Tommy Brown: I knew “thank u, next” was
gonna be a smash when my mom called me and
sung the song and put her exes in place of
everybody else in the song.
She was like “Oh my God I love that song!
‘Thought I’d end up with Mark!’”
That's when I knew this was going to be a
hit.
Tommy Brown: The day we did the track, I wanna
say it was about the third or fourth day we
were in Jungle City.
We weren't talking about singles, we weren't
talking about projects, we weren't talking
about anything.
We were just like let's get together and do
some music.
Scootie: We were all in the room and talking
to Ariana just about life and what she was
going through, what she was dealing with in her life.
Kind of like what she wanted to say.
Mikey: It was interesting.
The vibe in the studio was...it was very songbird
and very real.
Everybody was kind of, everybody wanted to
be empathetic.
So, we were just with our friend at the time.
Not even producers and writers, we were with
our friend.
And so, we were just like yo, how can we help
you describe what you're feeling?
Tommy Brown: She wanted a fresh vibe.
She's like, “I want a good vibe.”
So, I went to the room with Mikey and Scootie
and Mikey had this loop or these chords and
I was like they were crazy.
Let's speed them up a little bit and let me
go in there and play it for her.
Mikey: I just played some simple chords and
added one melodic note above it and then put
it through some retro effects from XLN Audio
and some characterizing things just to make
the keyboard be more interesting.
Tommy Brown: I don't know much about dating,
much about a lot of things in life, but what
I do know is I can hear.
And when I heard those chords, I knew what
time it was. So when I played her the chords
they immediately jumped in and started doing
the song.
But by that time they had already had loops
and everything else on the beat, I was like
okay.
Scootie: We added a little bit of percussion
to spice it up a little bit, give it some
energy, some life.
Mikey: We probably looked wild.
We were in there jumping around and yelling
and stuff.
Tapping on stuff.
Scootie: It sounded really cool and gave the
chords a little bit of support.
Mikey: The next thing we added was the bass.
We didn’t wanna do just a stock 808 or anything
like that or just a simple bass so we added
a keyboard bass with a synth that slides a
little bit.
We wanted the song to feel a little more uplifting,
a little more energetic and playful.
It’s like a little wave, little bounce.
Scootie: Little fun fact: Mikey almost was
like, "I don't know if this should be in the track."
Mikey: It's fun and it moves, but I was like,
"Is it too simple?"
He was like, "Dude-"
Scootie: I looked him dead in his face and
was like, "You're tripping bro.You're tripping bro.”
Mikey: When working, one should always add
Scoot’s 808s.
He made this 808 that always just be crazy.
Every time.
And so we use that on everything.
Mikey: After that we just wanted to fill it
out.
We added more drums.
So we literally have probably a lot.
This is a lot.
I don't care how many.
It’s a lot.
Scootie: It's shocking to see it like this.
Mikey: We enjoy layering.
We feel like there's certain pockets you want
to put certain snares in just to fill up certain
space and leave open space.
So you can't use everything.
We used a lot on this though.
So now I’m gonna play you the drum loops
for the chorus and I’ll add the kicks and
snares and the hi-hats.
Scootie: You can hear us yelling in the background.
Mikey: We were literally yelling, “Huh! Yep!"
"Labba labba labba!"
"What! Yep!"
"Lamma lamma lamma!”
Mikey: We also added another keyboard layer.
It's the same chords.
It's just a little bit different of a pattern,
so we can have a different texture.
For the bridge, we wanted to keep the chords
in there, but we didn't want it to sound the
same, so we literally changed the keyboard
again and tucked it.
Filtered literally the top end of everything,
so it just sits down in the pocket.
Mikey: The final thing we did is we had to
let Tommy Brown get his dance off at the end
of it, so we had to keep a party going at
the end of the song.
It had to.
It had to.
So literally this brought all the drums and
stuff back just to have more fun.
Tommy Brown: Who doesn’t like fun?
Tommy Brown: Those are the main things that
we did with the production, but of course
we have our tips and tricks and little things
that we got in there.
Scootie: We can’t divulge.
Mikey: So I'm sorry if we miss something,
there's a lot of details in here and we've
only been here for a short amount of time,
but y'all can't have all the secrets anyway so...
Tommy Brown: We did the whole thing, we were
like it's perfect, it's the masterpiece, let's
get her in here.
She came into the room and said, “Those
chords are wrong.”
And I was like, "I don't hear it."
Mikey: So we went and literally went basically
like we would go in a session, went and literally
found one note somewhere tucked in one of
the very quiet keyboards.
Like I don't know how she heard it.
Tommy Brown: She’s a musical genius.
Mikey: No session is complete without an array
of amazingly arranged and recorded vocals
from Ariana Grande.
Tommy Brown: It was a room where production
was being worked on in a room where they were
writing the song and recording vocals.
And it was like the bounce back and forth
of the rooms.
Scootie: I remember he came running into the
production room like “Yo, you gotta hear this.”
We were like, “Oh snap. It's crazy?”
Bro!
Tommy Brown: Took a lot of courage to be that
honest.
Mikey: We just knew it was a special record.
And she said it was a smash, we don’t have
to say it.
Tommy Brown: You know what's so funny?
And she brought this up to me.
Before the studio sessions
and everything started, we were both personally
going through something because of a close
friend of ours.
And I was texting with her and I said "Your
next album is going to be the biggest thing
you've ever done."
She asked me why, I was just like, "You have
a lot to talk about."
And literally like a week later we all went
to New York and it was like, let's just throw
paint.
And then this happened.
Mikey: Literally when they brought us in the
room and we heard the actual finished vocals
and everything, it was like one of those moments
where you're like yo, it's about to go down.
This is a beautiful song.
