“Hey.”
“Hey.
Can you hear me?”
“Yeah.
I had the ‘I’m
going to kill you’
line already, I think
from a song I was trying
to write about fentanyl.
And then I was like,
actually that kind of works.
And it started as a ballad.”
Singing: “I’m
going to kill you
if you don’t beat me to it.
Born under Scorpio skies.”
“The first thing
that I notice when
I listen to Phoebe’s music
is the writing itself.”
Singing: “Day off in Kyoto.
Got bored at the temple.
Looked around at
the 7-Eleven.”
“She’ll literally
write two lines,
and then she’ll
wait months just
for the perfect next line.”
Singing: “You called
me from a pay phone —
they still got pay phones,
it cost $1 a minute —
to tell me you’re
getting sober
and you wrote me a letter,
but I don’t have to read it.”
“Phoebe’s like magical power.
It’s just like
these incredibly
somber and gorgeous songs
that are also hilarious.”
“You write a lot
of very slow —”
Singing: “Can the
killer in me —”
“— very rip your heart out
and stomp on it ballads.”
Singing: “Jesus Christ,
I’m so blue all the time.”
“It’s easy for me to do.
I think that’s just
the way that they
sound when I play them solo.”
“Where did the idea
for ‘Kyoto’ start?”
“I think it’s like
a collage chopped up
into one experience.
Like, I literally
got home from tour.
And then Marshall and I
were talking about our dads
and their similarities.”
“Our dads both had beers in
their laps and were like,
‘You want to learn
how to drive?’
Like that kind of thing.
And we were both
laughing about that.
We’re like, ‘What the hell
is wrong with these guys?’”
Singing: “He said you
called on his birthday.
You were off by like 10 days,
but you get a few points
for trying.”
“It’s just about that
complex relationship
that you can never
kind of get rid of.
Wanted to see the world
through your eyes,
and then it happened.
And I changed my mind.”
“She just found this way
to sing heartbreaking stuff
in an alluring way.
And that’s really been kind
of the story of her career,
I think.”
“I had been playing since
I was a teenager once
or twice a month.
And then when I graduated high
school, it was just constant.
And I thought
that’s what it was.”
“I signed Beck 25 years ago.
This was the first time since
that, that I heard one song
and said, ‘OK, I’m in.’”
“I’d met a lot of
producers that were like,
I’m going to put a trap
beat over your voice.
And Tony was the
first producer I met —
I think he’s the reason
that my music sounds
the way it does.”
“The first album was mostly
me, Ethan and Phoebe.
“‘Stranger in the Alps’
was the first record
I got to be a
real producer on.”
Singing: “You, you must’ve
been looking for me.”
“We became the Trilemma,
as we call ourselves.”
“I had no idea what my
music sounded like before I
started the first album.
And then by the time I
finished, I was like, ‘Oh.’
And that’s how we
started this record.”
“We had started maybe
tracking four or five songs
at this point in the record.”
“But there was a
problem, and that
was Phoebe is very drawn
to slow tempo stuff.”
“All of us were like, we
do need to have some tempo.
And Phoebe was like,
I have a new song.”
Singing: “Day off in Kyoto.
Got bored at the temple.
Looked around at the 7-Eleven.
So slow.”
“Sounds like a
Phoebe Bridgers song.”
“Totally.”
“I said, ‘Look,
this song is great,
and the lyrics are incredible.’
But I said, ‘Look,
let’s speed this up.
Let’s let it rock.’”
“‘Motion Sickness’
was, I think,
one of the more beloved songs
off of that first record.”
Singing: “I have
emotional motion —”
“This song, I think, we wanted
to do a similar thing:
Give it some tempo,
give it some energy.”
“And I was like, ‘Let’s go.
Let’s do it.’”
Singing: “Day off in Kyoto.
Got bored at the temple.
Looked around at the 7-Eleven.”
“I think we were all like —
smiling at each other,
realizing it was working
and just like —”
“There are definitely
times where
you take slower, sadder ones,
and you start playing them,
and they lose,
like the chorus all of a
sudden feels flat.
This one seemed to really
like being a rocker.”
“Ethan on pocket piano, which
is the thing that plays the —
Singing: “Doo, doo,
doo, doo, doo.”
“I was almost thinking in
my head, which is often
the case, I’m probably
playing something
that I need to make cooler,
like it’s probably lame.
And Phoebe and Chris were
like, ‘That’s really cool.’”
“That’s classic
Ethan [expletive].”
“And then the trumpet idea —
Phoebe was like,
‘I want horns.’”
“It’s kind of at odds
with a rock band to me,
but when it’s done
right, it’s incredible.”
“I thought, this
is the last time
I’m ever going
to play trumpet.”
“Oh, no.”
“I had been dealing
with this tooth problem.
We started doing
takes of ‘Kyoto.’”
“He didn’t tell
anybody in the studio
that he had chipped
his front tooth.
So playing was excruciating.”
“Where were you on the
smiley face pain chart?”
“Somewhere between
8 and 1/2 and 9.”
“We made him do it
a million times.”
“And you had no idea.”
“We had no — I feel so bad.”
“There was a lot of
trumpet to record.”
[trumpet playing]
“I felt like it really
felt like a song
when I recorded
the backing vocals.
I’m going to —
I thought that was so fun.”
“In the tradition of people
like John Lennon, who
could write a
profoundly sad lyric
and play it as
an up-tempo song,
she did that with that song.
And it was, I think, really
effective because you’re
very seduced by its tempo,
by its rollicking nature.
And then you start
singing the song.
You find yourself
going, ‘Oh no,
this is terrible.’
And it’s great.
That’s a device she
employs, and she
employs it effectively.”
“And only a few
times per album.”
“But when it
happens, man, pow!”
Singing: “I wanted
to see the world.
Then I flew over the ocean,
and I changed my mind.
Whew.”
“I don’t think about all my
songs as ballads anymore.
I feel like they’re not
even really fully written
until I’ve shown
them to those guys.
And they’re like,
‘This stays a ballad,’
or ‘This is a rock song.’”
“It’s going to be an important
song for the record.”
“And I
changed my mind.
That’s very Tony, too,
to throw this in there.”
[strums guitar]
“How about when she screams
at the end of ‘I Know.’
I’ll send you a video
of her doing it.”
“I wanted to be able to hit
a really raspy Conor Oberst
or Haley Dahl scream,
because I love it in music.”
“Did you have to teach
yourself how to scream?”
“I thought I did.
And I asked Conor to come
to the studio the day
that I was screaming.
And he was like, ‘What?
You just
have to scream.’”
[screaming]
[screaming]
[screaming]
[humming]
“I just had this idea that
I wanted it to bounce.”
Singing: “I got the
horses in the back.”
- [humming]
[snapping fingers]
Singing “Man,
what’s the deal?
Man, I’m coming through.
It’s your girl, Lizzo.
[laughs]”
