- This is me just lighting
a bunch of matches in the bathroom.
[matches lighting]
It became the snare
essentially for this song
of Billie's called "Watch".
[snare drum loop plays]
♪ If we were meant to be ♪
♪ We would have been by now ♪
♪ See what you wanna see ♪
♪ But all I see is him right now ♪
The hook is like, "I'll sit
and watch your car burn",
and so there were all these
references to starting a fire,
and so I was like,
"Well let me try starting
some matches and whatever"
and that's a more inventive
way to use a sound
than to just be like,
"Yeah, we're gonna start with the sound
"of the waves rolling in
or something", you know?
[light dance music]
♪ What do you want from me ♪
♪ Why don't you run from me ♪
♪ What are you wondering ♪
♪ What do you ♪
I think the most pivotal
creative decision we made
when we were working
on "When We All Fall
Asleep, Where Do We Go"
was the tonal structure
of everything shifted
from where we had been thus far
into a kind of a more violent space.
It's all over the percussion
in "Bury A Friend".
[drum beat plays]
All of the super blown
out, distorted vocals.
♪ My limbs all froze ♪
♪ And my eyes won't close ♪
♪ And I can't say no ♪
♪ I can't say no ♪
The crazy alarm sound
at the end of that song.
♪ Bury a friend ♪
♪ I wanna end me ♪
They're all sounds that
are kind of jarring,
kind of unpleasant, a little bit ominous.
♪ Calling security,
keeping my head held down ♪
♪ Bury the hatchet or bury
your friend right now ♪
♪ Tell me love is endless ♪
♪ Don't be ♪
There's a really intense bass drop synth
in the middle of the song
"Listen" that I think
is so at odds with everything
else about the song "Listen",
because that song is just really pretty,
and there's this crazy
distorted bass that I play
on a thing called a seaboard.
♪ That's what a year-long headache ♪
♪ Does to you ♪
I think that was probably
the biggest shift
from wherever we had been
before, was these really dark
textures and dark sounds.
♪ It's not true ♪
♪ Tell me I've been lied ♪
"I Love You" is another
song that was written
prior to being recorded,
so the whole second verse
of that song is about sitting
on the tarmac on a plane.
You know when you press
the button on the roof
of the airplane to summon the
flight attendant and it goes
[imitates button sound]
I took that and I pitch shifted it
into all of the different
chords in the second verse
so it followed every chord.
♪ Up all night ♪
♪ On another red eye ♪
♪ So you're a tough guy ♪
♪ Like it really rough guy ♪
♪ Just can't get enough guy ♪
♪ Chest always so puffed guy ♪
The sort of greatest
challenge of that song
was not overthinking it.
I did overthink it and then
just had to remove everything
I overthought about it.
I thought I was blowing it
by having an instrumental
post-chorus, that
[imitates music of "Bad Guy"]
[music of "Bad Guy" plays]
Billie had written all of
the lyrics for the outro
of the song, and I loved it immediately.
She was recording it all in her bedroom.
She had her two Yamaha HS5s
and an HS8S sub on shelves
and they were just
rattling the entire room,
so they sounded really insane.
♪ I like when you get mad ♪
♪ I guess I'm pretty
glad that you're alone ♪
One of the issues with overload protection
is when you bounce something that way,
it loses a lot of its fuzz.
And so then when I got the files,
they didn't have that emotion to them,
that just angry quality.
And so then I put headphones
on and just abused the sounds
until they sounded really aggressive.
And the breakthrough was
understanding eventually
that the two different parts of the songs
could be smashed together and
they would make it way cooler.
♪ I'm the bad guy, ha ♪
♪ Tore my shirt to stop you bleedin' ♪
We knew that we wanted it
to be almost entirely vocal.
Another instrument doesn't
come in on that song
until a minute, doesn't come
in until the first chorus
and it's just a sub bass.
♪ I could lie, say I like it like that ♪
♪ Like it like that ♪
It's three instruments.
It's just vocals, sub
bass and acoustic piano,
those are the only three
instruments in that song.
So making it interesting every measure
was super challenging.
♪ Let's just let it go ♪
♪ Let me let you go ♪
I don't have a final
count on the vocal tracks,
but probably around 100.
There were stacks of each
layer, of each harmony part.
There were stacks of
doubles of the lead vocal.
There were stacks of every
harmony of the lead vocal.
There were weird processed adlibs.
♪ Call me friend but keep me closer ♪
♪ Call me back ♪
That was another song we
worked on for weeks and weeks.
♪ I've been watching you for some time ♪
The first song that we ever
had that got any attention
from anybody was a song
called "Ocean Eyes".
Billie was really really
particular about how she wanted
her voice to sound on it.
There's so many harmonies on
that song, and so many doubles
and there's so many layers
of background vocals.
♪ Those ocean eyes ♪
♪ No fair ♪
Normally, you can knock
out an entire song's worth
of vocals in six hours.
I think we recorded vocals
for something like
seven days on that song.
I thought she sounded
great the whole time.
She just was like,
"I know exactly how I
want this line to sound"
and she wouldn't stop
until she got it to sound
exactly how she wanted it.
That was really early on
in our career, and I think
predominately we were
pulling from references
of artists like Aurora.
♪ And all this time I have been lying ♪
Artists like Lapsley.
♪ Crush coming over like the R.E.M. kind ♪
Maybe a little bit of Lana Del Ray.
♪ It's you, it's you, it's all for you ♪
Although I don't think
we even held a candle
to Lana with that song,
production wise anyway.
♪ You really know how to make me cry ♪
♪ When you gimme those ocean eyes ♪
♪ Like lovers or partners in crime ♪
There's a song on my EP
called "Partner's in Crime"
that was totally the hardest to get right.
The song centers around
an acoustic guitar riff
and I just could not
get the acoustic guitar
to sound the way that
I wanted it to sound.
I ended up recording it on my
iPhone in my tent green room
the day of the Leeds Festival.
[acoustic guitar riff plays]
And so you can hear a crowd of 40 thousand
just sort of out in the festival
waiting for Stormzy or somebody to go on,
and it's just me playing acoustic guitar.
♪ I lost a friend ♪
♪ Like keys in a sofa ♪
♪ Like a wallet in the backseat ♪
I think the challenge with
that song was I wanted it
to get to a place at the
end that felt really intense
but I wanted to start
really simple, and I think
just sort of that steady slow climb
was the biggest challenge.
♪ I lost a friend ♪
♪ Like sleep on a red-eye ♪
♪ Like money on a bad bet ♪
[track fast forwarding]
♪ I'll be fine without 'em ♪
♪ But all I do is write about 'em ♪
♪ How the hell did I lose
a friend I never had ♪
The coolest thing I felt that I found
was I had this flute
patch that I arpeggiated.
It's a weird patch but
once I got it right,
I was really pumped on it.
[flute patch playing]
Which sounded kind of
percussive ultimately,
just in its kind of high end.
♪ I lost my mind ♪
♪ And nobody believes me ♪
♪ Say "I know that he don't need me ♪
♪ "'Cause he made a little too
much money to be 20 and sad" ♪
If you played that flute on one key,
it would sound like an actual sample
of an actual person playing
it, because that's what it is.
But having it in this
super staccato, randomized,
playing a larger scale than it
would actually be played on,
really fun, exciting thing to me.
And that kind of allowed
it to build momentum.
On the impact of the second
chorus, the thing that ended up
really making the
difference was this sound
of this RPG going off.
[RPG hitting a car sample plays]
That textural sound of all
the glass breaking to me
is so much more interesting
than a crash on a cymbal.
♪ I lost my mind ♪
♪ And nobody believes me ♪
♪ Say, "I know that he don't need me" ♪
♪ There's nowhere else that
I'd rather be than with you ♪
I recorded the demo on a
really plunky synthesizer.
I like the [imitates synth sound]
[music of "Shelter" plays]
And it just didn't work on
the synth that I had it on.
It ended up not working on acoustic guitar
unless I played all of the
notes super high on the neck
and then isolated them all,
and then loaded them as samples
onto a keyboard and then
played it as a keyboard.
♪ There's no one else could
ever hold me like you do ♪
The chorus is really simple on "Shelter".
The chorus is just "Gimme
gimme shelter" and to me,
the exciting part is just
the three part layering
of vocals on there.
♪ Gimme gimme shelter from the storm ♪
♪ Gimme gimme shelter, keep me warm ♪
There's also a harmony part on
the word "lucky" in that song
that makes it much more interesting.
♪ They call us lucky ♪
♪ But I think we might be cursed ♪
To me, harmony is as big a component
as any instrument might be to
really fill out a recording.
♪ Let's fall in love for the
night and forget in the mornin' ♪
I liked it at this really
slow tempo and I also liked it
with kind of a backbeat
and this sort of Gorillaz
"Feel Good Inc" rhythm running through it.
♪ I love it when you
talk that nerdy shit ♪
♪ Windmill, windmill for the land ♪
♪ We're in our 20s talking 30s shit ♪
One of the things that I always
try to do in my production
is help articulate shifts in certain ways,
so I really wanted the moment
where the drums break in
and the bass breaks in
to feel sort of enhanced
and accentuated, and I felt
that the easiest way to do that
was to muffle all of the
high end out of the intro
and then to just pump
in to a hi-fi feeling
with the drums and the bass.
♪ I know better than to call you mine ♪
♪ You need a pick-me-up ♪
♪ I'll be there in 25 ♪
The other good example I could give
is that the same kind of effect happens
on the beginning of "Mr.
Brightside" by The Killers,
and in that one, they use panning
in a really interesting way.
They have the guitar hard
panned and the drums hard panned
and the vocal is really muffled.
♪ Coming out of my cage and
I've been doing just fine ♪
♪ Gotta gotta be down
because I want it all ♪
And then when the second part
of the first verse comes in,
it all busts out into a million hertz.
♪ It started out with a kiss ♪
♪ How did it end up like this ♪
♪ It was only a kiss, it was only a kiss ♪
♪ Now I'm falling asleep
and she's calling a cab ♪
It's probably the primary inspiration.
At the end of the track, when
the drums and the bass cut out
and it just goes to only acoustic
guitar and only my vocal,
I wanted to sort of keep some ear candy in
and so I layered in this
recording of frogs and crickets
in a field up in northern California.
♪ I know better than
to ever call you mine ♪
The challenge was just being
willing to abandon ship
at the end of the song, and
have the last 45 seconds
be a live take, which is kind
of risky because sometimes
you can lose a lot of momentum.
But I felt that in that
song's case, it needed to have
this super different feeling
for the last 45 seconds.
♪ I needed to hate you to love me, yeah ♪
♪ To love, love, yeah ♪
I got sent a version of the song
produced by Mattman and
Robin, who are producers
I've admired for a long time,
and so a lot of what I did
on the Selena track was add
these kind of wind tones
that you hear if you listen to that song.
♪ In the thick of healing, yeah ♪
♪ We'd always go into it blindly ♪
All the weird shimmery
textural sounds were me,
and then a couple of the synths were me.
There's a crazy sort of
[imitates whooshing sound] sound
that goes into the very
last chorus of the song
that I felt really proud of.
I felt like it didn't
have a transition moment
until I did that, so I was pumped on that.
♪ To love, love, yeah ♪
♪ To love, love, yeah ♪
♪ To love, yeah ♪
♪ It's gonna take me a minute ♪
♪ But I could get used to this ♪
♪ The feeling of your fingertips ♪
And the breakthrough on that song
was there's this weird reversed
[imitates bell sound] sound
that I used as the snare basically.
♪ I could get used to this ♪
♪ I could get used to this ♪
I recorded the sound, bounced
the sound, reversed it
and then had the reversed part of it
lead into it every time,
so each time it goes
[imitates bell sound].
And I think just that
kind of lurching motion
that it makes you feel helped me know
where everything else
would go production wise.
There's a line in the song where she says,
"It's gonna take me a minute,
but I could get used to this"
and so, I just thought it
would help embellish that line
to have it all be like [imitates
clicking sound] under it
so it functions as some
form of auxiliary percussion
but it's actually just a clock.
♪ It's gonna take me a minute ♪
♪ But I could get used to this ♪
♪ The feeling of your fingertips ♪
♪ Uh uh, I'm on bikini porn ♪
♪ Uh uh, laying out in the sun ♪
♪ Oh I got those marks on my ♪
I got sent a really simple
bare demo of that song,
which is definitely just the writing demo,
and it was just about
really getting that song
production wise to a place
where everybody was like,
"[beep] yeah, this is
where it needs to be."
There's a really incessant
vocal, sort of like whoop
in the song that plays a really big role.
♪ Uh uh ♪
- [Producer] I had no idea
that was a vocal, that sound.
- Yeah, but pitched.
The demo I sent had a great lead vocal,
but it had no harmonies at all.
It was one lead track,
and so I had to synthesize
all of the other harmonies.
I used a plugin called
Little AlterBoy to do that
and I left it on what's called Robot Mode
where it holds one pitch,
and then I automated
all of the pitch changes
into all of the vocals.
And I liked that it sounded robotic.
♪ Oh, I got you dangled around me ♪
I think if you're trying
to have hyper-realism,
you would go about it in a different way.
If you have a voice that
is in a higher register
and you pitch it down,
it doesn't sound like you singing lower.
It sounds like this
sort of a voice changer.
♪ All I do is drink champagne
all day, all day, all day ♪
♪ And I dance around my
room naked, oh yeah, naked ♪
All of every vocal layer
that isn't the lead
was artificial in that song.
♪ Take a day from your life
all day, one day, today ♪
