August 19, 2022 • 22 mins
They that every character in your dreams is really you. The same goes for songs. Finneas spoke to us about how themes on Optimist began to emerge — ones that he wasn’t necessarily aware of as he wrote it. It helped him make sense of the tumultuous last few years, and how it changed him as an artist and as a person.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Song Stories is a production of I Heart Radio. Hello everyone,
and welcome the Song Stories, a new I Heart Radio
podcast where we try to figure out how do you
make a hit? To answer this not so simple question,
(00:20):
we're sitting down with some of the biggest names in music.
They're going to take us through the life cycle of
a song, from studio to stage and everything in between.
My name is Jordan Runta. Thank you so much for
joining us this season. We talked to Phineas, the singer,
songwriter and producer extraordinaire who's helped to find the sound
of contemporary pop in the Ties. In the past few episodes,
(00:42):
Phineas has broken down his writing a recording process. That
turns out that's the easy part. Knowing what a song
is done is a whole different skill, and releasing them
into the world is where it really gets scary. Phineas
opened up about what it was like the night before
dropping his solo debut, Optimistic. Despite a string of smashes
with his sister Billie Eilish not to mention Justin Bieber, Camilla, Cabo,
(01:05):
Selena Gomez, and Halsey, just to name a few, this
was his own personal artistic statement. It's a self portrait
made during the isolation of a COVID nineteen crisis and
released at a time when the world began to reopen. Well,
the introspective lyrics came at a time when he was
largely alone. Music is a conversation and not a monologue.
Sure sequencing and mixing play I made your role in
(01:27):
accommodating the many ways in which people listen to music.
But the real payoff comes was an audience in front
of you, screaming your own words back at you with
joyful abandoned. They say that every character in your dreams
is really you. We all the same goes for song lyrics.
As Phineas listened back to the completed record after months
of work, themes on optimists began to emerge, which he
(01:48):
wasn't necessarily aware of when he wrote it. The album
helped him make sense of the tumultuous last few years
and how it changed him as both an artist and
as a person. Phineas had a lot to say about
this and versation with me and my friend and colleague
Noel Brown, a talented musician, songwriter and producer in his
own right, on behalf of us. Both Please enjoy now.
(02:11):
I mean, when you're when you're sitting in in your
space and playing the album back start to finish, did
a theme emerge for you when you heard all the
songs after another. Is there something that when when you
find when all was saidden done that really kind of
there was one central theme that popped out at you? Well, yeah,
I mean I think, you know, on a sort of
(02:35):
lyrical front um, pretty introspective and sort of contemplative. Uh,
we're sort of the things I was going for. I
was trying to sort of articulate how I was feeling
about my life and about the world, and um, you
know they're very very personal. And then from a sonic space,
you know, I was just trying to kind of keep
(02:56):
everything out of the way of the vocal and lyric.
I wanted you to be able to understand every line
of the album, you know what I mean, Like sometimes
you know, in cool artistic ways, vocals are very buried
or they're not as articulate articulative as as they could be.
And that's all really cool, but to me, like lyrics
where the where the bread and butter of this record?
And so I wanted you to be able to understand
(03:16):
what I was saying a percent of the time. Um.
And then you know, honestly, in terms of cohesion, UM,
you know, I think it's my voice on everything. It's
the same piano and the same guitars and you know,
sort of similar drums throughout. But then, um, from a
sort of an album perspective, it was mastered by Dave Kutch,
(03:37):
and Um, I had him master the whole album at once.
A lot of the time albums are kind of mastered
piece by piece, song by song, and these days anyway,
and I had Dave do it all at once, and
he did a really artful job of like the timing
between songs and sounds bleeding from one song into the
other song. And I thought he did a really great
job of that. So that was really cool in sorts
(03:59):
of like helping it be as cohesive as possible. And
you mentioned, you know, these songs are are are very personal,
very introspective. I mean, the the probably the obvious question
is how much did did COVID impact that did that
time this would of be still and be probably more
alone with your thoughts, Um, did that impact the direction
of the album at all? Totally? I think that the
(04:21):
way that I tried to put it was that I
didn't want COVID to impact the album, but COVID impacted me,
do you know what I mean? Like I didn't want
to make a COVID album, but I went through COVID
just like everybody else went through COVID, and so I
you know, I was changed by it and wrote songs
that were changed by it, um, but I didn't want
it to I didn't want it to be dated. I
(04:42):
feel like COVID changes so much week to week, month
to month that I was really worried that if I
made a COVID record, it would just sound like super
you know, I guess, like of its time, and I
wanted it to be more timeless. So you know, the
stuff that I wrote about, you know, as opposed to
(05:02):
writing about COVID was was loneliness or you know, connection
or or you know a virtual world or you know whatever.
But I didn't want to make a sort of pointedly
like this album is about COVID, you know what I mean.
I mean, I think we all experienced things about ourselves
through COVID that you know, many many things were very
(05:24):
negative and possibly caused us to make some changes, but
also because of changes in work environment and working from home.
Maybe everyone kind of got a new hobby or discovered
something about themselves that they had been letting that because
life was so hectic. What was that part of it
like for you? Because I mean obviously you were still busy,
but was that part of it too, and just being
(05:44):
able to be alone with your thoughts? Yeah. The song
that really articulated that, um, more than anything else I've
ever written, was was only a Lifetime And the reason
that I wrote that song was, UM, I was sort
of doing I think kind of everybody was doing, which
was like checking the news and seeing seeing when I
could go back to normal, you know, during COVID, Like
(06:06):
when when when will everything be you know, normal again?
And the abnormal for me, not for everybody. Everybody you know,
dealt with had had to deal with COVID differently based
on circumstances. But mine was like sitting around my house
writing music, picking oranges off the tree in my backyard,
cooking dinner. You know, just it was very you know,
(06:29):
it was it was awesome, and I really missed my friends,
I really missed playing shows, I really missed sort of
the social world. Um. But there was there was a
lot that I was taking for granted. And I also
had this feeling of like, you don't get to say
in how long COVID is. Maybe COVID's gonna be five years,
And what a shame if you spend these five years
(06:50):
just waiting, just waiting for time to pass. And so
it was really just like take stock and what you're
getting to do right now, you know, I mean, even
like my life is much more normal than it was
a year ago. And it's like I spent a lot
of time away from my girlfriend. I spent a lot
of time away from my dog. I spent a lot
of time in transit um, you know, and those specific
things are our trade offs where I'm you know, I
(07:13):
miss my girlfriend, I missed my dog, I miss being
a home um, and I love playing shows. But it's
like it's always, you know, you can't always have both
at the same time of everything. So it's like, I'm
very glad that I was able to like enjoy COVID
for what it was in terms of an opportunity to
to to grow roots and and and be in the
(07:34):
same place. And you know, it's all an adjustment, but
but yeah, you're right, I mean, especially now I'm like,
it's funny you don't think about how busy you are
until you weren't, you know what I mean. We're like
coming out of COVID, like the transition back into full
speed life has been this like whoa like was it
was it like this before? Because this feels crazy now
(07:55):
coming from you know, waking up and sort of having
nothing to do. Um. So yeah, it was definitely a
sort of a constant adjustment period. There was an interesting
(08:20):
story that came through with the Adele record recently where
she essentially not petition, but commanded Spotify to get rid
of the like album shuffle feature because I think very
rightly so. She made the point that artists sequence things
very intentionally, um, and that it should be experienced in
that way. Not to say that you can't, you know,
(08:41):
put songs on playlist, but um, how important is sequencing
to you? And in this album in particular, you're making
these songs separately. I know you're thinking of it as
a body of work, but ultimately that's sort of your
artist statement where you get to choose how the listener
experiences them in what order. Can you just talk about
how you chose the track list and how that means
to you. Yeah, I mean, I'm you know, I'm calling.
(09:06):
I'm careful and conscious of it, and you know, I
feel that, you know, it's cool that adult did that.
I feel that most people, you know, at least the
first time, are listening to an album in its sequential order,
but honestly, like after like the first couple of times
or like, you know, I'll put it this way, like
(09:26):
I put on albums all the time, like i'll make dinner,
I'll put on the album. I'll just let it play.
But but most of the time in my life, when
I'm doing active listening, I'm like just choosing a song
and then choosing another song. So I don't I don't know.
I've never had any interest in like bossing listeners around,
Like I feel privileged that they're listening to the songs
at all, and they can listen to them however they want,
(09:47):
you know, and they can skip the song that they're
tired of and whatever. I do that, you know what
I mean. Like, dude, every time an album comes out
and they put out singles before the album, like I
always skipped the single when I'm listening to it because
my brain is like tired of that song or whatever.
So anyway, yeah, I mean, you put my album on
you know, I mean, and this is all sort of
like we're talking digital, right because otherwise, you know, otherwise
(10:09):
if you're if you're buying my album on vinyl, like
you only have one choice, So you know, I care
a lot about the order of it, but I care
about it from a like sort of filmmakers standpoint of
like I wanted to have a narrative. I wanted to
make sense. I wanted to have a beginning, middle, and end.
But then it's like once you've seen a movie a
million times, maybe you just want to show your friend
that one scene. So I don't really care. I don't
(10:30):
really care how people enjoy it. As long as they're
enjoying it, I don't. I don't love when artists like
it's a pet peeve of mine when artists are like, please,
like turn off your phone and make sure to listen
to it on this device or listen to it on
these headphones or like this bullshit like if you made
(10:52):
if you made good music, like people should be able
to enjoy it, you know, on their iPhone in a
loud room. To me, that's the vinyl experience. So there,
are you a vinyl person, Like that's like a ritualized
listening of like a whole piece of work. I'm a
vinyl guy, but I'm only a I'm only a vinyl
guy of old music. I don't really like the way
that new new recorded work sounds on vinyl. I don't
(11:14):
feel like I don't feel like vinyl really does like clean, noiseless,
sub base, crystalline highs very well. I feel like, especially
in music, like you know, my favorite my favorite artists
of this era, like Nat King, Cole Ray, Charles, Dizzy Gillespie,
Like those records are like mixed and mastered and minted
(11:34):
for vinyl, and like mine aren't. Mine are like made
to be listened to on air pods and in your
car and stuff. So like those old records, just the
timbre of the instruments, Like that's what I spend my
time listening to on vinyl, and I listen to him
a lot um But in terms of like new new works,
like I want big subworffers and stuff to listen to those.
(11:54):
I love the story of Brian Wilson doing his final
mixes for his Uh Beach Boys on a car speaker
because he knew that was how people were going to
be here, and you know, fun, fun, fun or whatever
it was. That's cool. I like that these songs are
also personal introspective. Did you know when you were writing
tracks for Optimists that that these were earmarked for your
(12:15):
solo album or did you listen to them back when
you were done and think, okay, no, no, no, I'm
keeping this one for me. Good question. I think all
of the songs on Optimists I wrote with myself in mind.
Um yeah, I think I think I think that was
liberating too, because it allowed me to be more personal
and introspective than I maybe would have gotten away with
(12:37):
if I were giving the songs away to you know,
other artists, right. You know, I was talking about I
don't know, like street names and friend names and and
you know, talking about my mom and dad and stuff,
talking about stuff that you know, maybe not everybody has
the same reality. Um uh you know, or or or
(13:01):
life experience. So yeah, I definitely wrote these with myself
in mind. And uh, you know, I'm I'm a pretty
open book, um, emotionally with my family and friends, and
so I don't think it was I don't think any
of it was any surprise to anybody that I was,
you know, hanging out with right, I'm kind of a
softie and and I think, you know, I basically think
(13:26):
that if there's they're like, I think there's sixty thousand
songs a day uploaded to Spotify. Um, and you know,
I'm in a position now where I have some bit
of a platform to put them out where they're going
to get hurt by some people, which I feel very
fortunate about. But at the end of the day, it's like,
(13:49):
you know, there's a lot of talented people. A lot
of people could play piano better than me, a lot
of people can sing better than me, a lot of
people can produce just as well as I can. To me,
it's like, the thing that I have to offer that's
worth offering is my story and my perspective. And you know,
(14:10):
at the end of the day, I think that's that's
my only obligation really is to is to be myself.
And you know, and and if I, you know, stand
a chance of really clicking with anything, it'll be because
of that. So that's kind of always been my philosophical
approach to songwriting is like it's got to be got
(14:32):
to be worth saying for me. You know what I
mean and what's worth saying to me, But you know
what's worth saying for me? Uh, you know, different stuff
every day. And maybe it's a little political, and you know,
I don't know what the audience size is for that.
Maybe it's about you know, being nostalgic or missing my
family or whatever. And and you know, again it's like,
(14:52):
I don't, I don't. I don't really have to worry
about the size of audience because I'm choosing to worry
about what's important to me to say. And you know,
what's gonna what's gonna make me feel like I've really
shown myself to be who I am thinking about how
(15:22):
you know, emotionally transparent. So many of these songs are
and you know, and you said earlier, come from such
an introspective place. What was it like for you, Like
like the night before Optimists was coming out, How did
you feel like were you excited? Were you terrified? Was
there you know, was some combination of the two? What
was What was it like when you're about to put
out this very personal, intimate, artistic statement of yours scary? Yeah, yeah,
(15:50):
it was scary to It was scary to put this out. Um,
it was scary to make it, scary to put it out,
but I'm really proud of it, and I'm glad that
people you know, that that some people have been reached
in the right way, and that it's meant a lot
to some people. And you know, I'm very grateful that
I made it. But it's definitely like playing a piece
(16:11):
in a in a greater puzzle of something. You know,
It's it's not as scary to put out a billy album.
I don't know if maybe it is for her, but
maybe it's not for her. Maybe it's not because it's
the two of us. Um. But doing this completely alone, this,
you know, it's like climbing a climbing a climbing a
mountain without a rope or something. I was like, oh man,
it's only me here. I do not have somebody helping me. Um.
(16:34):
But you know, uh, rewarding too. And you've been able
to see it reflected back in the faces of people
at shows, which has gotta be amazing. How has that
been just to see the crowd response right in front
of you. Ah, It's been so vital for my relationship
with the album, because otherwise you just look at metrics.
(16:55):
You just look at stats and streams and view counts
and such a hollow way to think about your album.
And you you you play a song live and you
hear the roar of the crowd when that first chord
gets played, and they sing lines to you, and they
sing specific lines louder, and it's the best. Like I
(17:17):
you know, I'm so grateful to have gotten to have
that experience so quickly after putting it out. I I
played my first show on this to ur ten days
after the album came out, and it was like just
enough time for the kids to learn the record. Um
and uh yeah, I feel like every I feel like
I should. I should put out an album and go
on a tour every time I put out an album
(17:37):
because it's so it's so much fun. How do you
know when it's done or is it a case of
is it it's done when it's due? Well, there's definitely
a lot of that. There's definitely a lot of that,
like it's done when it's due. Um. I find deadlines
really helpful. Um I would say that, you know, if
I'm left to my own devices and I really have
no deadline, I know when something's done when I it
(18:00):
starts to like when you try to add one more
thing and that thing isn't additive, you know what I mean,
Like you're you're sort of filling up the space and
then you put one more piece on and it's like,
I don't know, it's like you know, it's it's like
it's got an equilibrium and you're throwing the equilibrium off.
So that's usually when I'm like, oh no, no no, let
me take that off, like that's the right that's the
(18:21):
right shape. Um. But also deadlines are really helpful really quickly,
Like when do you feel, like you said, you send
your tracks to a mixer and then a master, do
you kind of mix as you go? I mean, obviously
everything you're doing is very sonically forward, so I feel like,
you know what I'm working on a track the sound
of it, and the mix is part of the composition,
(18:41):
Like how do you approach that? And what does a
mixer do for you that you can't do for yourself? Yeah,
so I'm mixing it too, like to to personal taste,
if that makes sense, Like I'm you know, I'm definitely
mixing as I go, Like I don't know if something
sounds good, if it's not sort of at least mostly mixed.
You know what I mean, I don't know if something's done, um,
(19:03):
but what I choose not to worry about is sort
of like uh, you know, general equing for radio and
for you know, playlisting, like the sort of you know,
I wanted to sound good to my ear in my room,
and then I send those files to Rob Knealski typically
or Justin Herget or Serbian or Spike whoever, and it's
(19:27):
sort of their job to make sure that it will
sound good in the whole throughout the known universe, you
know what I mean. Like, I'm just worrying about like
my ears, my headphones, my room. You know I'm not
I'm not chucking up like a um, a Katie Perry
song and then mixing and then mixing to that. I
don't do any referencing. Have you ever finished the song
(19:50):
and and learned something about yourself? Almost like almost like
a really good dream analysis all the time, all the time. Yeah,
I mean, that's songwriting. I'm an avid, avid therapy enthusiast.
I you know, I recommend therapy to anybody. You know,
it takes takes some time to find the right therapist,
but I think it's universally helpful for people. UM and
(20:14):
songwriting is is another form of therapy for me. Songwriting
is a you know, I talk myself through through a
scenario and you you you confess stuff in songwriting. You
you know, there's like this line and I have a
song on my album called Love is Pain. There's this
(20:34):
like second verse in that song of like, you know,
you may not make her happy, but I want to
be the only one who can that the only one
that can UM And that's a you know, that's embarrassing
and it's not a rational the thing to you know
what I mean, Like you shouldn't wish upon a person
(20:56):
you love that you're the only person that can bring
them joy and happiness. But it's like, you know, that's like, yeah,
it's a selfish thing that I think a lot of people.
You want to be the person that means the most
to somebody. And it was like one of those things
where like, I don't I don't think I ever would
have had the wherewithal to kind of come out and
say that as a person, But once I'd sort of
(21:18):
written it in a song, I was able to kind
of confront it and go like, oh, yeah, you feel
that way, but that's irrational and you can't you can't
let them. You can't dictate somebody's life that way, you
know what I mean. Or there's lines in in Only
a Lifetime. I mean that, you know, only a Lifetime,
which is the to me, the song that's like my
my manifesto. Um, you know that's I've been dealing with
(21:40):
that my whole life. I've been dealing with blazing through
peak life experiences, thinking about the future or you know,
dreading something that's about to happen, or feeling preoccupied. And
you know, that song is just this this reminder to
me of like being present, being mindful, being and grateful
(22:01):
and and I still I still fail at it sometimes,
but that song was a a big moment internally for
me in my sort of journey into sort of like
being present, minded and grateful. Um, and uh, you know
so so that's yeah, they're they're they're processing tools basically.
(22:27):
Song Stories is a production of I Heart Radio. The
show was hosted and executive produced by Noel Brown and
Jordan round Tug, with supervising producer Mike John's. If you
like what you heard, please subscribe and leave us a review.
For more from my heart Radio, please visit the I
heart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to
your favorite shows.
Song Stories is a production of I Heart Radio. Hello everyone,
and welcome the Song Stories, a new I Heart Radio
podcast where we try to figure out how do you
make a hit? To answer this not so simple question,
(00:20):
we're sitting down with some of the biggest names in music.
They're going to take us through the life cycle of
a song, from studio to stage and everything in between.
My name is Jordan Runta. Thank you so much for
joining us this season. We talked to Phineas, the singer,
songwriter and producer extraordinaire who's helped to find the sound
of contemporary pop in the Ties. In the past few episodes,
(00:42):
Phineas has broken down his writing a recording process. That
turns out that's the easy part. Knowing what a song
is done is a whole different skill, and releasing them
into the world is where it really gets scary. Phineas
opened up about what it was like the night before
dropping his solo debut, Optimistic. Despite a string of smashes
with his sister Billie Eilish not to mention Justin Bieber, Camilla, Cabo,
(01:05):
Selena Gomez, and Halsey, just to name a few, this
was his own personal artistic statement. It's a self portrait
made during the isolation of a COVID nineteen crisis and
released at a time when the world began to reopen. Well,
the introspective lyrics came at a time when he was
largely alone. Music is a conversation and not a monologue.
Sure sequencing and mixing play I made your role in
(01:27):
accommodating the many ways in which people listen to music.
But the real payoff comes was an audience in front
of you, screaming your own words back at you with
joyful abandoned. They say that every character in your dreams
is really you. We all the same goes for song lyrics.
As Phineas listened back to the completed record after months
of work, themes on optimists began to emerge, which he
(01:48):
wasn't necessarily aware of when he wrote it. The album
helped him make sense of the tumultuous last few years
and how it changed him as both an artist and
as a person. Phineas had a lot to say about
this and versation with me and my friend and colleague
Noel Brown, a talented musician, songwriter and producer in his
own right, on behalf of us. Both Please enjoy now.
(02:11):
I mean, when you're when you're sitting in in your
space and playing the album back start to finish, did
a theme emerge for you when you heard all the
songs after another. Is there something that when when you
find when all was saidden done that really kind of
there was one central theme that popped out at you? Well, yeah,
I mean I think, you know, on a sort of
(02:35):
lyrical front um, pretty introspective and sort of contemplative. Uh,
we're sort of the things I was going for. I
was trying to sort of articulate how I was feeling
about my life and about the world, and um, you
know they're very very personal. And then from a sonic space,
you know, I was just trying to kind of keep
(02:56):
everything out of the way of the vocal and lyric.
I wanted you to be able to understand every line
of the album, you know what I mean, Like sometimes
you know, in cool artistic ways, vocals are very buried
or they're not as articulate articulative as as they could be.
And that's all really cool, but to me, like lyrics
where the where the bread and butter of this record?
And so I wanted you to be able to understand
(03:16):
what I was saying a percent of the time. Um.
And then you know, honestly, in terms of cohesion, UM,
you know, I think it's my voice on everything. It's
the same piano and the same guitars and you know,
sort of similar drums throughout. But then, um, from a
sort of an album perspective, it was mastered by Dave Kutch,
(03:37):
and Um, I had him master the whole album at once.
A lot of the time albums are kind of mastered
piece by piece, song by song, and these days anyway,
and I had Dave do it all at once, and
he did a really artful job of like the timing
between songs and sounds bleeding from one song into the
other song. And I thought he did a really great
job of that. So that was really cool in sorts
(03:59):
of like helping it be as cohesive as possible. And
you mentioned, you know, these songs are are are very personal,
very introspective. I mean, the the probably the obvious question
is how much did did COVID impact that did that
time this would of be still and be probably more
alone with your thoughts, Um, did that impact the direction
of the album at all? Totally? I think that the
(04:21):
way that I tried to put it was that I
didn't want COVID to impact the album, but COVID impacted me,
do you know what I mean? Like I didn't want
to make a COVID album, but I went through COVID
just like everybody else went through COVID, and so I
you know, I was changed by it and wrote songs
that were changed by it, um, but I didn't want
it to I didn't want it to be dated. I
(04:42):
feel like COVID changes so much week to week, month
to month that I was really worried that if I
made a COVID record, it would just sound like super
you know, I guess, like of its time, and I
wanted it to be more timeless. So you know, the
stuff that I wrote about, you know, as opposed to
(05:02):
writing about COVID was was loneliness or you know, connection
or or you know a virtual world or you know whatever.
But I didn't want to make a sort of pointedly
like this album is about COVID, you know what I mean.
I mean, I think we all experienced things about ourselves
through COVID that you know, many many things were very
(05:24):
negative and possibly caused us to make some changes, but
also because of changes in work environment and working from home.
Maybe everyone kind of got a new hobby or discovered
something about themselves that they had been letting that because
life was so hectic. What was that part of it
like for you? Because I mean obviously you were still busy,
but was that part of it too, and just being
(05:44):
able to be alone with your thoughts? Yeah. The song
that really articulated that, um, more than anything else I've
ever written, was was only a Lifetime And the reason
that I wrote that song was, UM, I was sort
of doing I think kind of everybody was doing, which
was like checking the news and seeing seeing when I
could go back to normal, you know, during COVID, Like
(06:06):
when when when will everything be you know, normal again?
And the abnormal for me, not for everybody. Everybody you know,
dealt with had had to deal with COVID differently based
on circumstances. But mine was like sitting around my house
writing music, picking oranges off the tree in my backyard,
cooking dinner. You know, just it was very you know,
(06:29):
it was it was awesome, and I really missed my friends,
I really missed playing shows, I really missed sort of
the social world. Um. But there was there was a
lot that I was taking for granted. And I also
had this feeling of like, you don't get to say
in how long COVID is. Maybe COVID's gonna be five years,
And what a shame if you spend these five years
(06:50):
just waiting, just waiting for time to pass. And so
it was really just like take stock and what you're
getting to do right now, you know, I mean, even
like my life is much more normal than it was
a year ago. And it's like I spent a lot
of time away from my girlfriend. I spent a lot
of time away from my dog. I spent a lot
of time in transit um, you know, and those specific
things are our trade offs where I'm you know, I
(07:13):
miss my girlfriend, I missed my dog, I miss being
a home um, and I love playing shows. But it's
like it's always, you know, you can't always have both
at the same time of everything. So it's like, I'm
very glad that I was able to like enjoy COVID
for what it was in terms of an opportunity to
to to grow roots and and and be in the
(07:34):
same place. And you know, it's all an adjustment, but
but yeah, you're right, I mean, especially now I'm like,
it's funny you don't think about how busy you are
until you weren't, you know what I mean. We're like
coming out of COVID, like the transition back into full
speed life has been this like whoa like was it
was it like this before? Because this feels crazy now
(07:55):
coming from you know, waking up and sort of having
nothing to do. Um. So yeah, it was definitely a
sort of a constant adjustment period. There was an interesting
(08:20):
story that came through with the Adele record recently where
she essentially not petition, but commanded Spotify to get rid
of the like album shuffle feature because I think very
rightly so. She made the point that artists sequence things
very intentionally, um, and that it should be experienced in
that way. Not to say that you can't, you know,
(08:41):
put songs on playlist, but um, how important is sequencing
to you? And in this album in particular, you're making
these songs separately. I know you're thinking of it as
a body of work, but ultimately that's sort of your
artist statement where you get to choose how the listener
experiences them in what order. Can you just talk about
how you chose the track list and how that means
to you. Yeah, I mean, I'm you know, I'm calling.
(09:06):
I'm careful and conscious of it, and you know, I
feel that, you know, it's cool that adult did that.
I feel that most people, you know, at least the
first time, are listening to an album in its sequential order,
but honestly, like after like the first couple of times
or like, you know, I'll put it this way, like
(09:26):
I put on albums all the time, like i'll make dinner,
I'll put on the album. I'll just let it play.
But but most of the time in my life, when
I'm doing active listening, I'm like just choosing a song
and then choosing another song. So I don't I don't know.
I've never had any interest in like bossing listeners around,
Like I feel privileged that they're listening to the songs
at all, and they can listen to them however they want,
(09:47):
you know, and they can skip the song that they're
tired of and whatever. I do that, you know what
I mean. Like, dude, every time an album comes out
and they put out singles before the album, like I
always skipped the single when I'm listening to it because
my brain is like tired of that song or whatever.
So anyway, yeah, I mean, you put my album on
you know, I mean, and this is all sort of
like we're talking digital, right because otherwise, you know, otherwise
(10:09):
if you're if you're buying my album on vinyl, like
you only have one choice, So you know, I care
a lot about the order of it, but I care
about it from a like sort of filmmakers standpoint of
like I wanted to have a narrative. I wanted to
make sense. I wanted to have a beginning, middle, and end.
But then it's like once you've seen a movie a
million times, maybe you just want to show your friend
that one scene. So I don't really care. I don't
(10:30):
really care how people enjoy it. As long as they're
enjoying it, I don't. I don't love when artists like
it's a pet peeve of mine when artists are like, please,
like turn off your phone and make sure to listen
to it on this device or listen to it on
these headphones or like this bullshit like if you made
(10:52):
if you made good music, like people should be able
to enjoy it, you know, on their iPhone in a
loud room. To me, that's the vinyl experience. So there,
are you a vinyl person, Like that's like a ritualized
listening of like a whole piece of work. I'm a
vinyl guy, but I'm only a I'm only a vinyl
guy of old music. I don't really like the way
that new new recorded work sounds on vinyl. I don't
(11:14):
feel like I don't feel like vinyl really does like clean, noiseless,
sub base, crystalline highs very well. I feel like, especially
in music, like you know, my favorite my favorite artists
of this era, like Nat King, Cole Ray, Charles, Dizzy Gillespie,
Like those records are like mixed and mastered and minted
(11:34):
for vinyl, and like mine aren't. Mine are like made
to be listened to on air pods and in your
car and stuff. So like those old records, just the
timbre of the instruments, Like that's what I spend my
time listening to on vinyl, and I listen to him
a lot um But in terms of like new new works,
like I want big subworffers and stuff to listen to those.
(11:54):
I love the story of Brian Wilson doing his final
mixes for his Uh Beach Boys on a car speaker
because he knew that was how people were going to
be here, and you know, fun, fun, fun or whatever
it was. That's cool. I like that these songs are
also personal introspective. Did you know when you were writing
tracks for Optimists that that these were earmarked for your
(12:15):
solo album or did you listen to them back when
you were done and think, okay, no, no, no, I'm
keeping this one for me. Good question. I think all
of the songs on Optimists I wrote with myself in mind.
Um yeah, I think I think I think that was
liberating too, because it allowed me to be more personal
and introspective than I maybe would have gotten away with
(12:37):
if I were giving the songs away to you know,
other artists, right. You know, I was talking about I
don't know, like street names and friend names and and
you know, talking about my mom and dad and stuff,
talking about stuff that you know, maybe not everybody has
the same reality. Um uh you know, or or or
(13:01):
life experience. So yeah, I definitely wrote these with myself
in mind. And uh, you know, I'm I'm a pretty
open book, um, emotionally with my family and friends, and
so I don't think it was I don't think any
of it was any surprise to anybody that I was,
you know, hanging out with right, I'm kind of a
softie and and I think, you know, I basically think
(13:26):
that if there's they're like, I think there's sixty thousand
songs a day uploaded to Spotify. Um, and you know,
I'm in a position now where I have some bit
of a platform to put them out where they're going
to get hurt by some people, which I feel very
fortunate about. But at the end of the day, it's like,
(13:49):
you know, there's a lot of talented people. A lot
of people could play piano better than me, a lot
of people can sing better than me, a lot of
people can produce just as well as I can. To me,
it's like, the thing that I have to offer that's
worth offering is my story and my perspective. And you know,
(14:10):
at the end of the day, I think that's that's
my only obligation really is to is to be myself.
And you know, and and if I, you know, stand
a chance of really clicking with anything, it'll be because
of that. So that's kind of always been my philosophical
approach to songwriting is like it's got to be got
(14:32):
to be worth saying for me. You know what I
mean and what's worth saying to me, But you know
what's worth saying for me? Uh, you know, different stuff
every day. And maybe it's a little political, and you know,
I don't know what the audience size is for that.
Maybe it's about you know, being nostalgic or missing my
family or whatever. And and you know, again it's like,
(14:52):
I don't, I don't. I don't really have to worry
about the size of audience because I'm choosing to worry
about what's important to me to say. And you know,
what's gonna what's gonna make me feel like I've really
shown myself to be who I am thinking about how
(15:22):
you know, emotionally transparent. So many of these songs are
and you know, and you said earlier, come from such
an introspective place. What was it like for you, Like
like the night before Optimists was coming out, How did
you feel like were you excited? Were you terrified? Was
there you know, was some combination of the two? What
was What was it like when you're about to put
out this very personal, intimate, artistic statement of yours scary? Yeah, yeah,
(15:50):
it was scary to It was scary to put this out. Um,
it was scary to make it, scary to put it out,
but I'm really proud of it, and I'm glad that
people you know, that that some people have been reached
in the right way, and that it's meant a lot
to some people. And you know, I'm very grateful that
I made it. But it's definitely like playing a piece
(16:11):
in a in a greater puzzle of something. You know,
It's it's not as scary to put out a billy album.
I don't know if maybe it is for her, but
maybe it's not for her. Maybe it's not because it's
the two of us. Um. But doing this completely alone, this,
you know, it's like climbing a climbing a climbing a
mountain without a rope or something. I was like, oh man,
it's only me here. I do not have somebody helping me. Um.
(16:34):
But you know, uh, rewarding too. And you've been able
to see it reflected back in the faces of people
at shows, which has gotta be amazing. How has that
been just to see the crowd response right in front
of you. Ah, It's been so vital for my relationship
with the album, because otherwise you just look at metrics.
(16:55):
You just look at stats and streams and view counts
and such a hollow way to think about your album.
And you you you play a song live and you
hear the roar of the crowd when that first chord
gets played, and they sing lines to you, and they
sing specific lines louder, and it's the best. Like I
(17:17):
you know, I'm so grateful to have gotten to have
that experience so quickly after putting it out. I I
played my first show on this to ur ten days
after the album came out, and it was like just
enough time for the kids to learn the record. Um
and uh yeah, I feel like every I feel like
I should. I should put out an album and go
on a tour every time I put out an album
(17:37):
because it's so it's so much fun. How do you
know when it's done or is it a case of
is it it's done when it's due? Well, there's definitely
a lot of that. There's definitely a lot of that,
like it's done when it's due. Um. I find deadlines
really helpful. Um I would say that, you know, if
I'm left to my own devices and I really have
no deadline, I know when something's done when I it
(18:00):
starts to like when you try to add one more
thing and that thing isn't additive, you know what I mean,
Like you're you're sort of filling up the space and
then you put one more piece on and it's like,
I don't know, it's like you know, it's it's like
it's got an equilibrium and you're throwing the equilibrium off.
So that's usually when I'm like, oh no, no no, let
me take that off, like that's the right that's the
(18:21):
right shape. Um. But also deadlines are really helpful really quickly,
Like when do you feel, like you said, you send
your tracks to a mixer and then a master, do
you kind of mix as you go? I mean, obviously
everything you're doing is very sonically forward, so I feel like,
you know what I'm working on a track the sound
of it, and the mix is part of the composition,
(18:41):
Like how do you approach that? And what does a
mixer do for you that you can't do for yourself? Yeah,
so I'm mixing it too, like to to personal taste,
if that makes sense, Like I'm you know, I'm definitely
mixing as I go, Like I don't know if something
sounds good, if it's not sort of at least mostly mixed.
You know what I mean, I don't know if something's done, um,
(19:03):
but what I choose not to worry about is sort
of like uh, you know, general equing for radio and
for you know, playlisting, like the sort of you know,
I wanted to sound good to my ear in my room,
and then I send those files to Rob Knealski typically
or Justin Herget or Serbian or Spike whoever, and it's
(19:27):
sort of their job to make sure that it will
sound good in the whole throughout the known universe, you
know what I mean. Like, I'm just worrying about like
my ears, my headphones, my room. You know I'm not
I'm not chucking up like a um, a Katie Perry
song and then mixing and then mixing to that. I
don't do any referencing. Have you ever finished the song
(19:50):
and and learned something about yourself? Almost like almost like
a really good dream analysis all the time, all the time. Yeah,
I mean, that's songwriting. I'm an avid, avid therapy enthusiast.
I you know, I recommend therapy to anybody. You know,
it takes takes some time to find the right therapist,
but I think it's universally helpful for people. UM and
(20:14):
songwriting is is another form of therapy for me. Songwriting
is a you know, I talk myself through through a
scenario and you you you confess stuff in songwriting. You
you know, there's like this line and I have a
song on my album called Love is Pain. There's this
(20:34):
like second verse in that song of like, you know,
you may not make her happy, but I want to
be the only one who can that the only one
that can UM And that's a you know, that's embarrassing
and it's not a rational the thing to you know
what I mean, Like you shouldn't wish upon a person
(20:56):
you love that you're the only person that can bring
them joy and happiness. But it's like, you know, that's like, yeah,
it's a selfish thing that I think a lot of people.
You want to be the person that means the most
to somebody. And it was like one of those things
where like, I don't I don't think I ever would
have had the wherewithal to kind of come out and
say that as a person, But once I'd sort of
(21:18):
written it in a song, I was able to kind
of confront it and go like, oh, yeah, you feel
that way, but that's irrational and you can't you can't
let them. You can't dictate somebody's life that way, you
know what I mean. Or there's lines in in Only
a Lifetime. I mean that, you know, only a Lifetime,
which is the to me, the song that's like my
my manifesto. Um, you know that's I've been dealing with
(21:40):
that my whole life. I've been dealing with blazing through
peak life experiences, thinking about the future or you know,
dreading something that's about to happen, or feeling preoccupied. And
you know, that song is just this this reminder to
me of like being present, being mindful, being and grateful
(22:01):
and and I still I still fail at it sometimes,
but that song was a a big moment internally for
me in my sort of journey into sort of like
being present, minded and grateful. Um, and uh, you know
so so that's yeah, they're they're they're processing tools basically.
(22:27):
Song Stories is a production of I Heart Radio. The
show was hosted and executive produced by Noel Brown and
Jordan round Tug, with supervising producer Mike John's. If you
like what you heard, please subscribe and leave us a review.
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