You're listening to song-explitter where musicians take apart their songs and piece by piece tell the story of how they were made. I'm Rishike Shikairway. Grimes is the project of Claire Boucher. In 2015 she released Art Angels for 4th album.
In this episode she breaks down a guilty name and how the experience of writing songs for other artists opened up the way she writes for herself. This is Claire Boucher from Grimes. I was jamming with a friend and this person was really good at making really aggressive music and he kept doing these cute little plucky things. And I was like, no, no, let's make a hard song.
He was like, no, no, you make cute music. I was like, I was so horrified. I was like, I can make hard music. So I went home after that and sort of wanting to prove that I could make something that's going to be really aggressive that I would want to play during an action-sequencing movie or something.
So that was kind of the impetus of how it started. So the first thing I made for the song was I just got out this old crappy guitar I had and I didn't know any chords. I hadn't really played guitar very much. It's like a single note guitar lead thing.
And then I just pitched it down an octave so it would set a market pace. But then later on I ended up getting a really sweet guitar amp and so I re-recorded a lot of guitars. And then also I played some chords that I had subsequently figured out with better guitar, like making a real amp. You can tell that it's like chopped and pitched.
I mean, every thing about the guitars in the song are the byproduct of me just knowing nothing about guitars. Like, it sounded interesting. I just wasn't worried about keeping it, I guess. It's just a complete mess of unprofessionalism.
I'm a real kick drum person. Like, I live for kick drums. That's what the whole thing for me is about every song I do. Like, there's at least 15% of the time that I work on the song is dedicated to the kick drums.
But this song is really hard for me because when I came to realize making the song is that it's usually like either a kick drum song or a guitar song if it's a banger. Like, you usually get one or the other, like a big rock song that's the kick is actually usually pretty chill. So this was just me just really trying to get as much bang from the kicks as I could. There's like, Tom's and explosions that are also layered into the kicks.
There was like 40 layers of drums. I want to make a song that I would want to dance to. I also stood up for most of the time that I was making it. Like, I put my computer on a monitor stand so that I could dance while I made the song.
I had been watching Godfather and Godfather 2 and I just had this thought in my mind of this insane movie that would just be like a Godfather with vampires. Like, a mixture of Godfather and Twilight. I just wanted to make the song that would play during the trailer of this fictional movie in my mind. I hate singing.
It's just not something I identify with at all. I'm pretty much always pretending to be someone else when I'm singing. Six months before starting this song and stuff, I did some sessions like writing for other people, which I know, it was actually really great because I started for the first time writing in other people's voices. It was a huge door for me when I first started trying to write music for other people.
It was like, this amazing, because suddenly you don't have to feel self-conscious lyrically it's also so much easier. You're like, oh well, this doesn't have to be something my parents are going to hear and think, wow, I can't believe you did that. Which is actually huge, probably one of my biggest hindrances as an artist is my parents or grandparents being upset by my lyrics being not PG or too weird or something. Writing for other people was definitely how I started down the path.
Music for me, it's like fan fiction. When I was really doing the vocals and lyrics for this, I was deep in the record. I was not talking to people and I was very isolated. I was doing just a lot of voices in the house.
This makes me sound insane. I actually feel like maybe I shouldn't say stuff like this. When you're making a record and you're never talking to anybody, you just start, oh, I'm going to try to write in the voice of a something, with a Harley Quinn vibe, this jokery, scary demon chorus. The BEHA, which sounds terrible, you shouldn't solo it.
It sounds so bad, it's so loud. Okay, we'll let the people know that I think it sounds, it's really embarrassing to listen to solo. But I respect a few solo it. BEHA.
I mean, that was the thing that I was really just totally stuck on until the very, very end was just finishing the BEHA. It was so hard to get it right. I just had to do that 50 different times and go through and try to find the ones that were off key and then just get those out. And just auto tune some and not other ones.
When you're working with 50 plus vocals, it's like one vocal. It's like if a light ball burns out on the Christmas tree lights and you have to figure out which one it is, it's like that. It's just really mind-numbing and annoying. Oh, I add crowds into everything.
I think it's a huge key to making dance music. Even if it's so quiet, I can kill me, I mean it's so quiet, you can't even hear it. But it's like you take crowds cheering, you side change the kick, pan hard right and left. It just adds so much energy.
It's my number one go-to trick, it just makes everything sound better. Also when it's live, people think it's live and they cheer more. It's very manipulative tactic. It's great.
This song is probably my favorite song I've ever made. It was definitely fun the whole time. There were times when I was really worried that it was going off the deep end where I was like, I should probably just give up on this song. But I always enjoyed this song, which is more than I can say for most of my songs.
I do feel like it's important to consider how music is made. I think really great music. Over time you start hearing little imperfections in it. For me, the process is by far the best part.
And now here's Kill V. Mame by Grimes in its entirety. For more on Grimes, go to SongExploder.net. I put the music video for the song up on the site and a link to buy the track on iTunes.
Next time on SongExploder, Band of Forces. You can find all the past and future episodes of SongExploder at SongExploder.net or on iTunes, Stitcher, or wherever you download podcasts. SongExploder is a proud member of Radiotopia from PRX, a curated network of extraordinary story-driven shows. Learn more at radiotopia.fm.
My name is Rishi K. Shirewe. Thanks for listening. In the middle of the summer I thought the cops would surely come.
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