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Original subtitles

ANNIE CLARK: The point of a song is to get at the ineffable

and get at the struggle that is to be human.

Every song needs to have an epiphany.

Where it starts and ends ought to be different.

Something should happen.

ANNIE CLARK (THROUGH SPEAKERS) Let's begin.

ANNIE CLARK: (SINGING) When the earth split in two--

ANNOUNCER: Please welcome St. Vincent.

ANNIE CLARK: (SINGING) I, you were you.

Here's someone doing edgy stuff,

but it's very beautiful and melodic at the same time.

ANNOUNCER: And the Grammy goes to Annie Clark, St. Vincent.

WOMAN: She fronted Nirvana for their Rock

and Roll Hall of Fame induction.

TREVOR NOAH: Some people have compared you

to David Bowie saying that your characters change

from album to album.

ANNIE CLARK: Are Annie Clark and St. Vincent the same thing?

Honestly, you'd have to ask her.

[MUSIC - ST. VINCENT, "FEAR THE FUTURE"]

I'm St Vincent--

and I'm Annie Clark--

and this is my MasterClass.

When I think about the things that used to hold me back a lot

when I first started out, more than anything, it was fear.

And it was aspects of shame.

Or it was this inner voice that was not very helpful.

At the time, I felt like the options afforded women

in music who went under their own name

were kind of narrow roads.

If I went by my name, which is Annie Clark, which

is a perfectly fine American name,

it would sound to people like I made acoustic music only

for coffee shops.

And that wasn't what I wanted to do.

And so I just came up with something else.

I came up with the moniker St. Vincent

before I put out my first album.

And it was a reference to a Nick Cave song called "There

She Goes My Beautiful World," where he sings,

"And Dylan Thomas died drunk at St. Vincent's hospital,"

which I thought was hilarious.

No, I thought it captured the kind of grandiosity

and the squalor that I think it is

to be an artist, because there's these fleeting moments of,

like, I found it.

I'm a genius!

And then the next minute is like, oh, God,

what a fucking idiot .

I made it a moniker so that I could have the flexibility

to do whatever I wanted with it and for it

to be any number of things.

So I could be any number of things.

I wanted to do this class because I wanted to peel back

the curtain and go, listen.

These are all the things that go into being

a professional musician.

So I want to share with you guys some performance tips,

some songwriting tips, some studio tips.

We're going to take my song "Savior"

and walk you through every step of the songwriting process,

from the beginning, the lyrics, counter-melody, production.

We're going to talk about guitar, finger style,

effects pedals, and also crafting your own sound.

I think this class can be applicable to not

only musicians, but also just anybody who

is in the process of making something and taking it

from an idea all the way to its completion

and understanding the vulnerability of that process.

I know that most of the time, what people see is the music,

or it's the concert, or it's the album

cover and that kind of stuff.

But I just wanted to explore all the things

that I think about when putting an album together or putting

a tour together.

[MUSIC - ST. VINCENT, "SAVIOR"]

(SINGING) Please--

The moments of feeling like, yes, we crushed it, are real,

but they're fleeting.

And then you need--

like a drug addict, need to go out and climb another mountain.

Your best tool in the world is your ears.

If you have ears and ideas, you can make anything happen.

[MUSIC - ST. VINCENT, "SAVIOR"]

I have gone into periods of my life

when writing that I like to call "nun mode," which basically

means I cut out anything that isn't writing.

I would abstain from, like, alcohol.

I would abstain from just anything that

gave me visceral pleasure and just focus in.

When I was writing my last record, which

was called "Masseduction," I went into nun mode to do it.

And I-- for probably six months, I didn't have any fun.

I was just hyperfocused, and writing,

and trying to really hone in on what I was trying to say.

It's not necessary to become a complete aesthetic,

but for me, in that period of time in my life, it really was.

I had to just hone in and find--

find it.

The great thing about music is that it's generative.

Like the more you do, the more you can do.

Part of the process is the sitting there and just,

like, hoping, hoping that the train rolls

through the station.

But the old adage goes, like, if you want to get hit by a train,

you better go stand on the tracks.

So just even being there strumming away

or playing away and kind of going, huh-- and even if the--

even if the idea at the time doesn't feel like much,

just keep going.

Push through the feelings of I'm worthless,

this sucks, I hate myself, I'm a fraud.

And you just have to push through those feelings, which

is difficult. That, I think, is half the battle

of writing is sitting with yourself

in uncomfortable positions where you're

hoping something happens.

You're straining your brain, you're

straining your spirit to, like, find something to say,

something to express, the way to express it.

And you feel bad when it doesn't happen

or you feel you don't like the way it is happening.

But if you can turn that voice down,

the inner critic, as much as you possibly can,

then you can just generate.

I just make things.

And I'm not judging them when I'm making them.

I save the editing part.

I save the critical part for after.

My favorite thing to do in the world

is set aside an entire day.

I know I don't have any fucking conference calls.

I don't have any obligations.

My obligation is to sit here and write.

This is my job.

It's your job.

Sometimes that means after three hours of kind of noodling away,

you take a shower that you don't need

to take because the second you step away from it, you go--

[SNAP]-- that's the melody.

Oh, yeah, what about this lyric?

Because there's this difference between active engagement

with it and then the sort of passive engagement with it

that you can do that sometimes you need to step away

and just kind of let it--

let it happen.

And other times you need to force it even

when you feel very uncomfortable.

From the outside, I think the creative process looks insane.

It looks insane.

If there was a camera in my studio,

it would be me going like this--

typing some lyrics on a laptop, zoning out,

picking up a guitar, playing a thing, zoning out--

mixed with flurries of this-- this, this idea, yeah, okay,

we're really on a roll.

Okay.

And just, you get into this rhythm and this zone

where you're just hyperfocused.

And things are flowing, and you're going, you're going.

Hitting a wall being, like, hmm, I should probably

go listen to a podcast.

You know, you just anything--

I should probably take a second shower today

or I really do need that muffin.

The 30-minute break that you take to, like, go

do something completely passive is also part of the process.

With writing, you just have to make a habit of it.

And also when you're just going about your day not writing,

if you see something, write it down.

If you see something that's inspiring, have a thought,

write it down, unless you have the world's best memory,

but I certainly don't.

I have to write it down.

This thought, I had this thought.

I'll wake up in the middle of the night

because I have a melody in my head.

Record it into my phone.

Fall back asleep.

It's just the more that you kind of tune in

to, one, your inner voice, the more it will give you.

The trick is if you tune out that voice

too often, that's when the voice gets just quieter, and quieter,

and doesn't come when you want it to.

So always, always write it down if you have an idea.

Always record it if you have a little melody that's coming

to your head, whatever it is.

Because even if it's something that you don't use at the time,

you may use it later or it will lead you to other ideas

that you do use and you are really excited about.

Part of the process is, in my experience, is finding it.

You know, you're going, going, going.

You're creating.

And sometimes you don't know what these big themes are.

You don't know, necessarily, where you're headed.

You don't know, really, what you're unpacking.

You just have to go through, create, create,

follow your inner intuition and your voice.

And then at the end of it, you're like,

oh, I guess this is what this is about.

And the music will tell you what it wants to be.

That's the other thing that happens.

You can think that you're completely

in control of the whole thing-- well, I want it to say this.

And it's going to be this, and this, and this.

The music that's inside of you is going to come out.

And it's a really nice dance, because it's humbling,

you know?

And the more you try to shoehorn who you are

and what you want to say into somewhere it doesn't fit,

the more the music will be like, nah, no, no.

We don't-- that's not who we are.

So it's a really funny dance with control and abandon.

When you're thinking about watching a film

or you're thinking about reading a book,

you don't read a happy story about happy people

where everything works out fine.

Within every narrative storytelling form,

there is a transformation that takes place.

It's all about tension and release.

I mean, both what you're doing musically,

how you're saying it lyrically, and also just

the tension and release of the story.

You kind of set it up and watch it unfold,

and watch characters change throughout the course

of the song.

I think that every song needs an epiphany.

The epiphany can be the narrator of the story realizing

something that they didn't previously

realize by the end of the song.

It can be-- the epiphany can be that, as you're listening

to the narrator talk, they're revealing

more and more about the story.

And then at the end, it's sort of, the epiphany is yours

and you go, oh, that's what was going on.

Wow, what a twist.

But also there's this--

you want to leave enough room for the audience

to put themselves into the song, see situations

that they've been in, feel feelings

that they don't have necessarily access to

or words for on a daily basis.

But you put it into song, you put music next to it,

you put the lyric together, and suddenly

people go, I feel understood.

I feel seen.

I'm this person.

The idea of epiphany really crystallized for me,

I think, listening to Leonard Cohen's song "Famous Blue

Raincoat."

The music is pensive and somber, and it's

written like it's a letter.

It's written like it's dialogue directed toward a couple

people.

And then you realize at the end, the entirety

of the story, which is, like, a story of brotherly betrayal

and lost love, and just all this rich, rich story

that he was able to convey almost

without the listener knowing.

But every lyric furthered the story.

A great example of epiphany, even just

the feeling of "Lithium," which, the chorus is just, yeah.

You have these, like, said with piss and vinegar

kind of verse lyrics.

And then the epiphany, to me, is just the big release

of just screaming, yeah.

You understand it.

And it's just one word.

Just all of the--

just anger, and the fuck you, and the angst,

and the sarcasm, and just all of it wrapped up into one.

Through one word.

The music is the context.

I mean, the music will tell you things about the story

that the character is not.

So even if the character is saying the same thing

and the music is changing, you go, oh, uh oh.

What's going on here?

So an epiphany does not have to be a lyrical.

It can absolutely be musical.

It can just be that little moment of a-ha,

this is why this song exists.

But I think songs do need epiphanies.

Otherwise, I guess you're writing

about happy people for whom things are good who end up

happy, and that's garbage.

That's not how life is.

[MUSIC - ST. VINCENT "MASSEDUCTION"]

Masseduction.

I can't turn off what turns me on.

Masseduction.

As a songwriter, learn as many songs as you possibly can,

and how to play them, and sing them, and try

to figure out what about them makes you love them so much.

And then incorporate that into your own work.

Learn it all, and grab it, and use it,

and go, oh, this is amazing core progression.

Boop.

Fits right here.

Look at that.

You know, take some of the conventions and riff on them.

I mean, just run wild and listen to all kinds of music.

There's not a kind of music that I

can't find something really compelling

or interesting about.

Listen to Stevie Wonder's "Golden Lady."

Listen to how it starts with a progression,

this nice little jazz progression.

Look, it's a major seven, and then to the two,

it's a minor seven.

[VOCALIZING] Minor seven.

Oh, wait.

It continues going up.

It takes a convention, a very known progression,

and then when you think you know what it is,

actually, it goes up one more and somehow lands back to one.

We go someplace else for the pre, [VOCALIZING]

But guess what?

Then we land.

And then when we come back for the chorus,

we've just gone to the relative minor.

Like, wow.

This is fascinating.

This, like, this underpinning and how we go from A to B to C

is just thrilling.

Take a song that you love and dissect it.

Like, let it be a frog in a middle school science

classroom.

Like, just go, oh, I mean, one of the brilliant things

about Nirvana is there are these beautiful melodies.

I mean, it's like--

it's almost like "Heart Shaped Box," for example, you know,

[VOCALIZING]

In another context, you know, that would be Cole Porter.

But it's put with, like, I mean, I'm playing it,

but I realize you can't hear.

But it's put with these chords that add menace to it.

The chords add sorrow.

And suddenly, what is this beautiful fluid melody

is totally gripping and recontextualized.

It feels new.

It feels new, because those things aren't often

put together in that same way.

I mean, it's like a masterclass, no pun intended.

I mean, that's, like, a masterclass

in melody right there.

And being able to use simple chords, simple progressions,

for just glorious effect.

You don't need theory.

Theory just helps to give a language to that

which you can already hear.

Your ears will be your best guide.

I learned some theory in college that I basically

filed away for years.

And only now am I kind of going back to it and going,

oh, the stuff that seemed abstract,

like, me charting out a mingus, I understand that now.

But it took me 15 years to get to a place

where that felt relevant to my work.

But again, it's the sort of thing where you just

input, input, input, and you never

know what's going to come out or be

the be the right thing at the right time.

But also, hit the woodshed now.

Because at the point where you get successful

or the career starts taking off, you're going to be going.

The train is just going to leave the station,

and you just have to be ready for it

and you have to be prepared.

You have to know how to sing.

You have to do know how to do all these things.

Because once the train gets going,

you're not going to have time to just luxuriate

in your bedroom for 12 hours, you know, playing Led Zeppelin.

One hot tip would be to train your ear

to hear what every instrument in a song is doing.

I remember getting this good lesson

when I was playing guitar.

I was really excited about guitar,

but I was like, I'm going to learn how to play bass.

But all of a sudden, it took a total recalibration

of my ear to hear the bass.

Because I was used to just, you know, hearing the guitar,

hearing the peacock in the song.

But I started to really paid attention to the bass,

and it kind of changed the way everything.

So train your ear to notice what each instrument is doing.

Also, Miles Davis said that there are no wrong notes.

It's just the note you play after it.

Every melody, at one point, was an improvisation.

Everything is improv.

You just codify the improvisation.

One great thing to do is say you have a chord progression

that you're really into, you're not really sure what to do.

Just start improvising melodies over it over and over

and over again.

Record everything.

I record everything.

And then go back later and go, oh, this was cool.

A lot of times you go back to certain things

and you're like, oh, god.

If this ever saw the light of day--

you know, this is terrible.

But that's the point.

Create, generate, go, go, go, go, go.

And the more you have to work with,

just the better off you'll be.

I recorded a lot of my first album in my childhood bedroom

at my mom's house sitting at the computer like this

with a Sonic iced tea.

But through that, I learned how to arrange.

I honed some of my engineering chops,

and I learned what my voice really sounded like.

I learned how to make different sounds and explore.

You don't need a whole lot to just go ahead and start

as a songwriter.

There's some tools that you can have

pretty easily at your disposal and just record

things in your bedroom.

Learn about that process.

You could have an idea, and at the end of the day,

five hours later, you've got a song.

It's so exciting to be able to just do that.

So during the time when I was making

what would become my first album, I did a lot of it

in my childhood bedroom with a setup somewhat similar to this

except it was a laptop.

It was an Inbox, which is a first-generation Inbox,

which was--

you could monitor.

You could put on headphones and listen,

and you could record two signals.

So you could put in a local XLR cable,

or you could put in a line-in guitar cable and record in two.

I was using Pro Tools at the time.

And sit there and play and go, oh, that's not right.

Try again.

Dot dot.

Sit there and sing.

That's not right.

Go, go, go, go, go.

Track, track, track.

And so I did a lot of that first record just sitting

at my mom's house.

I was playing a lot of guitar and bass,

but I also would just go to pawn shops

and find little toy pianos.

Or the glockenspiel, God bless, was big at the time.

I had one of those.

My mom got a dulcimer at a craft festival,

and I was messing around on that, and it really was just--

it was just exciting to be able to try out

different sounds, things that I didn't really know how to play.

That's another thing I'll say for songwriters.

If you're stuck on something, go to an instrument

that you don't play.

Go to an instrument that you don't play well.

And all of a sudden, you're not going

to be able to rely on muscle memory.

You're just going to be-- you're just

going to be finding new things and going,

ooh, that's exciting.

Ooh, OK.

I guess I wrote this on a bass, you know,

or I'm not very good at piano, but I

can poke around until I find something that excites me.

So today, I've got a little home-studio setup, just

a little audio interface here that I can plug a guitar into

and I can plug a vocal mic into.

And that has phantom power because some mics require

phantom power, and some do not.

See, just a little set of headphones here.

I'm using this keyboard as a midi controller.

If I wanted to play something into the computer using

a soft synth in the computer, I could do over here.

I've got a keyboard here.

I like the kind--

I like the hotkey situation over here.

So I can turn things like clicks on and off

or send things back to the start.

This is a mouse.

Some people are faster with just a normal mouse,

and some people use mouses that are kind of specifically

for editing like this.

I got used to this one, so it's just

a personal-preference thing.

Couple monitors here.

Monitor placement is pretty important.

And depending on how much space you have,

you know, you'll need to kind of make adjustments.

I have some guitars laid out.

I like to have a lot of different timbres of guitar.

I have a little pedal board here that I

can play guitar into the pedal board into the audio interface

and record in.

I have a little microphone here.

This is just a little ribbon microphone.

I think it sounds great.

I like the look of this one and the feel of it,

and it sounds great too.

But it's just easy for me to go oh, wait, no.

It should be da, da, da, da, da.

OK, to me, that's just easier, and then I

don't have to move around as much.

And I can-- well, a lot of times when I'm singing vocal

takes, I like to stand up and get into it.

Again, thank God it's your home studio.

No one else is there watching.

But I like to really get into it,

and I find that the handheld kind of simulates the feeling

of a show a little bit more.

Again, like, it doesn't matter how good you are

in any of these instruments.

If you can make something that inspires you and sounds good--

hell, even get so good at editing

that it doesn't matter if you're good at it.

Do that, anything to get to your idea.

When I'm writing and the sounds aren't particularly inspiring,

sometimes that can be a real bummer,

and it can stop me from wanting to press forth

with a particular song.

But I've learned--

I call it hearing through the demo.

I can hear through and imagine what it will be in the end.

So as long as it doesn't so bum you out and completely

stop you from writing, know that any song can be changed.

Key, tempo, all these things can be changed.

Right now I have Logic teed up because I

used to do a lot of demos in Logic

because I found that their midi interface was easier,

but you can use anything.

I mean, the even scaled-down version of Logic is GarageBand,

and those things are totally compatible, which is great.

You can start something in GarageBand

and then open it in Logic.

You can record a live instrument in any room.

Every room sounds different.

What you want to try to do is make

the room as dead as possible.

That means not too many surfaces that it can--

the sound can bounce off of.

Try to deaden things with blankets if you can.

Make sure nothing's rattling in the corner

or whatever it is because it's your bedroom.

It's for things other than recording a lot of the time.

If you want a particular sound but you

don't have a lot of guitar pedals,

you can still get a lot of cool sounds from digital presets.

You can, for example, take your guitar

and plug it directly into the audio interface

and use programs that have a lot of presets.

It's not air moving through a speaker moving the room

and changing the energy of the room,

but it's absolutely a nice quick fix

for finding some tones that are inspiring to you.

This is bare bones, and this is really--

you know, you could write a whole album like this.

You really could.

ST. VINCENT: Over the next few chapters,

I want to start to demystify the process of songwriting.

So we're going to take my song "Savior"

and walk you through every step of the songwriting process

from the beginning to its final recording on the record.

And we're going to talk about the tempo.

We're going to talk about the key.

We're going to talk about counter melody

and knowing when it's done, knowing when to step away.

[MUSIC - ST VINCENT, "SAVIOR"]

(SINGING) Savior.

But then you say, please.

Then you say, please.

I wanted to talk about the song "Savior"

because it includes a melody that I wrote when

I was 16 or 17 in my childhood bedroom,

and I think it proves the point that there is no wasted effort.

And when the time is right, the idea will come.

I'm going to play something for you guys that

is so embarrassing.

Just fills me with shame.

As I said, I wrote part of the song "Savior" when I was 17.

There's this line ooh-ooh-ooh-ooh.

I found the audio.

I have-- my friend found a tape that I had given him,

and I'd given a bit of a tape that said my first single.

So I have it.

Oh, God.

OK, well, I can play you approximately three seconds

of this.

Here we go.

OK, see?

See I got it?

OK, just "bit, dit, dit."

(SINGING) You say please.

Oh, God.

It's so-- what was my problem?

There's four more minutes of this damn song.

I have not been able to get through it

because I'm just overcome by, like, oh.

Which, again, shame is a good thing to face,

and I'm demonstrating that for you right now.

The song for me was just very personal.

I was in a situation where--

I think we've all been in the situation

where we're sort of being asked to be things that aren't really

even natural for us.

You know, you're in a relationship with someone who's

kind of asking you to be all of these different things

that you don't really know how to be,

and you don't really know how to be for them.

So I took the example of some of these, you know, archetypes.

OK, you've got dress you up like a nurse,

dress you up like a teacher, dress you up like a nun,

dress you up like a cop, you know,

all of these things that are very visual.

You can see it.

I'm not just describing how I feel.

You can see the metaphors unfold.

Those particular examples to me were

a little bit funny and a little bit tongue in cheek

because they're also, like, stripper tropes

or like porn tropes, right?

And that made me laugh.

Even if a song is about something very serious,

you can use humor.

You can use levity to get your point across.

[MUSIC - ST VINCENT, "SAVIOR"]

(SINGING) You dress me up in a nurse's outfit.

(SPEAKING) The first line is "you dress me up

in a nurse's outfit.

It rides and sticks to my thighs and my hips."

(SINGING) --to my thighs and my hips.

(SPEAKING) One, visual language, you can see it.

But also to me, that's a funny image.

Just it doesn't-- it doesn't fit.

And so you start off the gate with in some ways like a thesis

and get people into the world from the start.

I keep you on your best behavior,

but I can't be your savior.

OK, it rhymes, sometimes.

Not always not everything has to rhyme.

I learned-- I learned that lesson the hard way.

But then it breaks into the narrator saying

but then you say please.

[MUSIC - ST VINCENT, "SAVIOR"]

(SINGING) Then you say please.

Then you say please.

(SPEAKING) And then you see that the narrator is

in this other position where it's like,

well, it takes two to tango.

I'm still here.

So what's going on?

I'm equally culpable.

I think as a writer, it's very tempting to write songs

where you are either the hero or the victim,

but it takes a little bit more introspection to be, oh, damn.

This is about me too.

I did something wrong too.

And that, I think, that's a really just kind

of nice life lesson to learn.

[MUSIC - ST VINCENT, "SAVIOR"]

(SINGING) Hand me a badge and a little billy club.

(SPEAKING) I really care about words.

I really, really like them.

But the trick sometimes being a songwriter

is threading the needle, finding that balance

between a lyric that means what you're trying to say

but also leaves enough ambiguity where

it's necessary to let a listener in and let them

put their own life into it.

Every song should have an epiphany.

Where it starts and where it ends should be different.

You realize something in the midst

of the song that puts you in a different place at the end,

but always think about tension and release, even lyrically.

Set up a lyric almost like a punch line.

You set it up, and then with the next thing,

you either defy the expectation of the previous lyric

or you expound upon it on a way that makes it more meaningful.

[MUSIC - ST VINCENT, "SAVIOR"]

Lyrics are super, super important to me.

It's a fine line of saying what you intend

to say in the most colorful way possible

but also making sure that it sings well.

And sometimes you have to what I call

kill your darlings, which is change words that

just don't sing well.

There have been a couple times when

I know that certain words really, really, really

don't sing well, and I just try to lean into that.

I think I managed to put the words snorted in a song, which

is a coup because, at the end of the day,

it does need to sound good.

It needs to, for people who aren't total lyric

freaks like I am, it needs to draw them in.

That doesn't mean it has to be pretty or any particular--

I'm not being prescriptive about what it needs to sound like,

but it needs to capture people.

And I feel strongly that the first lyric of a song

really ought to be compelling enough

for people to go, wait, what?

and at the very least really set the scene.

With the song "Savior" when it was

very produced and put on the album,

it's sort of tongue in cheek.

It's sort of sexy.

And then I also recorded it with just me and a piano player,

and that version way more leans into the sadness

and the desperation.

So same lyric, two different takes

on it, which I think that's the goal of a songwriter

is to be able to put a song in different contexts,

to strip it down to its most bare.

Here's the chords.

Here's the vocal, and is it still powerful?

Does it resonate?

When you sing it, does it make you feel something

in your heart?

If the answer is yes, then great.

You've written a song you can build a house on.

If it needs everything, if it needs

all the bells and whistles and it

needs so much to kind of even stand,

then it might not be one for the ages.

And I say this having written many things in this category,

I think.

But a good song you can dress up in any way, shape, or form,

and it's still a good song.

[MUSIC - ST VINCENT, "SAVIOR"]

(SINGING) But then you say please.

Then you say please.

I originally started it, the doo, doo, doo, dih, dee, dee,

duh, dih, dih, dih, dih, duh, was slow and dirgy.

But then I started to think about the actual meaning

of the song.

And again, these, like, early '80s porn tropes, like,

it should just feel more like slinky,

and sexy, and almost a little like wha whan.

So I moved off of that.

But originally you can see I had this--

[MUSIC - ST VINCENT, "SAVIOR"]

Great take.

Okay, so you can see here I was--

I was pretty much just trying to like make sure

that the lyrics were singable.

When you're first starting out singing the song

and you have the words and everything,

sing entire takes of the song.

Sing it over and over again.

Try different things.

It's not about perfection at all.

It's like does it have vibe?

Does it sound good?

Is it evocative?

Because if it's a little pitchy here, who cares?

Like, that's-- that's what music sounds like.

When you're recording yourself at home,

it's hard to switch between performer brain and, like,

editor brain.

And I've gotten better at it over the years,

but I would always find, like, I was in the flow.

And then it wasn't exactly the thing

that I was hoping it would be.

I played it a little wrong or I wanted

to change an arrangement thing.

And so then I'd go over here.

And I was not--

I would just do-- and then all of a sudden,

it's a right-brain, left-brain situation.

And I'm interrupted from the--

any vibe or flow that I was in creatively

and now I'm just like looking at a screen and going and counting

measures.

So I don't have any real advice on how

to toggle between those things successfully

except to just say just get as good as you can at both.

[MUSIC - ST VINCENT, "SAVIOR"]

(SINGING) You dressed me in a nun's black outfit.

The versus of "Savior" are centered

around D, and D major, or D mixolydian,

which means a Flat VII, a C rather than a C sharp.

And then for the pre choruses--

(SINGING) But I keep you on your best behavior.

I go to the relative minor of D. I go to B minor.

So a center the tonality differently.

(SINGING) But I keep you on your best behavior.

Honey, I can't be your savior.

Do this walking down motion and end up

on a G, which is nice because that resolves nicely to D.

So sometimes it becomes a little bit of like--

a little trick of, like, math of, like, where you want--

where you want to end up.

Like, I'm centered around this note for this time period.

And then I'm going to center around this note

so that when I go back to this note, it feels fresh.

I think about how I want sections

to feel new every time you come back to them.

And I used to do that a whole lot

with melodies or reharmonizing a particular part.

But currently, I'm just really into,

like, the mechanics of harmony and going,

wow, how can we go super out here, and then land here,

and it feels like such a relief and such a surprise?

Like, let's follow this harmonic journey.

[MUSIC - ST VINCENT, "SAVIOR"]

Another thing I like to talk about and think about

is, like, proof of concept.

You can have these beautiful words that you've written

and a melody.

And you can hear it all in your head.

But then, somehow, when you go to record it,

it's like, oh, that word's a little clunky,

or this needs revising, or--

and that's fine.

That's so part of the process.

The process is either take something good

and bludgeon it till it's great or set it aside and refine,

refine, refine, refine, refine.

This would be more proof of concept.

Let's see.

[MUSIC - ST VINCENT, "SAVIOR"]

(SINGING) Keep you on your best behavior.

But, honey, I can't be your savior.

I can tell from the vocal take there

that I was imagining those being backgrounds,

because I was adopting a very stilted, stilted performance.

[MUSIC - ST VINCENT, "SAVIOR"] (SINGING) You dress me up like

a nu--

Oh, that's an embarrassing line.

That was a bad line.

And luckily, I fixed it.

Oh, god, that was terrible.

Thank god, I was working in my little--

in my little tiny space polishing this stuff.

I think I started at something about--

you know, this, like, Virgin Mary reference and imagery.

And then it was Madonna, something

about Madonna, but then that sounded like Madonna the pop

star.

And it was very confusing.

And it didn't sing well and it was too--

oh god, this is horrifying.

But I'm glad I did it alone.

[MUSIC - ST VINCENT, "SAVIOR"]

Okay, I ended up tweaking those slightly, those

lyrics slightly, just a little, you know, final polishes of,

like, "I can't be" instead of "I don't want to be,"

stuff like that.

Obviously, all of this changed.

All of it did.

But here, I have the basic form.

And I have a north star in the song.

Sometimes I'll find that if I'm writing, and writing,

and writing, and nothing's catching,

it's because the song doesn't really have a heart yet.

And so you can flex all day and come up with clever wordplay

or whatever it is, but if you don't

have that North Star grounding you

and everything writing toward it, then what do you do?

To me, the North Star in this song was the concept of savior

and the line, you know, " but I can't be your savior."

It has a heart.

I know what it's about.

So I'm not just flailing.

[MUSIC - ST VINCENT, "SAVIOR"]

(SINGING) But I keep you on your best behavior.

Honey, I can't be you savior.

I love you to the grave, then farther, but, honey,

I can't be your martyr.

Here was the original guitar part.

[HEAVY GUITAR PART]

Got that?

I mean, that's a real beefy riff, which I moved away from,

because I thought it took power away from the vocal.

So when the vocal melody comes in,

if you've heard this big, blasting monster guitar already

saying it and then the vocal comes in,

you've just deflated that balloon.

I also did it because I felt like it was just

right on that edge of corny.

At the end of the day, one of my big rules

is, like, I ask myself, does this serve the song?

And if the answer is no, then it's unfortunate.

But sometimes you really just have

to be merciless with your editing.

And it's fine.

Again, there's no wasted effort.

Save it for a different song.

You can always throw it in there.

[MUSIC - ST. VINCENT, "SAVIOR" WITH GUITAR PART]

(SINGING) But I keep you on your best behavior.

But honey, I can't be your savior.

(SPEAKING) I mean--

(SINGING) Honey, I can't be your mart--

(SPEAKING) OK.

So I changed that.

I think there were different instruments that could support

the vocal a bit better there.

And also, I wanted to make that part really syncopated.

I think I was thinking about The Pointer Sisters

or something, just something really syncopated.

Again, the tension and release-- dot, dot, dot, dot, dot--

angular.

And then it releases into that.

[MUSIC - ST. VINCENT, "SAVIOR"]

(SINGING) Love you to the grave and farther.

Honey, I am not your martyr.

But then you say, "please."

(SPEAKING) This very kind of strict beat--

[HEAVY BEAT]

This is definitely on the grid.

There's no movement here.

This is the kind of beat-- this, like, strict, Germanic thing--

that actually could support a--

[VOCALIZING DESCENDING NOTES] this waterfall thing

going down.

At this tempo, it didn't have any power.

So I changed the tempo, and I changed the key.

I changed the key.

[PLAYING NOTES]

So that became the lick and definitely more in that--

again, I mean, I was just, like, referencing Dr. Dre.

[PLAYING NOTES]

So it's just, like, little and kind of funk,

idiomatic, and better for my voice to sing all the parts.

(SINGING) You dress me up.

Please.

Every singer has a couple different breaks

in their voice.

And what I mean by a break, it's a place

where you go from your chest voice into your head voice.

Because this song goes from chest voice to head voice

and then goes from head voice all the way down into chest

voice, I just had to pick the key of it pretty thoughtfully.

[MUSIC - ST. VINCENT, "SAVIOR"]

I'd added a bass.

And this is-- this bass is one of the great bass players

of life, Pino Palladino.

And he came in to play.

And he's playing--

[MUSIC - ST. VINCENT, "SAVIOR"]

(SINGING) But I keep you on your best behavior.

Honey, I can't be your savior.

(SPEAKING) And it's--

(SINGING) Love you to the grave and farther.

Honey, I am not your martyr.

(SPEAKING) He's playing these--

the great thing-- I mean, he's playing

these little melodic lines with a fair amount of notes in them.

But because it's in the bass register

and not something really high, which

your ear hears higher things--

there's something called perceived loudness,

so it hears higher things as louder

than they actually are in decibel levels because

of the way that sound travels.

So he's playing.

He's playing.

But it just adds this, again, fluidity against the rigidity

of these very sort of Germanic drums.

Usually, the reason you're asking someone to play

is that you like what they can do.

And you like their voice.

So it's always a balance between allowing someone

to be themselves and experiment and also

guiding them toward what it is you want

if those things don't align.

Always be prepared to be pleasantly surprised

that someone can play something that you go, oh my god,

that's awesome.

We're going to chase that down.

We're going to follow that thing.

This galvanized the whole song.

So that can be scary, but there's

nothing lost in chasing an idea down a rabbit hole.

I ended up enlisting a great pedal steel

player named Greg Leisz.

And he added this.

[SORROWFUL GUITAR PART]

So Greg played this beautiful thing that just added, I think,

the extra sorrow.

Lap steel, to me, is a very sorrowful instrument.

[SORROWFUL GUITAR PART]

That under the word "please" sung over and over again

hopefully creates an emotional effect.

[MUSIC - ST. VINCENT, "SAVIOR"]

(SINGING) Please.

(SPEAKING) Counter melody is really, really important.

It's just something other than the main vocal melody that adds

just a little bit of intrigue.

A lot of times, counter melodies can be hooks.

[MUSIC - ST. VINCENT, "SAVIOR"]

(SINGING) But I keep you on your best behavior.

Honey, I can't be your savior.

(SPEAKING) So at some point, there was this.

[MELODY PLAYING]

I think my friend Thomas might have done this.

So he was trying to play kind of a counter melody.

I ended up abandoning this, though, and just

trying to make it as syncopated-- just clean

and syncopated as possible.

[MUSIC - ST. VINCENT, "SAVIOR" WITH MELODY]

(SINGING) But I keep you on your best behavior.

Honey, I can't be your savior.

(SPEAKING) But one thing that that does do--

[IMITATING MELODY]---- is it provides a counter melody.

Here's a good example of counter melody.

OK.

So I'm singing, (SINGING) please.

While I'm going down, my friend Bobby Sparks is going up.

[MELODY PLAYING]

[MUSIC - ST. VINCENT, "SAVIOR" WITH MELODY]

(SINGING) Please, please, please.

(SPEAKING) So for the end, the effect that we're going for

is this kind of, like, swirling whirlpool, things going up,

things going down, just to create

the sense of being slightly disoriented in a narcotic way.

So I just played you things that I did more or less in my house,

in my home studio.

And now we're going to go into a proper recording studio

and see the inner workings of that.

[MUSIC - ST. VINCENT, "SAVIOR"]

I love being in the studio.

It's my favorite.

It's my absolute favorite place.

Anything is possible.

Anything is possible in the studio.

It's so exciting.

SONG: You dress me up in a nurse's outfit.

It's very easy to write alone and come up

with a lot of great ideas, generate a lot of material,

flesh out a lot of things on your own.

But at some point, you'll probably

want to go into a proper recording studio.

Especially when you're trying to track things

like live drums, acoustic instruments, big pianos, things

like that, you kind of want to make

sure you have good mics and good gear

if you want to capture the actual sound of the room.

That's a lot of the reason why people

go to studios instead of doing things at home

is because it's a physical space.

And also, there's a lot of great gear

and mics and all that stuff.

When you're walking into a studio,

automatically you're going to have other people around, be it

the studio assistants who are helping set up the gear.

Maybe it's a producer.

And so you're going to have to know how to talk to people

and know how to get your ideas across.

In my experience, having the--

a little bit of technical know-how

regally helps because you can talk to engineers.

If you're looking for a sound, you

can go, oh, well, what I want is a plate reverb, instead

of going, well, I kind of hear kind of airy.

And then you're at the mercy of somebody else's idea of what

"airy" means and their own baggage with whatever effects

they have and their own personal tastes.

But also, you know, the reason to collaborate

with people is that it's going to be better than what you

could've done on your own and different than what you could

have done on your own.

That's the whole reason to collaborate,

is that it gets to be the joy and excitement of discovery.

And that can be sometimes difficult to sort of personally

navigate and know why you're doing what you're

doing, in order to make sure that you're not

making decisions based on fear.

That's kind of an art killer, in my experience.

When you get too in your head, when

it's too much about being self-conscious,

it's a real vibe killer.

There are a lot of ways to write and a lot of ways to see it--

your song to completion.

One of the ways is to have everything really planned out,

have all the parts written, have all the words written,

you know, know things like, it's going to be this tempo

and it's going to be in this key and all those things that

are really crucial to the DNA of the song.

And at that point, I would say it's

very safe-- it's a safe bet-- to go into the studio.

A lot of people like to experiment and explore

in the studio, too, though.

So if you end up getting in there and things change,

that's cool, too, because so much about the process

is being opened to being pleasantly surprised.

Once I had the idea and the structure of the song,

I went and worked with my friend Jack Antonoff at Electric Lady

Studios.

And we recorded things there like live drums

and additional guitars, some upright piano.

In addition to that, just added a lot of bits of production

that would just catch the ear.

A little change here, a little bit of,

like, effervescence there.

I've been known to call them "flavor crystals."

I think I got that term from my friend John Congleton.

So this is one thing.

I had my uncle Tuck come in and play guitar--

great guitar player.

And what we did is we had him just solo over the entire song

and then pick just little moments that could add,

you know, exclamation points.

So we have Tuck doing this--

[CHIMEY GUITAR PLAYING]

--at the end.

So he's playing this chimey, pretty, pretty thing.

And here-- here it is in context with the track.

[VOCALIZING, GUITAR PLAYING]

Here-- here it is without.

[VOCALIZING]

Here's with it in.

[VOCALIZING, GUITAR PLAYING]

You can hear how it's in that higher register.

And so it kind of adds this little layer

of shimmer over the end.

So that's a bit of a flavor crystal.

There's also program drums, and I also have live drums.

I've tracked the live drums with Jack Antonoff at Electric Lady.

So I'm going to just show you the difference.

A lot of what the live drums did is

just add, again, some feeling, some air moving

through the room, and, again, flavor crystal

and help the groove.

[MUSIC - ST. VINCENT, "SAVIOR"] --rides and sticks

to my thighs--

You can hear--

--and my hips.

I'm soloing out the live drums.

[DRUMS PLAYING]

You can hear, that's the sound of a room.

Here's just the programmed drums.

[DRUMS PLAYING]

Do you hear the--

so we've got like a little bit of a slap delay

and some, like, small plate reverb on that high hat

and snare.

[DRUM SNARE AND REVERB]

Little bits of that there on the snare.

OK, so that-- that would be a snare through a space

echo and made to be random, right?

And really, you can play the echo.

So it's more exciting than, say, a plug-in on the computer that

does the same echo every time.

The most-- the exciting thing, especially about studios,

is when they have outboard gear and you can feed signals

that you've just recorded direct in through the gear

and get new sounds, especially with echoes and big plates.

The point is, there's a lot of fun toys

to play with in the studio.

And it's always nice in productions

to have a little bit of chaos.

It can be quiet chaos, but just a little bit

of things constantly changing.

It's never quite the same, but it's in very subtle ways

to just keep the momentum going.

Also, that's, I think, how life is more.

[DRUMS PLAYING]

So still the programmed drums--

programmed drums and live drums together.

[DRUMS PLAYING]

So roll in space echo.

[IMITATING DRUMS] And found a loop of the

echo where it was in time doing a kind of triplet rhythm.

Duh, duh, duh, duh, da, duh, duh, duh, da, duh, duh, duh,

duh, da.

So just to add texture.

Texture is very important.

[DRUMS PLAYING]

And all this stuff is going on in the track,

and you don't really hear it.

You just hear some excitement.

So I'm going back to the track now.

[MUSIC - ST. VINCENT, "SAVIOR"] --your savior.

Love you to the grave and father.

Honey, I am not your martyr.

But then you say, please.

Synths.

[SYNTH PLAYING]

Sounds like a Juno, probably, just ascending, adding

a pad layer of texture.

That adds up with--

[SYNTH PLAYING]

--this other synth, which adds up with the guitars.

[SYNTH, GUITARS PLAYING]

I just wanted its feel like it was going on forever.

Keep going.

And it eventually has to come back down.

We add it with a pedal steel.

[SYNTH, GUITARS PLAYING]

[PEDAL STEEL GUITAR PLAYING]

And the pedal steel takes us out.

But adding all of these things, playing the same chords

but different arrangement, different tones,

the overall texture can be really exciting.

Simplicity is great, too, though.

I don't want to--

you can't use every color on every painting.

But it is really nice to have things add up

to one big kind of undefinable sound.

[MUSIC - ST. VINCENT, "SAVIOR"] But I keep you on your best

behavior.

Honey, I can't be your savior.

The other thing I want to talk about is the lead vocals.

So we talked about in the other room--

you heard me just trying to get lyrics figured out and give

takes that were-- (SINGING) you dress me up--

just not particularly good.

But I want to play you where the lead vocal ended up.

RECORDING: (SINGING) You dress me up in the nurse's outfit.

It rides and sticks to my thighs and my hips.

It's a little--

RECORDING: (SINGING) You put me in--

--a little gritty.

RECORDING: (SINGING) --a teacher's little denim skirt.

A little talky.

RECORDING: (SINGING) Ruler and desk so I can make it hurt.

All right.

We've figured out the lyrics.

As far as effects and vocals go, it's a real season to taste.

But I-- I'm such a sucker for lyrics

that I like to at least have the opportunity

to hear what they might be.

That doesn't-- there's great, great,

great music where you can't understand anything,

and it's beautiful, too.

I think with-- a lot of times with my own,

I kind of like to at least give people the opportunity

to hear the lyric.

Make sure that when you are insisting on,

you know, more effects on something

that it's not because you don't like the sound of what you're

hearing and are afraid of-- like especially

with vocals, because that's the most sensitive thing,

in my experience.

It's such a personal thing to sing,

and it's such a personal thing to hear yourself back.

And it's so hard to be objective.

I think a good rule for being in the studio

is either turn it up and make it a thing or lose it.

If you find yourself continually turning down something-- turn,

turn, turn, turn down--

it's maybe that it doesn't need to be there.

And if you are a singer and you're

working on putting effects on your own vocal,

just make sure that you're not taking

a knife through the painting.

[MUSIC - ST. VINCENT, "SAVIOR"] Please.

I don't know how records get done.

I have no idea.

It's a mystery.

But somehow, you work a lot of days.

You eat a lot of takeout.

And somehow, after a number of months, you have a record.

You don't even remember.

It's-- you don't even remember exactly how it came to be.

You don't remember why you made this decision and not

that decision.

But you did.

And the reason that's exciting is

because you made that decision now in real time.

You might not have made that decision two years ago.

You might not make that decision in three years.

And what that means is, no matter

what, it's a record of a moment in time.

It's one of the reasons why I feel

like, no matter what, you just have to keep generating,

keep creating, keep creating.

Every artist knows when they didn't really--

they didn't get it quite there.

They got it there, and a lot of people go, oh, yeah, great job.

But you know.

You'll know that you didn't push it that little bit farther.

And just like Brian Eno said, if something's good,

torture it mercilessly till it's great, or discard it.

You just have to keep pushing and have to keep writing,

because miraculously, something will happen.

Everybody feels weird sometimes.

Everybody feels like they don't fit in.

Everybody feels self-conscious, and afraid,

and all those things.

If you can speak to that in a way that's real,

then you can move the needle just slightly

in a more empathetic direction for the world.

[MUSIC - ST. VINCENT, "LOS AGELESS"]

Really, the only thing that I think

has happened as I have progressed

is I've simply become more myself.

That's-- and that's the path for every artist.

Just become more yourself.

You can't try to be somebody else.

There's no way you could possibly

fill somebody else's shoes.

And you don't want to.

They're already in them.

You do you because nobody else can

say what you're trying to say the way that you can say it.

I think that shame is the root of all evil.

I think the shame is the reason why people are violent.

It's people having shame, not knowing what to do with it,

and then doing something, making a bad decision.

Make shame your friend.

And what I mean by that is be able to find a way

to find humor in all situations and be

able to laugh at yourself because there's

no way to get good at something without being bad at it first.

Live performance is a big part of that.

There's something else entirely that

happens when you're in a room needing to perform for people.

It's just a different energy.

And it just takes a while to figure out how to do.

And the only way you get good at it is by doing it a lot.

And so, unfortunately, that means

people being witness to some of your more embarrassing moments

like--

I tried to do a cool stage dive one time in Germany

and climb the speaker.

I tried to climb through this stack of speakers

and got caught.

I was just flailing like a roach on its back, just stuck.

And it's like, great.

Luckily, I had been through enough hilarity and kind

of indignation to just find that incredibly funny.

Shame will stop you from experimenting.

Shame will stop you from trying.

Shame will stop you from putting yourself out there.

And you just have to be able to face it, compartmentalize

it, put its--

metabolize it, in a way, whatever way it is for you.

I tend to do it with humor.

Find a place to put it so that it doesn't block you

from the thing that you love.

When you can do that, then you deactivate the bomb.

You deactivate the bomb of fear when

you can take something and put it through the funhouse

mirror to explore it.

I think that everybody feels like a fraud at some point.

And I think feeling like a fraud is actually

kind of helpful and healthy in ways.

There's the Dunning-Kruger test where

people took this big test.

And the people who did the worst thought they did the best.

And the people who did the best were like, oh, I bombed it.

I bombed it.

So the feeling like a fraud, I think, is--

all these things can just be motivators to make you go,

I want to work harder.

I won't be a fraud.

I'm going to work harder.

And again, it's just this idea of metabolizing shame.

[MUSIC - ST. VINCENT, "FEAR THE FUTURE"] Come on, sir.

Just give me the answer.

Come on, sir.

Now I need an answer.

My baby's lost--

At different points of my life, I've tour managed.

I roadied.

I teched.

I pretended to be my own agent.

There's a hot new act named Annie Clark,

who is making the rounds all over coffee

shops in the Northeast.

But I felt too uncomfortable calling myself and saying, oh,

hi, can you give me a gig, that I bought a domain name,

made up a fake agency, made up a fake name, and called people--

mailed them my CDs, wrote flowery emails about this

amazing new talent that they've just got to check out--

[CHUCKLES] and got some gigs.

Just-- and whatever it takes.

Let's hop in the minivans.

Let's do this.

Help me with this amp.

Sike.

I can do it myself.

[CHUCKLES]

[MUSIC - ST. VINCENT, "FEAR THE FUTURE"] I fear the future.

From a really early age, I was just obsessed with the guitar.

I remember seeing "La Bamba," the Ritchie Valens movie.

And he had this little Stratocaster guitar.

And I was just obsessed.

I started making them as little craft projects with, you know,

cardboard and rubber bands and just--

oh, this form is so exciting to me somehow.

And then there was a toy guitar at a local Target store,

and I begged my mom for it.

And she finally acquiesced, even though it was definitely

out of the price range for for us at that time.

I just remember long car trips--

that going on, you know, little family vacations

and that kind of thing is always being about the soundtrack.

Frankly, I don't really remember the vacations.

But I remember that we were listening to this Steely Dan

record.

And then we had this Traffic record,

and then we got this Rolling Stones record and this Jimi

Hendrix record.

Those are sort of, like, in this way, the most crystallized

moments of my childhood, is, like,

looking at a landscape listening to Jimi Hendrix.

I started finally actually playing guitar when I was 12.

And then it was all I wanted to do.

It really was obsession.

You know, any album you buy, you read

the liner notes so you know who played on it, who produced it.

Oh.

Oh, this-- it's like, oh, this person

played on that record, and then oh, wow.

And you have this library of, in some cases,

totally useless knowledge, or useful only

in the amount of joy that it gives you to know, oh, yeah,

so and so and so and so.

There's been nothing in my life that

has ever given me so much joy.

I played bass in a metal cover band,

and we played things like junior high cafeterias.

So we played-- we played some Maiden and some Metallica

and some Pantera and some AC/DC.

And then I remember I played a show in Dallas at a bar.

Which I was 15, so I was not obviously

allowed to even be there, but they made an exception.

My guitar teacher, who was a great guy named Tony Hyatt,

he had a band.

And he let me sit in with the band,

and we played Jimi Hendrix's "The Wind Cries Mary."

And I mean, I practiced that.

(IMITATING GUITAR) Doo, doo, doo, doo, doo.

[VOCALIZING] I still play it wrong.

Doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, ba, boo, doo, doo, doo.

Doo, doo, doo, doo.

Da, da, doo, da.

Whatever it is.

I play it wrong still, but I play it my way.

So my aunt and uncle are a jazz duo called Tuck & Patti.

Tuck plays amazing finger-style guitar.

Patti has an amazing voice.

And they invited me to come out on tour with them.

So I went out as their tour manager when I was 15 or 16.

The first place we went was Japan.

My job was to set up all the gear and test the connections

and learn how to properly tech something

if something went wrong and to basically just be a roadie.

One of the first things my uncle had me do was

learn how to properly roll a cable, which

it sounds like my new show.

But I'm so glad I know how to do it.

Anytime I'm at a place and I see someone, like,

wrapping it around, it makes me want to die.

It's just the wor-- it's like nails on a chalkboard.

It's the worst.

So how to probably roll a cable, how

to test an outlet for the proper voltage,

how to recognize frequencies and learn

their corresponding notes.

So if you're soundchecking, you can say,

can you turn 800 down 2 dB--

so the engineering vernacular.

But it was thrilling.

I mean, it was thrilling to watch them every night.

I just loved the road.

I loved the freedom of it.

I loved the idea that anything was possible,

that you were going to be in a new place the next day

and something new might happen.

And who are you going to meet?

And what are you going to see?

It was so formative, and so fortunate

that I got to really see it.

And also have a respect for all of the jobs

that happen on the road.

I was kind of at a precipice.

I mean, I was obsessed with music.

I was playing in bands.

I was writing songs.

I was doing all the things.

I was recording myself in my childhood

bedroom at my parents' house.

And I was-- but I didn't know what the path forward

necessarily would be.

I knew I wanted to be a musician, but I wasn't--

I was like, how do you do that.

And I was just--

I was going to go to the University of Texas,

where, you know, a couple of my sisters went-- great school.

And I guess I was going to be like--

I don't know, like an art history major?

I don't-- I don't know.

And at the sort of final hour, my aunt and uncle

called my mom and dad and said, no, she

needs to hone her craft.

Like, she needs to be a musician.

I had no idea that they had that kind of confidence

in me, which is very heartening.

But also, I don't think that my parents had any idea

that it was anything more than, like, what a fun hobby.

She also likes to play volleyball.

You know, it was kind of in that same realm.

So that really-- that was a sharp right turn.

So I went to music college.

I went to Berklee for about three years and dropped out.

Kind of unbeknownst to my parents, I moved to New York

to "make it."

I was back home with my parents about three months later.

But shortly after I moved back to Dallas,

I joined a band called the Polyphonic Spree,

and then all of a sudden I was out in Europe,

touring, playing guitar in a band,

being backstage and being like, oh my god,

there's Kevin Thurston.

Or like, oh-- just being in the world, like doing it.

And then that kind of became a somewhat circuitous route

to where I am now.

But, uh, lucked out.

I cowrote and costarred in a movie called "The Nowhere

Inn" with my best friend, Carrie Brownstein, who

is an incredible artist in basically every discipline now.

She's in a band called Sleater-Kinney,

which is a really important band to a lot of people,

very important to me as well.

She also starred in "Portlandia" with Fred Armisen.

She's just, all around, truly one of most brilliant people

I've ever met.

We got to work together, and it was the most fun thing.

In this chapter, I'm going to take you through the theme

from "The Nowhere Inn" and peel it

apart layer by layer, from the lyrics

to the songwriting process and all the way through to some fun

studio tricks and effects.

One of the things for the film was

we wanted there to be a theme song that

was kind of the culmination of the whole film,

and that you would see us writing it along the way.

So we got together, and we wrote this song in a day.

The original idea of the song is we

were trying to think of a metaphor for this place

that people can get to when they've become so consumed

with their own identity and their own myth

that they're in between a real person and their own creation.

And we thought, well, that's kind of like The Nowhere Inn,

like picturing this rundown desert

motel where just lost souls kind of go

to be in narcissism purgatory.

The first part of the song, it's me talking to the driver

as I'm on my way to The Nowhere Inn.

[MUSIC - "THE NOWHERE INN" THEME SONG]

So all dialogue-- driver, do you mind?

Just turn off the radio.

We tried to use dustier sounds, right?

Like things that felt dreamy and desert road sounds.

When I think about desert sounds,

I guess I think about almost like spaghetti Western,

that kind of Morricone film score,

where you can almost picture the cowboy coming out of the saloon

doors with the woo-oo-oo, the whistle and the tumbleweed--

acoustic guitar with some Mellotron pads.

And so we kind of--

[MUSIC - "THE NOWHERE INN" THEME SONG]

(SINGING) Oh, pick up speed and sandwiches.

Sip that bag of--

When I say pick up speed and sandwiches--

[MUSIC - "THE NOWHERE INN" THEME SONG]

(SINGING) Oh, pick up speed and sandwiches--

--track actually speeds up 10 BPM.

So we start it at 90.

When we get to there, we needed it to have some urgency.

So we added it.

And I'm literally saying, let's pick up speed, and also

some Adderall or whatever.

Delightful.

[MUSIC - "THE NOWHERE INN" THEME SONG]

(SINGING) At The Nowhere Inn--

I'm at The Nowhere Inn.

(SINGING) --wasted on [INAUDIBLE]..

So really just like--

(SINGING) Here at The Nowhere Inn--

--like a little bit like Brazilian--

again, trying to channel these things,

just like Brazilian psych, where you can picture the drummer

with like a cigarette coming out of their mouth, just like,

we're all just decrepit over here.

And we're playing like we are.

[MUSIC - "THE NOWHERE INN" THEME SONG]

(SINGING) And then I see [INAUDIBLE]..

And then this wee-oo-wee-oo--

scene change, BPM change.

All of a sudden, we are in a '70s rock

odyssey with big Keith Moon drum tom fills.

But this is also--

I want to show you, there's two--

there are two drum sets in this section.

[MUSIC - "THE NOWHERE INN" THEME SONG]

And the two drum tracks give it this extra bit

of propulsion and chaos.

(SINGING) Oh, there is no--

OK, again, scene change.

Now we go from something very fast and frantic to something

that I was calling the devil verse, because you know,

who's the person who greets you at The Nowhere Inn?

And it's somebody who confirms all your worst

fears about yourself.

Like, we knew we'd find you here eventually, and--

(SINGING) [INAUDIBLE].

Been waiting for years to see you in my everlasting mirror.

What I did here, because I wanted to sing it,

but I didn't want my voice to sound exactly like my voice,

so I took the whole track, and I pitched it up one semitone.

And then I sang over this section.

And then I put everything back in its original key,

back down the semitone.

And so my voice has been--

it's been manipulated.

It was sung here, and then it was pitch shifted.

So it just has a little bit of an alien quality,

which was the point.

[MUSIC - "THE NOWHERE INN" THEME SONG]

That line in particular makes me chuckle every time in that--

just the idea of someone telling you, like, you are--

you're the reason why your mother cries every time.

That is just so dark and sad that it makes me laugh.

Um-- OK.

So now we're in country dance hall, sawdust on the floor,

but all the cowboys are skeletons world, you know?

I put pedal steel in this section

to make it sound very woozy with the bed.

And then I took that little lap steel

solo, the [IMITATES GUITAR] sort of "Black Hole Sun"

lap steel moment.

Background singing, we're in nowhere.

Just picture like people in purgatory.

So now we've come back to the chorus.

But we're in a different key.

And we're also in a different tempo.

[MUSIC - "THE NOWHERE INN" THEME SONG]

(SINGING) where are my [INAUDIBLE]

wasted on [INAUDIBLE].

OK, so two drum kits, just chaos.

Very Beatles-y kind of bass playing.

And then guitar solo.

[IMITATES GUITAR]

So it's just like, where are you?

Where are you?

And then you're in a loop for longer than you ought to be,

because that's what--

that's the loop that you can get into.

That's neuroses.

It's just your brain running through the same pattern

over and over and over again.

So the end was very much kind of just like, oh, god.

We're just stuck in this loop.

We're stuck in this loop.

And nothing gets resolved.

[LAUGHS] It just ends, like life.

So I used a lot of adjectives like woozy,

or drowsy, or just--

and made this kind of face quite a bit.

But what I'm talking about when I'm talking about that feeling

is, a lot of times, things being really pitchy

and going in and out of pitch.

And effects like chorus can make you feel that way,

or if you're playing a guitar, just bending it to like,

[GROANS].

You can bend things on keyboards that have a pitch wheel.

And you can certainly do it with your voice and any horns.

The culmination of all those things

can make you feel really woozy.

Another way would be something like a phaser, which

is basically sweeping through--

(DISTORTED) --the EQ spectrum of what

you're doing and modulating it slightly every time.

There are effects like tremolo, which is taking a signal

and kind of writing volume.

[MUSIC - "THE NOWHERE INN" THEME SONG]

OK, so I'll give you an example of like--

this would be a--

[DISTORTED MUSIC]

And the thing with tremolo is it's usually--

it is a time--

it is time sensitive.

I'm free wheeling it right now, but you're basically

taking the--

[DISTORTED MUSIC]

You're basically taking the audio signal of it

and vacillating between different volumes

at a particular BPM.

There is other effects--

things like delay.

Well, I can give you an example.

Here's one I can throw up very easily.

[DISTORTED MUSIC]

(ECHOING) OK, delay.

Very fun.

Delay is very fun.

Basically, delay-- you take the signal, the original signal.

And then it gets multiplied.

Delay is super fun and fun to kind of

toss on something really quickly and then

have it go away, just like a little bit of a jump start.

So--

[DISTORTED MUSIC]

(SINGING) --for years to see you in my everlasting mirror--

This is a more--

a lot of people will talk about this slap delay.

It's just a short delay without any repeats

that was very popular in Elvis recordings and things

like that.

It's also known as slap back.

So I'm going to adjust the feedback of this.

[DISTORTED MUSIC]

So it's just like--

the feedback means how many times

it's repeating and multiplying.

There's no hard and fast rule with effects at all.

It's seasoned to taste.

My only thing is that it should support the feeling of the song

and not get in the way of the song.

That's my only rule for anything.

It's like, ah, really try not to get in the way of the song.

It's really fun to write theme songs.

The great thing about writing theme songs

is that you already know what's happening

plot-wise in the movie.

So you can almost reverse engineer

the lyrics to be things that directly apply

to what's going on in the plot.

I think make things with your friends.

Just like make things with your friends.

It's awesome.

I think there's a certain porousness that you

have to have as an artist.

Well, not even that you have to have,

that probably you just, by nature, have.

The membrane between you and the world

is just a little more porous.

It's just a little-- you're a little bit more tuned

into certain things.

So much work is inspired by other artists.

Somebody like Jenny Hotzer, who does these giant projections,

they're like advertising slogans except their message

is very dire like "protect me from what I want",

things like that.

I definitely was thinking about her

when I was writing a song like "Fear the Future"

because I was picturing "fear the future" on a big billboard.

Memphis art was something that was

really omnipresent during my childhood in that it

was a big art movement in the '80s

that you'd see filtered through in films like "Beetlejuice".

Or you'd see these kind of threads of it.

And I just got really obsessed with it,

again, and its color scheme, and its clean design,

and its humor, and absurdity, and just

worked with it on the imaging for an album.

[MUSIC - ST. VINCENT "LOS AGELESS"]

It was like sexy "Pee-Wee's Playhouse,"

which is just redundant, frankly.

Again, I was trying to take this very brightly colored and kind

of almost animatronic feel and then

inject the performance of sexiness into it

and just see what happened.

And part of that was because that was the only way that I

could inhabit the idea of that particular kind of sexiness,

was to sort of make a--

have it be absurdist.

You really can just take things from any kind of art,

visual art, books that you've read,

and just incorporate it all into what you're doing.

I was reading a book by an author named Lorrie Moore.

It was a great, great book of short stories

called "Birds of America".

And it just happened to be a story

about a woman going and visiting the Blarney

Stone with her mother.

And her mother goes to kiss the Blarney Stone and almost falls.

And this woman who had previously

seen her mother as this very oppressive force in her life

suddenly sees her very vulnerable.

And so that was what the story was about.

But she just happened to use the phrase "birth in reverse"

to describe the way that a cathedral opened.

And I was like, wow.

And that just started sparking a million other ideas

of, well, what--

what is-- what is that?

I'm picturing the Big Bang going in reverse.

So many things are coming to mind.

And I was like, well, it sounds like a great title for a song.

[MUSIC - ST. VINCENT, "BIRTH IN REVERSE"]

(SINGING) It was a birth in reverse in America.

I feel like, in the past couple records,

certainly a color palette has kind of come first.

And then you just stick to the palette

so that you kind of keep everything in the same world.

And then I had dyed my hair blond.

And it was kind of all terrible because I'd just done it

in the bathroom sink in Texas.

I wanted to look like an alien.

I didn't want to look friendly.

I didn't want to look relatable.

I didn't want to look like a nice girl from Texas.

I wanted to look other because I wanted to look how

I felt inside, which was other.

I worked with David Byrne on a record

called "Love This Giant".

We wrote the record over a number of years,

just trading ideas back and forth on the computer.

Originally, we were just supposed to write a couple

songs for a night of charity.

But then we just kind of got in the rhythm

and really liked it and kept going and going and going

until we had a record.

David's so brilliant.

One of the things I really walked away with was he's

just willing to try anything.

When we were making demos--

one of the things that I found so exciting that I ended up

incorporating into my own work was, even

if he didn't know what the words were, I'd get these demos that

were like, [GIBBERISH]

And then you're like, oh.

Oh, god, is he having a--

like, what's going on?

But it would be this great, really cool melody.

And he's just working it out.

And the words, maybe it's gibberish.

Maybe he's singing just syllables.

And maybe there'd be some words.

But his way of just being free enough

to find it, flinging at the wall, see what happens,

try this, try that, that was just so--

that was so exciting because I think

I'd come at music from a little bit more of a--

with a little bit more, I don't know, trepidation.

And also the fact that David doesn't look back.

David's not-- David is always looking forward

to his next project.

And his projects are in wildly different fields.

He's designing a chair one day.

And he's writing a musical the next day.

And he's working on a neuroscience project

the next day.

It's-- there's really no end.

So I took that lesson.

I was like, well, yeah, you can just make things.

For the tour, we worked with a choreographer.

And I'd never worked with a choreographer before.

In fact, I was kind of scared of dancing.

I'm not-- I'd have to be very drunk to get

in the dance at the party or whatever.

I just was kind of shy in that regard.

But we worked with the choreographer

named Annie-B Parson, who just absolutely blew my mind,

put me in my body in a way that I had never been.

It's not about athleticism or super skill.

It all had to be things that basically anybody could

do because we had an eight-person horn

group in addition to a drummer and a keyboard player.

And they were all moving all the time.

And we were all moving all the time.

So I would be playing guitar but then also doing

my post-modern choreography.

So at first, I was sort of resistant.

I was like, no, no, no, I'm playing guitar in this song.

So I can't.

I can't do that.

And she would just slowly but surely, well,

what if you tried?

And the next thing you know, I was just obsessed with it

and incorporated it into my own work.

And one of the things I found so wonderful about choreography

was it was ways that I had never moved

my body, which isn't to say that it was a super athletic thing.

It was just simply gestures that I'd never done

and that were just kind of inexplicably powerful.

I remember her giving me a piece of choreography

where I leaned forward and showed my neck to the audience.

And it was one of the--

it's like a shock went through me the first time I did it.

It was like, wow, this is-- this is a really emotional thing.

And I don't really know why.

And I found that was so much of the choreography.

It puts you in your body in a way that is just special.

You can see just in the way-- if you watch people

in the way they move, you go, OK.

This is your center.

I think my journey as an artist has probably

been to go from cerebral to throat to more heart centered.

I know that there are certain things that

are easier for me to tap into.

It's easy for me to tap into rage.

It's easy for me to tap into sorrow.

It's easy for me to tap into cynicism.

It's less easy for me to just instantly tap into softness

and vulnerability.

But as I've grown and become, I think, a better artist,

that stuff is--

it's there when I need it.

It's accessible, which is nice.

The guitar--

[GUITAR STRUMMING]

--I've been playing it for lots of years.

And at different times, it's kind of

taken on different roles.

I've always been trying to figure out all of the best ways

that I can be a songwriter and also guitar player

and merge those two things in a way that

is compelling or new and kind of creatively satisfying.

I learned pretty early on that I just wasn't satisfied,

you know, accompanying myself with basic chords.

[GUITAR STRUMMING]

I always kind of wanted the guitar to be doing more--

bumping around, bumping around the melody,

being a percussive instrument sometimes,

being a totally other voice in the music other times.

[GUITAR PLAYING]

I have some basic tips for tone, effects pedals,

general ideas on technique, and then

a general just overall ethos about guitar.

Tone is-- wow.

Tone is so-- tone is so major.

First of all, if you're a left-handed player,

know I mean this about your left hand--

your right hand is really important.

You want to make sure that when you're playing

you're not holding tension in your body,

because if you're holding tension in your body,

it's going to come out in the guitar.

So the more you can breathe into it, the better.

I know that sounds a little silly or a little basic.

But sometimes on stage, I'll find myself scrambling.

And every time I'm scrambling on the fretboard,

it's because I'm not breathing and I've just

played a note that I'm not sure how to recover from.

[LAUGHS]

I hear tone usually in my head, and then I try to find it.

And more than that, I hear guitar lines in my head

and then figure out how to play it.

I would say some of my--

[GUITAR STRUMMING]

--ideas come from actually just sitting down and playing

guitar.

But a lot of things are just like, OK, I can hear the music.

Now I just have to chase it down and transpose it

for this instrument.

If I'm going to write a solo, usually what happens

is I've written a melody in my head,

and then I go and find it--

of course, leaving room for exploration here.

Again, I think your ears are your best asset.

Ears and ideas, that's all you need.

[GUITAR STRUMMING]

The guitar can be really--

it can sound like anything you want it to sound like.

Right in front of me is a pedal board.

It has phase, which sounds like--

[FUNKY GUITAR PLAYING]

--that.

I mean, there's a long history of playing with phase in style,

like kind of funk styles, like--

like a--

[FUNKY GUITAR PLAYING]

--stuff like that.

So that's more like a really loose wrist

here and treating the guitar more

like a rhythmic instrument.

[FUNKY GUITAR PLAYING]

Different sounds of the guitar, I think, carry--

they carry with them a certain kind of baggage.

And the baggage isn't bad.

It's just like context.

When I think about phase, you know, I'm thinking about--

[FUNKY GUITAR PLAYING]

You're thinking about, like, a lot of stuff

that was going on in the '70s.

The board also has--

it's an H3000.

It's basically a multi-effects unit, so there's all kinds of--

[GUITAR PLAYING WITH MODIFIED PITCH]

In this case, this is--

[GUITAR PLAYING WITH MODIFIED PITCH]

It's a pitch effect.

There's a triad in here.

So--

[GUITAR PLAYING WITH MODIFIED PITCH]

--that's quite pretty.

So you can get this nice, like, [INAUDIBLE] things.

[GUITAR PLAYING WITH MODIFIED PITCH]

Kind of chime-y stuff.

There's a compressor, which makes everything kind of sound

a little bit more present, because it

takes your lowest lows and your highest highs

and brings them closer together.

[GUITAR PLAYING WITH COMPRESSOR]

This can give us a very Hendrix-y kind of tone.

It has this kind of effect.

There's a whole world of other effects

that are definitely more in the, like, "let's fuck some shit up"

mode.

[DISTORTED GUITAR PLAYING]

That world.

These are distortions and overdrives.

I've got a reverb here.

So reverb is-- a digital reverb would be simulating a space.

[ECHOEY GUITAR PLAYING]

It adds dimension.

Basically what a reverb is doing is--

[ECHOEY GUITAR PLAYING]

--pretending that you have taken the signal of something

and put it in a specific space.

It says, just kidding.

You're in a cathedral.

[ECHOEY GUITAR PLAYING]

You can hear the tail on that.

Then we've got a--

[GUITAR PLAYING]

--kind of a chorus-y thing.

So this is like a--

chorus is a pitch effect.

Lot of--

[GUITAR PLAYING]

Chorus was very popular in the '80s.

When I think of chorus, I think a lot about the Cure.

There was a song on a record called "Strange Mercy" called

"Surgeon."

And I had this EQ pedal that I was messing with.

And basically, I just took all of the low end of the guitar

out and kept just the high frequencies.

I wanted the guitar to be kind of needley and sharp.

So I wrote this part inspired by the sound.

[FUNKY GUITAR PLAYING]

You get it.

But kind of a funk part, kind of a finger style part,

that I just wanted it to kind of work with the vocal,

kind of play where the vocal wasn't.

I don't know-- kind of keep this "de, duh, de, duh, de, duh, de,

de, de, de, duh, de, duh, de, duh" going.

So that was the thought, but it was really

inspired by the kind of all high end, no low end sound.

There's a song called "Rattlesnake,"

which I was listening to a lot of Turkish music

and specifically this artist called Selda, who

was a '70s Turkish folk star.

And the music is like-- the rhythm

section is sort of like Led Zeppelin-y, but it's a saz.

That's s-a-z.

It was the instrument they're playing,

a Turkish instrument, that's like-- the way you

play it is all sliding.

So I was like, oh, that's such a cool sound.

How can I sort of get--

approximate that sound?

You'd have to play a melody all in one string, so--

and add compression so you would take

as few reattacks as possible.

So like a--

[GUITAR PLAYING WITH SLIDING]

And a lot of like--

[GUITAR PLAYING WITH SLIDING AND VIBRATO]

--that kind of stuff.

Like, overshooting the note and doing vibrato is--

that's a big--

it's a big kind of trademark of the sound of the saz.

So I was just kind of trying to emulate that.

A lot of times playing guitar, I'm

emulating the sound of a human voice,

or I'm emulating instruments that aren't guitars, even.

There's all kinds of ways to modify the sound of the guitar.

Obviously one way is pedals, but there's another way

that's just the more--

the craftier way, shall we say, which is you

can do things like put paper or paper clips in the strings.

This would be something called prepared guitar.

But it's also a little bit of a nod to great African guitar

players.

I'm thinking right now of Ali Farka Touré,

who was a big inspiration for the riff in a song called

"Cruel," which is like--

[GUITAR PLAYING]

So this sort of like--

that kind of paper in your strings, like--

there's something kind of--

[GUITAR PLAYING]

--very natural, like, rattle.

[GUITAR PLAYING]

Stuff like that.

So there's a lot of ways to get at tone

that aren't even just going and buying a bunch of pedals.

You can put metal in the strings.

This is a favorite of a lot of New York downtown art--

you know.

[TINNY GUITAR PLAYING]

So you've got-- you've got, like, a homemade ring modulator

right here.

It's-- you might have to do a little bit of jerry-rigging

to get it to sound the way you want.

But, like, pretty sick.

Playing with fingers, because I play

with the pad of my fingertip, is a sort of softer attack.

So with a pick you might have--

[LOUD GUITAR PLUCK]

With a finger you have--

[SOFT GUITAR PLUCK]

I like having the flexibility to do both because I--

[SOFT GUITAR PLUCKING]

--so I can play "Girl from Ipanema"

at the Holiday Inn, which is where I will die.

That's where--

[SOFT GUITAR PLUCKING]

That'll be my--

I'll keel over on stage playing "Girl from Ipanema"

at a Holiday Inn in Tampa.

[SOFT GUITAR PLUCKING]

Stay tuned for tips on alternate tunings and how to get unstuck.

[GUITAR STRUMMING]

Standard tuning of a guitar is E, A, D, G, B,

E. That's how most guitars are set up.

I found pretty early on that when my guitar was tuned in E,

it wasn't a great place for my voice.

Years ago, I just started tuning down

a whole step, which makes it a little bit more

complicated to transpose.

But I think, for me, the guitar just lives

better a little bit lower.

It's-- the range of it gets to live in places that my vocal is

not.

[GUITAR STRUMMING]

Sometimes I'll just-- I'll go and get

a tuning that I think is really interesting

and then write three songs on it really

quickly and-- because all of a sudden

my normal finger positions are sounding totally different.

So I'll get inspired by that and then just run with it.

[GUITAR STRUMMING]

If I feel like I'm stuck, then I'll

take a guitar that is in Nashville tuning

and get this very chimey, pretty--

pretty world.

[GUITAR STRUMMING]

In Nashville tuning, the lowest four strings

are tuned up one whole octave, so that all of a sudden I

have a new little sonic landscape

to explore and discover.

And things sound different because octaves

are in different places.

So the voicing of the chord is going

to be different because where the notes were, some of them

might be in flipped octaves.

So we got this pretty--

[GUITAR STRUMMING]

Then the neck.

If I'm stuck on something, I'll either go to different tunings

to play the same thing, or I will tune my guitar

in sort of unexpected ways.

Sometimes I just will go to random tunings.

Let's try open D tuning.

I'm tuning the strings to D, A, D, G, A, D,

also known as "dad-gad."

[GUITAR STRUMMING]

And this is just--

this is an open tuning.

But all of a sudden, you have, like--

the same shapes--

[GUITAR STRUMMING]

--have a different tonality.

They have-- it's different harmonically.

Suddenly the familiar becomes the unfamiliar

to you, which is always exciting.

Always prepare to be pleasantly surprised.

There's something called glam tuning,

which is when you tune everything

on the guitar to the same note.

It'll be in different octaves, but it's all the same note--

definitely made popular during the glam rock era.

So if we--

[ONE-NOTE GUITAR PLAYING]

So the guitar, pitchy as it is, it is all tuned to one note.

Everything is-- everything is an E.

And I first kind of thought about this

because I played with a guy named

Glenn Branca, who was famous downtown New York

musician/composer.

And I played in his orchestra for 100 guitars.

There were 80 guitars, and there were 20 basses.

And everyone was going--

[ONE-NOTE GUITAR PLAYING]

It just-- then it created this crazy mass of sound,

because the exciting thing about this is it's--

it's natural chorus, because you have--

even though the guitar is all tuned to the same note,

there's going to be fluctuations within those notes.

So you're going to get this, like, woozy--

[ONE-NOTE GUITAR PLAYING]

--sound no matter what.

Even if you-- this is this guitar totally clean.

[ONE-NOTE GUITAR PLAYING]

And what happens is the--

when the notes, when the frequencies are very close

together, they kind of bounce off of one another

and create that--

[ONE-NOTE GUITAR PLAYING]

--kind of spacey sound.

So that's-- that was a technique I used on the solo

for "Masseduction," which was a--

which was that world.

[MUSIC - ST. VINCENT, "MASSEDUCTION"]

(SINGING) Mass destruction.

Masseduction.

Mass destruction.

Masseduction.

Mass destruction.

Masseduction.

Mass destruction.

Something like that.

[PLUCKING STRINGS]

Along the lines of playing guitars with different tunings,

you can not only change the relationship

between the strings, but you can also

play guitars that are tuned way down or really high.

This is a baritone acoustic guitar.

And what makes it sound different from other guitars

is that it's tuned down to a B. And it has flat ones on it.

So there are two different kinds of strings.

One is roundrounds, and then one are flatwounds.

And flatwounds are a lot of times known as a jazz string

because they have a more muted tone.

[GUITAR STRUMMING]

But they sound really beautiful in a lot of different contexts.

And it almost has--

[GUITAR STRUMMING]

--like almost like a cello-esque sound.

[GUITAR STRUMMING]

And just-- it's just a really, like, more delicate approach.

Again, I play with my fingers a lot.

I used to watch my uncle play guitar,

and he's the world's best finger-style jazz guitar

player.

So I-- I would just watch him play and try to pick up

bits about his technique.

I kind of like to keep the--

[GUITAR STRUMMING]

--have a thumb that's able to sort of comp bass parts

or be really dexterous.

[JAZZY GUITAR PLAYING]

[PLUCKING STRINGS]

Wherever you are, up 12 frets there will be a harmonic.

There are natural harmonics on the guitar at the fifth,

seventh, and 12th frets.

But you can do what's called artificial harmonics, which

is you take--

you put your fingers on the fretboard.

And then 12 frets up from that, you go--

[PLAYING HARMONIC]

--and you've got a harmonic.

You could do, like, a little-- pretty little thing.

You could be like--

[PLAYING HARMONIC]

That's a fun trick.

And you can also play with the naturally occurring harmonics

on the fretboard, which would be like--

oh, here's a fun one.

[GUITAR STRUMMING]

And create entire melodies out of those harmonics,

just with tuning and a light touch.

You just have to have a light touch with it.

[PLUCKING STRINGS]

Right now, I'm kind of falling back in love with the guitar

as in its kind of purest form, in the not affected--

not trying to be anything else.

Just kind of going back to some of my favorite guitar playing

that is just really fluid and wiggly,

and playing as softly as possible to get the most tones.

And long bends, like really--

[BENDY GUITAR PLAYING]

Just like-- just really super bendy and trying to get as much

emotion out of one note as possible.

Just very fluid things that go like this instead of things

that go like this.

[BENDY GUITAR PLAYING]

If you're on a stage, it is a performance.

People are watching you.

People are listening to you.

They're coming to go someplace else for an hour and a half.

It's your job to take them there and go there with them.

I just like to acknowledge that, and then

control what I can control in the performance

to make it the best possible experience for the audience.

You get to bring in everything that you

love into one place, the visual art side, the movement

side, obviously, the music.

That's first and foremost.

The conceptual.

You know, that's the place where you

get to create an entire world on a stage for an hour

and a half to two hours for people.

That's the best, and there's no reason

not to just embrace that fully and make it anything

you want it to be.

By the time the audience sees the show,

it's very well-rehearsed.

The lights are in order.

Certainly as things go on, it gets more and more well-oiled.

But I don't think an audience should pay

to watch you figure things out.

I think they should pay to see a show.

Performance tips.

I have so many.

And I have so many because I have done things so wrong

so many times.

So eating.

When to eat to have energy for the show, but not be lethargic.

Eat four hours before the show.

That is enough time to digest, not feel bloated,

have enough energy, and have your brain

back and functioning.

That's one.

Two, a lot of times you'll see, oh, no, so-and-so

canceled the tour because they've

lost their voice from singing.

You don't lose your voice from singing.

You lose your voice from partying.

You lose your voice because you went to the after party,

and you're like, yeah, thank you so much, oh yeah, yeah, yeah.

Talking is the thing that will do it.

Singing.

Sing all day.

You'll be fine.

Singing-- your voice is a muscle, and like all muscles,

it can be trained.

It can be worked out.

I mean, when I'm, like, in the middle of tour,

it's like the difference between,

you know, being scrawny and being s bodybuilder.

Like it's just there.

It's there because I'm using it all the time.

So warm up your muscles a little bit before you play.

That's good, before you sing.

If you're a player, warm up a little bit.

Even just holding the guitar for me before I play,

it just does something to my body where it centers me.

And singing before I play, it's centering.

And if you don't want to do, like, standard vocal warm-ups

and that kind of stuff.

Sing songs you like.

Sing songs that you like with your friends backstage.

Harmonize.

Just be in music before you go out on stage.

Don't go out cold.

That's hard.

You want to be so well-rehearsed and so fluid in your body

and not holding any tension when you

play that you can lose yourself in it when you're actually

playing.

You want to be so rehearsed that you're not thinking, oh, shoot,

is the bridge coming up?

Wait, where do I--

wait, where do my fingers go for this section?

Because that will take you out of the moment,

and the audience will feel it, or they'll hear it,

that the song is wrong.

So that just alleviates a lot of stress for me

if I'm so well-rehearsed that everything is muscle memory.

And once it's committed to muscle memory,

then I can be free.

Then I can explore.

Then I can go off script.

But learn the melody before you improvise.

Don't ever throw anyone under the bus on stage.

Don't do that.

Somebody fucks up, don't give them the look

because chances are nobody knows.

I've seen some big artists call people out on stage,

and it's just--

it just feels like sacrilege.

It just feels like, oh, that's just horrible.

That's bad etiquette.

The shows are for the audience.

You might not want to play that song that you've

played a million times.

Who cares?

It's not about you.

The shows are not about you.

The shows are about the audience.

It's people who have taken the dance off or, you know,

got a sitter, or they worked at the job

to get the money to buy the ticket.

That's about them, and that's a special thing

that you get to do together and for them.

So play the fucking song.

Play the song that everybody likes.

Just do it.

Hot tip.

Whatever shoes you're going to wear

for the show, rehearse in them.

Find out if you can actually stand up

in them for an hour and a half.

I made a terrible mistake in Japan one

time where I did not do that.

And I thought, oh, these will be fine.

And then I got up on stage, and about 30 minutes into the set,

I was like, I can't move my ankles, and I can't move.

So I hope people can dig it with me just

being the tin man over here.

Latex is a crazy one because you are covered in sweat.

You just have to dig that.

That's varsity level discomfort.

It's funny.

Sometimes-- because it's live and it's adrenaline

and it's all the things-- sometimes something-- well,

you know, something with the monitors is bad,

or I've had experiences where I get very frustrated.

I just snap into rage really quickly.

And sometimes it ends up that people are like, wow,

that was a great show.

And you're going, what?

I was so mad.

I thought I was doing so poorly.

I was in my head the whole time.

I couldn't-- and a great thing to remember is that people

don't know.

People don't know what's going through your head.

Half the time, even if you think you made a mistake,

people didn't notice it.

Just keep going.

Just keep going, keep going, keep going.

And if you're reaching for a solo

and you make a mistake, great.

Do it again.

Look, now it's intentional.

Look what I did.

What an interesting choice.

The great thing about being on stage,

and one thing that I have to remember,

is that no matter what happens, you're not going to die.

So sometimes that's the only thought that calms me down.

Well, I'm not going to die.

For my last record, "Mass Seduction",

I did three iterations of a show.

The first was this solo show that

was kind of about my work in chronological order.

And I played it solo with backing tracks,

which was contentious.

But the show was more like kind of tracing

the line and the roots of this kind of more DIY, a little bit

scrappy, a little homemade, into the present, which

was this hyper color funny dominatrix.

Oh, so much fucking latex.

I was in athleisure for a year after.

The latex phase-- those boots hurt.

They hurt.

You get them done, and they put the padding in them,

and you go to the guy that Beyonce goes to,

but those boots fucking hurt by the end of it.

It's so funny, too, like the gearing up to do the show.

It was similar, I would imagine, to gearing up

to do a big sporting event, where I'm like,

ankle braces, check, wrap the feet, check.

But I liked it.

And it was part of the show that I

would be physically uncomfortable

and also pushing myself physically.

And I always like to be a little bit uncomfortable,

whether that's physically or emotionally.

Just makes me feel alive, makes me feel

like I'm really onto something.

Keeps me on my toes, in this case, very literally.

That show was a lot about unpacking

for myself the idea of power and also the idea of sexuality.

So when I was working with the design of the stage outfits,

I was kind of going, what's my idea of sexuality that's

sort of like if an alien did it, and if it was sort of so

classically sexy that it was actually kind of funny?

And so that's where I started, in a pleather bunny suit.

The record was a whole lot about power, and about sexuality

and power, and how different people

wield power and figuring out for myself, how do I wield power?

On both a really macro scale, even the title

is this portmanteau of "Mass Seduction".

And if you say it fast, it sounds like my seduction.

And does that mean I'm being seduced

or I am doing the seducing?

And also, the seduction of the masses.

I remember for that tour we did some video,

and I got very obsessed with Mussolini

and watching Mussolini do speeches.

It was always this, and it was this.

So I remember at the beginning, we

were shooting video that was going

to play at the beginning of the show, and it was me,

and I'm talking, but really, I'm watching-- off screen,

I'm watching Mussolini and trying to emulate Mussolini

go-- how's he moving his hands?

What's he doing?

And so by kind of aping the gesture of power,

but decontextualizing it and making

it different and strange, frankly,

you kind of get to question what is power?

Who has it, and how do they wield it, and--

god, the whole thing it's just ridiculous, isn't it?

That first tour was almost like a solo theater piece,

and then the second iteration was a full band, large scale,

blistering, disturbing rock show I called "I Am a Lot Like You".

That's one way of approaching things.

But the other way is I was just singing,

and I had my friend Thomas Bartlett, who's

a beautiful piano player, accompany me.

And we didn't practice at all.

I mean, we just showed up, chatted, kind of played

through the thing a little bit, like, oh, yeah, I

think it goes like that.

Yeah.

OK, sure.

Fine.

(SINGING)

We'd just drink some tequila and play for an hour and a half.

And those shows are some of the most fun and emotional shows

I've ever played.

There's the excitement and the freedom of spontaneity,

and the fact that you're really only dealing

with two instruments.

You're dealing with a voice and a piano.

And so everything is this conversation.

Oh, you're going here?

Oh, that's exciting.

I'm going to follow you.

I'm going to go here.

Oh, you're pushing against it.

Oh, you're following me.

It's like such a beautiful dance,

and I'm so glad that I also got to perform

the songs in that context because in some ways,

I feel like that was an even better show.

I hate to say it for the people who

bought the ticket to the band's show,

but those were special and very drunken.

(SINGING) I fear the future.

Right now my head is at just playing

when I have something to say and leaving space.

There have been times in the past

where I will put a guitar thing where maybe it doesn't even

need to be, because I had some fear of, like, well, people

need to know I'm a guitar player.

I don't care about that at all anymore.

And ironically, it means me playing so much more guitar.

It's a paradox in that way, to have run from convention

in certain ways and then find yourself back loving

what you loved about it when you first heard it,

and coming back to those influences.

A lot of times when you're arranging and writing and more

in the production phase of things and layering, you think,

well, the chorus is going to happen.

We've got to add something.

Think the opposite.

Think, I'm going to take something away here.

This piano part, this is how we wrote the song.

Great.

Build a track up around it and then remove the piano

and see what you get.

You can't use every color in a song.

You have to pick.

Not every song needs a guitar solo.

Not every song needs a big distorted monster guitar.

Just try to serve the song

It's so much about deciding what's going

to be the best big picture.

And that big picture isn't about ego

and planting your feet in the space and going,

here's my macho moment.

Just kind of being way more fluid with the whole thing.

I think no matter what the genre, there's a lineage

and there's a DNA that you can feel.

Like John Coltrane in "The Love Supreme," just wailing.

You can hear that spirit in punk rock.

You can hear that spirit in hip-hop.

No matter the genre, this kind of grasping,

reaching for more is present in all kinds

of music, in every kind of music.

The great thing about music is that you

get to be a part of this lineage for a brief period of time.

And the greatest thing you can possibly do

is get to give back to this lineage that

has given you so much.

Music is the gift that keeps on giving.

It really is.

The more you do, the more you can do.

You could study it your whole life,

you could play it your whole life,

and you will never even get close to its edges.

Everybody, good luck.

I hope this was valuable in some way.

And remember that the best thing you could possibly be

is be yourself.