create a sense of conversation you know

33:41what happens is between my vocal phrases the guitar will kind of rise up like a wave and then it will rescind a little bit when I sing and then it will fill up the gap so the dynamics I think of my singing were really inspired by and informed by the way I play the guitar and vice versa I think the guitar was inspired by the voice as well I think in general as a multi-instrumentalist and enthusiast of instruments in general I think that instruments are at their best when they feel like voices in general, you know it's no wonder that we bend our strings or we we we add vibrato on on violins or uh you know across the gamut there's there's the sense that instruments have a variety of ways of imitating the voice essentially and um yeah i think as a guitar player i kind of try and play like i'm singing even if i'm playing a chord you can you can kind of stroke a chord or you can it's like you breathe you know it's like the way that the voice does i think that the the least interesting kind of guitar players i i know play the guitar like it's a guitar, if that makes sense.

34:46You're bringing up an interesting idea, which is modern recording now is you record everything separately. And even folk artists now, I'm sure, do their guitars separately. Yeah, yeah. Isolation. But then you lose some of that interplay between the instruments. Now, the other thing that's happened to recording is everything is now on a grid. So when you're talking about the swells, you're also changing the tempo, which is something you don't hear a lot in modern music. It's true. It's such a good point you make. I take for granted that I don't play in time a lot of the time, but I think oftentimes the way our psychologies are kind of illustrated now in terms of like a canvas or a workflow is if you look at a computer and you're running a DAW audio software, you see grids constantly.

35:34There were, I think, only two songs out of the 11 on this album that I recorded to a grid. Everything else is totally whimsical in terms of time, which I really enjoy. It's funny, I've always kind of felt comfortable going off the grid, especially with recording. And the thing that really taught me how to do it well was back in 2016 when I released my debut album In My Room, the way that I funded that album and I built the campaign was through a service called Patreon. It's like one of the crowdfunding websites that I'm sure you know. And I decided to launch a campaign where I would harmonize my fans, harmonize my audience members.

36:09So I asked people to send me 15 second snippets of any melody in any language of their choosing. Some of them wrote new melodies, some of them sang songs I knew. And I would kind of send it back to them harmonized and I would film myself singing the parts and I would upload them as videos. And I did about a hundred in the end and it was a really fun way of building an audience online in those early days. And to me, it was like, I had to get really good at harmonizing quickly because I'd received so many different submissions. And that process, it was like solving Sudokus, you know. It's like someone would send a melody that sort of goes, you know, whatever the melody was.

36:46And I would find a solution for it harmonically that felt just like ticklish and fun and made the person sound really good. But no one was singing on grid. So I had to create ways of making somebody's time make sense without imposing anything on them. I had melodies from like two-year-old kids, super microtonal, as I'm sure was not their intention. But there's this one girl, she sang like, twinkle, twinkle, little star. And my job is not to change anything about the melody all the time. So I modulated around her using all these microtonal chords to make her sound incredible. And it was a really fun philosophical musical exercise for me.

37:30But I think that one of the biggest things it taught me, especially with, you know, accompanying musicians who play things in time, was how you can make you can kind of make someone sound good by following their time rather than imposing any kind of grid. It wouldn't have worked if I tried to impose a grid. So weirdly, I learned a lot of lessons from that process that I applied to this album, because I think with this album, I was kind of harmonizing myself in the sense that I'd record a full length take recording. And then I would begin the process of in so much as it was necessary, adding that context or decoration or, you know, sort of like, yeah, elements to make that performance shine.

38:09and for certain songs like there's one song called called Icarus which is by a group called the which I just love so much the song that is primarily just completely me doing it live same with the song called Norwegian Wood which I recorded it's it's fundamentally just that live performance of me playing the song and then other songs like the Beach Boys keeping on summer some of my own songs like Heaven Butterflies and I know a little some of these things have a little bit more of that layering effect involved but I love the challenge of following something that feels natural and organic and alive without trying to, in music we say the word quantize it, you know, sort of lock it to a grid, make it rigid in terms of rhythm, but also in terms of tuning, in terms of sound.

38:50I love all that squiggly imperfection. Norwegian wood is interesting because, of course, there's always a debate about whether Norwegian wood's in three, four time or six, eight. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And you do something, first of all, you're making a sound that sounds like you're, you're striking above the nut. Is that true? Yeah, this thing. Is that what you did? I did do that. Oh, okay. It was like, so I lit a fire. Isn't it good? There's one thing. But that figure. The rhythm you picked for that. Yeah.

39:26Again, it's that drone thing. And I love the palm muting sound in general. but what you're hearing a lot is me hammering on with my left hand and these little baby kind of like strings and I love it because it feels again it doesn't feel like a guitar it doesn't feel like I'm it's like it's like partly percussion partly drum partly kind of drone there's something almost like a kalimba about it like thumb piano-y about it it's really kind of groovy it sounds a little and I know it's not it sounds a little bossa nova almost yeah yeah the first part somewhat yeah somewhat yeah um but then the the chorus you do play like you're just playing you yeah that's more open yeah but I love how I mean one of the things about this guitar I love is that it has a six string neck but only five strings so there's much more space between the strings to just kind of find these sounds and and somehow it's it's it's it's like an appealing system for me to to find these these kind of ticklish little little pockets um in this song i also bend so it'll do a lot of string bending which again is possible because of the space between the strings but you know yeah for this for this particular song the time is constantly shifting slightly because it's all live but i focused on the fact that this was just me doing a take and singing the song and only at the very last minute did I add a couple of little moments of decoration here and there you know one last break and we'll be back with Jacob Collier fear is the virus is trending on TikTok vaccines are poison then your yoga teacher says that sex trafficked children are being sacrificed by satanic liberals but it's all okay the great awakening is coming.

41:18What is happening? Every week on Conspirituality Podcast, we explore the fever dreams that suck friends, family, and wellness gurus down the right-wing cult spiral in a search for salvation.

41:36Now, probably the most produced song is your Beach Boy cover of Keep an Eye on Summer. Not Not their best-known song, but tremendous song. I love that song. What inspired you to do that song? You know, this was one of the things that I had before the four-day window began. I'd recorded a rendition of this song summer of 2024. Actually, it was on Midsummer's Day. And it was one of those rare days that I'm sure many of you will know where you, you know, your life's been full and you've been busy and things have been going on. But you just find yourself at the weekend home. You've got a whole afternoon ahead of you.

42:11you think, oh, what should I do? I find myself, you know, allure unto myself. And so I thought, well, maybe I should just record Keepin' Our Summer, because it was a song I'd been sort of jamming on for a bit and playing. And I just got my 10-string guitar, which was a brand new kind of angle on the 5-string. It's just the sort of 12-string equivalent of the 5-string. And so I sat down, and it took me about three or four hours, and I recorded this quite scrappy arrangement of it with all these different layers and things. And that arrangement of the song existing actually was quite a big part of the inspiration to make this album a tool.

42:47Because when I sat down in May to do this record, I thought, well, what do I have that I could work with? And it's like, well, I have that arrangement of Keeping On Summer. Maybe I could build a whole record around that world. Because it's a musical world I really love and a sort of sonority, a particular area of my taste that I've really wanted to explore and go deep into for ages. And sorry, what is that area that you loved? I think it's a combination of the sound of the guitar mixed with a sort of stripped back approach. There's also with Keeping On Summer, a microphone that I use called an R88 ribbon mic, which has that really nice hiss to everything.

43:22So when you record something on it, it feels really kind of feels analog, feels alive, feels like warm and rich. So there's something about that, which is a big part of this world, which for me made a big impact. and I used it on Keepin' On Summer it's one of the first times I'd ever recorded using it and so I got really excited by this hissy warm world I'd explored it a little bit with Jesse Volume 2 back in the day but yeah there's something about the acoustic guitar meets vocal harmony world that inspired me and obviously the king of vocal harmony and songwriting to me is Brian has always been Brian so to cover that song Keepin' On Summer felt like a really nice sort of homage to the great man And we obviously lost Brian this year.

44:06So it just felt like a really nice thing to share that arrangement with the world as just a sort of really warm, sunlit, gladeful afternoon in England, thinking, oh, maybe I can do a rendition of the song that I really love. And yes, not one of his big hits, but a beautiful modulation in that bridge there. Absolutely. It goes up a – I can't remember the chords exactly. It might be a major third or something or minor third. Now, did you get a chance to meet him? Sorry. I never did get a chance to meet Brian and he like Joni was one of these people who sits on a total on a throne in my head someone who I never felt the need to meet him for any I have enough of a feast of inspiration just from his work but I did see him play once and it was unbelievable it's funny when you talk about this album it was about restricting choices or at least putting some of your palate away which is, you know, famously, he's the guy that was almost driven crazy by the number of choices he could make in a studio.

45:07Yes, exactly. I mean, he's a guy who embraced the fireman's bells and the timpani and the swanny whistle and the theremin. The theremin, of course. And it's, to me, it gave me so much permission as a kid to play and to explore these big worlds. But I also love that, I think it was a bootleg album that Brian put out or was put out of just playing songs on the piano. Remember, it was called like Brian at the Piano or something like that. And he just plays these songs at the piano and you recognize with Brian how strong the songs are. Because when you take away all the swanny whistles and the craziness of the sound, which I love so much, you're left with a really beautiful song.

45:45And so, yeah, for me, that was so inspiring and still so inspiring to me as a songwriter. It's like, how can you make something that both works in a totally acoustic stripped back scenario and also works when you scale all those layers on top of other layers? And you have a song like Good Vibrations, which I think I look back at that at the first time I heard that song and it was just like the whole, this whole new faction of creativity became available to me. It's like, I just didn't know you could do that. But when Brian sits at the piano and plays the song, it sounds great too. And that's what I love about Brian and love about those songs.

46:18I want to talk about a couple more of your influences, how they may or may not have found their way into this album. Yeah. You grew up in a musical family and you said you sang Bach chorales. I did. What part did you sing, by the way? Well, I was the bass. So I would, and I'd often add notes in or improvise things around those things. I always have a pencil handy and would be, you know, jotting notes in and things, just learning what I liked and what I responded to. But yeah, so I was brought up by a single mom. I'm the eldest of three kids. So we were SATB, you know, and my mom sings tenor, kind of.

46:53She kind of goes, ah, and it kind of comes out with these tenor lines. but I really loved I loved that feeling I still love that feeling now of sitting with those those lovely people and just singing together and actually it's what Brian used to do too he used to sing with his brothers he used to transcribe four freshman arrangements and they'd sing it all together as a group and I think he did a lot of his process of studying and expanding his kind of harmonic palette through learning these arrangements and teaching the parts to his brothers and I love the thought that yeah he did that and then went on to write songs like you know Surfer Girl or whatever and out come all these four freshman voicings.

47:27But in the context of a surf rock song, it's amazing. Now, are there points where we're hearing a little Bach in any of the songs on this album? It's a good question. I find him unavoidably inspiring, and he shows up in all sorts of places. I think there are certain moments. There's a song called Where Did My Apple Fall on the album, which is really quite austere to it. It's quite a strange song. I really love it a lot. one of the songs one of those sort of song seeds that I had that I didn't know what to do with it because it didn't feel like it fit on any of the Jesse albums and it didn't really have a world where it belonged and I was so excited to get to release it but it's almost quite classical in terms of the harmony this three part harmony that moves I think in a way that hopefully Bach may approve of.

48:14There's another song on the album called Tom Thumb which is a similar thing so it goes Tom Thumb goes

48:31Light up the stove Of your countenance You're all that matters to me I am a lake or a stone Or an hourglass I am a joke that is wasted on me Wrap me in scarves of your confidence Rend me to tatters, I'm free I'll be a steak or a bone or an oven glove I'll be the island that drowns in the sea Tom, Tom, where did it come from? I'm lost, soft, drowning in everything Tone thumb, thought you were gone Then I found you inside of everything

49:57That's the whole song. It's lovely. It's very short. But this... What is it?

50:09It's very classical. And I love that influence showing up in songs. you can't plan what inspires you and when you sit down to write a song your job is to make space for whatever wants to come through but I think having loved that music for so long as a kid it's always a surprise and delight but also unsurprising to me to see certain subtractic things make their way into songs I think a progression like that wouldn't exist if it wasn't for that influence I definitely didn't learn the bulk of my harmonic understanding or my songwriter style through any kind of jazz harmony. I think I was most inspired and informed by some of the more expensive classical harmony that I loved as a child.

50:56And hearing that find its way into songs, to me, that's always a sign that I'm tapped into something real. Here's a trickier one. Benjamin Britton, whom you love. I adore. any little any little bits of benjamin britain in here i would definitely say so uh i think those two songs feel again feel britain-esque in to to to the to the point that they are austere i think of britain as the master of the austere harmonically like he he kind of plays what's not the chord rather than just what is the chord he'll leave out a really important note in a chord and make you feel like you have to imagine the note instead.

51:41Well, he often inverted chords in the bass. He did. You'd have a fifth in the bass. You'd have a fifth or a third or even a seventh or a sixth. It really had a very bold imagination for kind of leaving space in chords and leaving austerity within chords. I think Britain to me, it's hard to point to a particular moment where it's like, oh, there's Britain. But I think that the attitude of a harmonic language that can be, yeah, both very warm and reassuring and also austere and rather unpredictable. I think that there's an essence of that, which he was like one of the founding fathers for me as a child of being harmonically unpredictable in ways that are just disarming.

52:19Like not just fully fledged and radically dense, but just surprising in these gaunt ways. Yeah, I was watching a video you made, I'm not sure how many years ago, you were on Logic, just showing people how you create vocal effects over, I think you used maybe Hey Jude. I can't remember, it was Hey Jude or something like that. and you were just showing people and you were talking about doing this and this is how you created I think this is where I got your description of decoration over top of the melody and how impatient you are to get to that part I'm glad you've learned patience but you said something that really struck me you said and you were speaking very fast and you said you know this takes a lot of practice and then you paused and you said and it takes a lot of courage and trust And those two last words really interested me because not only – I mean, I've dealt with writers my whole life.

53:21I'm an editor. That's something so many people lack, courage and trust. And even musicians we have in here sometimes who have great accomplishments and are sitting here at some point in their career don't have that faith in their own work at that moment. Yeah. I'm interested where you get that Oh it's a beautiful question I think of All the most important things in music I don't think they're musical things I think they're human things I think courage and trust are two of Yeah two of the central pillars That are somewhat necessary to make a thing A tool and make something interesting To me It's hard to say where these things come from I think everyone needs a champion in different ways In different parts of their journey Everyone needs a person to reflect them back at themselves in a certain way, in some form, and say, hey, this thing that you are doing is interesting.

54:19To me, I can think of people along my journey, whether it's my mother or whether it's Quincy Jones or Herbie Hancock or just peers of mine, friends of mine who notice something about what I'm doing in a moment where I don't have that trust and belief and say, you realize this is special. You should keep doing that. And I say, oh, really? Are you sure? And they say, yeah. and there's something about that exchange that reflection which I think really helped me along my way I don't know where my audacity comes from quite, it probably comes partly from my mum, it comes partly from my heroes, people I've loved over the years I think I've always possessed a sort of dogged belief that something is possible even if it's totally not possible for example going to a key that doesn't exist these kinds of things I've done in the past you know the piano is limited to 12 notes I've written songs in keys that are beyond those 12 notes and the only real reason I've done it is because I'm just too interested not to give it a try I think that every time you take a risk and something interesting happens you get a little bit of confidence out of that I think about being on stage over the years and you know when I first stepped onto a stage I you know I was it was really it's really scary thing to do you know you stand in front of a thousand people or 5 ,000 people or a hundred people, wherever it is, and you tell your story and everyone's watching.

55:39And if you're not used to that as a format, it's, it's a really strange thing to do. It's a strange thing to, to subject yourself to. But what I found is every time I take a risk and I'd get a little bit of that reward back, I would, I'd gain a little bit more courage for next time. And I think that as, as one thing went to another, both in the studio and out of the studio, I really enjoyed just, You just have to try stuff out. And the worst thing that can happen in music is that you do something that's just not great. And we've all made things that aren't great. And I think when I'm at my best, when I'm at my most open and free-flowing, I'm totally willing to just let go and see what comes out.

56:18And I also know the feeling of, I think as all artists do, of really doubting the thing I'm making. Basically every single thing I make at a certain point, I'll be like, oh, I don't know about this. I don't know. Is this really worth completing? it doesn't feel like it tells the whole story or it feels like it tells too much of the story or, you know, is this interesting enough? I think it's something I've often come up against myself or, or is this, is this too much? You know, have I, have I gone too far? There aren't really any guidelines around this stuff. Like there are people whose taste we can align with, but, but ultimately as an artist, you have to find those lines for yourself.

56:53I think I've, I have deliberately put myself in situations creatively where I will be uncomfortable and I I won't know what's going to happen next. And I have to find a solution. I think about collaborations like that too. I've been in the room with musicians who I respect greatly and who I've been trying to build some kind of musical bridge with. And, you know, sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. But there's always an interesting lesson to learn. I think that trust comes from not being afraid to make a mistake. I think that there's nothing that prevents creativity more effectively than the fear of making a mistake.

57:25That's the ultimate death nail for you being opened and you being, you know. And I experience this all the time. And I think my job as an artist is to keep on maintaining those strategies that flip you out of those kind of fear directions and think, well, you know, I can take confidence in my risk going through this challenge. And at this point, I've done so many kind of unruly things musically that I do have a sense of faith in myself. People don't talk a lot about your lyrics, mainly because I think you're known so much for your incredible music vocabulary. Has your lyric writing changed? Yes, it has.

58:04I think, in a sense, I still feel like I'm learning the ropes. I'm someone who loves words and description and language equally as much as I love music. I could happily talk about my experience of the world in as much length as I play about my experience of the world. Um, the two worlds have existed somewhat separately for me for a lot of my life. Like I, because the music that I've created in the past contains so much, uh, kind of depth and contour and color. Um, my sense over the years has often been to not try to make the lyrics to too much either, because otherwise it's just too much information.

58:43So sometimes my lyrics have been relatively simple in comparison to the music. But as someone who just loves the whole spirit of language within poetry and words and resonance and the mind, it's something that I think I'm – with this album, I think there's a particular element of that being explored anew. But I'm always curious how those two worlds can converge. And I'm always blown away when a songwriter can do both things really well. Well, let me give you an example. Yeah. And it's the last song on your album, which is very different. And after a beautiful album, it comes as such a surprise.

59:21The lyrics are quite different. The piano treatment is quite simple. And you use your voice in a way that I had never really heard before. Can you tell me a bit about that song? I can. So the song's called Something Heavy. And it's another one of these songs that I had before the album. I didn't know what to do with that song. It felt like it came from a totally different place from other songs. But I loved that figure. I can play it for you on the piano right now. It's just something I found myself one day really enjoying.

1:00:05That has a space. I thought, okay, there's a song that needs to be written here in some way. And so I started to sing a melody. And as I went, some things came out. So I started saying, I've been holding something.

1:00:27Something kind of heavy.

1:00:32And then I heard this.

1:00:42I really like that melody. And so I worked it through and I figured that it might be fun to say it. So let go now.

1:00:55Let it go now. And the idea of holding something heavy. So let it go now. It's like a song from an ancestor or something. And we all know the feeling of holding something for a really, really long time. and finally realizing, I've got to put this down. I've got to let this go. This isn't serving me anymore. This is something big and I don't need it. And there's a sense of relief about that. Exchange that handoff and there's a sense of grief about that handoff as well. I think that it's one of those songs that just kind of came, it wrote itself a little bit. It's like the figure was there and I became kind of really attached to it and the melody was clear.

1:01:36The chorus.

1:02:04I knew that's how it should end. And so I just, you know, I sang it until the lyrics came through.

1:02:37time to let it go now let it go

1:02:50so the song kind of came from from there um one thing i found on tour that i've really loved to do is is belt like use my chest voice and belt really loud and i this album is such a softly spoken album and I enjoyed the idea that just at the very last minute I would really sing out and so the second chorus the second chorus of the song goes and every time I build a wall around me but I belt it loud and I'm like and every time I build a wall around me you hold a life to put me back to life And all this time You'd never stop thinking of me But I know

1:03:46It's time to let it go now And that kind of catharsis was something I think the album needed. It's funny, it's all this kind of softness and consideration and warmth and it needed a burst, it needed a burst open. but I didn't write this song for this album I wrote this song in its own right and realised actually this could totally work for this record and yeah the style of songwriting the style of lyric writing came from a kind of a different place but it was a refreshing challenge to write from that perspective just write from a figure or an instrument I think the way it was related to the rest of the album is that it came from my relationship with one figure on one instrument and that kind of solo instrument approach was different from other songs I've written that begin as kind of sonic worlds, sonic environments or moods, and then that is what bursts the lyrics.

1:04:39But yeah, this just felt like a good old-fashioned song. Thank you so much for coming in. Just wonderful. Thank you for having me. All right. It was great.

1:05:00see all of our video interviews. And be sure to follow us on Instagram at The Broken Record Pod. You can follow us on Twitter at Broken Record. Broken Record is produced and edited by Leah Rose with marketing help from Eric Sandler and Jordan McMillan. Our engineer is Ben Talladeh. Broken Record is a production of Pushkin Industries. If you love this show and others from Pushkin, consider subscribing to Pushkin Plus. Pushkin Plus is a podcast subscription that offers bonus content and ad-free listening for$4.99 a month. Look for Pushkin Plus on Apple Podcast subscriptions. And if you like this show, please remember to share, rate, and review us on your podcast app.

1:05:35Our theme music's by Kenny Beats. I'm Justin Richmond.

1:05:47You come to the New Yorker Radio Hour for conversations that go deeper with people you really want to hear from, whether it's Bruce Springsteen or Questlove or Olivia Rodrigo. Liz Cheney, or the godfather of artificial intelligence, Jeffrey Hinton, or some of my extraordinarily well-informed colleagues at The New Yorker. So join us every week on The New Yorker Radio Hour, wherever you listen to podcasts. This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed human.