Key Change: James Acaster on OutKast

My guest today is James Acaster, a comedian, author, musician, and interviewer. He's filmed comedy specials for HBO and Netflix, which are hilarious and high concept. His musical project, Temps, has released an album and an EP. He’s written multiple books, including one about how the year 2016 was the greatest year for music. James also co-hosts the food podcast Off Menu, with comedian Ed Gamble. And I've listened to more hours of Off Menu than any other podcast. James and Ed don't know it, but they're my best friends. And I have lured James out of the parasocial relationship that we have in my head and into this conversation with me, to talk about a song that had a profound effect on his life. For more, visit songexploder.net/keychange https://songexploder.net/keychange. You can listen to "Hey Ya!" by OutKast here https://song.link/i/255964670.

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 Rough Trade 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?

  There's a new podcast called Before the Moment with Nile Rodgers. In every legendary music career, there's a moment right before it all changes. And in every episode of this podcast, Nile Rodgers talks to a legendary musician about the choices, the events, and the relationships that shaped their career before the moment that everything changed for them. Every story is unique and opens a window into the lives of some of the biggest names in music. And Nile is the perfect person to lead these conversations because for over 50 years, he's played guitar with artists like Diana Ross, David Bowie, Madonna, Daft Punk, and Beyonce. In the first season of the podcast, some of Nile's guests include John Legend, Miguel, and more.

• 1:39Hrishikesh Hirway?

  New episodes are coming out every other Tuesday. Listen to Before the Moment with Nile Rodgers wherever you get your podcasts. 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, 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

• 2:23Hrishikesh Hirway?

  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.

• 2:47Hrishikesh Hirway?

  This is Key Change, where I talk to fascinating people about the music that transformed their lives. My guest today is James Acaster, a comedian, author, musician, and interviewer. He's filmed comedy specials for HBO and Netflix, which are hilarious and high concept. His musical project, Temps, has released an album and an EP. He's written multiple books, including one about how the year 2016 was the greatest year for music. James also co-hosts the food podcast Off Menu with comedian Ed Gamble. I've listened to more hours of Off Menu than any other podcast. James and Ed don't know it, but they're my best friends, and I have lured James out of the parasocial relationship that we have in my head and into this conversation with me to talk about a song that had a profound effect on his life.

• 3:32Hrishikesh Hirway?

  So, James, thank you so much for being here.

• 3:35Speaker 01

  I love that. I love that there's a parasocial relationship and a real one at the same time.

• 3:41Hrishikesh Hirway?

  The parasocial one goes very deep.

• 3:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, that guy, I can't compete with him. I accept that you're his best friend, and that's cool. But like, I'm happy to have our relationship as well.

• 3:51Hrishikesh Hirway?

  OK, great. Well, what song are we going to talk about?

• 3:55Speaker 01

  I mean, it's gonna seem really obvious and basic, but we're gonna talk about Hey Ya is what we're gonna talk about.

• 4:01Hrishikesh Hirway?

  I don't think that seems either obvious or basic, especially in the year 2025. It's been 22 years since OutKast released it, so I'm excited to talk about it.

• 4:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, I guess like, I was 18, I think, when it came out. And it was everywhere and you couldn't get away from Hey Ya.

• 4:19Hrishikesh Hirway?

  Yeah.

• 4:19Speaker 01

  I did a DJ set at Glastonbury Festival with a friend of mine, who's Ottawa comedian, Nish Kumar. And there was someone relentlessly requesting Hey Ya, who was maybe fifteen years old. And I don't know what their relationship is like with the song. Cause they haven't heard it absolutely in every single bar they walk in, every time they turn on the TV, every time they turn on the radio. So I don't know what it's like for them.

• 4:45Hrishikesh Hirway?

  And when did you hear the song for the first time?

• 4:48Speaker 01

  The first time I heard it wasn't actually Audrey 3000 playing the song. I was doing a music course in Northampton, where I grew up. And one of the bands on the course played an acoustic version of it to the class. And I knew it was an Outkast cover, but I was like, this song is incredible. I have to go and listen to this actual song right away. But they had learnt it like, you know, a day after it had come out and played it to everyone. And I wasn't really listening to that sort of music at the time. So it just passed me by in the day it had been out, but instantly loved it.

• 5:26Hrishikesh Hirway?

  Were you already an Outkast fan?

• 5:28Speaker 01

  Not really. From the ages of thirteen to seventeen, I was just listening to punk and metal and that was it. You know, finding my tribe in school and trying to be with those guys and just being completely shut off to anything else. And then I'd left school, gone on this music course, which was not a proper qualification. It wasn't really a proper course, but the whole point of it was that you form a band and everyone's in bands in the course and they're playing their songs to each other. And while I was on that course, I was like, I'm gonna listen to as much music as possible. I'm not gonna shut myself off anymore. I'm gonna be really open to loads of different genres. So I'd be listening to a lot of jazz, I'd be listening to electronic music.

• 6:14Speaker 01

  But I hadn't really gone all the way into hip hop yet, and I definitely hadn't gone anywhere near pop music yet.

• 6:20Hrishikesh Hirway?

  Yeah.

• 6:21Speaker 01

  So this really poppy song from a rapper was not something that was on my radar yet at the time. I was open to it, but I hadn't yet discovered. How incredible pop music is and also how mind blowing rap music is.

• 6:40Hrishikesh Hirway?

  When you were at that music course, were you playing drums in bands?

• 6:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, so I decided when I was at school, I'm not going to go to university, I'm not going to carry on being at this school. I'm just going to focus on being in a band. Didn't know where to find other musicians, saw that course, the whole point of it is forming a band, I'm going to go there, I'm going to do that. But I was open handed as a drummer, I played like left handed even though I was right handed.

• 7:03Hrishikesh Hirway?

  Yeah.

• 7:03Speaker 01

  And a drummer that I really respected told me, you need to switch over. I'd been playing drums for like 10 years at that point and they were like, you need to learn how to play right handed.

• 7:15Hrishikesh Hirway?

  Why?

• 7:15Speaker 01

  Because they were saying, if you go to any gig, the drums are set up for a righty. You want to be able to sit down and just play it, it's just going to make your life easier. I was ambidextrous when I was like a little, little kid.

• 7:26Hrishikesh Hirway?

  Yeah.

• 7:27Speaker 01

  And all of my teachers and my parents just encouraged me to be right handed and were like, it's an easier life. Just do it. But I was just naturally, I picked up my knife and fork left handed and drums left handed, just most things I would quite naturally do left handed. So I spent the summer before starting that course, learning how to play drums right handed. Which meant I went from thinking I was this really good drummer, I really had a high opinion of myself as a drummer. Definitely inflated looking back, but I thought I was brilliant to absolutely being like, I can't play the drums. I remember when the course started, I was pretty nervous and I was like, I'm not where I want to be or where I was.

• 8:09Speaker 01

  But that was my main instrument and luckily there wasn't too many other drummers on the course, so I was able to get in a band fairly easily.

• 8:17Hrishikesh Hirway?

  Do you think relearning how to play the drums and opening yourself up to new genres of music were related at all? Like you're retraining your brain on the drums and maybe also retraining your brain on how to listen to music?

• 8:31Speaker 01

  Definitely, I think leaving school, like deciding to leave school. And not go to university, which is what I'm supposed to do. Definitely did change my mind to be a bit more like, you can do anything. I met someone on the college course called Graham, who I instantly bonded with, who was kind of at the same point. He was older than me, but he had quit his job as a plumber to decide to try and be a guitarist. So we were both like, we just suddenly realised, you can do anything in life. We could go around, we were very obnoxious at that point. I think he would admit that as well. We would argue with people about stuff that we didn't even really particularly care about, but we just realised we could argue when we'd never argued before. We'd always been like agreeable types.

• 9:15Speaker 01

  But the positive side of it was, we were like, we can play anything, we can play any instrument, let's just go for it, let's just sit down, work it out. No one can tell us what kind of music we can listen to and get into whatever we want. We can study it, understand it, not understand it, whatever we want to do. And that was a really exciting part of that time was just, yeah, being like, let's not limit ourselves anymore.

• 9:38Hrishikesh Hirway?

  The James that I'm imagining before this programme, a drummer who thinks very highly of his playing and listens to punk and metal. I mean, I think I either was very close or possibly was that person at that age as well. Was it tough for you to make that switch from being like, this is exactly what I listen to, to no, I'm going to let in other kinds of music?

• 9:59Speaker 01

  I think, I don't know if I've been wanting to do it for a while, but it definitely stopped making sense to me to just continue to listen to one style of stuff. Although in Kettering, the town that I grew up in, all the kids who were into alternative music really quite heavily at that point got into old school alternative music. So they all suddenly got into Sabbath and ACDC and it wasn't about what was current, which, you know, to be fair to them, their taste have absolutely stood the test of time. Whereas what I was listening to at that point were predominantly new metal bands and, you know, bands that are very cringe now. But within that friendship group, within that whole

• 10:43Speaker 01

  music scene in Kettering. I still was sticking to my guns, even with them, and being like, no, no. I like this new Tapfruit album. And you guys don't know what you're talking about because you're listening to stuff where they just, that's how metal's always been. But I'm listening to stuff where they're pushing it forward and it's exciting.

• 11:02Hrishikesh Hirway?

  I'm listening to nu metal, nu is in the title.

• 11:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's literally called nu metal, you Philistines.

• 11:08Hrishikesh Hirway?

  Did you think it was exciting that they spelled nu metal N U instead of N E W?

• 11:12Speaker 01

  It's extremely exciting. I wouldn't have been lured in by it if it was N E W. Was it, did one of my teachers invent it? I'm not gonna listen to that. So I think that when I did start being like, I'm gonna listen to anything. It was actually quite an easy jump because it was like, oh, I should have been doing this all along. Yeah, I'm running my mouth off about how great it is, people innovating in one genre of music within this very tight parameters. But actually, there's all this stuff that I clearly love and enjoy. And there were some like gateway bands and bridges and stuff. But "Hey Ya" was the proper like, oh, we've completely shifted into, I'm not being a snob anymore. I mean, you couldn't really be a snob with that song. It was so good.

• 11:53Speaker 01

  You would have to be, you know, willfully a contrarian to not like it. But it meant that it completely just got my head out of my ass and made me actually appreciate anything by its own worth.

• 12:06Hrishikesh Hirway?

  Okay, before we go into OutKast's version of the song, will you tell me more about the cover that you heard? Were you sitting in a classroom when this band was playing it?

• 12:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, there was really uninspiring, energy-draining cabins that we were all sat in. It had like stark white walls and they were echoey and people would fall asleep in the lessons all the time. And I remember, it was a lesson was like, we're gonna do an acoustic song each, each of the bands. And it had to be a cover. I remember that the main guy in that band was called Tim. He was a red-haired guy. I think there was an acoustic bass involved and maybe one of those, you know, whatever that drum's called that you sit on, that box.

• 12:45Hrishikesh Hirway?

  Oh, a cajon?

• 12:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think it was that. And at the time, Graham and I were really into learning new time signatures and not everything being in 4/4.

• 12:58Hrishikesh Hirway?

  Yeah.

• 12:59Speaker 01

  And the main place we'd found that was in post-hardcore music or jazz music. Then they played Hey Ya and it's just got that one bar of two.

• 13:09Hrishikesh Hirway?

  Yeah.

• 13:09Speaker 01

  In the chorus. And that was so hooky to me and worked so well and it was like a undeniable pop song. That was also doing what I considered at the time to be like intelligent. Now I know that there's all sorts of intelligence in music that isn't just, oh, that person can count in certain ways. But at that point I was like, whoa, that's like really good songwriting and I couldn't wait for that bit to come around again. I literally can picture that Tim guy in my head, sitting on a chair, playing the acoustic guitar, looking down as he was singing. And doing that bit where it's a bar of two in the chorus and maybe like I have to hear this song.

• 13:53Hrishikesh Hirway?

  So when did you go and listen to the actual song and where were you for that?

• 13:57Speaker 01

  I went and bought it. I was still very entrenched in buying CDs at that point.

• 14:02Hrishikesh Hirway?

  Yeah.

• 14:02Speaker 01

  So I went to the Kettering HMV in the weekend. I bought the double album. And I don't remember sitting down and listening to it for the first time, but I remember constantly listening to it.

• 14:14Hrishikesh Hirway?

  And was it clear to you how popular it was everywhere?

• 14:17Speaker 01

  Yeah. And you know, at that age as well, I was starting to like, actually like go out with my friends and go to bars or clubs or whatever. And I've got, yeah, distinct memories of like being in the sound house in Northampton, may it rest in peace. And then playing Hey Ya and just everyone who was sitting down suddenly is on the dance floor. And that pretty much being the case anywhere that you went around that point. And it was gonna be on at some point in the night. It would have been nuts if a DJ didn't drop it at some point because it's just, it's just an open goal. Surely you want an easy night to some degree.

• 14:55Speaker 01

  And it still would be now. That's the thing. Nish and I didn't play it at Glastonbury because it made me laugh too much. That someone had held their phone up that said, play Hey Ya. And I laughed because it was such an obvious song to request. I always think when you're requesting songs. You know, it probably should be something you don't think they're gonna play. To play something that is so well known made me laugh.

• 15:18Hrishikesh Hirway?

  Yeah.

• 15:18Speaker 01

  And then the guy tapped on his phone a bit more and then showed us the screen again and it just said, please. And made me laugh again. To be fair to the guy who requested it, it would not have been out of place at all because we're doing one after the other. We play a song.

• 15:30Hrishikesh Hirway?

  Mm hmm.

• 15:30Speaker 01

  And the game became whatever the last person played, you kind of play the opposite to that. Uh, genre wise, but we were still trying to play songs that everyone knew. So we absolutely should have played Hey Ya. Especially because we both had it downloaded already as part of our day to day lives. So we should have, we should have played it.

• 15:50Hrishikesh Hirway?

  Yeah.

• 15:51Speaker 01

  I hadn't listened to it in quite a long time. And then cause I was gonna do this, I was like, I'm gonna listen to that particular song again. And it still makes me feel the same. It really is still a really exciting, unique song that I don't think I found that energy anywhere else.

• 16:08Hrishikesh Hirway?

  Well, I was wondering when you started hearing it everywhere, if that changed your feelings about it at all.

• 16:13Speaker 01

  Definitely when I was into new metal and suddenly Limp Bizkit were number one. I felt a bit of that. But with Hey Ya, at that point, I was playing music all the time with my friend. Trying to make something that was innovative and accessible. We were very obsessed with, we wanted to have a huge album, and bearing in mind we failed. We wanted to have a huge album that was also incredibly innovative and original. And when I heard that album and that song, that's how I felt about it. I thought this is really inventive. And yet, I think it was number one. Everyone was listening to it. It was huge. So when I was like

• 16:58Speaker 01

  out for the night and they'd play Hey Ya, a song that I was like, these people don't even know that he drops a bar of two halfway through the chorus. They haven't got a clue and they're all dancing to it and they don't, they don't get thrown off by it. They're not dancing and then the bar of two comes on. They're like, whoa, hey, what, what, what happened? Like they're all still dancing. So to me, it was extremely inspiring. Cause I was like, yeah, you can do. Smart music, make smart choices, be a bit avant garde within pop music and still everyone will love it. And that was really what I wanted at that point. Music that I liked to be in the mainstream because I wanted to make music that would be in the mainstream. I didn't want to be this weird little band. And looking back at the kind of band that I

• 17:41Speaker 01

  was in, what were we thinking that that would ever have been in the mainstream? We were lucky if we even got it into the alternative scenes. But like, I definitely, that's what I wanted at the time. My desire was to have really weird music in the mainstream. So this rapper who had been the weird half of this duo for a while, had fully let into that, did an album on his own as part of this double album and released this song that I felt was sneaking weirdness under the radar for everyone and they weren't realising how weird it was. So it was, I was delighted when everyone was dancing to that song.

• 18:17Hrishikesh Hirway?

  My conversation with James Acaster continues after this.

• 18:23Hrishikesh Hirway?

  Thanks to Stio for sponsoring Song Exploder. I took a trip to Iceland this summer and because it was the summer, I didn't really think about dressing for the cold. Even though I was hiking and I was planning on seeing some glaciers, I thought, it's August. But then I got there and I realised I made a huge mistake. Now though, I have a Stio hometown hooded jacket and I just wished I'd gotten it before my trip. All of Stio's clothes are designed and tested in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, by locals who live, work and ski in below freezing temperatures. I'm headed back out into the cold this winter, but now I'll have my insulated hooded Stio jacket. Ski season's almost here, so gear up now

• 19:06Hrishikesh Hirway?

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• 19:25Hrishikesh Hirway?

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• 20:00Speaker 02

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• 20:33Hrishikesh Hirway?

  So around this time in your life, were you already thinking about becoming a comedian?

• 20:37Speaker 01

  Not really, no, not at all. Around then, so when I was 21, I did my first comedy gig, and that was just to see if I could do it. Again, it was partly tied into that era of my life. I was like, let's just do everything. But also, I'd had this car accident that really freaked me out. I could have easily died in it. I emerged without a scratch on me, but I really got obsessed with, oh, I'm not going to be here forever. So it was a bit of a bucket list lifestyle of anything revealing itself, do that thing. One of the things I wanted to do at the time was do more volunteer work. I painted an old lady's kitchen through this Kettering volunteer service. They asked me if they could do anything for me in return. I said no, because I hadn't done a good job of painting the kitchen.

• 21:23Speaker 01

  They were like, we need to write something on the form. Can you just say something that you would like to do? And I was like, I wanna do stand up comedy at some point. I wanna do a stand up comedy gig. And they were like, okay, well, we can't organize that, but we'll write it on the form. And then coincidentally, a week later, a guy came in asking them if they could help him put on a stand up comedy workshop for younger people. And they signed me up to it without asking me and phoned me up and said, well, we've signed you up to this thing. So I did that for nine weeks, did a gig on the 10th week. And then even then, I was thinking, I'm not gonna do this as a job. I'm in a band. That's who I'm gonna be. I'm a drummer. So I would do a gig every four months, a stand up comedy gig, just for the adrenaline of it and because it was just fun.

• 22:09Speaker 01

  And it wasn't until the band stopped when I was 22, so just a year later, a year and a half later, that I was like, I don't think I have the energy emotionally or mentally to start another band. So I'm gonna do stand up comedy in the meantime, just for the adventure of it.

• 22:26Hrishikesh Hirway?

  Do you think that the way that you play drums and the way that you perform comedy or construct your material, do you think that they're similar?

• 22:35Speaker 01

  I definitely notice and tour managers of mine and like venue techs, people who've seen me every day, have noticed that like there are some routines, some delivery, some lines that are always rhythmically the same. Because I'll find that is the best way that that joke works. That's the best way of making it land. And I will remember that that's how you deliver that bit. And I might mess around with it and try and deliver it differently one night and then go up, no, no, it was that that other way is the best because that that pause at that exact moment makes that land better. So sometimes I can feel a little bit like, oh, that kind of comes from drumming and that kind of comes from when to hit this, when to hit that, and then the effect that

• 23:18Speaker 01

  it has and how that helps and how that affects the people who hear it. So like, I definitely think there's something to that. And I also feel sequencing shows and sequencing albums are very similar. As soon as I started stand up, sequencing the set and the order I was gonna do the material in was a part that I really enjoyed and thinking how it would all flow. Cause when I was growing up as a teenager and I was in bands with my friends, I was walking around just thinking about the setlist. Cause I was like, this is the order we should play them in tonight. And if it didn't work, I'd go away and rethink it. No, we should do this, cause this is segueing to this nicely.

• 23:56Hrishikesh Hirway?

  Yeah.

• 23:56Speaker 01

  And stand up, that's obviously part of it as well. You cannot get to the end of a routine and then just like have a little bit of a break and then go into it. So it's gotta be momentum. So I always felt that's really similar and a really satisfying part of it to me, getting the sequencing right. So the audience are taking on a journey that with music, they don't necessarily even realize sometimes, it doesn't have to be a story, but there's this emotional journey that if you get the sequencing right, it can take them on. And I love that when a band has paid attention and thought about that.

• 24:29Hrishikesh Hirway?

  When you were talking about what Haia and what Andre 3000 and OutKast accomplished with that song, something that can on the surface be enjoyed by so many people because it has like such a mainstream kind of hooky quality to it. But actually, you know, there's something secretly smart happening under the surface, but it's able to mix both of those things. Is that something that you have found in comedy? Cause I feel that way about your stuff.

• 24:59Speaker 01

  Oh, thank you. I think it can exist in comedy, there are countless comedians that I've seen who I think pulled that off, you know?

• 25:06Hrishikesh Hirway?

  Yeah.

• 25:06Speaker 01

  The reason I wanted to start doing stand up is cause, you know, my friend bought Susie Izard's VHS around to my house and was like, it's dressed to kill that show.

• 25:15Hrishikesh Hirway?

  Yeah.

• 25:16Speaker 01

  Like, you gotta watch this. And I knew this is one of the biggest comedians in the world. And then watching him in like, this is so weird. Like this whole special is weird. And this is one of the biggest comics in the world.

• 25:28Hrishikesh Hirway?

  Yeah.

• 25:29Speaker 01

  But there is a weird culture in comedy, especially in this country. And I think American comics often get very frustrated with it when they come to the Edinburgh Festival. Cause that's where you suddenly get reviewed. And people get very annoyed with comedy critics in this country. Seeing a show that's funny wall to wall, but then giving it three stars and saying, yeah, but is being funny enough though, really? It wasn't clever enough, there wasn't this. And then as a comedian, you'll go and see that show and you go, this is really clever. There's so much cleverness in the show, but they're burying it. They're not putting it in the shop window and saying, look how clever I am. And I think the main kind of flaw in the way that comedy is reviewed.

• 26:13Speaker 01

  And maybe, I mean, I'm gonna sound very bitter here because I famously have failed to win a certain award many years in a row in this country. Is that the comedian's show often has to tell the audience why it's clever. There has to be a point where the comedian explicitly says, hey, here's what I'm doing in this show. Whereas if the comedian trusts that the theme is there and the audience will see what the theme is. Or they do the clever stuff, but they don't tell the audience, here's why that was clever. They just do it and, you know, they naturally laugh. They don't know, like hey, yeah, they don't know, they just danced to someone doing, you know, two bars of four, a bar of two, and then back into four, four again.

• 26:52Hrishikesh Hirway?

  Right.

• 26:53Speaker 01

  Andre three thousand doesn't go like, you know, during the chorus, and that was a bar of two, by the way. And then carries on.

• 27:00Hrishikesh Hirway?

  Yeah, there's something so special about having a song that music heads can appreciate. You know, there's this dropped bar of two and yet still have aunties dancing to it at every wedding.

• 27:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, I really do feel like that's the dream. I think, I think those are some of my favorite things just across the board. Hugely accessible and innovative at the same time.

• 27:19Hrishikesh Hirway?

  Is that something that you can design for or is it just luck?

• 27:23Speaker 01

  I personally couldn't envision sitting down and going, right, we're gonna write something that is both, you know, accessible and innovative at the same time. And that's what we're gonna aim for. But I think if you're always thinking about your audience.

• 27:38Speaker 01

  And how they're gonna feel when they experience the thing that you're making, then it becomes a bit more achievable. If you're someone like Andre few thousand, who, and I'm being very presumptuous now, but he appears to be someone who won't let himself off the hook, who's like, this has to be good.

• 27:58Hrishikesh Hirway?

  Yeah.

• 27:58Speaker 01

  And this has to be true to me and what I want to do at the same time. I have to be expressing myself. But also, it can't just be just for me and nobody else. And all because even with that flute album, he is not doing it just for him. He has been very, very deliberate about, no, this I want to share with people.

• 28:16Hrishikesh Hirway?

  Yeah.

• 28:16Speaker 01

  It might not be for everybody, but I'm thinking about making a certain amount of people feel a certain way. I think this can work and connect with them. I think if those are your priorities, then yeah, you can kind of accidentally on purpose do that more often than not. And I think Outkast definitely achieved that album after album because they had those values.

• 28:42Hrishikesh Hirway?

  James, thank you so much. This was so great.

• 28:44Speaker 01

  Thank you so much. I loved it.

• 28:46Hrishikesh Hirway?

  You can learn more about all of James's various projects at jamesacaster.com. His latest stand-up special is Heckler's Welcome. It's out now on HBO and you can also order it on vinyl. Go to songexploder.net/keachange for more episodes and for a playlist with all the songs that have been discussed on the series. The playlist also includes music from James's musical project, Temps. I'll be back with a new Song Exploder episode next week and stay tuned for more Key Change episodes in the future.

• 29:18Hrishikesh Hirway?

  This episode was produced by me and Mary Dolan with production assistance from Tiger Biscoe. Special thanks to Kieran Banerjee for recording James Acaster in London. 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.fam. If you'd like to hear more from me, you can sign up for my newsletter. You can find a link to it on the Song Exploder website. You can also follow me on Instagram and you can get a Song Exploder t-shirt at songexploder.net/shirt. I'm Rishi Kesh Hirway. Thanks for listening.

• 30:02Speaker 03

  Radiotopia.

• 30:05Speaker 03

  From PRX.