Lorde - Sober

Lorde is a Grammy Award-winning singer, songwriter, and producer. Her second album, Melodrama, debuted at number one on the charts in June 2017 – five months before her 21st birthday. In this episode, Ella breaks down her song “Sober.” You’ll hear how it started, with the original demos she made with her co-producer Jack Antonoff, and how the song changed over the course of working on it for months and months. Thanks to Sonos for their support of the podcast. Check out sonos.com. https://www.sonos.com/ For more, visitsongexploder.net/lorde. https://songexploder.net/lorde

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Hrishikesh Hirway?

  You're listening to Song Exploder, where musicians take apart their songs and, piece by piece, tell the story of how they were made. I'm Rishi Kesh Hirway.

• 0:11Hrishikesh Hirway?

  I'm going to be on tour, playing some shows this fall. I'm going to be in London on Wednesday, November 18th. I'm going to be performing solo at Roughtrade Records on Denmark Street, and I'm going to be in conversation about my music moderated by one of my favorite actors and writers, Matthew Bainton. And a ticket to the show also gets you a copy of my album on vinyl or CD. And in December, I'm going to be on tour supporting S. Carry. We're going to be playing a bunch of shows in the Northeast US. So I hope to see you in one of those places. You can find all the details and get links to tickets at songexploder.net/live. That's songexploder.net/live.

• 0:55Hrishikesh Hirway?

  I've talked about Quince before on the show and how some of my favorite clothes are things that I've gotten from their website. But they have a lot of categories beyond clothes. For example, I just ordered a cotton velvet tree skirt, which is the thing that goes around the Christmas tree to hide the stand and the cords from the lights and stuff. And it also catches pine needles. I grew up with an artificial tree, so I'm kind of new to the ways of having a real tree. But Quince is letting me step my game up. And everything at Quince is priced 50 to 80% less than similar brands. So it's a great place to do all of your holiday shopping, whether you're buying clothes or accessories or stuff for your house. Give the gift of quality this holiday season. Download the Quince app for app-exclusive offers

• 1:39Hrishikesh Hirway?

  or go to quince.com. Get free shipping on your order and 365-day returns. It's now available in Canada and the UK, too. And when Quince asks you where you heard about them, let them know it was Song Exploder. It's the best way to support the show. This episode is sponsored by the podcast, What It's Like to Be. Do you ever think about what other people's workdays look like? Satisfying some of that curiosity is the idea at the heart of bestselling author Dan Heath's podcast, which is called What It's Like to Be. In each episode, Dan interviews someone from a different profession to find out what it's like to be a professional Santa Claus, or a Secret Service agent,

• 2:22Hrishikesh Hirway?

  or a long haul truck driver, or an aerospace engineer at NASA, just to name a few examples. The show gives you an insider view into all kinds of jobs from a wide range of industries, answering questions like, what do mail carriers learn about us from our mail? There are so many jobs out there that exist only as titles in our imagination, if they even register that much. This show is a chance to reach beyond what you know, or think you know. If you're curious to learn more about the work lives of other people, check out What It's Like to Be, wherever you get podcasts. This episode contains explicit language. Lorde just put out a new song and announced that she has a new album coming out this June. She's also touring in the fall with some past Song Exploder guests like Blood Orange and Empress Ave

• 3:06Hrishikesh Hirway?

  as support. And so, hearing all of this news these days, I thought it'd be nice to revisit her Song Exploder episode from 2017. She came over to the studio, and I have a very cute photo of her playing with my dog from right before we recorded the interview. Here's her episode on Sober. Lorde is a Grammy Award winning singer, songwriter, and producer.

• 3:26Speaker 01

  My full name is Ella Maria Lani Yelich Okona. So it's a whole thing.

• 3:31Hrishikesh Hirway?

  Her second album, Melodrama, debuted at number one on the charts in June 2017, five months before her 21st birthday. In this episode, Ella breaks down her song Sober. You'll hear how it started with the original demos she made with her co-producer, Jack Antonoff, and how the song changed over the course of working on it for months and months.

• 4:00Speaker 01

  My name is Lord, I'm breaking down, My Song's Over. I remember I had spent the summer in New Zealand and I was reeling from this summer, which was very much like wild and fluorescent, that first summer on the cusp of being an adult. I'd just come out of a relationship and was just like drinking all the time. I was just like either like sleeping or getting ready for like what we were gonna do that night. When you come out of a relationship, you just want to fill the quiet as best you can. You know, you're like, I just don't wanna deal with this quiet yet, so I'm gonna make every moment full and social and busy and loud and then I won't have to think about it.

• 4:42Speaker 01

  So this song in particular was set at a party, but there's such angst to it. I have this like very distinct memory of standing in the corner of my lounge, having like a very tense conversation with somebody and people on my back porch dancing. The DNA of SOBA is wanting to tell someone how you feel and knowing they feel the same way and needing the evening's theatre to come and have all the characters going and then you can let your guard down. That was kind of the spread of the night which became SOBA. I worked on this record with my co-producer and co-writer, Jack Antonoff. People sort of tell you you have to come to LA.

• 5:28Speaker 01

  They send you to all these like fancy studios and I think when you're beginning a project, that can be terrifying. So there's Westlake Recording Studios, which is like very fancy and Michael Jackson recorded there and I couldn't make anything good there. And then we discovered this room down the back, which is like a production room. We called it The Rat Nest. It's like this tiny little room, very dirty and that room really was the room where SOBA started to take shape. The whole thing started on the June 106. And I just recorded these vocals.

• 6:11Speaker 01

  This slow, kind of droning version, which existed for a long time. Just like this moody, emotional journey. I knew exactly where the chords had to go. I was literally pulling Jack's sleeve going, no, no, no here.

• 6:25Speaker 02

  So to me, it seemed like, can you do it like this so clear?

• 6:36Speaker 01

  Through a lot of this process, you know, I had such specific ideas about all of this stuff. I knew exactly what it was so early. And he was very open to me playing God over the writing session in such an intense way with that, which is cool and a lot of people, you know, I think would not be so good at doing that. For a long time, Jack was like, I like the song. I don't, I don't know if I quite, you know, visualize it like you do. And I was like, trust me, this is my passion project. Like, so it does the verse and then it goes.

• 7:22Speaker 01

  And it's an uneven number of bars. It's just this weird thing that my brain absolutely needs. And like, props to Jack, that's why I love Jack so much. He was sort of trying to get his head around it when we were writing it. And he was like, oh, there's an extra bar. I said, is that wrong? He was like, no. If Jack had been like, no, we can't do that. I think that would have really changed the course of what we ended up doing for this album. But the fact that he's like, no, it's cool. We can make it work. So April 2016, we go to Coachella, Jack and I. We're in a studio and we can work in the day and go to the festival at night. So we went to the studio and I was like, I love the idea of it just snapping into this little groove.

• 8:06Speaker 01

  And I sung Jack the rhythm of the groove that I wanted and he made it really quickly.

• 8:13Speaker 01

  Jack is always just like going around hitting a bunch of shit and the main sound in this little bongo he like hit with the drumstick.

• 8:22Speaker 01

  And then I, I went.

• 8:28Speaker 01

  It's a vocal sample. It's me going, night, midnight, lose my mind. I, midnight, lose my mind.

• 8:37Speaker 01

  As soon as I heard that first loop, I went.

• 8:42Speaker 01

  I really clipped it kind of Princey or MJ-ish and, and just put it over the top.

• 8:53Speaker 01

  So the song was like really intense and droney and serious. And then right at the end for like 20 seconds, it just flipped into the funnest groove ever. And, you know, it felt like changing the radio station or something, which I was into. It was cool. And it stayed like that for a really long time.

• 9:14Speaker 01

  So flash forward, New York, November 7th, my birthday. We're in a studio. We're at that stage with the album where we needed someone to take us out of our zone a little bit. And we meet Malay, who is very wonderful, works on Frank Ocean, and realised he is my favourite type of producer. He wants to hear you talk about the genesis of the song and the emotional energy. And like, I'm sort of used to clipping my language for technical people, you know, because people don't want to hear about the colour of an evening or the way a light looked on a wall or whatever. But he really does and it really helps him do great work.

• 9:56Speaker 01

  And so with the song, I was like, just met him and I was kind of just looking at the floor and telling him the story of the song. And he was like, okay, cool. We booked the big room downstairs, an electric lady for him to muck around in. And then we went down there the next day and Malay has taken that groove.

• 10:16Speaker 01

  That groove that came in right at the end of the song, that 20 seconds, and underlaid it underneath the whole song. And he's taken out these really serious minory chords that were like, the chords of my fucking dreams, and replaced them with these buoyant, urgent, insistent party chords.

• 10:40Speaker 01

  And I was like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. The song feels right for the first time in almost a year. It was incredible. We were just floored by it. It had the movement that it needed. It instantly felt like we were in the vignette that we'd been chasing for a long time. He was like, yeah, I had to sacrifice your perfect chords. I was like, it's okay, because it worked so well. And that was really exciting to me. So it really needed to just be pushed off the edge by him. Yeah, it was so funny that that didn't come from me. But you know, sometimes even when you do know what something deserves to be, it takes somebody else's good idea to get it there and for there to be fresh years involved. And I think in that session, I also came up with the little stop. It goes,

• 11:32Speaker 01

  just kicks down for a second and then goes back up.

• 11:37Hrishikesh Hirway?

  More with Lorde after this.

• 11:43Hrishikesh Hirway?

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• 12:30Hrishikesh Hirway?

  This year, my wife and I are hosting Thanksgiving at our house. And in anticipation of that, I've already started some of the planning. And one of the things that I realized I wanted to have was some kind of small but elegant serving tray that I could put snacks and stuff on while we're just hanging out before the meal starts. So I turned to Wayfair and I found the perfect thing. These small wooden plates made from acacia. They match the rest of the vibe of my house and I'm going to be using them even when it's not Thanksgiving. For all things hosting, Wayfair delivers high-quality, customer-trusted products for your home, so you can host and celebrate without the stress. If you're hosting for any of the many holidays coming up, take a look at the website to browse for ideas or look for something very specific.

• 13:14Hrishikesh Hirway?

  You can use filters and reviews and photos from other customers to help you find the perfect thing. When you're refreshing your home this holiday season, Wayfair delivers exactly what you need. Head to wayfair.com to shop all things home. That's W A Y F A I R dot com. Today's episode is sponsored by Function Health, and I've been a Function Health member for over a year now. I have to say, I'm pretty grateful to have a service that lets me track my health because it's not really my natural inclination to do it myself. And especially around the holidays and holiday feasts and travel and vacation, I have to keep my health a priority. There's a saying that I think about a lot. That which can be measured can be improved.

• 13:56Hrishikesh Hirway?

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• 14:34Speaker 01

  We recorded the vocal for this verse with Kook Harrell. Kook is a legend. He just records vocals, that's all he does. He does all of Rihanna's vocals. And in a song like this, especially this verse, the timing is like very syncopated.

• 14:51Speaker 03

  We're sleeping through all the days.

• 14:53Speaker 01

  I would kind of let days go as long as it can and then it would have to snap back and go to the next part. And my favourite thing to do with vocals is get so specific. Just this drop more of regret or anger or lust or this tiny smile on this word would you rip away on the next word. You know, I'm really into like emotional molecular chemistry. And getting this vocal bouncing off the walls perfectly. Could not have done that without Kook.

• 15:21Speaker 03

  We're sleeping through all the days. I'm acting like I don't see every ribbon you used to tie yourself to me.

• 15:30Speaker 01

  Second verse to the song is one of my favourite things I've done with vocal production. I'm a big fan of thinking about the characters that my vocals are playing in songs. I always think about that. And there's always those moments in a party where you're sort of throwing your head back and forth and being like, what is this like fun house of terror that I'm running around? And you know, especially if you're drunk, who knows what else is going on, you know? And I love this idea of there aren't people in your house. There are just bodies walking around and you only care about one person at the party anyway. And it's like these little kind of voices pinging out. Maybe they belong to these detached bodies.

• 16:08Speaker 03

  Oh God, I'm closing my teeth around this slicker wet lime night. Lose my mind, I know you're feeling it too.

• 16:17Speaker 01

  We basically recorded straight harmonies through the verse and then chose little moments for them to ping out here and there. And they, certain harmonies only exist on a certain word. It's like all those little voices in your head that are like telling you someone's bad news. There's like so many different vibes that the vocals in that second verse take on.

• 16:42Speaker 01

  Just these like little bratty, kind of shouts in the back of the song. So I feel like the lead is you saying what you wanna say. And then sometimes those are what slips out. Imagine this narrator like trying to keep those voices in and just ah. And you said, oh shit, cover your mouth, you know, ah. It's just like popping out all over the show.

• 17:07Speaker 01

  There's always an element of strange feedback ticking away at the back of a Jack Antonoff song to really like give it body. And I love that.

• 17:20Speaker 01

  This is some classic Jack Antonoff shit right there. Jack's always doing a lot of that, taking a sound and pitching it and distorting it and pulling it to a weird place. Oh, and then I had the idea for the horns. Do you remember all that great Hudson Mohawk, Luda stuff? I mean, it was the best. I was raised on tonight. Like, that's 10% of why I make the music that I make.

• 17:49Speaker 01

  I was like, we just need like a ton of brass, you know? Our engineer Laura, Laura Sisk, who is the greatest engineer in America. I sort of let her take charge of this horn part. So the first line, which eventually was played on a horn, but was first on that duno, was the do, do, do, do, do. I was like, we have to just get triumphant there. So we started with tenor and baritone sax.

• 18:18Speaker 01

  And I was like, we definitely need trumpet.

• 18:25Speaker 01

  It was sitting there and we just kept telling them to play harder and harder and harder. And they were like, this is, it sounds like our instruments are breaking. And we were like, yeah, yeah. That's 100% the vibe we're going for.

• 18:40Speaker 01

  Just play it kind of inappropriately. I wanna hear the edges of your instrument.

• 18:47Speaker 01

  And then.

• 18:52Speaker 01

  Can you hear that? That's a fucking tiger's roar. There is low key a tiger's roar starting that bridge, which was just the kind of like ridiculous dramatic flourish that it needed. We were in one of the last two sessions for this song. And Jack was just like going through, he just has these endless banks of bizarre samples. And we just find this tiger's roar, which I thought was so cool. I love the way it swells the top of that part. That's like one of my favorite sneaky things on that song. So next time you're listening to Sober, please enjoy the tiger's roar at the top of the bridge, because it's our baby and we love it.

• 19:45Speaker 01

  New Zealand is so beautiful. And every day I just found myself kind of so moved by the light and like all of these bodies and the water and people on my back porch dancing.

• 20:01Speaker 01

  It really does feel like a very specific vignette from two years ago. It's a very specific, beautiful image to me, but it definitely feels like the past. Coming into, you know, early adulthood and every party felt so monumental and so endlessly inspiring and intoxicating and interesting. And there's a reason I wrote an entire record about partying. But it's very interesting, like you finish the record and that door really does close. My research trip ended essentially. I did all the like exploration I needed to do. And it's funny to look back on remembering these evenings and taking so much from them and injecting so much meaning

• 20:44Speaker 01

  and then being so transcendent and feeling a lot of affection for that time. But also like, you know, it's a little more chill now. I'm like, I'm not making every drink like it's the last drink I'm ever gonna make, you know?

• 21:04Hrishikesh Hirway?

  And now here's Sober by Lorde in its entirety.

• 21:17Speaker 03

  Oh god, I'm clean out of air in my lungs, it's all gone Play it so nonchalant, it's time we dance with the truth

• 21:29Speaker 03

  Move along with the truth, ooh Hey, we're sleeping through all the days I'm acting like I don't see Every ribbon you used to tie yourself to me But my hips are mischievous So let's get to know the kicks, will you sway with me? Go astray with me? You're a queen of the weekend Ain't a pill that could touch our rush But what will we do when we're sober? I'm a dream with a fever Bet you wish you could touch our rush But what will we do when we're sober?

• 22:12Speaker 03

  These are the games of the weekend We pretend that we just don't care But we care What will we do when we're sober? I'm a dream with a fever Bet you wish you could touch our rush But what will we do when we're sober? Oh god, I'm closing my teeth around this slicker wet lime Night, lose my mind, I know you're feeling it too

• 22:42Speaker 03

  Can we keep up with the rules? Ah, hey But bodies all through my house, I know the story by heart Jack and Jill got fucked up and possessive when it get dark But my hips are mischievous So let's get to know the kicks, will you sway with me? Go astray with me? You're a queen of the weekend Ain't a pill that could touch our rush

• 23:15Speaker 03

  We do what we saw. I'm in your dream with a fever. Bet you wish you could touch our rush. But what would we do what we saw? These are the games of the weekend. We pretend that we just don't care. Oh, we care. We do what we saw. I'm in your dream with a fever. Bet you wish you could touch our rush. But what would we do what we saw? And I have a feeling. Daylight, we're shaded. We know that it's over in the morning. You'll be dancing with all the heartache and the treason, the fantasies of believing. But we know that when it's over in the morning,

• 24:00Speaker 03

  you'll be dancing with us. Oh, dancing with us. Oh, you'll be dancing with us. Can you feel it? Can you feel it? Dancing with us. I. We do what we saw. Us.

• 24:25Hrishikesh Hirway?

  To learn more, visit songexploder.net/lord. You'll find links to buy or stream Sober, and you can watch the music video. This episode was originally produced by me and Christian Kuns with production assistance from Olivia Wood. This reissue was made by me and Mary Dolan. Song Exploder is a proud member of Radiotopia from PRX, a network of independent, listener-supported, artist-owned podcasts. You can learn more about our shows at radiotopia.fm. You can follow me and Song Exploder on Instagram, and you can get a Song Exploder t-shirt at songexploder.net/shirt. I'm Rishi Kesh Hirway. Thanks for listening.