Moby

Photo: Scott Dudelson/Getty Images

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Trouble So Hard: Moby On His New Memoir & The 20th Anniversary Of ‘Play’

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"'Play' was supposed to fail and the fact it did exactly the opposite of that was very surprising and still to this day seems anomalous," says the electronic DJ/singer
Dan Weiss
GRAMMYs
May 20, 2019 - 12:17 pm

Moby is famous for two things: Making electronic music and not making electronic music. This contradiction has made for a strange career that opened electrifying raves with early floor anthems like “Go” as a DJ, before cycling through genres as disparate as ambient and punk rock not too many years later. It also serves as a fitting setup to his fifth album Play, which indeed famously turned non-electronic music—namely sampled field recordings of gospel hymns from Alan Lomax’s Sounds of the South collection—into electronic music. Several of those tracks (“Natural Blues,” “Why Does My Heart Feel So Bad?”), along with a couple that Moby sang himself (“Porcelain,” “South Side”) became huge hits all over the world.

But every one of Play’s 18 tracks (even many quiet, obscure instrumentals) was licensed for commercial use, saturating the year 1999 so effectively that the album eventually climbed to 12 million copies sold. As a result, the album crowned Moby with the best-selling electronic album of all-time.

Reading Moby’s new memoir Then It Fell Apart will tell you what a shocking turn of events this was, rising from the commercial wreckage of his 1997 hard-rock experiment Animal Rights to a surreal level of fame that involved dating Natalie Portman and beefing with Eminem. And uh, brushing against Donald Trump at parties.

The Recording Academy spoke to the man himself about how Play’s very millennial fusion of house music and gospel roots could’ve ended up sounding like Pantera, how the landmark album fits into today’s discussions of cultural appropriation and more.

Play changed your life 20 years ago; it’s the all-time best-selling electronic album. What does that mean for you?  

The context was what made it so surprising. Before it was released, my career was in the toilet. The album that came out before Play, Animal Rights, had just been an across-the-board failure. Bad sales, bad reviews, no one came to the shows. My expectations, my manager’s expectations and the record label’s expectations were so low. Richard Sanders, who was running V2 [Records] at the time, said he thought that Play might sell 50,000 copies, and I scoffed at it. “Oh, it will never sell 50,000 copies.”

It’s not only the fact that it went on to sell absurdly well, but also that Play became this weird lifestyle record… the stories people told me about the ways in which they listened to it. I had people telling me that they had multiple copies of it, one for their car, one for their home, one for their parents’ home. Elton John told me he had a copy of it in every home and apartment that he had in the world.

I made it in my bedroom, it was mixed poorly. It was released at the time when Eminem and *NSync and Backstreet Boys were topping the charts. It was supposed to fail and the fact it did exactly the opposite of that was very surprising and still to this day seems anomalous. If you remove the albums Play, 18, and Hotel, my career and sales make a lot more sense. Those records really are the baffling exceptions to everything else.

You’ve said that you didn’t expect Play to do better than Animal Rights. But clearly you made a very different record from Animal Rights and making a punk album was kind of an obvious risk, no?

This might seem disingenuous or overly naïve, but I assumed all but the most conservative pop musicians made creative choices based on their enthusiasm for the music they’re making. When Joe Strummer decided to start playing reggae and hip-hop, to me, it made perfect sense. When David Bowie went from being a folk artist to a glam-rock artist to a disco artist and a new wave artist, it all seemed challenging and interesting because he was excited by these genres. Same thing when John Lennon started the Plastic Ono Band and started releasing crazy noise records, or when Lou Reed made Metal Machine Music. I thought this was part of the musician’s job description to be inspired by different genres and release records that might be challenging but were a product of that inspiration.

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Yeah, but the sales figures for Metal Machine Music were very at odds with its eventual influence.

I didn’t expect Animal Rights to be successful, per se. But the fact that it was crucified and maligned was weirdly disappointing. That was sort of when the blinders came off; that even in the world of indie-rock and dance music, it was way more conservative than I thought it was. I thought that it was a critics’ job to support experimentation even if they didn’t like it, the Lester Bangs approach.

Were you specifically setting out to make a dance record again after that?

At the end of the Animal Rights tour, I was playing Glastonbury for the first time and it was grim. It was in the middle of the afternoon, I was playing in the pouring rain, there was a sea of mud in the front of the stage, the tent was maybe 20 percent full. On the tour bus, I was talking to my managers. I had just been listening to the most recent Pantera album and I told them, “So, for my next record, I want to take what I did on Animal Rights and go harder, I want to tune down the way Sepultura and Pantera are all tuning down really far and just make it as dark and hard and almost unlistenable as possible, doubling down on the aggression of Animal Rights.

And my manager Barry said something so simple: “That’s okay, but people really do like your electronic music.” If he had said “Your electronic music sells better,” the old punk rocker in me would’ve rejected it. But I suddenly realized in an almost existential way, if you’re going to release music and try to communicate with people… one, try not to waste their time and two, give them something that they can derive joy from. So in that moment, I thought, if I’m going to make super-dark death metal, I can do that on my own time. And that was what led to trying to make a more melodic electronic album.

But you also had low expectations for the sales of Play. How did you end up underestimating pop songs like “South Side”?

In some ways, that’s the weirdest song on the record because it’s not a weird song. Every other song on the record [has] something abnormal. The song “Run On” does have a verse/chorus structure, but it involves vocals that were recorded in the 1950s. “South Side” is the closest thing to a pop/rock song and as a result, I didn’t want to put it on the record. I thought that “Porcelain” and “Why Does My Heart Feel So Bad?” and “South Side” should be left off because they just didn’t feel substantial enough to me. But there was no thought of making pop music or making commercially viable music. I thought I was a has-been, I didn’t think that was even an option. Never once in the making of Play did I think that anyone would hear it or buy it.

You’d sampled before, of course, but was it a challenge to put new arrangements on an already-existing traditional song like “Run On?”

The challenge was actually more technical. This was all done pre-Pro Tools, a lot of really getting into the nuts and bolts of the Akai samplers, a little bit of time-stretching. Now in Pro Tools it would’ve been the easiest thing in the world. But back then, you had to do all your editing on the tiny little screen of an Akai sampler. When you watch an old movie, you’re just amazed at what they were able to do when they were cutting film. Making music before Pro Tools it was the same thing; it took a lot longer to get something to the place where it sounded normal.

Specifically that song “Run On” because there’s so many vocals, and obviously they did not record it to a click track, there’s no solid tempo in that song. As an engineer, that was the hardest song to make on the entire record. “Honey” was actually pretty easy because they’re clapping, which made for an ad hoc click track. And luckily, they had really good timing.

Did you struggle with worrying that you might offend the source material?

No, because I didn’t expect anyone to listen to it.

Right.

If someone had said, “You’re making an album that’s going to sell 12 million copies,” I might have given it a second thought. From the time when electronic musicians started sampling, there was only two criteria for sample-based music: Is it good? And are you gonna get sued? I’m not saying the criteria of historical sensitivity was invalid, just that it was never part of the conversation.

Of course, the world is a very different place now and people have a lot more understanding of historical sensitivity. I asked Chris Rock, “As a black man, what do you think?” And he said, “It’s good music, that’s all that matters.” I don’t know if he would feel that way today, but in 1999, that’s what he said to me at the MTV Awards.

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There’s been a lot of debate about cultural appropriation in the 2010s. Has that affected your feelings about Play at all, or have you had any substantive conservations about it since then?

No. I have not. I’m not saying I shouldn’t have those conversations or that I won’t have them, but as far I know, you asking me is the closest I’ve come to a conversation about it.

In that case, any thoughts you want to share on the fly?

Culture is evolving and it’s fluid. I’m sure if I sat down with someone like Cornel West, I’m sure they’d have a different perspective on Play and I’m sure that I’d agree with their perspective.

I was in high school at the time and I remember reading press about Play summing up the century by tying those Lomax field recordings of hymns and gospel from the beginning of it, to the beats of the Y2K era. Did this future-meets-past thing ever cross your mind?

No, no. [Laughs.] There was no meta context or anything academic in the making of it. There was simply… the only way I can describe it is, like, emotional utility. Did it resonate with me emotionally? That was the sole criteria for evaluating the music when I was making the record. And we didn’t have a licensing plan. People still ask me about the licensing of Play, which seems almost like a cute nostalgic question. Now every musician in the world will bend over backwards to license their kidneys. But no, I just made a record I liked and my managers liked.

You’ve had a complicated relationship with Christianity, were the gospel samples on Play significant to you in a religious way at all?

Ahh… not in terms of any creed or dogma or denomination, just more so the human condition and emotional expression. Even “Natural Blues,” which is a lament to the divine, to me it was much more about the quality of the voice and the expression of longing and sadness in the vocals in the words, rather than trying to slot it into a Christian or secular tradition.

After reading Then It Fell Apart, the videos from this era felt a little darker to me. “South Side,” “Bodyrock” and eventually “We Are All Made of Stars” all express a kind of discomfort with the limelight.

I like being an agreeable interview subject, but the video directors made most of the creative decisions. I’d love to take credit for “South Side” and “We Are All Made of Stars,” but the director, Joseph Kahn, those are his videos.

It was just interesting that so many of them commented on fame to a degree. Even the “Natural Blues” video has this preemptive look back at your career.

You missed – which is not surprising because no one really saw it – what I think is the best of all the videos from Play, and the most entertaining look at the world of fame, “Find My Baby.” I came up with the plotline for it: “The world’s youngest boy band.” It’s a boy band throwing whiskey bottles and having debaucherous hotel times, but they’re one and a half years-old. It was released at the end of the Play album cycle so very few people saw it, but I think it’s really funny. I hadn’t really thought of it until you mentioned it, but there is a through line in those videos, criticism of the world of fame in both a lighthearted and cautionary way.

Which brings me to you and Eminem meeting at this very bizarre nexus of two different kinds of celebrity. I wanted to ask if you still have the drawing Eminem gave you of himself strangling you?

Oh yeah, of course. I framed it.

Jul 18, 2018 – 7:41 pm

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You were maybe his most bizarre target during a time when anyone was in his crosshairs. Have you come around to what he was trying to do artistically?

Honestly, I don’t know his music that well. I know the hit singles, but I’ve never delved too deep into the album tracks. It was clear to me from day one that he was very smart, very talented, and very aware. In hindsight, it sort of frustrates and saddens me that we were pitted against each other because I think our upbringings were very similar: scared kids in dysfunctional, single-parent households. I think a lot of misogyny and homophobia in popular culture comes from dumb, unevolved bigots. I don’t think Eminem is any of those things, for him it was almost like performance art. He’s certainly not the best poster child for me criticizing those things. I don’t need any more feuds, but I can think of a few thousand other musicians who are probably now wearing MAGA hats and watching Fox News, who probably made a lot more egregious music.

It’s funny that Elton John’s got your record in every property he owns, and then he’s singing with Eminem onstage at the GRAMMYs. For him, both your messages worked.

Uh-huh.

Then the Trump family appears in your memoir in random ways, particularly that “knob-touch” story. How did you end up in so many situations with the Trumps?

I grew up very, very poor. I longed for legitimacy and acceptance and validation, so in the 2000s, as I started getting invited to fancy events and parties, I jumped at the chance to ingratiate myself with wealthy New Yorkers.

But I also sort of use the Trumps as a narrative device in the book because there’s something really wrong with them. No one in the Trump family is ever allowed to serve on the board of a charity again because of the way they ran their foundation was so dishonest and so corrupt. That’s disgusting. So in an emblematic way, they’re representative of the corruption I was experiencing. The moment you say you’re at a party with Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner, you’re establishing that things have gone terribly wrong.

You publicly stated/posted a couple years ago that you have sources who know things we don’t about Trump. Has the Mueller report illuminated any of that or is there still plenty to come?

The Mueller report isn’t even the tip of the iceberg, it’s like the picture of the hair above the tip of the iceberg. The depths of corruption regarding Trump and his businesses, his administration, his foundation, it’s so much darker. The Republicans are basically water-skiing behind the Titanic.

How did you come to receive this info?

I’m just going on what I’ve heard, that Trump was installed as a Russian asset. Among the intelligence community, that’s just a given, no one even questions that anymore.

Do you have personal ties to the intelligence community?

I don’t include this in the book, but after college I had a relationship with a woman whose father was one of the heads of the CIA and I’ve been friends with a lot of those people since then. And years of touring, you just end up meeting people on tour. I don’t know that many people in that world, but there does seem to be a complete consensus that Trump is completely corrupt and his only saving grace is that he’s dumb and incompetent and has no control over his emotions. We should all be grateful for the fact that he’s not Putin. If Trump were bright and could regulate his emotions, he would be truly terrifying.

You also find yourself talking to Putin’s daughter at one point in the memoir.

This was the mid-2000s so I had met plenty of heads of state, children of heads of state and I was also very drunk. I just thought she was very nice, this normal, soft-spoken person. Maybe in my drunken haze that wasn’t true.

Twenty years later, do you think of Play as your definitive work?

I think it’s a lovely little record. If I’m being honest, I like the second half so much more than the first. It has more depth, more nuance, more texture. When I hear songs from the first half, sure, I like some of them, but I don’t get terribly excited. “My Weakness” or some of the ones at the end, those are the ones that resonate with me a lot more on an emotional level.

Dumb question: Why did you name it Play?

It was a few things. There was a park on the corner of Spring and Mulberry that had a giant mural that read “play” and I saw it almost every day. At one point I was listening to the music in a friend’s car and I thought “Wouldn’t it be funny to name the record Play so it would be displayed on any system it was playing on.” And one of my favorite bands, Magazine, with Howard Devoto, one of the original Buzzcocks, released a live album in the ‘80s called Play, a slight homage to that title. And the fourth reason is, I have always worried and anxious and possibly taken myself too seriously and calling an album Play was a reminder to not be so dark and dour and self-involved.

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Dan Auerbach of the Black Keys

Photo by Scott Dudelson/Getty Images

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Dan Auerbach Talks Rebooting The Black Keys On New Album 'Let's Rock'

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One half of the GRAMMY-winning blues-rock duo talks to the Recording Academy about getting back to basics with his longtime bandmate, Patrick Carney
Dan Weiss
GRAMMYs
Jul 24, 2019 - 10:41 am

The Black Keys are almost innovators in reverse; they redefine familiar rock phrases like "stripped-down" and “back to basics." Case in point: Their ninth album (and first since 2014) is titled Let’s Rock, which makes ZZ Top's Eliminator sound like a downright Zen koan. There isn't going to be a more on-the-nose title this year unless Lil Pump surfaces with Let's Do Drugs or Luke Bryan unleashes Let’s Wear Jeans. The blues-damaged Ohio rock duo has risen from indie scraps to festival headliners with a clutch of radio hits in the early 2010s, which, under the tutelage of unofficial Third Black Key Danger Mouse, have come to incorporate lush-soul strings, buzzing synths and horny glam falsetto. (They also won four GRAMMY awards.)

Even though the duo was inactive for nearly half the decade, to hear singer/guitarist Dan Auerbach tell it, the band flicked back on like a light switch with no apparent loss of anything. According to the him, it was all gains: In the interim, he and drummer Patrick Carney both got married and had kids. The Recording Academy spoke to Auerbach about reigniting the band, his near-psychic connection to drummer Carney and their devout allegiance to touring.

The last time you guys released an album, you were going through a divorce. You and Patrick didn't release an album until you were both married again and raising new kids. Does the inspiration for new Black Keys music depend on what’s happening in your personal lives?

Not really. I’ve been playing in the Black Keys since I was 16… I was playing with the Black Keys before I was ever in any serious relationships. This is the longest relationship I’ve ever been in with one person.

Would you say this the happiest the Black Keys have ever been as a band?

It’s all relative. We’re definitely in a great place, a really musical place. I’m really excited about it.

I think there’s more songs in a major key on here than any of your other records.

I don't know, man.

A song like "Shine a Little Light," addresses death a little but also has this uplifting, gospel feel, like a Spiritualized song.

Well, I love gospel music. I collect gospel records, I’m a big fan. I know what you’re talking about.

So what’s it like trying to write blues-based songs about happiness?

Mmm… well, I sort of feel like everything's blues-based, any kind of genre. We just make 'em up. This record especially, we were just flying by the seat of our pants. The whole time we were just throwing ideas out, seeing if they stuck, and if they did, we just kept rolling with them. I was even doing that as I was writing lyrics. We would just do the music and then I would make up the vocal melodies afterwards. It could be a little strange but I had a lot of fun doing it.

"Eagle Birds" seems to be a lament for people who won't find a love like yours. That’s an interesting workaround, like you're singing someone else’s blues.

A lot of it was just unconscious. Having ideas and not being afraid to just sing what’s supposed to be there. Sometimes the lyrics can be really simplistic. But they’re supposed to be, you know? I’m thinking about how everything feels mixed together, the big picture. All the vowels and the sounds. Going by feel.

So what did the big picture end up being?

Maybe a Jackson Pollock. [Laughs.]

You didn’t plan for it to have no keyboards and be titled Let’s Rock.

I think we had six songs in a place that we liked ‘em, and none of them had anything but guitar, bass, and drums on them. And we were just like, "Man, let’s just keep doing them like this." That was all we ever really talked about it. The "let’s rock" thing, that only came later when we were thinking about a title.

They were the last words of a convicted murderer, right?

We were in the studio in Nashville, and it was the headline in the paper, in the same city, the day before we were recording. Months later, when we were thinking about a title, I remembered it, let’s put it that way.

Did you and Patrick work on music throughout the hiatus?

Pat and I didn’t talk a word about the session. We just showed up on the day in the calendar, didn’t talk about anything ahead of time. We didn’t even really talk about a direction before it happened, just let it unfold in front of us.

I love the simplicity of that.

Making music for us has never been the hard part. I love making music with Pat, it’s always so much fun. It was really great having that time off to work on so much stuff, and it made it that much more enjoyable when Pat and I got back together. We’ve always had a natural connection, ever since we were 16. In a roundabout way, we both want the same thing. We’re very different people, we hung out in different crowds. But the very first idea we had when we sat down, after four years, getting back together, the very first idea when we had, made the record, that song "Breaking Down."

So how did you decide it was time to make an album?

A year and a half ago, I was in the studio with Glenn Schwartz, the original guitar player from the James Gang; he was Joe Walsh's guitar hero, and he was mine, too. I used to go see him when I was a teenager and I loved his guitar and the amp he played. So when I started the Black Keys, that’s the type of guitar I tried to get and the amp I got. We were recording all his songs with Joe at the studio here in Nashville. It just brought back so many great memories that I just texted Pat, "Let’s make a Black Keys record." It was that loud electric guitar that drove the whole thing from the beginning.

Turn Blue seemed like you maybe went as far as away from your usual sound as you could.

We were out in California, hanging out in the Hollywood hills for a month. When you’re in sunshine every day, synthesizers make a lot more sense. [Laughs.] But when you’re stuck in Ohio in the winter, there’s something about a loud electric guitar that can warm you up.

Was the band reluctant to let in keyboards and other instruments in the first place, a decade ago?

We basically learned how to play our instruments and we learned how to record together. We didn’t know anything, and we made five records. Just experimenting on our own, never stepping foot into a real studio. It was a slow process for us, we didn’t have a lot of money so we couldn’t afford keyboards, let alone know how to actually work synthesizers. We had never really seen anybody do that. But when we decided to work with an outside producer and work in a studio for that first time, it was really eye-opening for us and we realized it didn’t have to be such a big deal to incorporate other instruments. It was nice to know that we could do that. But the heart of what we are is drums and guitar. And it felt so good to go back to just that. It felt cleansing, you know what I mean?

When you produce artists like Bombino or Lana Del Rey, do you feel like you’re vicariously living through sounds outside of the band’s comfort zone?

Honestly, I look at it all as part of the same fabric, just different threads. People like Dr. John opened my eyes to that, when I would listen to his records and hear all these different styles. We’d listen to lots of Captain Beefheart and he’d be all over the place, but it made lots of sense to me somehow. I look at the music I’ve done with Bombino or Lana as all coming from the same place.

You produced Dr. John's GRAMMY-winning Locked Down in 2012, his next-to-final release. What was your relationship like with him?

There was just a lot of love. Every time we spoke it felt good; he was still on a high from having the successful record and the resurgence [of popularity]. That meant a lot to him and [the sales] helped his family.

You poke fun at such rumors in the new video for "Go," but was there ever a moment when you honestly weren't sure if the Black Keys would return?

No, not at all. We just knew that we can’t just put out a record. We would put out a record twice a year if we could. But every time you put out a record, you’ve got to do, like, two years’ worth of touring. That was the holdup, basically. It just goes with it.

The band made a point of not "bundling" this record with things like ticket sales to get a higher chart debut. What bothers you and Patrick about the bundling strategy?

Pat’s the better person to talk to about that. I mean, ultimately, the artist ends up paying for the extra sales in the bundling, just to get higher chart numbers. 

When the Black Keys pulled out of Woodstock 50, were you worried it was looking like a Fyre Festival situation?

We didn’t know anything about it, to be honest. Us dropping out was completely unrelated, we just wanted it to be before tickets went on sale. And it was weeks later that they announced the festival was having problems.

Did you ever consider becoming a studio band like the latter-day Beatles and shunning the touring aspect?

No, we didn’t want to do that. It’s afforded us great lives and we’re able to invest it back into musicians that we believe in. It’s just finding that right balance, because I need to be able to make records and feel fulfilled in that way, too. We don’t take the road for granted.

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A Million Miles of Fun: Listening To Len's "Steal My Sunshine" 20 Years L-A-T-E-R

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There were plenty of weird hits in the '90s, but there is absolutely nothing normal about “Steal My Sunshine," from Len’s genre to its famous sampled riff. And don’t even start us on the lyrics
Dan Weiss
GRAMMYs
Jul 23, 2019 - 10:28 am

The 1990s, particularly the musical culture that defined the decade, was marked by a lot of things: irony, disaffectedness, angst. But "randomness" might be the most crucial component. '90s radio was a Wild West of jock jams, Pearl Jam and Nirvana imitators, ska, big band swing, the tail end of New Jack swing, the front end of Timbaland and people of all walks of life who rapped with varying degrees of success, sometimes over loud guitars. And Cake. At least the 2010s developed social media as a support network to espouse complicated feelings over something like Rebecca Black (or "OId Town Road," for that matter). The '90s did not provide memes to bring people together and help make sense of "Tubthumping." We were all alone. But we made it.

Len's "Steal My Sunshine" was one of the decade's last true non-sequiturs. It doesn't matter that the mysterious Canadian outfit put out two albums before "Sunshine" home You Can't Stop the Bum Rush or has since apparently released two others. Len, definitively, in the public eye, came from nowhere, to whence they returned, but not before offering history some butter tarts. (If you've been wondering for 20 years, the Canadian treat resembles mini pecan pies sans pecans. They're better than you think.)

No one knows who "Len" is supposed to be, least of all Marc and Sharon Costanzo, the brother and sister who became one-hit wonders under that moniker. That's asking dangerous questions, like who Harvey Danger is or what the "182" in Blink-182 stands for. Let the chaos be and it will reward you with pop bliss. So we are avowedly not going to steal everybody’s collective sunshine and run "Now the funny glare to pay a gleaming tare in a staring under heat / Involved an under usual feat / And I'm not only among but I invite who I want to come" through Google Translate.

We are going to celebrate the Costanzo siblings’ giggly homemade boredom, though, because it gives that of Billie Eilish and her brother Finneas a run for their (piles of) money. You Can't Stop the Bum Rush is a pinnacle of randomness, the cherry (or smoked salmon) on the Dadaist sundae that is the 1990s. Musicians on this thing include hip-hop pioneers Kurtis Blow and Biz Markie, Poison guitarist C.C. Deville, Broken Social Scene plug Brendan Canning and future croaky alt-rap cult hero Buck 65, who also appears in cartoon form on the cover, second from left. The only thing more unlikely than this combination of people is the album bearing a hit single, which of course sounds like none of the above-named artists. (In this ridiculously entertaining interview with Marc Costanzo, he says Sum 41's Deryck Whibley was present when he recorded vocals. Was every Canadian musician involved with Len? Did 13-year-old Drake deliver pizza to the studio?)

Because this was the '90s, Len weren’t even the only Canadians working the Completely Irreplicable and Somewhat Frighteningly Eclectic circuit; sh*t would’ve hit the fan if Bran Van 3000 started a turf war (those kids had a girl-group cover of "Cum on Feel the Noize" that starts acoustic and ends techno). But Len were The Killers to BV3’s The Bravery, so to speak, and their reward was a song that your regular, non-weird-music friends remember in 2019.

"Steal My Sunshine" is one of those tunes that was everywhere in part because the seeds for it had been planted in part by the Andrea True Connection’s "More, More, More" saturating discos in 1976 (True herself had a bonkers story, acting in more than 50 porn films before reaching Number Four on the Hot 100). "Sunshine," which sampled True’s bridge for that iconic opening hook, was merely its final form. Stylistically, "Steal My Sunshine" is inarguably pop, though the tone of it is gloriously incongruent even with itself. Marc and Sharon’s voices border on twee, with a breezy delivery that speaks to directly to the song’s famous soft-serve vibe.

But the words, whatever you make of them, speak to fighting off something dark. Taking a cue from the canned candid dialogue of Weezer’s “Undone (The Sweater Song),” the Costanzos’ verses each begin with concerned friends discussing them: “Man, I’ve never seen Sharon look so bad before.” But this alarm is confusingly offset by the cheery narrators themselves. Are we supposed to believe Sharon’s hit rock bottom because she’s made [checks notes] an “eight-foot heap” of Slurpee straws? (Holy hell that’s a specific and esoteric image.) Is this a weird Canadian in-joke? Depression in 1999 sounds significantly preferable to depression in 2019.

The chorus, which everybody kind of knows (did you know you were going to be singing “keeping dumb and built to beat” before it appeared on the karaoke screen? You did not), has a loving sound to it, of the two reassuring each other of things that may keep their heads up. But that’s under the strange stipulation of promising to steal each other’s sunshine, not to prevent the thievery of said Vitamin D. This threatens to blow “Steal My Sunshine” wide open as potentially the most mysterious are-they-vampires song since Toadies’ “Possum Kingdom.”

You Can’t Stop the Bum Rush, on its face, looks like the weirdest part of the Len saga. Once it gets the hit out of the way, the rapping begins (“Cryptik Souls Crew,” “Beautiful Day”), in comes with the squeal of rock guitar (“Feelin’ Alright,” “Cheekybugger”), and occasionally some atmospheric lounge funk (“Junebug”) or krautrock (“The Hard Disk Approach”) takes up residence like they’re the friggin’ Avalanches. But plenty of ‘90s radio anomalies made albums that sounded nothing like their reason for being (wait ‘til you hear the rest of the Sugar Ray album “Fly” is on) and the biggest shock is how little “Steal My Sunshine” — which is very possibly an anti-sunshine song — makes sense when held up to the, um, light.

Ultimately, the underlying bizarreness, enigmatic characters (in that aforementioned Stereogum interview, Marc Costanzo mentions in passing that he and his sister “really haven’t talked in a while” as of 2016), and uncanny industry connections only serve to further cement “Steal My Sunshine” as a legendary pop blip. If you have more questions than answers now about a sweet tune that you assumed had less to ponder than, say, “Closing Time,” well, you’re welcome. Bring on the memes. Your move, Lil Nas X.

Blink-182's 'Enema Of The State' Will Never Actually Turn 20

Whitney Houston photographed in The Bodyguard

Whitney Houston

Photo: Fotos International/Getty Images

Feature

'The Bodyguard' Soundtrack: 25 Years After Whitney Houston's Masterpiece

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Clive Davis, Deborah Cox, Maureen Crowe, and other key players in the GRAMMY-winning album's legacy reflect on the best-selling soundtrack of all time
Billy Johnson Jr.
GRAMMYs
Nov 8, 2017 - 11:16 am

It's been 25 years since the release of The Bodyguard soundtrack, and the 13-song collection continues to hold the record for best-selling music from a film, boasting a staggering sales total of more than 45 million copies worldwide.

May 20, 2015 – 12:37 pm

Whitney Houston Wins Album Of The Year

Of course, the feat can be attributed largely to the appeal of late pop queen Whitney Houston, who co-starred in the film and contributed six songs, among them her jaw-dropping version of Dolly Parton's 1974 ballad "I Will Always Love You" that features Houston delivering arguably the best female pop vocal performance of all time.

Released just weeks before the film debuted, "I Will Always Love You" opens with a piercingly sweet a cappella melody and the chorus soars into a string of impressive, triumphant vocal acrobatics. Like a movie trailer, the music video builds interest in the film, previewing highlight clips as Houston sings the lead song.

"I Will Always Love You" was simply magic — a lighting-in-a-bottle pairing of the right song with the right voice. It ultimately held the top spot on the Billboard Hot 100 chart for 14 weeks, earned Record Of The Year honors at the 36th GRAMMY Awards and helped the project earn the distinction as one of three soundtracks to receive the GRAMMY for Album Of The Year, among other accolades.

Looking back on this milestone anniversary, The Bodyguard lead actor and co-producer Kevin Costner says Houston was his first and only pick to portray his female co-lead, Rachel Marron, a larger-than-life pop star with magnetism and depth.

"We just needed a world-class voice, a world-class beauty in a sense and a world-class presence, and there's not many that fit that bill," recalls Costner, whose film career was blossoming at the time. "I didn't see anybody [else] on the landscape that actually matched up with what we needed in a contemporary way and a musical way."

Whitney Houston and Kevin Costner

It would be difficult to argue with Costner's point. Houston, a stunning former model, was already a pop star of the magnitude of a fictional character. Her previous three albums at the time — Whitney Houston (1985), Whitney (1987) and I'm Your Baby Tonight (1990) — scaled the top of the charts, with the former two landing at No. 1. Costner was so convinced that Houston was the right fit for the role that he delayed production until the "Greatest Love Of All" singer finished touring and was available to begin filming.

Music mogul Clive Davis, who signed Houston to his Arista Records label and co-executive produced the soundtrack, says Houston made a deliberate choice to accept The Bodyguard role.

"It was a very specific and determined decision on her part," Davis says. "She said, 'I really want to make a film.' I asked, 'Well, can you afford to? You're making literally $20 to $50 million an album — a movie will probably take a year of your time. And can you get a part that you feel comfortable with that does justice to your talents?"

Houston met and exceeded Davis' challenge to find a film role that could make her an even bigger star.

Nov 16, 2017 – 10:36 am

112's Water Balloon Fight With Whitney Houston

The GRAMMY winner garnered praise for her big-screen debut, including notable film critics such as Roger Ebert. "[Whitney Houston] is at home in the role; she photographs wonderfully, and has a warm smile, and yet is able to suggest selfish and egotistical dimensions in the character," wrote Ebert in his three-star review of the film.

Musically speaking, the six songs Houston performs on the soundtrack (five in the film) offered an impressive sampling of her varied vocal stylings: power pop ballads a la "I Will Always Love You," "I Have Nothing" and "Run To You"; an R&B dance cover of Chaka Khan's "I'm Every Woman"; a rock-fueled crossover hit in "Queen Of The Night"; and the pop/gospel offering "Jesus Loves Me." Each song, save for "Jesus Loves Me," was released as a single and peaked in the Top 10 on the Billboard Hot 100, U.S. Dance Club Songs or Adult Contemporary charts.

Music supervisor Maureen Crowe rounded out the best-selling soundtrack with plenty of more soulful firepower: Kenny G and Aaron Neville's "Even If My Heart Would Break," Lisa Stansfield's "Someday (I'm Coming Back)," the S.o.u.l. S.y.s.t.e.m.'s "It's Gonna Be A Lovely Day," Curtis Stigers' "(What's So Funny 'Bout) Peace, Love, And Understanding," Kenny G's "Waiting For You," Joe Cocker and Sass Jordan's "Trust In Me," and Alan Silvestri's "Theme From 'The Bodyguard.'"

May 20, 2015 – 12:38 pm

Whitney Houston Wins Record Of The Year

While "I Will Always Love You" eventually sold more than 4 million copies as a single, it actually wasn't the first choice for the soundtrack's pivotal song. Costner originally intended to use Jimmy Ruffin's "What Becomes Of The Brokenhearted" but another remake of the track had already been used prominently on the soundtrack for the Academy Award-nominated film Fried Green Tomatoes, which was released while The Bodyguard was in production.

Crowe suggested a few alternate options, with Costner picking "I Will Always Love You." The actor pitched the song to Houston, Davis and producer David Foster, and they all loved the idea.

For her part, Houston had no trouble making the song her own. Linda Ronstadt's 1975 rendition of "I Will Always Love You" was used as a reference track. However, Ronstadt's cover did not include the third verse Parton recites on the original. Crowe recalls watching Houston record the vocals for the third verse.

"I remember being in the studio and saying, 'Hey, is there anything you need for this third verse?' and [Foster]'s like, 'Don't worry, honey. Just watch her go.' David really understands how to do an arrangement for a singer of Whitney's caliber. It's like the saying: The song presents itself but the singer delivers."

Bodyguard Movie Poster Photo

"The first version that David sent me had that brilliant a cappella opening that was just chilling and spine-tingling," says Davis. "Then he kept sending more and more versions — but they weren't registering the same way with me. It got down to D-day — 'You've got to pick a single, — the movie's coming out.' Finally, I had to pick, and I picked that very first version."

In addition to the soundtrack's astronomical success, all of these colliding positive forces helped yield a box-office smash. The film made $411 million in 1992, making it the second highest-earning movie globally that year, while raising Houston's profile higher into the stratosphere.

The Bodyguard Soundtrack Reissued For Its 25th Anniversary

"Plain and simple, The Bodyguard's unparalleled success cemented Whitney Houston's status in the firmament of iconic female singers," says Gail Mitchell, Billboard magazine senior correspondent. "The film also opened the door to a second career as an actress — a transition that only a few singers have seamlessly accomplished."

While Houston's life and career were cut short far too soon by her tragic death in 2012, her legacy and influence live on through her work, with The Bodyguard playing a key part.

Today, musical adaptations of The Bodyguard run rampant around the world. In addition to productions in Toronto, Australia, Madrid, and North America, "The Bodyguard" musical opened at the Adelphi Theatre in London's West End during the fall of 2012, featuring Heather Headley in the principal role.

GRAMMY-nominated singer Deborah Cox was cast in 2015 for North American dates. Cox, who was a labelmate with Houston at Arista Records and recorded the 2000 duet "Same Script, Different Cast" with her, admits to feeling the pressure to uphold Houston's legacy.

"I wouldn't be honest with you if I didn't tell you it was challenging," says Cox, who is currently performing U.S. dates through 2018. "I knew what the expectations were. I knew what I would have to perform and deliver every single night."

Challenge aside, Cox could not resist taking on the role. Like millions of fans, it especially resonated with her because she was already a huge Houston fan, loved The Bodyguard and knew all of the songs. And it's a story that continues to appeal to fans 25 years later and beyond.

"It was the perfect combination of my favorite entertainer, a storyline and a script that I love — because I'm a hopeless romantic — set on a screen and a good story put with [timeless] music."

(Billy Johnson Jr. is a Los Angeles-based freelance music journalist, content producer and former senior editor for Yahoo Music. You can follow him on Twitter at @BillyJohnsonJr.)

Did You Know? Whitney Houston's "The Bodyguard — Original Soundtrack" Album

(Photos: WireImage.com/Getty Images)

Shura

Photo by Hollie Fernando

News

Shura Tells Her Modern Love Story On 'Forevher'

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The U.K.-born pop singer/producer talks to the Recording Academy about moving overseas for love, how it inspired her gorgeous sophomore effort 'forevher' and why this feels like her "first record as an adult woman"
Rachel Brodsky
GRAMMYs
Aug 15, 2019 - 4:23 pm

Shura didn't intend to fall in love with a woman an ocean away—like all love stories, it just sort of happened.

In the time after her 2016 debut, Nothing's Real, the British pop performer began to realize that having a traditional Tinder account was no longer an option, with her own show attendees screencapping her profile and posting it to Twitter, among other embarrassments. So she signed up for the considerably more private dating app, Raya, which heavily vets its users and posits itself as "an exclusive platform for people in creative industries."

During a phone call to talk about her upcoming sophomore album, forevher (out Aug. 16 via Secretly Canadian), Shura, whose real name is Aleksandra Denton, emits a sniff of laughter at the idea of being one of the dating elite ("I'm on it and my girlfriend's on it, and she's not famous," she says). But her experiment would prove successful: Once she began swiping on Raya, Shura met her now-partner, who was and is currently based in New York. After months of chatting, Shura flew to the city for a first date. Now, two years later, she's a permanent resident of the Big Apple, and her relationship informs much of her softly soulful sophomore album, which is home to the synth-splashed, Janet Jackson-esque single "religion (u can lay your hands on me)."

In many ways, forevher also represents a victory lap for Shura, who, even as recently as a few years ago, wouldn't have felt comfortable using same-sex pronouns in her songs. But the "her" in "forevher" is quite purposeful, as is its Rodin-inspired blue imagery of two women embracing. "I remember when I put out Nothing's Real... In the pop sphere there really wasn't a queer woman that I could think of, other than people who had also already been around for a while," Shura tells the Recording Academy. "So, Tegan and Sara, maybe you have Hayley Kiyoko as well. But now we have King Princess, we have lots of non-binary artists. The indie-pop world, it's just so much queerer than it was when I first put out a record. I don't feel like the only gay in the village anymore."

On the cusp of releasing forevher, Shura sat down with the Recording Academy to delve further into the story behind her latest effort—which is co-produced with Joel Pott and features collaborations with Jagwar Ma's Jona Ma, Whitney's Will Miller and more—and why this feels like her "first record as an adult woman."

When did you begin to write forevher in earnest?

I began as soon as I finished touring. I wasn't seriously planning anything. It was just about getting back into the groove of writing. No pressure to think about anything in terms of an entire record.

Then, I guess about summer of, maybe spring, summer of last year, I'd written enough songs to really go, "Okay, there's a body of work here, a story that I feel like I can get a handle on what the story is that I want to tell." And I began in the summer of last year, the recording. Kind of approached it, actually, in a very different way than the first record.

[The first record] was done like, I would write a song and finish producing it, and then move on to the next song. Whereas this was much more like, write a bunch of things, and then go, "Okay, what do I have here?" And then go in.

Did you primarily record in the States, or were you in London?

No, because earlier, I made it primarily in London. It was just about me going to the States.

I did some writing in L.A., actually, with Orlando Higginbottom, whose artist name is Totally Enormous Extinct Dinosaurs. But that was the only writing that I did in the States for this record. I bizarrely made more of this record in the U.K. than the last one.

Forevher is about your forming a long-distance relationship with your current partner. When did you guys originally connect?

Yeah, so we met on a dating app when I was physically in Minneapolis, and my partner was in New York at the time. So we weren't close to one another, even then. And we met because she had said, "If you're swinging by New York on your way back to London, then maybe we should hang out."

But you know, I wasn't really swinging by anywhere. I'd just wrapped up finished touring. I was like, "I need to go home. See my parents and my cat, and my twin, but sure." So we began talking. It wasn't like an every day sort of thing. We would just occasionally share funny things that had happened.

And I guess gradually, we were just talking more and more frequently. For four months it slowly developed to this quite intense relationship. It wasn't sexual, of course. It was an intellectual one. That's the funny thing about it. Because it wasn't Tinder. It was an app called Raya.

Yeah, I just learned about that one. My coworker was telling me how she spotted like, Owen Wilson and Ben Affleck on there! Isn’t it where all the celebs hang?

Well, apparently. Except I'm on it and my girlfriend's on it, and she's not famous.

You have to give your Instagram handle. You go through an approval thing. It's based on whether or not you're verified, or verified people follow you. You know, it's kind of ridiculous.

I think everyone can get on it. If her and I can get on it, it can't be that bad. But I only got on it because I was at my own gig in Boston, and I hadn't even opened my Tinder. Because I wouldn't, at a gig, that would be weird.

But because I was physically in the vicinity, people found my Tinder profile and screen-shotted it, and shared it on Twitter and being like, "I hope we're going to meet." Or like, "I hope we're going to match." And I was like, "Oh my God, I need to get off this."

And I was like, "Okay, I've got to get off of this." And I told a friend, and they told me about Raya, which I found it so hilarious. I was like, well, I have to apply. It's just so funny.

Like a week or two later, after I'd applied, I was accepted. I was like, "Holy sh*t. This is what I'm going to spend the next hour in the tour van, looking at. This going to be so fun!"

So the point that I was getting across is, because it's for wildly famous or successful people, in theory. They don't show you people who are necessarily physically close to you. Because I'm guessing the assumption is that you're so successful that you can afford to fly to L.A. You could go anywhere on your private jet, or whatever it is. I wasn't wealthy enough or successful enough to be able to fly on a private jet to go on a first date. So it meant that we just had to talk, in a way that I guess you wouldn't on Tinder, because it shows you people that are close.

So you have to, after a couple of weeks go, "Should we go on a date?" We just slowly developed this relationship. I think once we got to the stage where we were talking on the phone more or less every day, and three, four, five hours at a time, I was like, "We should probably see if this is gonna work in real life, because it's taking up a lot of my emotional energy, and obviously, just a lot of my time."

So I just invented a reason to go to New York. I thought, maybe I can take a couple of meetings, and hit up some of my friends, just in case. And I flew to New York, for this date and arranged lots of other things just in case it went really badly. But it went really well. And here I am, two years later with a record about meeting someone on a dating app and then moving to a different country.

Wow. So have you officially moved to the States?

Yeah, yeah. I moved to New York in November of last year.

How are you liking it?

I love it. Which is really weird, because I hated it when I first went. I hated New York and I loved L.A., because L.A. is immediately appealing. There are palm trees, and the weather's great. And New York was kind of weird, because it was either too hot or too cold, and everyone was cross at you. In England, if someone's cross at you, they're going to apologize. You bump into someone, they'll be like, "Sorry." Even though you bumped into them. Whereas in America, if you bump into someone, they'd be like, "What the f**k are you doing, you f**king asshole?" And I'm like, "I'm sorry! I didn't see you!"

But once you sort of peel away the layers of New York, it has this real energy that's like no other city I've ever been in. I mean, for Christ's sake, it also of course helps that I fell in love there. You can't not fall in love with the place in which you're falling in love. Which is kind of weird to be that person that's being like, "Oh, America's really great!" at a time where everyone else was like, "F**k the Americans!" It's mad! So yeah, it's been quite a weird backdrop to a queer love story.

Well, in looking at your description of the album and its lead single, “religion (u can lay your hands on me),” I’d love it if you could elaborate a bit on how you’re approaching the concept of religion and Christianity here.

I think there's a few things going on. Frankly, there's this rich history, in general, with pop music playing around with religion that I enjoy. Whether it's the iconography or toying around with it lyrically. So it's just fun to me to explore that and be, "This is my contribution to that tradition," shall we say.

Especially, if you think of me being a devotee of, to use a religious phrase, Madonna. And I think it's sort of my way of honoring that tradition. But also, the language that we use around love is very close to the language we use around religion.

Whether it's "I believe in love" in the same way that you believe in God. It's a type of faith and the act of devotion. Something that we say, we devote ourselves to someone that we love, and the physical act of laying your hands on someone. It's something that you would do during sex.

But also it could be in religion. It's something you might do to bless someone or to heal someone. So there's me, just having fun a little bit with that and other factors.

I've always been really interested in religion. I very nearly studied theology instead of English literature, because I just found it fascinating that in every culture there is a kind of religion. Which is kind of hilarious, because I'm an atheist and always have been. But you know, to be fascinated in that and especially being a woman and being queer, two things that don't often get treated well. Like women, since the dawn of time have gotten a bit f**ked over because you know, in Christianity, the prime example of a woman is a mother and a virgin. Which is kind of a physical impossibility. From that point on, we're a bit f**ked.

Yeah, there's not a lot of gray area where women are concerned in the Bible.

Yeah. So I think just something that I'm interested in. I think love is kind of absurd if you think about it. Like the idea of being with one person forever, is kind of absurd. But that's how I love. That's how I do it. If I am to be with someone, it's because I think I'm going to be with them forever, even though all the evidence points to the contrary.

And I think there's something about religion that's also absurd, and that we believe that most every culture has a belief system, where we go, there's someone bigger than us that does everything and knows everything. And I think it's just playing around with the absurdity of humans and being human and love and faith is a big part of that.

Hopefully I want it to be kind of done in a fun way and also a funny way. I really, on this record more than the last one, I wanted to make people cry, but I also wanted to make people laugh, and feel joy. There was a lot of me in that first record, but I feel like in general, my personality gets across better in this record, in the fact that I am a deep thinker, but also a bit of a joker. And a bit, I like to kind of play around with things and have fun.

Yeah, forevher has a soulful quality that I think was missing on your debut. When you mention how you are with someone, specifically the way you enter a relationship believing in the concept of forever—even though all the evidence points to the contrary—is that where the title of the record comes from?

Yes, well, it's a combination of things. Firstly, the idea that we love forever, in a sense. Or the idea of the ultimate love, or the one true love, is someone you would love forever. But you know, it stemmed, or the reason I started thinking about that as a title, was because of the song "Forever," which isn't spelled with an "H." I rhymed "together" and "forever." Which is like the biggest no-no in songwriting history. Because it's so obvious that the point in doing that, I think, was to point out the absurdity of it.

And I think in the middle of it, I start talking about the sun crashing into the sea, and leaving us in the dark forever. When I'm saying "I'm gonna love you forever," I don't want it to be just this saccharin, cheesy thing. I want it to be like, "Oh, there's an absurdity to it, or a sense of humor to it." But forevher, the title, and the way that I spell it with the pronoun, arose because it was a mix of, well, her. My partner.

So much of it has to do with that. But then also it's a mix of, "for-her, forever, and forever-her." I think because I really made a conscious choice on this record to use pronouns in a way that I hadn't done before. It felt important to specify that in the title.

My first record was queer. If you watch the music videos and it's queer as f**k. But this record, lyrically, is more explicitly queer.

Yeah, I think that’s been in the conversation more recently. That artists, if they do identify as queer, they’re more likely to use the pronouns of their choice. And that probably would not have been the case, say, 10 years ago.

Even five years ago! I remember when I put out Nothing's Real... In the pop sphere there really wasn't a queer woman that I could think of, other than people who had also already been around for a while. So, Tegan and Sara, maybe you have Hayley Kiyoko as well. But now we have King Princess, we have lots of non-binary artists. The indie-pop world, it's just so much queerer than it was when I first put out a record. I don't feel like the only gay in the village anymore.

Absolutely. And as far as the album cover goes, that feels like it adheres much more closely to your identity as well. Would you say that’s true?

Yeah. I felt that this record was a more certainly musically mature record. And I think I felt like I wanted that to be visible just from the artwork and stuff. I always joke that my first record was kind of like the soundtrack to a John Hughes movie that was never made.

[For this record] I wanted to use photography and illustration to have that childish, teenage vibe. And this felt like my first record as an adult woman. And so yeah, I knew from the beginning that I wanted it to be, to feel vastly different.

I remember talking with a friend of mine, he's a brilliant photographer, Hollie Fernando, about wanting to recreate a classic image of love with women. And we were talking about the Rodin sculpture, "The Kiss," which is one of the most classic examples of erotic love in art.

I remember saying, "Well, how would you feel about recreating that and doing a photograph?" It was very important to me, even at that stage, of it not being just a straight photograph. I wanted to go through another process. I really want to print it as an aristograph, which is the the style of printing that just feels sort of nostalgic and almost going to make something look like an oil painting, rather than just a photograph. 

What I didn't know was that the image that we used for the cover, I didn't know that that was what it was going to be. I'd thought it would be very obvious, and it would be a wide shot where you can really clearly see what we were doing. And now, actually, the cover is kind of quite mysterious. You wouldn't necessarily know it was two women until you open it up, and it's unveiled to be two women.

I felt like that was a really nice representation, aesthetically, of the music. Because it's a very queer record that you could completely miss with queer, somehow. Especially if you don't listen to the lyrics. That's the first thing I listen to, is lyrics. But a lot of people are all about melody and the music. 

I'm just so struck by [the cover], how blue is such a promiscuous color. And I don't mean that it sleeps with a lot of people. It means so many different things to different people, to different cultures. For some people it symbolizes depression or loneliness. For others it's love or royalty or holiness. And I just really loved how blue that blue made me feel. It kind of feels like longing and maybe it's something to do with the ocean and the distance between us. I look at it, and it feels like there's this halo around her head. We might see Mary and religious imagery, which tied in with some of the religious themes.

But it's this kind of desire for the eternal that I really got from that color in that dimension. And I think that's what we strive for and when we are in love, it's this weird desire for things to last forever. There's a song on forevher called "tommy," which very explicitly deals with the notion of forever, and foreverness, and the desire for the eternal, and death.

Yeah, you mentioned working with Hollie Fernando... Speaking of collaborators, you also have so many on this record Orlando from T-E-E-D, Jona Ma from Jaguar Ma. How did you connect with everyone?

So Joel Pott, I wrote a lot of this record with him. We co-produced it together, which is why I still made it in London. So that was fairly easy because we'd worked together before.

With Whitney, I had just worked with Will, who plays trumpet for Whitney. I just fell in love with that record. When I was writing "princess leia," decided I wanted to have a brass arrangement, because there's a moment where I'm talking about, I was on a plane and a dead soldier was taken off the plane, and I saw that, and there was a brass band. Whitney's [also] signed to Secretly Canadian. So they just introduced us and I sent him the track and I said I'd really love for you to just do your thing on it. I didn't give him too much direction. As a fan, I trusted him. And when I got it back, I just remember crying and just thinking it was so wonderful. And why hadn't I ever learned to play the horn?

With Orlando [from Totally Enormous Extinct Dinosaurs], he'd just put out a song, I think, on SoundCloud called "Leave A Light On," that I couldn't stop listening to. And it's very rare for me to reach out to people, like just slide into the DMs. But I did. I just DMed him and was like, "Hi, this song is so beautiful, I can't stop listening to it. If I were to ever be in L.A. for writing, would you like to try some things?" And we spent three days together and wrote four or five songs, two of which made the record. So that was just very exciting.

And then, there's a chorus of incredible women: Rosie Lowe, Kerry Leatham and Reva from NIMMO. They're friends of mine too. They just happen to be really brilliant vocalists.

And I mean, I've obviously been a big fan of Jaguar Ma. I'm so lucky to have, like, slid into the DMs of people who I'm a big fan of and have them be receptive. Some DMs, you don't get a response. So these are the ones that came off.

Well, it never hurts to ask.

I have this thing, "Don't ask, don't get." The worst thing that someone can say is no, and the world's not gonna end if that happens. 

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