Episode 55: Tim Heidecker and Portugal the Man
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Time Crisis, November.
It's the first Time Crisis since the World Series, so we'll talk about the Dodgers, the
Astros and baseball, perhaps the most frickin' random sport in America.
We'll also talk to John Gourley of Portugal Demand and Tim Heidecker about his new album.
All this, plus the top five songs on iTunes.
This is Time Crisis with Ezra King.
[applause]
So, as we talked about on the last episode, a lot of people get their news from Time Crisis,
which is slightly irresponsible given that we're a bi-weekly show.
And heavily biased.
And heavily biased, so that's fine.
Some people don't have time to catch up.
So the Astros won the World Series.
They won it about five days ago.
I'm announcing it now.
We watched game seven.
We watched game seven together.
It was interesting for me because, you know, I'm not really a sports guy.
Yep.
I thought you were a bit of a baseball nut.
I know baseball historically.
I can't front, like I'm a Dodgers fan.
I can name like four players.
But you know like the lingo.
As we were watching it, you were making calls like, "Should have put in Kershaw earlier."
Yeah.
Whereas I know very little about baseball.
But I watched the last two games because I'm here in LA working with a lot of LA-based
people.
In my heart, I made a split-second decision that I wanted the Astros to win.
Respect.
Sports is really boring if you're not rooting for one team, right?
Is that generally understood in the sports community?
No, I wouldn't say that, but we can move on.
Really?
Yeah, I can watch a game and not have a vested interest.
You'll just like watch the Milwaukee Bucks are taking on the Utah Jazz and you'll just
be like, "High level of gameplay."
Tell you what.
Yeah.
If I'm in a hotel room and I flip on ESPN and it's like four minutes left in the fourth
quarter and it's tied, I'll watch the end of it.
Sure.
Really?
Sure.
Even with just like two random ass teams?
Yeah.
If it's like a good vibe, if it's tense.
Yeah, I just don't relate to that.
So, tell me about Houston.
Okay, so Houston versus the Dodgers.
So my friend makes me watch game six.
He's a born and raised LA guy.
I do some very minor research.
So I know that Houston suffered a hurricane.
Hurricane Harvey.
Crazy flooding.
So on some level already, I feel like they could use a W.
Isn't that weird that there's been two Harveys in the news in the last like two months?
That crossed my mind for a second.
I was like, they're both just like too horrible for even anybody to like talk about.
Anyway, it's kind of a random name.
So Houston got slammed with a hurricane.
Houston got slammed.
So of course they could kind of use it.
They've never won.
And then I saw that they never won.
So come on.
Now I'm really kind of rooting for them.
And then also like I had this feeling and this doesn't cover everybody, but I felt like
proportionally the Dodgers probably have more fake fans.
Okay.
Cause it's a big trendy city.
Yeah.
Okay.
Sure.
And I know that's not fair because the Dodgers probably have millions of fans born and raised
like grew up in a few miles from the park and they want to see him win.
So I was kind of like, I don't know.
There's something in my gut told me that Houston seemed more like the underdog.
And I feel like it'd be corny for me being just like a semi LA resident to just like
root for them.
Just get all ride or die Dodgers.
Yeah.
I would feel corny about that.
Sure.
That makes sense.
But as the game unfolded and we were researching the players, just almost everything I would
hear about the Houston players.
I was like, that is a more interesting squad.
Right?
So first I was researching Altuve.
I found out that he was the shortest guy in MLB.
We were reading about Bregman, a Jewish kid out of Albuquerque, which I thought was random.
Shout out to Mark Maron.
Another Jew from Albuquerque.
And then you pointed out one of the best guys, at least his backstory is one of the best
was Evan Gattis.
Well, first of all, he's the only player that doesn't use batting gloves and his bat is
just like a raw piece of wood, no pine tar, no varnish.
He just has like a primal connection.
And then, yeah, his whole backstory was interesting.
Like really into new age kind of healing culture out of New Mexico had been drafted originally
fell into some troubles with substance abuse and then like spent three or four years kind
of like in the wilderness, like working at ski resorts, living in his van.
Right.
So this guy, he was a hot baseball.
He was like, he was nationally known as a high school player.
How long has this just become like a sports show now?
With two guys that have no business talking about sports.
Bear with us, Crisis Crew.
We're going to get through this.
We're talking about Evan Gattis, nationally recognized, one of the hottest players on
the high school circuit, full ride to Texas A&M.
And then his senior year of high school around then, his life kind of fell apart.
His parents got divorced.
He started abusing substance.
So he never ended up at college.
That's like in movies and stuff.
You're this golden athlete, pride of your high school, about to go to a huge school.
Everybody's excited.
Think about how much pressure, like even random people from your town are putting on you.
That's a big deal.
And then we were reading about like what he got up to instead of going to college.
I guess he briefly went to a junior college in Oklahoma, tried playing some baseball,
burned out and quit.
So then he left school in baseball and became a parking valet in Dallas.
And then he went to Boulder, Colorado, worked in a pizza parlor and was a ski lift operator.
Probably running some sweet delivery in Boulder.
That's a kind of vibe city.
But he still wasn't happy.
He still suffered serious mental health problems.
Former MLB prospect.
Then he and his brother moved to Dallas where they worked as janitors for Datamatics Global
Services, which sounds made up.
Yeah, it's like a Mike Judge film.
Then he met a spiritual advisor who advised him that he should follow her to Taos, New
Mexico.
He worked at a ski resort there.
I don't know.
We don't have all the info about what happened, but I guess that was some type of spiritual
reawakening for him.
He became refreshed.
He wanted to go back to school.
He went back to University of Texas, but not big old Texas A&M.
He ended up at the University of Texas at Permian Basin.
He got another shot to play ball and then he ended up back in the MLB.
But this is like a dude who, you know, especially when people talk about athletes, it seems
like the age like 18 to 23 is like a real prime time to like get your together.
Yeah, you got to do it.
That's where you go from like being the best player at your school or in your state to
being like a world class athlete.
So to imagine that this in this period he was suffering in so many ways to come back
at age 23, 24, whatever, start playing high school, college ball again.
Yeah.
Already that's crazy.
And then from there he ended up being on the Braves.
Then he ended up winning a World Series.
So when you told me about Evan Gattis, then I was like, these guys got to win.
It reminded me of the 2001 series when it was a month and a half after 9/11 and the
Yankees were playing the Arizona Diamondbacks and it went to game seven and Rivera blew
the save.
And I remember thinking at the time, like, wow, there is no cosmic justice in sports
as it relates to geopolitical events.
Because if that's a year that the Yankees should have won the series, that was it.
Oh, one.
The first post September 11th World Series.
It's like, wow, okay.
There is no God.
That's what I learned that day.
Well, maybe God is back because God rewarded God was rooting for Houston.
How does rooting for the Astros?
I'm going to run that bait so it's not nice.
For this life I cannot change.
In the hills, deep off in the main.
Eminem, sweet like candy cane.
Drop the top, pop it, let it bang.
For this life I cannot change.
In the hills, deep off in the main.
Eminem, sweet like candy cane.
Drop the top, pop it, let it bang.
For this life I cannot change.
In the hills, deep off in the main.
Eminem, sweet like candy cane.
Drop the top, pop it, let it bang.
For this life I cannot change.
In the hills, deep off in the main.
Eminem, sweet like candy cane.
Drop the top, pop it, let it bang.
For this life I cannot change.
In the hills, deep off in the main.
Eminem, sweet like candy cane.
Drop the top, pop it, let it bang.
Drop the top, lay high to see.
Jump inside, jump straight to the lead.
Take a sip, feel just how I be.
On freeway, but know ain't nothing free.
Been lost, been laced.
Been busting bills, but still ain't nothing changed.
You in the mob, soon as you rock the floor.
You in the mob, soon as you rock the floor.
You in the mob, soon as you rock the floor.
You in the mob, soon as you rock the floor.
You in the mob, soon as you rock the floor.
You in the mob, soon as you rock the floor.
You in the mob, soon as you rock the floor.
You in the mob, soon as you rock the floor.
You in the mob, soon as you rock the floor.
You in the mob, soon as you rock the floor.
You in the mob, soon as you rock the floor.
You in the mob, soon as you rock the floor.
I can only imagine that Ray playing on that opening day was quite the party.
Okay, he sent in photos from the Whole Foods 1980 Grand Opening.
We'll throw those up for everybody to see.
Well, let's hear what his song "Snake Farm" sounds like.
Well, the woman I love is named Ramona.
She kind of looks like Tempest Storm.
She can dance like a little Egypt.
She works down at the snake farm, snake farm.
It just sounds nasty, snake farm.
Pretty much is snake farm.
It's a reptile house, snake farm.
One more paragraph here.
We'll just read it over the music.
1980, Austin, Texas.
Summer's winding down, but something even more exciting is buzzing on the horizon.
Organic in every sense of the word.
Nineteen hippie Whole Foods employees and their friends celebrating graduating from the co-op to owning their own store.
All fueled by the music of Ray Wiley and his prime.
I like to imagine Willie might have been there and sat in for a few tunes.
At the very least, he crushed a few cold Lone Stars from the audience.
Take care, Matt.
Great email.
Hell of an email, Matt.
So that's interesting, too.
It's like this small group of people, the original employees, kind of sounds like they opened it together.
I wonder if they all had equity in it.
Are there 19 former Austin hippie billionaires?
Or alienated, pissed off people that got lawyered out?
We should make a movie like the Steve Jobs movie, except it's about Whole Foods.
Oh, man.
You know who should make that is Richard Linklater.
Oh, yeah.
Because he's from Austin.
He's an Austin guy.
But he also makes movies that, like, span time.
Like, that is his true subject in a way.
Like, there's the Before Sunrise trilogy and, of course, Boyhood.
And Richard Linklater made Fast Food Nation.
So up his alley.
So he's tapped in with corporate America as a subject.
Rick, if you're listening.
Make the Whole Foods movie, man.
All right, so, Jake, we got another good email.
This one's about the '90s.
And it's a different perspective on the 1990s.
And actually, I've been thinking about it lately, especially as I've been in the studio, kind of finishing up this album.
Yeah.
I've been thinking about different palettes.
And maybe it's just because of the age I'm at, but I've been thinking back to my youth,
and the '90s palette has interested me more than the '70s lately.
Specifically which '90s palette?
I was just kind of thinking about all that music that wasn't, like, grunge or hip-hop,
but still was, like, on the radio all the time, like, Aerosmith, Hootie, Wallflowers, '90s Tom Petty.
Sure.
After the '80s, all those people were kind of, like, trying to shake off the '80s.
That had, like, way more effects on the drums.
And kind of doing the '90s version of the tasteful '70s palette.
But it just was different.
Yeah.
Because you know, like, when they were producing those records, they were probably like,
"No, no, I don't want any of that '80s crap, man. I want it to sound like the '70s."
But it just ended up sounding like the '90s. That's what happens.
But anyway, this email is from Rebecca Hertz.
"Hi, Time Crisis crew. Care of Jake.
Though I may not be in your typical demographic, I am an avid TC listener and fan."
The truth is we have no idea who our typical demographic is.
Yeah, I have no idea.
So you, who knows?
"I am writing today to reopen a discussion that I have heard you reference,
but I think the perspective could be widened a bit. The '90s."
Yeah, we've been pretty shallow on our '90s.
It's mostly GBV talk.
We talk about GBV.
"I was a teenager in the '90s."
So if you're a teenager in the '90s, you're--
She's like my age, probably.
I was partially a teenager in the '90s, but yes, maybe late '70s, early '80s birth.
"I was a teenager in the '90s.
That means I went to high school, graduated from high school, went to college,
and graduated from college all in that decade."
Boom. Class of '99 over here.
Class of '99. You got in at the buzzer.
You're a true '90--
Yeah, I've never thought about that in terms of eras, to put it that way.
We've got to come up with a name for that.
"When your entire eight years, from freshman year of high school
through senior year of college, is in one decade."
What do we call that? Golden eight?
Tight eight.
Just a tight eight.
'91 and '99, bud.
You had a tight eight.
So you're a true '90s guy.
It's a great eight.
My tight eight was from 1998 to 2006.
Wait, you were a freshman in college and--
Okay, that makes sense. I'm seven years older than you.
That's just funny to think about.
You were a freshman in high school, and I'm entering my senior year of college.
Imagine if we could have met then.
We would have still been bros.
Oh, yeah. For sure.
We would have hit it off.
Oh, yeah. But I would have been 21.
You would have been 14.
Yeah.
You want a brew, man?
I think I had my first beer at 14.
But anyway, I had a real freaking random--
But in a way, I've been blessed.
I felt like my high school through college years
was such a freaking random, like, sh-- time in history.
Just late '90s, American hubris.
Yeah, you're going from Clinton to Bush. It's brutal.
But even, like, the height of the Clinton years is kind of gross and f--ed up.
Sure.
And then into Bush.
And so in some ways, there was kind of something cool about, like,
I began my working life as a teacher for a year.
Vampire Weekend comes out.
Obama becomes president, and then we get, like, a kind of a tight eight.
Or a seemingly tight eight.
At least we could, like, pat ourselves on the back.
Let's just say it's a tight eight.
I guess we're about to have some kids who had a full 2010s tight eight.
I love that Rebecca helped us talk about this concept of the tight eight.
So she had a tight eight.
She went to high school, college, all that sh-- in the '90s.
I went to high school in Los Angeles and college in Manhattan.
My experience of the '90s is radically different
than the one I've heard you guys talk about on the show.
It was not a period of calm politically.
We could see the tidal wave of hyper-militarized corporate oppression approaching,
and we did everything we could to work against it.
The music of the time reflected that.
In fact, I look at the '90s as a time of deeply political music.
And that's kind of what I was just saying about the Obama years.
It's like, in retrospect, because we have such, like, brutally, openly harsh presidents,
we start to look back through rose-colored glasses at, like,
when Obama was president, when Clinton was president.
And then, of course, as we start to realize, like, well, Clinton, they signed the crime bill.
It's a very good point.
So, anyway, here are some of Rebecca's examples of political music from the '90s.
See Sonic Youth's 1992 album "Dirty,"
a song swimsuit issue about sexual harassment in Hollywood,
great San Fernando Valley references, too,
and "Youth Against Fascism," which is anti-Nazi,
and also contains the iconic line, "I believe in Anita Hill."
Bikini Kill's seminal '90s anti-patriarchy albums,
songs such as "Don't Need You" and "Suck My Left One,"
as well as "Pretend We're Dead" off of L7's 1992 album "Bricks Are Heavy,"
about frustration with the silence of the left in the face of the Gulf War.
Wasn't that L7's kind of, like, radio song, right?
I don't remember.
Yeah, it's the number one song for them on--
Okay, this is good.
This sounds tight.
Yeah, no, L7's f---ing cool.
I had this L7 album.
I think I got it through Columbia House.
♪
So poppy.
I love it.
Yeah, it's that kind of cool--
[imitates guitar]
Yeah, that grunge 30--
Almost like a Weezer.
Yeah, this is before Weezer.
That's a solid three years.
♪
This is a great song.
I did not know that it was about the silence of the left
in the face of the first Gulf War.
♪
♪
♪
♪
♪
♪
In any generation, there are people still flying the flag
for anti-corporate ideas, fighting white supremacy,
fighting mass incarceration with their art.
I guess sometimes you don't get all those things coalescing
into a giant movement at the same time
in quite the same picker-esque way that it happened in the '60s,
but that doesn't mean that it was like there were less people caring.
Yeah, in the '60s, the major kind of divisive social issues
were larger, basically, than they were in the '90s.
Or not even larger, but more straightforward.
Right.
And that is a tough one.
Yeah, easier to point your finger at.
Yeah, because you could say to somebody something like,
in the '60s, I guess, if you were arguing with a white supremacist
and you were saying black people were treated terribly in this country,
you'd be like, "Give me one example," and you could be like,
"The Jim Crow laws of the South," whereas today,
people actually use that to try to pretend that nothing's the matter.
Like somebody would be like, "Well, it's not the '60s.
There's no segregated waterfronts."
You'd be like, "Yeah, but there's," like she was saying,
"There's the hyper-militarized corporate way that the police
and the private prison industrial complex work together."
Those are--
Institutionalized, yeah.
--harder concepts in some ways for some people.
Certainly not all people, but for some people to understand.
I mean, right now is a very political time.
There's plenty of people out there protesting.
There's people making political music.
It is now like the '60s, Jake.
Are there people making political music that are huge superstars?
Yeah, people would say that Beyoncé was very political on her last album.
Katy Perry was vaguely political on her last album.
As we talked about, Eminem went on BET and dropped--
literally threatened to drop a very hot coffee pot on the president.
So I know it's funny, but on a very basic level,
if we take off our music critic glasses for a second,
is Eminem getting up there and saying, "That's an awfully hot coffee pot"?
What's different about that versus the--
♪ There's something happening here ♪
Yeah, is that so much better?
♪ What it is ain't exactly clear ♪
♪ There's a man with a gun over there ♪
♪ Telling me I got to beware ♪
♪ It's time we stop, children, watch that sound ♪
♪ Everybody look what's going down ♪
Do you think there's some dad somewhere who used to be liberal
and became conservative and sees his son or daughter
watching the Eminem freestyle and is like,
"Listen, I used to be idealistic in the '60s,
and we did have real problems in the '60s."
Oh, I'm sure.
"But we didn't have some dumb millionaire
talking about an awfully hot coffee pot.
We had young, passionate people saying,
'Something's happening around here, and what it is ain't exactly clear.'"
They were millionaires too, but I mean--
"We didn't have the Internet back then,
so we found out what was going on from--"
The musicians, man.
"From the musicians, man."
Yeah, when you really get down into it--
and I'm not trying to pit them against each other,
but it's like, you know.
No, it's easy to idealize the '60s protest music.
That's for sure.
I think it's good to take all protest music with a grain of salt
and not pit it against each other and say,
"60s protest music is, like, corny if you look at it through a certain lens.
'90s protest music is a little impressionistic in a way."
It's a generation removed, yeah.
And even--because you can have a sense of irony
and still be very passionate about political issues,
but it's all art, and, you know, art can just sit there
and be a reflection of the moment.
And that's cool.
I think art should be a reflection of the moment,
but I guess then you still got to vote, still got to read books,
got to do all, like, the kind of boring stuff
to affect political change--protest.
It's interesting how Nirvana really wasn't political,
because they--yeah, like, as Rebecca says,
I mean, they definitely were influenced by, like, all those bands--
Sonic Youth, L7, all of the Kill Rockstars bands,
all the K-Records bands.
But Kurt Cobain's songs were, like, weirdly kind of personal.
Well, if you watch the documentary and you read interviews about him,
you realize that he had very strong feelings about gender equality.
Absolutely.
He hated the patriarchy, he hated the white male patriarchy.
He felt--even him as a white male, he felt victimized by it.
And the truth is, white males are victimized, you know, in their own way.
That's a winning argument.
Yeah. No, but that's an argument that I've heard extremely woke people make.
I'm not trying to say that they're victimized
in the sense that they got it just as bad as everybody else.
I'm saying this is, like, a very old idea
that in any kind of oppressive system,
the oppressor is also being sucked into something horrible.
You know, that's some [bleep] that, like, Nelson Mandela would say.
Okay.
Like, even him as a black man in apartheid South Africa
being treated like a subhuman.
Even he, when he would talk about his prison guards,
when he's in prison forever, would talk about the way in which they were--
maybe "victim" is not the right word,
but that their lives were sucked into this oppressive system, too.
He had sympathy for them?
Yeah, I think you could call it a type of sympathy.
But anyway, my point is that Kurt Cobain,
it seemed like he felt victimized by growing up in a macho--
because he would describe his hometown as being full of macho rednecks.
And because even though he was a white male, he wasn't that.
So people were mean to him, made him feel like [bleep]
and abused him, whatever.
So the more you know about Kurt Cobain,
the more you know that he's definitely somebody who had political views.
To pull that out of the music, because his lyrics are so impressionistic,
is not exactly an easy task.
But the music and the lyrics are still great.
Won't you believe it, it's just my luck
No reason
No reason
No reason
Won't you believe it, it's just my luck
Won't you believe it, it's just my luck
No reason
No reason
[guitar solo]
You're an asshole again
You're an asshole again
You're an asshole again
No reason
No reason
No reason
No reason
No reason
Okay, so Jake, you weren't familiar with them already,
but we were listening to a song that's been racing up the charts the past few months,
"Feel It Still" by Portugal the Man.
And when we first heard it, you correctly pointed out that there was kind of a riff
from "Please Mr. Postman," and then we looked them up and they're from Wasilla, Alaska.
So anyway, we got John Gourley, the lead singer of Portugal the Man, calling in.
Love it.
He's down to talk about whatever, answer our questions about "Feel It Still,"
answer our questions about Alaska.
Very psyched about this one.
Let's do it.
Now, let's go to the Time Crisis Hotline.
[phone ringing]
Hello?
Hey John, what's up? Welcome to Time Crisis.
You're on with me, Ezra, and Jake.
What up?
How are you doing? Where are you calling from, John?
I'm in Portland, Oregon right now.
We have a little break from tour, hanging out with my daughter.
How old?
Six years old.
So you're a Portland-based musician,
but one thing that we definitely want to talk about with you is your Alaskan heritage.
So we read that your father moved to Alaska, but he went to Woodstock.
So does that mean he was like a continental U.S. hippie
who decided to get out of Dodge and see what was popping in Alaska?
What's the story? How did your family end up in Alaska?
Yeah, so my dad is--he is a hippie in kind of like the loose sense of it.
He cares about people, cares about the environment, things like that.
He's not a pacifist in any way.
He's one of the hardest-working people I know, and he's worked for everything.
He's the type of guy that will get in a fist fight.
So he's like a tough hippie.
Yeah, he's like a tough hippie.
In his circle of friends, his best friend's dad actually is the one that inspired him and his group
to move from Morrisville, New York, up to Alaska.
So he moved with a whole posse?
Yeah, so my dad and a group of his friends--his friend's dad is Robert Durer,
who wrote "The Iceman Cometh."
Oh, wow.
There must have been something in the air at that time.
Alaska is known as the last frontier.
My mom and dad are both from the same town, Morrisville, New York,
and moved up there kind of around the same time, didn't know each other in Morrisville,
but met each other in Wasilla, Alaska.
There's just a lot of people on that Morrisville to Wasilla circuit?
That's a coincidence?
I think it's all around that circle of friends and that group.
But what's the story about him going to Woodstock?
Was this right after Woodstock they decided to make the move?
Well, Woodstock happened--my dad graduated in '69.
From high school?
Yeah.
You know, if I'm being honest, I never really got a lot of the stories about Woodstock.
I never really got a lot of the things that's happened to my dad.
I've gotten these little bits and pieces as we've gone along.
I mean, my gift to him 10 years ago was a tape recorder,
so I have all of his stories stored on his tape recorder somewhere
that he gave me at some point.
But I've gotten little bits and pieces along the way.
The newest Portugal the Man album is called Woodstock.
Yeah, yeah, which is loosely inspired by that.
Woodstock '94, right?
My dad went to Woodstock '94.
There is something interesting to me.
Obviously, I don't know your dad, but it's like--
that's kind of intense that you would be--1969, you just graduated high school.
You already live in upstate New York,
and you happen to witness this iconic, epic, gigantic concert of hippies.
You couldn't--in 1969, in terms of youth culture,
you couldn't possibly have been more in the mix than being at Woodstock.
It's ground zero.
So one year your dad is looking around at America's finest hippies together.
Hendricks just ripping into the national anthem.
One year later, he's in Wasilla, Alaska.
That's a hell of a year, a year to year.
Yeah, I'd say so.
The way they did it, when they went up to Alaska,
my dad and his group of friends, they all went out--
actually, to Taquita and the Chase Mountain Range,
and they all went their separate ways.
It was at this time where you could stake a claim on land.
Really?
These were 19-year-old dudes just like--
Just homesteading in 1970?
That's amazing.
My dad didn't even have the $50 or whatever it was to pay for the deed
or the title on the land, so they were just living out--
kind of, I mean, really in the middle of nowhere.
They're in this place that nobody really knows a lot about at the time
and just living off the land.
They did this for three years.
I'm pretty sure that was the whole plan.
They all went out to the mountains, went their separate ways,
and they lived off the land for three years,
and then came back to town and all met up.
That's wild.
Okay, so then flash forward to your birth.
So you're growing up in Wasilla, Alaska.
For people like us, never been to Alaska before,
obviously Wasilla in the past 10 years,
most people associate it with Sarah Palin.
What's the vibe of Wasilla?
Is it, like, semi-rural? How big is the town?
Is there a Best Buy there?
Well, I think now we have Target, we have all that big city stuff.
Growing up, we didn't really have a lot.
I think there were 5,000 people in Wasilla when we were growing up there.
And when you say 5,000 people in Wasilla,
you're counting anywhere from 20 to 50 miles around Wasilla.
The hinterlands.
Yeah, they kind of take everybody in there.
It was a pretty small place.
I mean, we grew up hanging out at the Cars parking lot,
which is like our grocery store.
Whoa.
When I was a kid, I'd sometimes hang out in the 7-Eleven parking lot,
but even that's kind of a different vibe.
So was there, like, for instance, a record store anywhere near you?
We did have a record store.
So even when I grew up in Wasilla, I was 15, 20 miles away.
I grew up in a really amazing place.
I got to be straight about that.
When you grow up in these spots,
I never thought about how great it was that I grew up on the Cook Inlet.
My neighbors were five miles away,
and we grew up on the Cook Inlet,
which is this kind of deep, gray, silty body of water behind our house.
And we'd have these--like, every year, we'd have beluga whales
swimming up behind my house.
That's unreal.
So you're just a kid looking out the window, and you see some belugas.
Yeah, and I don't give a [bleep] at all,
because I've seen it a million times.
Like, every year, I'd see the same beluga whales coming up.
You wouldn't even look up from your Game Boy?
Yeah, I'd be hanging out, like, hanging out with friends, playing in the woods,
and my friends would see the whales coming up the water with the tide.
And it's--I mean, it's just this deep, gray, silt water
with these white whales kind of rolling around,
and they would flip out, and I'd say, "Come on, man.
Yeah, there's [bleep] whales. They're back there all the time.
Get your stick. Let's go play guns in the woods."
For you, that was like seeing a pigeon.
Yeah, it was just like--I'd see that [bleep] all the time.
Were there grizzly bears around?
Oh, yeah, we had bears.
We had black bears, grizzly bears.
So was that a concern when, like, playing in the woods as a kid,
like, were your parents like, "Well, there's grizzlies around.
Don't get eaten by a grizzly," or if you see a grizzly, "Play dead," or what?
Well, I know this is controversial, but I grew up in Alaska.
I was carrying guns at, like, 17 years old.
Carrying guns with me.
And looking back on it now, it's absolutely ridiculous.
This little kid is going to shoot at a bear if he comes at him.
Were the guns for the bears, though?
Yeah, the guns were for the bear for protection.
I mean, literally, like, there's moose out there.
There's bears.
Moose are just so much crazier than anybody ever thinks.
We see stories in the paper every year about some tourist got the [bleep]
kicked out of him by a moose trying to go and edit.
Because they look so dopey, but they're just this hyper-aggressive giant horse.
I mean, they'll kick you.
They'll stomp you.
No, no, that's a good point.
People think of moose as being, like, a cute goofball animal.
Like, they call that ice cream moose tracks.
Like, moose--people almost talk about moose like they're rabbits or something.
Whereas the truth is, moose is like the lion of the ecosystem in some places.
Every one of us has been chased by a moose at one point.
That's like a Wasilla rite of passage is getting chased by a moose?
Yeah, you've been chased by a moose.
Obviously, Wasilla is a place full of natural beauty, majestic creatures.
What's, like, the vibe?
Like, at your school, as somebody who was interested in--
or had at least a burgeoning interest in, like, music
and maybe a left-of-center taste in music, were you, like, a weirdo?
Or, like, it's just a small town, everybody knows each other, it's pretty chill?
Everybody knew each other.
It's like any other small town.
I mean, you tour quite a bit as well.
Whenever you hit the small towns, like middle America,
it always reminds me of Alaska.
It's just--yeah, there's the freaks, there's the jocks,
there's, you know, the stoners and the skaters,
and I was always obsessed with that stuff.
Kind of a lot of the music I found in high school was through, like, Welcome to Hell.
It was Toy Machine and Ed Templeton, and I was in that circle, like the skater kid.
I was my group of friends, but where I lived, I didn't have any pavement.
I couldn't skateboard.
Like, I would just watch these movies.
Did you own a skateboard?
No.
I had no use for one.
I would go snowboarding.
No, I'm with you.
Like, I love the culture of skate movies.
I've never skateboarded in my life, but yeah, I was kind of enjoyed watching that.
The music's great.
It's like seeing the dudes, like, goof off.
You learn a lot from them, especially when you're a kid.
Yeah, that's what I was really obsessed with.
And it was Ed Templeton in particular, was his style, his art,
everything around Toy Machine was really exciting to me.
I loved his high waters and his kind of nerdy look that he had.
That was all really cool, but it was just everything that we saw had to be shipped in.
Right.
You couldn't walk down the street and find that.
So a lot of the music that we came across was through our parents,
and that's where Woodstock comes into play.
It was my dad showing me that VHS copy of Woodstock,
seeing Richie Haven just opening up Woodstock, like, tearing his guitar in half.
Like, you feel like you could see, like, blood coming out of his throat.
He's, like, tearing something and delivering this just passionate rendition of Motherless Child.
There was something about that.
Seeing that is what got me excited about music,
was seeing that, seeing Joe Cocker with his all-male band doing the female backup vocals.
That's when I realized that maybe I can sing.
Maybe I can do this, because I always had a higher voice.
I always felt really self-conscious about singing,
and I was seeing people, like, sing falsetto
and also backing up this complete psychopath in Joe Cocker.
What would you do if I sat at a tomb?
Would you stand up and walk out on me?
Lend me your ears and I'll sing you a song.
I will try not to sing out of key.
Oh baby, how did I, how did I,
oh, I made it my way.
Oh baby, how did I, how did I,
I'm gonna make it my way.
Well, so let's fast forward to current day,
because, you know, on this show we always do the top five,
and so your song "Feel It Still" has been in the top five quite a few times now.
I think it's a great song, and also I've been kind of pointing out to people,
because not everybody always thinks about this,
that to actually have, like, a band,
I don't know how you guys define yourself, but, like, you know,
left of center, alternative, whatever,
rarely in these days, not since the 90s,
ever crack, like, the top ten,
ever have what anybody would call, like, a hit song.
I'm kind of curious, so when you started working on this song,
did you have a sense that you wanted "Portugal the Man"
to have, quote unquote, a hit,
and that just seemed so crazy you couldn't even think about it?
How has this been?
You probably approach music the same way we do,
which is I just want to write the best song I can,
and we set out to do that.
I mean, we worked with Mike D, who, by the way, speaks very highly of you.
Oh, appreciate that. Love Mike.
He's the f***ing best, man.
And working with him and Brian Danger Mouse, John Hill,
all of these people have always just pushed me
to try something more and do something better,
and we wanted to write that song, for sure,
but you can't predict that stuff.
Like, there's no way I could have written that song
if I sat down and said, "You know what?
I'm going to write a number one song.
I'm going to write a top five."
You just can't do it.
I want to be in the top five on Time Crisis.
Every musician's dream is to get there.
Yeah, get me a break. Can I get on "Esmer's Show"?
I also think a lot about, like, with hit songs,
it's like a classic hindsight is 20/20 thing.
Like, somebody could listen to your song "Feel It Still Now"
and be like, "Well, yeah, obviously that's a hit.
It has all the hallmarks of a hit song, you know,
like the number of elements happening and the way the hook works,
and it reminds me of this and that."
But go back three years ago and play it for somebody and say, like,
"You think this is going to be top five
in between Chainsmokers songs in a few years?"
You wouldn't think that.
You don't sit down to write a song like that,
and sometimes you're surprised which songs go the furthest.
So the first time we heard it,
Jake kind of recognized the "Please, Mr. Postman" melody,
and we saw that the people who wrote that song have publishing on it.
So we're kind of curious about how that came about,
because on this show we talk a lot about how, you know,
sometimes somebody goes out of their way to reference a song,
and more often than not these days, a song is written,
and somebody says, "That kind of reminds me of this other song,"
and then you have a lawsuit.
So was this a preemptive thing, or when you start writing,
would it be cool to kind of reference "Please, Mr. Postman"
in a different context? Like, what's the story with it?
We set out to do that. I mean, that was the whole thing.
Like, when I sat down and started working on the song,
it really did come out of nowhere.
We were mixing "Livin' the Moment" with John Hill in one room,
and I kind of stepped into a side room,
and Asa Tacone from Electric Guest--
Yeah, I did not know Asa there.
He's a rad dude, and as you know,
it gets always weird if an outside--another artist
steps in on your songwriting.
But I just kind of stepped in the side room,
and he was working on his own thing in one corner,
and I just picked up this 1960s Hoffner
and started playing that bass line.
And just immediately Asa kind of tilted his headphones back
and looked over and said, "Yo, Jay, you mind if I record that real quick?"
And I was kind of caught off guard by it, to be honest.
Like, it's just not a normal thing for artists to be so open
and just to kind of jump on it like that.
And I let him record it, and he asked if I had a bridge.
I threw down the bass just for a bridge real quick.
And everything just started happening really quickly.
I had written that lyric with Mike, actually, 5 years ago.
I'd been thinking about this lyric forever,
and I'd used it a million times.
And there was just something about the thump of the bass.
It reminded me of those drives to town to get groceries.
I mean, we'd have, like, 2-hour drives to go get groceries sometimes.
- Wow. - Just depending on where we lived.
And we would sing along with Mr. Postman.
And we'd sing along with Motown and The Beatles.
And there was just something about it that was so immediate to me.
And I sang that lyric, "I'm a rebel just for kicks,"
and then it just led me to 1966.
And everything just kind of snowballed from there.
I mean, every lyric led to the next.
"Let me kick it like it's 1986" was a Beastie Boys reference.
- I mean, I was "kick it." - Right.
The funniest thing about this is I said it to everybody when I sent it in.
I said, "Hey, just so you know, this is Mr. Postman."
And everybody came back saying, "No, it's not. You're cool."
I can totally picture that.
Because that's funny, too.
Sometimes when you're the artist, you're trying to be extra sensitive
to put yourself in the shoes of another songwriter.
You really want them to know that you would never intentionally rip them off.
And then you have other people being like, "Wait, you're crazy.
"What, are you going to give up some publishing?
"No, get it? No, no, no. Don't do it."
That's so classic.
No, it's funny. It was like two weeks before the song came out.
We actually got hit.
The musicologist called me up and said,
"Okay, he's walking me through exactly how this is exactly Mr. Postman."
The pacing, the time, everything about it.
"This is Mr. Postman. He's playing full back to me."
And he gets done, and I go, "Yeah, I know."
That was intentional.
So you have that scramble to try and clear it before it comes out.
Obviously they cleared it, and everything was cool.
But the thing that I loved about it was--it's that thing.
It's that I get to sing this song for the rest of my life
that reminds me of those drives singing Mr. Postman with my family.
There's these really great memories of us just singing along in the car
and these long trips to go see my dad when he's running the Yukon Quest.
It's just cool to share that stuff with other generations.
It's something we've talked about it a million times.
It's Keith Seeger and Woody Guthrie traveling across the country
writing folk songs and learning a new folk song in Missoula
and taking it to Idaho Falls and writing a new verse along the way.
It becomes their song.
It becomes something a little bit different along the way.
I always think, to me, that I've done a lot of work
with references, other songs, inspiration, kind of do my own thing with it.
But of course it's indebted to the other song.
I've done a lot of songs where another artist--you kind of had to clear a sample, so to speak.
And the truth is that sometimes people think that that's kind of
some new-fangled hip-hop way of doing things, that it's like an aberration.
It used to be people just sat down and wrote songs.
No, the vast majority of human history has been people using melodies
as a way to remember stuff.
If you think about it, Homer, the Iliad, actually had a melody.
Or the Bible has a melody.
You know, like the Old Testament, the Bible, you could sing the whole thing.
Because our brains work really well to use melodies to do your own thing with
and to spin and to--every folk song, like you said, is a million versions of it.
So yeah, I love stories like that.
I think it's super cool that there's a part of something from your old memory
that's part of a new song.
And look, millions of people are hearing this song now.
Maybe 80% to 90% of them just like the song.
But there's going to be a sizable percentage of people who are like,
"Oh, I wonder, like, I see these other names in the songwriting credits.
Who's that?"
Like, that's how I was when I was a kid. I learned a lot that way.
No, man, that's what's great about music.
And I think that's what music should be.
I mean, this was hip-hop as well, where hip-hop comes from just sampling records.
And I love that idea of creating something new with something that is so familiar to you
and something that means so much to you.
Some people are just sampling records that they love,
and they get to rap over it and write a new chorus.
And that should be how we share music.
Totally. And one last thing that I'll say is also, like,
you made something that's really connecting with a lot of people
that's deeply original too.
And you know, you put 1,000 people in a room with "Please Mr. Postman,"
they're not all going to come out with your song.
They're not all going to write a Time Crisis Top 5 song.
So, you know, as much as obviously the song's indebted to that,
you did your thing with it, and I think that's great.
Well, John, we've got to wrap up.
Thanks so much for calling in, man.
I hope we cross paths in person in the future,
and thanks for talking to us, painting that beautiful portrait of your youth up in Alaska.
There you go.
All right, talk to you soon, man. Have a good rest of your tour.
Thanks, buddy.
All right, peace.
Thanks for having me.
Our pleasure.
It's an honor to be here.
You're also a radio host in a way.
Office Hours, it's a Facebook live stream call-in show where people can call into my Skype.
It's a little bit of a ripoff, I guess, of Tom Sharpling's show or the Howard Stern show or any other radio show.
And then that gets turned into a podcast after I do the live stream.
I want to say one thing before we get in, because we were talking about it.
Sometimes you get people who call in the show and they just say, "Oh, I'm just a big fan."
And it kind of ruins the flow of the show, but I'm a big fan.
And I was thinking about this because I've always been very interested in the year 2004.
Have I ever talked about this on the show?
No, I don't think so.
I've always had this weird theory.
I don't have to go into detail, but it's like there's a lot of weird connections between '94 and 2004.
So, for instance, the first OutKast album came out in 1994, and then in 2004, they won Album of the Year for their final album.
And a week later, Kanye's first album came out.
So I've always been interested in things that happened in 2004 because a lot of things just come together.
And I remember a lot of these things.
I remember Kanye's first album coming out in 2004.
That was a big deal for me.
I remember Facebook launching in 2004 because it very quickly came to my school.
You're like one of the first 500 users of Facebook?
Yeah, I looked it up.
I'm one of the first 5,000 people on Facebook.
So recently I was thinking about it because I was wondering when Tom Goes to the Mayor came out.
That was the first show you and Eric had on TV, right?
Yeah.
2004, right?
Yeah.
So I'm just saying in the year 2004, George W. Bush is president, Iraq War is cooking.
It's spiraling out of control.
And I think three--
Or it's starting to simmer out of control.
Yes, and three things that to me really changed culture, Kanye's first album, Tim and Eric on TV, and Facebook all came out in 2004.
That's a big year.
If we want to go a step deeper, I'll have to do this in maybe like a book format.
I think we could then look at ways in which Kanye changed culture, Tim and Eric changed culture, and Facebook changed culture.
Eventually those things--
Gave us Donald Trump.
--take on a life of their own and they start to intersect.
I wasn't going to say Trump, but I bet you could make the case.
I guess so.
Eric made some video for Kanye West and I'm on Facebook doing my office hours show.
That's right.
I think we've connected the dots.
Little did you know.
And you have Trump fans calling in.
You know what the Midwest is?
Young and restless, but restless might snatch your necklace.
The next is might jack your Lexus.
Somebody tell these who Kanye West is.
I walk through the valley of the shower deck is.
Top floor to view alone and leave you breathless.
Try to catch it.
It's kind of hard.
Get choked by the text.
Yeah, yeah, now check the method.
They be asking us questions, harassing, arrest us.
Saying we eat pieces of shit like you for breakfast.
I leave pieces.
What's the basis?
We ain't going to ever get suits and cases.
A trunk full of coke, rental car from Avis.
My mama used to say only Jesus could save us.
Well, Mama, I know I act a fool, but I'll be gone till November.
I got packs to move.
I hope Jesus will.
God show me the way because the devil's trying to break me down.
Jesus will.
The only thing that I pray is that my feet don't fail me now.
Jesus will.
And I don't think there's nothing I can do now to right my wrongs.
Jesus will.
I want to talk to God, but I'm afraid because we've spoken so long.
Jesus will.
Anyway, 2004 was a seminal year, but now it's 2017.
But I don't want to just talk about that because I think--
Let's not talk about the old days.
So this is primarily a music show.
Yes.
And increasingly baseball.
Oh, baseball.
What are you-- I can't talk about baseball.
No, we're not.
Baseball's over.
It was so-- yeah, it drained me of everything.
But so you got a new record coming out.
This is not your first album.
In a weird way, it's like my seventh album.
Seventh record.
So this is your Born in the USA.
Yeah.
That was the seventh Bruce album.
Was it?
Is that his seventh official?
Yeah, I'm pretty sure that was his seventh official record.
And then, of course, all throughout your TV stuff,
there's always been original music and original songs.
I'm prolific in that sense.
One that made a big impression on me was Petite Feet, Feminine Step.
[MUSIC - PETITE FEET, FEMININE STEP, "PETITE FEET"]
Petite feet, feminine step.
Sounds like a lady when he's walking in the room.
He's got petite feet, feminine step.
Sounds like a lady when he's walking in the room.
Now this is what a man sounds like when he walks.
But this is what the dude sounded like when he walked.
Now this is what a man sounds like when he walks.
But this is what the dude sounded like when he walked.
Now this is what a man sounds like when he walks.
But this is what the dude sounded like when he walked.
But to take us back a little bit, before we
talk about the new album, before your young man growing up
in Pennsylvania, right?
Yeah.
Always had a band.
Had to have a band.
I think that was the case for a lot of generally creative people.
Whether you ended up making music or if you became a TV
person or an actor or director or something,
I bet a lot of people had bands because it was a fraternal thing
to do, it was a friendship thing to do.
It was easy, it was relatively cheap.
You weren't going to make a movie, you weren't going to make
a virtual reality experience.
You were going to get a PV bass and a Gorilla amp and write songs.
What else could you do?
This was like mid-90s.
Yeah, 90s.
So actually, Tim, we were just talking about this before.
What year did you start high school?
I graduated in '94, so I started in '90, '91.
And did you go straight to college after?
Yeah.
Did you graduate college?
Yep.
You went straight to college in '98?
Yep.
Oh, so you have a new phrase we have on the show called
the tight eight.
[laughter]
Where your entire eight years of high school and college
was in one decade.
Oh, okay.
So Jake had that.
You guys both had tight eights.
I'm like, "You're behind me."
I was in the '90s.
Actually, musically, I had a big seminal year.
I remember very distinctly my freshman year of college,
a couple big records.
Your freshman year was '94?
Yeah.
Cracked rear view, '94.
What was that?
You don't know the cracked rear view?
I know--I can't remember.
What is it?
I'll give you a hint.
It's the 16th best-selling album in U.S. history.
Is it--is it--that helps.
Alanis Morissette?
No.
Good guess.
No, that's a good guess.
Give me one more clue that's not chart-related.
The kind of like syntax of the name is something in the--
Hootie and the Blowfish.
That's right.
I didn't like--I was cool enough to not like Hootie and the Blowfish.
Okay?
I didn't care.
Oh, so you were a hipster.
I was a big hipster.
What were your records in '94?
The Blue album from Weezer.
Oh, sure.
Huge.
Classic.
Big--I can picture driving down the road with that.
I was into the Pavement record, Crooked Rain.
Absolutely.
I think this was in more of senior year high school,
but it was like Smashing Pumpkins, Siamese Dreams.
Oh, yeah.
Real big.
There's another one that--Luna.
I love that Luna record.
Oh, it's early Luna.
I was cool.
I was a very cool music guy.
Alt-rock.
You're an alt-rock guy.
John Spencer, Blues Explosion.
Oh, wow.
A lot of Matador records.
A lot of Matador.
A lot of Matador, Yola Tango.
Oh, yeah.
A lot of white guys.
Ween.
Ween, huge.
Yeah, of course.
Big.
Chocolate and Cheese.
So you had a very tight eight with a major pivot right in the middle.
And then the next year, '95, you get Radiohead, right?
You get--
The Benz.
Okay.
Anyways, we're off topic.
So you were down with Smashing Pumpkins, so you weren't too much of a snob.
I was really a big classic rock guy when I was in high school.
I was all about my Beatles, my Stones, my Zep, my Hendrix.
Steve Miller.
Whatever was on the local classic rock station.
But I heard Jimi Hendrix, "Axis Bold as Love" in the Pumpkins.
For sure.
And I thought that was exciting.
One thing we talk about on the show a lot is kind of the narcissism of small difference
and how when you're like a kid who's into something, these different bands and vibes are huge to you.
And then to the outside world, they're like, "This s--t all sounds the same."
And then even to kids down the line, to imagine there's a time where Pavement and Smashing Pumpkins would have an ideological beef.
Right.
I just heard that on the radio the other day.
Oh, you didn't know about that at the time.
Well, you knew about the line from the song from Range Life where he says,
"Out on tour with the Smashing Pumpkins, nature kids, but they don't have no function."
Yeah.
I thought, "Well, what's that about?"
I thought the Smashing Pumpkins were cool.
Now this Pavement group is putting them in check.
I'm thinking, "Uh-oh, I better start picking out my sides here."
You go with Pavement.
I had the exact same experience with that record.
I was starting to smell a rat with that Billy Corrigan.
He seems like an angry guy.
But you know what's funny?
It's like maybe this is all Stephen Malcomus' fault.
It seemed like that criticism really affected him.
I don't remember at the time.
He was very angry about it because he had a quote where he said,
"You know what? Nobody wakes up in the morning with a humming of Pavement's song."
He's basically trying to say that he was just a jealous [bleep]
The point is this idea that Pavement and Smashing Pumpkins are so, so different.
Maybe different sensibilities of the singers, but the music is so different.
Whereas now, there's no music like that on the radio anyway.
So the idea that there'd be enough room for both of those bands to really be making it done is kind of funny.
Do you remember this song?
Did this mean anything to you?
Oh, this was--is this the band Live?
No.
No, that's Collective Soul.
Collective Soul. Yeah, they were always a joke.
In 1994, you heard this and you were like, "Sucks."
Yeah, yeah.
Harold's down for Rare Harold.
We used to make fun of this guy singing because it sounded like he was ripping off Eddie Vedder.
Yeah, many people were.
Yeah, a lot of people were.
But this guy seemed to be most flagrant.
I just hated it.
I hated the sound of this record.
I hated the production of it.
I hated the voice.
Okay, but what about listening to it now?
Now you're a grown man.
All right, give me some fresh ears.
And a beer.
Is this so bad?
Yes, it is. Wait.
[singing]
Okay, that's the worst part.
Listen to that fuzz--what's it called? Big Muff.
[laughing]
But is the--
[singing]
Okay, the chorus is pretty good.
Gotta get your light shine down.
What does that mean?
[singing]
It drags.
I think it drags.
It's in the pocket.
[laughing]
This guy's got a laid-back feel.
Okay, but like--
Collective soul.
The production's not bad.
That reeked of inauthenticity to me in high school.
I do recall that.
That was '94.
Feeling like, "This guy's--what is this?"
It's like the grunge version of Asia or those bands in the '70s and '80s that were just like session guys.
Toto.
Toto, yeah.
Yeah, but now everybody loves Toto.
Okay, well, maybe--
This is Ezra's philosophy.
--Collective soul's going to become the cool band.
I don't know.
I'm just saying, like, I wonder if you played for a kid that and then you played some pavement today,
if you'd be like, "Obviously the pavement's cooler," and they'd be like, "I don't know, man.
"That collective soul song was kind of catchier."
Yeah.
"Had a more traditional structure."
How does this sound?
Speaking of 1994, how does this sound to you now?
It's good.
It's a jingle not dissimilar from some--
I don't want to be with you.
I would take this over the collective soul.
Really?
Yeah.
Yeah, I like this.
This has got a lot more life to it.
See, he leans into that--
He's also very veteran.
He's bettering it up.
I wonder if veteran was like an active influence on him or if that was just like the zeitgeist of the era.
Yeah, what happened?
Maybe they're just all drinking from the same well.
It's a good song, structurally.
Off-tempo.
Could have been like an Allman Brothers song.
It does sound like an Allman Brothers song.
They're from the South, right?
Yeah, they're from South Carolina.
You know what else was big in '94 was Four Non-Blondes.
Oh, yeah.
I disliked that song.
Really?
Yeah.
You know, it's funny.
We were just talking about-- because Jake's always believed that the '60s was a really special time for political music.
The '60s changed everything, man.
The way you put that is so brutal.
Without the '60s, you don't get the '70s.
That's right.
You don't get the '80s.
Forget about the '80s.
So we were talking about was the music actually all that much more political?
And the funniest example to think of is Buffalo Springfield.
Something's happening around here.
That's the best.
The '80s?
Ain't exactly clear.
You know what's even better about that?
That song, for what it's worth-- that's the title of the song, by the way--
what inspired that song was not the Vietnam War, not civil rights.
It was the Sunset Strip had begun having these shows, like rock concerts in the clubs and everything, and they were all ages.
And the cops put a curfew in effect.
And these overprivileged white sons of cinematographers in the Hollywood Hills rioted and freaked out because they were told to go home at midnight or something.
And Stephen Stills saw these protests or whatever from these kids, and he wrote this paranoia in the streets.
Oh, so that's what he's getting.
So much resistance from the heat.
Yeah, pretty much.
But, I mean, it got co-opted by all the movements, I guess.
Well, this is a [bleep] cool song.
It's a great song.
Power of the song.
Well, I was thinking that this-- you point out Four Non Blondes-- this is kind of the '90s version of that song.
Like, it's a similar sentiment.
What's going on?
What's neat about this song, in retrospect, is that it is kind of a novelty song, right?
Right.
At the heart of it.
But it got major radio play.
I mean, it was on the radio every day that I remember going to school.
It was just like--
So '90s.
But it is-- the way she sings, the way the chorus-- it's very much a novelty song.
Everybody sang "Crazy" in the '90s.
There's nothing wrong with it.
It's very basic.
Very bass.
I realized quickly when I knew I should
That the world was made up of this brotherhood of man
For whatever that means
Into a crazier times when our mind made the decision
And this, like, is--
Well, hold on.
This became a real karaoke-bar cliche.
This gives way to that "If I would walk 500 miles, then I would"
Another great song.
I mean, people like to make fun of this song, but, like, you know what?
Try to karaoke this at your own peril.
'Cause she's got a killer set of pipes.
And she went on to be a major producer, right?
Yeah, that's right, and songwriter.
That's what we're saying to this day still.
Yeah. I just want to say also, like, it's really easy to make fun of songs
That kind of just earnestly say, "Something's happening around here."
What it is ain't clear, or else the song would say, "What's going on?"
But, like--
After Marvin Gaye already asked the question.
Okay, yeah, I guess when you put it that way--
Oh, you know what? I just realized.
That's why this "Four Non Blondes" song is not called "What's Going On."
It's called "What's Up?"
'Cause they couldn't probably--
They didn't have the right to say what's going on.
It wasn't a wise move to call it "What's Going On."
But, you know, on a basic level, it's very human.
Just to say, like, you don't have to pretend you have the answer.
Sometimes all you do is just write a catchy song and say, "What's going on?"
I remember hearing that every morning in the car going to school.
And being so mad at my local rock station for playing it.
I think 'cause I was mad-- I think 'cause it was a woman.
Oh, really? You were a sexist rock fan?
I think it was like, "Come on, man. Where's Robert Plant?"
I've changed my position on that.
So you weren't a whole fan?
No, probably not. I wasn't a big Nirvana fan, actually.
Interesting.
So do you feel like, in a weird way, having been a disaffected white kid,
albeit in the early '90s, used to call the local rock station and say--
Complain when they're playing. I remember they had a vote.
I'm not kidding about that.
They had a vote on the classic rock station whether to play the Sinéad O'Connor song.
"Nothing Compares to You."
"Incredible Song."
Yeah, "Unbelievable." That's an unbelievable song.
And some other rock song that was--
Maybe it was Bon Jovi or some [bleep] rock song.
Like, "Which should we choose?" And I called up,
"How dare you even consider playing that Sinéad O'Connor [bleep] song?"
♪ I can eat my dinner in a fancy restaurant ♪
♪ But nothing, I said, nothing can take away this blues ♪
♪ 'Cause nothing compares ♪
♪ Nothing compares to you ♪
As a young kid, you had a misogynist streak in rock--
Misogynist. I was probably more aligned with George Bush,
the senior, than I would have been with Bill Clinton.
I was born in a Republican house with a conservative family.
I was artistic and creative and I had friends who were gay and I had that going on,
but I think I was already breaking out of that--
Right, so it was a transitional period.
But there was certainly like earlier in high school.
So do you feel like with these alt-right kids, they've called into your show and stuff.
Yeah.
Do you feel like you understand them better than most?
I think I probably do, and I think I don't let it get me too upset
because I know a lot of them are just going to plain grow out of it.
And a lot of them will just go to college or they'll go get a job
and they'll discover more people in the world and just mellow out
and become a little more empathetic.
So what was your journey to mellowing out?
I grew up in Allentown, Pennsylvania, which is a very small town outside of Philadelphia.
Not that small, but it was small enough that I didn't really know anybody that didn't look like me.
And I went to Temple University in North Philly,
which is about the biggest dichotomy you can imagine of environments.
It was the ghetto of Philadelphia.
And I was exposed to all kinds of different people that I didn't grow up around and stuff.
And then you took--listen, college--they're not kidding about college liberalizing you.
I took classes where they gave you the Howard Zinn books to read and everything
and exposed you to multiculturalism and all kinds of stuff like that.
And I think it's a positive thing.
But there is that--
So you're a case study of a kid going down the wrong path
who went to college, took one gender studies course, and finally realized Sinead O'Connor's good.
Yeah, I took a lot of those--because those were the easy classes.
Oh, okay.
I got a question. Are you a communist?
No.
Socialist?
No, I don't think so.
I've just always been--
I don't really understand what I am.
I'm socially liberal, fiscally--I wouldn't say conservative,
but you feel like you want to be smart with the money that we have?
You want to try to spend it wisely?
I hear you, man.
I don't know.
I just think, in a funny way, the stuff you've done on TV--
I think I've seen people make the case that Tim and Eric sometimes seem like a critique of capitalism.
Definitely the commercialism, which is tied into capitalism,
but sort of the craven commercialism of late-night infomercials and stuff like that.
There's certainly elements of that.
But I do think I can be easily persuaded into socialism.
I think the bigger macro issues coming our way, like a tsunami of the automation
and the fundamental changes in the way that people are expected to work and earn livings,
is going to force us into some kind of socialist system.
Something's going to change.
Because what are these guys that built trucks supposed to do?
And they don't need to be building trucks anymore.
No one's given an answer for that.
Or not even build trucks, drive trucks.
Or put gas in the trucks or clean them.
I mean, it's all going to be automated in 20 years.
And also chipping away at this concept of work being something that somebody wants to do.
Like, work sucks.
We hate work.
I hate work, man.
Jobs, like manual labor, repetitive labor, it's very unhealthy.
It's bad.
It doesn't provide any satisfaction to the person.
So you have to create other things in that person's life to give them satisfaction.
You have to create sports teams to root for.
And you have to do all this stuff to fill in those gaps.
So when all that stuff gets torn down in the next quarter century,
there's going to be some big questions that need to be answered.
So tell us about your new album.
Well, it's just a collection of songs that I've put out this year.
I think last year, once the election of Donald Trump happened,
I think a little bit before that, when he was running and the election was going on,
I would kind of freak out, and I did what I would often do in other times in my life.
I'd kind of go down to my garage and play piano and sing about it.
And some of the songs seemed to--I liked them.
I liked what came out of me.
And so I'd put them out on my website on Bandcamp.
And the more I did it, the more people liked it,
the more I felt encouraged to keep doing it.
And so throughout the year, when an idea came to me, I would put it out.
It was fun to put something out on a Friday night,
and then all these music sites just picked up on them,
and Pitchfork and everybody was like, "He's released another one."
I released this Richard Spencer song the day after he got punched.
And I had this little two-minute--I mean, it's a real little ditty.
It's just this two-minute little song about punching Richard Spencer.
I put it out on a Saturday night.
I just said that there was a song on my page.
It was everywhere the next day, like on all those blogs.
And I didn't promote it very much.
I just kind of let it lay out there.
So those built up to enough where my label, Jag Jaguar,
was like, "We should put these out in a real way,"
because they're all just kind of spread out.
And so they mastered it and made a nice album cover for it.
Friend of the show, Eric Yonker, did the cover.
Oh, is he a friend of the show?
Yeah, yeah, he's been on before. Remember when--
His cover is unbelievable, and it's controversial
and all that kind of cool stuff that you want cool things to be.
So I got a lot of reaction. A lot of people like it.
A lot of people think it's very lame to be making fun of Trump
because it's a low-hanging fruit.
One thing that we've always been interested in on this show is--
and me personally--is tone.
And I think as somebody who's kind of known as a comedian,
but even your comedy has a lot of different tones.
It's interesting, like, with your music career,
there's a lot of people known for comedy who go into music,
and it's like comedy albums, like your classic Adam Sandler thing.
Adam Sandler in the '90s--
Novelty songs.
By the way, sold more records than a lot of rock bands.
I looked it up. He's like--I think each of his albums--
All for one!
--is like four times platinum.
Right.
Jesus Christ.
Adam Sandler probably sold more records than Collective Soul.
[explosion]
Just when we're thinking about the '90s.
Yeah.
But you're somebody who, like, you make some songs that are obviously funny,
and then you make songs that are not straightforwardly comedy songs.
You also have more musicianship and kind of love for music
than some, like, straight-up comedy people.
Like, where does this album fall on the spectrum of, like, your music
and the tone of your music?
There's definitely funny songs.
I think Mar-a-Lago's a funny song.
There's funny ideas, and there's really sad, tragic ideas in it.
My hero, when it comes to songwriting, has always been Randy Newman.
And I got really deep into Randy Newman four or five years ago,
dug into his '70s records, a record called "Good Old Boys" in particular,
which is a perfect album, in my opinion.
It's a 10 if I was writing for Pitchfork.
[laughter]
I'll let you do a guest review.
And it vacillates between sort of satirical, political commentary
and then terribly sad songs and very, very funny songs.
And musically, it's the best.
It's just so beautifully made.
So that inspires me to, if I have a funny line or a funny perspective
on something, to pursue that.
But this song on the record called "Wilbur Ross,"
who Wilbur Ross is Trump's Commerce Secretary, I think.
He looks like a turtle.
He looks like a turtle.
And where I grew up in Allentown, the neighboring town is Bethlehem,
and Bethlehem Steel was a big--
Yeah, famously.
And one of the things we learned about Wilbur Ross is back in the '80s,
he basically bought Bethlehem Steel and sold it for scrap.
He just decimated the town.
So there's a very personal, hurtful feeling towards people like that.
But I did learn something about him, that he wears these slippers
that are embroidered with the Department of Commerce,
and he has this collection of $500 slippers.
That's the only shoes he wears.
So that's absurd.
And so the first line in the song is,
"Wilbur Ross puts his slippers on, just like all of us, $500 at a time.
I don't see what's all the fuss."
So that's kind of a funny line.
But then the second verse, I go into the point of view
of a West Virginia miner whose sister is on heroin,
and I just went for it as a real lyric about real people that I see on TV
and that I probably would know if I was still living in Allentown
that's absolutely and totally intentionally sincere
about what these people are like
and what they expect of people like Wilbur Ross to do for them
and how they're disappointed in them.
And so I'm proud of the fact that you can go from the two different levels
of funny little one-liners to some serious subject matter.
It wouldn't tell the whole story to call it a political comedy album.
You can shorthand it that way fine.
Sure, but there's more to it.
You're not going to fight that.
So we have to ask you, because on this show, from day one,
we've always talked about Billy Joel a lot.
And of course, nationally, your hometown was really--
for a lot of people, they heard about it with the song "Allentown."
Great song.
As an Allentown native, what do you think of that song?
Well, it connected to what I just said about Wilbur Ross.
It should have been "I'm living here in Bethlehem,"
but I understand why you didn't do that, because that's--
Because of the emphasis on the syllable.
And that the rest of the world--
Then they think it's a Christmas song.
Yeah, but Bethlehem was truly--
Billy Joel is an international artist.
He can't have that kind of confusion.
Is Allentown not considered a steel town?
No, but it's really right next to Bethlehem.
So I'm sure people lived in both areas.
You never encountered any Allentown resistance to the fact,
like, why is this guy writing a song about art?
There was a little bit of that.
I remember there being a little, what does he know?
First of all, he's from New York.
He's a big pop star with a model wife, you know, Christy Brinkley, right?
Right, the Uptown Girl herself.
He got his Uptown Girl. He forgot about the downtown.
There was a little bit of, like--
And I think in general, probably, what does this guy--
And also, what are you, Bruce Springsteen?
Well, obviously he was trying to keep up with Springsteen at that moment.
But looking back on it, it's a pretty crafty little song.
Yeah. Somebody-- Who was it that told me recently
that they saw Billy Joel at a massive concert,
because he's been doing kind of like a stadium tour,
and they said that when he plays Allentown,
it has an infamous beginning.
[imitates drum roll]
[laughs]
That's pretty--
And then it kicks in.
So somebody told me that they saw him sometime recently,
and, you know, it's Billy Joel's.
It's like a big razzle-dazzle production,
but he's also still this kind of funny, sarcastic dude.
So it's time for Allentown,
and, like, the lights go out in the stadium,
and, like, some big smokestacks are on stage,
and then just, like, you hear...
[hissing]
And then there's just, like, real steam coming out
and, like, crazy lights.
Like, he momentarily turns into a factory.
The drums kick in, and he's like--
And he's like, "Stop, stop, stop!"
And he's like, "Ah, I'm sorry. We f---ed up."
And then they kind of turn the lights back on,
and he's like, "Should we take it from the top?"
And they're like, "Yeah." And of course all this stuff is programmed.
You got the dude doing the lights and stuff.
Then they, like, take it from the top.
And then it's, like, this whole production again
of just, like, this steam coming out.
And then they kick into it.
[upbeat music]
♪ ♪
♪ Well, we're living here in Allentown ♪
♪ And they're closing all the factories down ♪
♪ Out in Bethlehem, they're killing time ♪
♪ Filling our forms, standing in line ♪
♪ Well, our fathers fought the Second World War ♪
♪ Spent their weekends on the Jersey Shore ♪
♪ Met our mothers from the U.S.O. ♪
♪ Asked them to dance, dance with us slow ♪
♪ And we're living here in Allentown ♪
♪ But the restlessness was handed down ♪
♪ And it's getting very hard to stand ♪
♪ Yeah ♪
♪ Oh, oh, oh ♪
♪ ♪
♪ Well, we're waiting here in Allentown ♪
♪ For the Pennsylvania we never found ♪
♪ All the promises our teachers gave ♪
♪ If we work hard, if we behave ♪
♪ So the graduations hang on the wall ♪
♪ But they never really helped us get on ♪
♪ No, they never told us what was real ♪
♪ Iron and coal, chromium steel ♪
♪ And we're waiting here in Allentown ♪
So we gotta get into the top five real quick.
It's time for the Top Five on iTunes.
All right, so Tim, there's a tradition on our show
that at the end of every show, we listen to the top five songs on iTunes.
It's a way for us to engage with the zeitgeist.
Do you feel like you keep up on pop music?
No. Do you know who Demi Lovato is?
I do know--yeah. You can quiz me on this.
I do know who Demi Lovato is. I couldn't tell you any of her music.
You've heard the name? Heard the name.
Do you know who Lil Pump is? No.
Okay. All right, I'm just kind of feeling it out.
I know Taylor Swift. You know Taylor Swift? You're familiar.
Yeah, and I know the music from my daughter's Disney movies,
some of which I do really like.
I like the Moana music. Mm-hmm.
I like the-- "Frozen." You know what song I love?
"Love, Love, Love" is a song from Zootopia that Shakira did called "Try Everything."
Okay. Put that one on. Yeah?
It reminds me of an ABBA song.
[ABBA's "Try Everything"]
You know this one? No, I don't know this one.
Think about ABBA when you're listening to this.
[ABBA's "Try Everything"]
And Bill.
Uh-oh.
[Bill's "Try Everything"]
Oh, Subramma.
[Subramma's "Try Everything"]
Could almost be an '80s Bruce song, too.
Yes.
[Subramma's "Try Everything"]
That's clever. Yeah.
Okay.
That's a good song.
I could totally-- It's funny, you know.
I'm impressed with good melodies. Yeah.
Okay, so you're somewhat up on pop music,
so let's see how you do with the top five.
Okay.
The number five song right now on iTunes,
it's called "Motor Sport."
There's a bunch of artists on this song.
Got Migos.
♪ Motorsport ♪
Do you know Migos?
[singing]
We'll see. We'll see if it's a hard rock song.
Who is it now? Migos.
Heard the name. It's a brand of tequila.
That's Casamigos.
You know Migos? It's three rappers from Atlanta.
Don't know it.
Okay. Nicki Minaj?
Heard of it.
New York.
She's from New York. And Cardi B.
Don't know that.
She's a little newer as a truly famous person.
She's also from New York.
It's "Motorsport."
♪ Yeah ♪
♪ Let's rock ♪
♪ Motorsport ♪
♪ Yeah ♪
♪ Put that thing in sport ♪
It's a mess.
♪ Shout it fast ♪
♪ Pop it like a motor ♪
"Motorsport" is a mess.
♪ You a dork ♪
What?
I like how he just said, "You're a dork."
♪ Swallow, whoop, whoop ♪
♪ Jump and knock that cord ♪
♪ Whoop, chook, cock, can't turn ♪
Oh my goodness.
♪ My cook tastes like the bed ♪
It's creepy. It's like a Halloween song.
Oh, it's hooky. It's perfect for this song.
♪ Gave my mama tips ♪
♪ Mama, she think you're shit ♪
♪ On the nuffin' ♪
Have you been up on rap much in the past?
No, I was never a rap fan.
Okay, so let alone the past five years?
Yeah, I'm out.
I'm out. It doesn't appeal to me.
Never has.
Like I said, I'm a melody guy.
I like tunes.
Are these guys--
There's more melodic rap than this.
♪ Da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da ♪
[laughs]
This is nuts.
So you're so unfamiliar with this music
that it's like you can't make heads or tails of it?
I mean, I've been in clubs
where this has been playing and stuff,
but I've been next to cars playing it.
Yeah.
[laughs]
It does seem like it's a reflection
of the psychosis occurring amongst everyone
in the world, in the country right now.
Well, I mean, there's definitely a lot of rap music
where the rappers openly talk about Percocet,
drugs that they might be on.
I did like that Chance the Rapper record,
which obviously is very, very popular.
Very, very-- bridge crossing.
A lot more major keys in this one.
Yeah.
♪ 488 hit the gears ♪
♪ Suicide don't Britney Spears ♪
♪ I'm bougie so don't get near ♪
♪ Chris Angel make you disappear ♪
♪ Hit the gas it got flames out the rear ♪
♪ It's a rush to the back of the mills ♪
♪ Ride the b-- like a BMX ♪
♪ No, no, don't wanna be my ex ♪
♪ I love when he go on tour ♪
♪ 'Cause he come small when I see him left ♪
♪ I get upset or I turn off set on ♪
♪ I told him the other day ♪
♪ Man, we should solve that poem ♪
♪ Yeah, Cardi B, I'm back ♪
♪ I wanna hear I'm acting different ♪
♪ Same lips that be talking 'bout me ♪
♪ Is the same lips that be kissing me ♪
♪ Saying what they say they are ♪
♪ And they-- ♪
They're listening to Arlang rap.
[laughing]
♪ They reachin' out ♪
♪ And they-- ♪
♪ And doing yeah, got like a-- ♪
♪ She's-- ♪
♪ Glam pom hair and everything ♪
Okay, so I have a feeling--
That's the-- that's number five?
That's number five.
The number four song, you might like this one.
There's a guy who loves classic rock
and '90s alternative music.
Kid Rock?
Well, no, it's Post Malone.
You know who that is?
Who?
Post Malone.
No, is that real?
I've never heard Post Malone.
That's funny.
Now, Jake is more familiar with this music.
Normally Jake's the one who doesn't know anything.
Yeah, this is usually my role.
Yeah, so Jake, you remember--
Post Malone, I swear to God,
I've never heard that before.
You've never heard the name Post Malone?
No.
Okay, he's--
I've heard "Bring Malone."
He's relatively new on the scene.
This song's featuring 21 Savage.
[laughing]
Okay, I'm not even gonna ask anymore.
I really don't.
Okay, but I think--
I'm not being a--
I'm not trying to do a bet here.
Okay, no, no, no, no.
I'm really--
No, no, being straightforward.
But you might like this song
because guess what it's called.
"Rockstar."
Okay.
Just so you know,
this is one of the biggest songs in America
for the past few weeks.
Oh, my God, am I gonna jump off a bridge after this?
Doubt it.
[soft music]
Post Malone.
[soft music]
[laughing]
So much production going into this song.
[upbeat music]
♪ I've been, I've been, I've been poppin', poppin' ♪
♪ And I feel just like a rockstar ♪
Oh, no.
You have no context for this music.
♪ They always be smoking like a rockstar ♪
♪ When me, when me call up on the ♪
♪ And show up, name them the shottas ♪
♪ When my homies pull up on your block ♪
♪ They make that thing go ♪
It almost reminds me a little bit--
I mean, it's melodic.
You can't say it's not melodic.
It's got a little Floyd in it.
Don't you think?
A little, like--
A little, uh--
It's psychedelic and it's--
Yeah, a little, like a little, um--
I'll just ask.
Shine on you, crazy diamond.
I can see that.
This guy, Post Malone, I like him.
Do you think I could, with the right producer,
make this kind of music pretty easily?
Or do you think it's not so easy?
Well--
Obviously, I've got a terrific sense of melody--
Yeah.
--and song structure.
I have a point of view.
Well, here's the thing--
Could you take one of my songs and sort of
meld it into this kind of sound?
This type of music, it's like anything.
The same way that somebody could listen to rock music
and say, "Hey, just get a guitar, bass, drums."
It's easy.
But I'm saying, with this type of music,
yes, you could go download some instrumentals off YouTube.
There literally have been hit songs that were made that way.
Somebody downloaded something that's like trap beat four
and it becomes a hit.
Right.
So you could find the beat.
You got Auto-Tune in your Pro Tools.
Mm-hmm.
Okay, so you--
Logic.
Oh, in your Logic?
Okay, so you use some Auto-Tune.
You could get the vocal sound very easily.
So these are open secrets.
It's not hard to get that vocal sound.
Post Malone, it's not like he's the only guy doing this.
There's hundreds of thousands of kids on SoundCloud
making songs like this.
I bet you could make something that sounded
professional rap song very quickly.
Yeah.
Could you make one that was a huge hit?
That's the hard part.
That's always the big question.
And I think you should try.
I don't want to.
You've been--
I don't want to try.
Well, do you appreciate that that song is called "Rockstar"
as a rock fan?
That seems pretty first draft to me.
Really?
Call it "Rockstar." It doesn't matter.
How long did that take for Post Malone to come up with "Rockstar"?
He's looking at that 20-ounce bottle of energy drink
he was drinking at the time.
Post Malone's a very interesting guy.
Okay, I'll look into him more.
Look into Post Malone.
Post Malone.
And also look into Migos.
I think there are Migos songs you'd like.
Okay.
Well, we'll see.
We'll make you--
You got any Joni Mitchell coming up?
Joni's got a new album coming out.
Oh, really?
The single's a big hit.
No.
The number three song, Camila Cabello.
I don't know.
Do you know who Fifth Harmony is?
Yes, I think so.
Maybe your daughter--
You know what's funny about them is my "In Glendale" album,
the single on that record was called "Work From Home."
Oh, and they had the song--
And they had a song called "Work From Home."
Yeah.
And it came out the same week.
It was very annoying.
Oh.
Maybe I got some sales off of accidental--
Yes, who knows?
It was a blessing in disguise.
Camila Cabello used to be a member of Fifth Harmony.
And this is her song "Havana,"
which has been staying pretty strong in the top five,
featuring Young Thug.
There's that piano that you're hoping you wanted.
Little upright attitude, love it.
Yeah.
This has got to bust into something soon, right?
The bust in?
I think they'll kick it up a notch.
Bassline drop.
Still hasn't gotten all the way there yet.
You kind of see where it's going the whole time, right?
A little bit?
Is that a good thing?
It's familiar, I guess.
It's all right.
It reminds me of that collective soul song
where it kind of plods along.
[laughs]
Camila Cabello is a big collective soul fan.
So, okay, so it seemed like the first two songs,
you're not up on new rap music.
It's a little disoriented.
But so are you the type of person,
because you love acoustic analog stuff so much,
as soon as you hear that real sounding piano,
you're more engaged?
I'm intrigued.
I can visually see the instrument.
I can connect to it.
Okay, well, it's interesting.
Actually, we've been getting,
as we go on to the number two song on this week's top five,
we've been getting progressively more organic.
Because we started motorsport and rock star are totally,
you know, beats are electronic music.
The only organic thing is the vocal.
Havana is somewhere in between.
And this guy, this guy gets on stage
in front of thousands and thousands of people,
just his voice and his guitar.
Sheeran.
That's right.
I know him.
Because you're a fan?
No.
You know him socially?
No, I just know that I've seen him.
He's big enough that he comes into my little circle.
So as somebody vaguely knows about Sheeran,
who is he to you?
What does he represent?
You know, I think he's got a little too much
of that post-American idol show-off vocal acrobatics
that I don't like.
Well, let's hear the song.
Because on paper, his palette is not that different
than some, you know, Joni Mitchell blue.
Well, I mean...
That's a big...
Miles away, bro.
What have we got so far?
Organ?
Guitar?
Vocals?
A soulful delivery?
A little Jeff Buckley.
So you can do some rap.
Yeah.
Sucks.
Whoa!
Sorry.
Sucks.
You think that song sucks?
So that's the first time you said one of these songs sucks.
No.
Or you thought they were sucks?
I don't know.
Where is it going?
Let's keep listening.
Or do you like that kind of illusion,
that kind of '50s music that...
It's very doo-wop.
Yeah, Dion or something.
From 6/8?
You don't hear that on the radio a lot?
Well, let's see where he goes with it.
We need a big chorus, Ed.
Come on.
Rip that off.
From Briss?
Yeah.
I'm a little closer.
Hey, Ed.
I heard your music, man.
[Laughter]
Took one of my lyrics.
Took one of my song titles.
Strings come in.
Another organic, old-time instrument.
Give me "Whiter Shade of Pale," you know?
Give me...
No, but "Whiter Shade of Pale,"
that's from the '60s, man.
The kids need their version.
That's fine.
I'm not very impressed with that,
to be honest with you.
I'm sorry.
I think it's very basic.
Despite the tasteful power.
Straight shooter.
"Rippin' Off," "Dancin' in the Dark."
Okay.
Bruce doesn't own the phrase
"Dancing in the Dark."
Wasn't that the one that we thought
kind of reminded us of "Clapton,"
"Wonderful Tonight"?
Well, also, he says...
He says...
♪ Go to a party ♪
By the way, I did stand-up the other night,
and I came out to--
I usually come out to some, like,
"You Can Call Me Al" or something
and do a whole thing.
I came out to "Tears in Heaven."
Oh!
That's rough.
And then started yelling at the sound guy.
Like, I said, "Clapton," like, "After Midnight."
"Layla."
Some "Fun," some "Up."
Anyways, very sad song.
Also, we have a slight tradition on this show
that Ed Sheeran is probably
the preeminent songwriter of our time.
What?
He's on, like, every episode.
He writes songs for other people, too?
Yes, he's written songs for Justin Bieber.
Migos? Oh.
I don't know if he's written a song for Migos,
but he's a massive songwriter,
and like it or not,
as far as the Caucasian male
with an acoustic guitar,
he's the only one breaking through these days.
Okay.
And, you know, he sometimes has little surprises
in the lyrics, so you might be surprised.
Jeff Tweedy has a nice career going.
No, it's not even at the same level.
Ed Sheeran.
We'll see if Ed Sheeran goes for 20 years.
He will.
Ed Sheeran sells out Wembley Stadium.
He would do Morongo Casino in 20 years.
Ed Sheeran sells out stadiums,
just him and acoustic guitar.
But, you know, I bring--
It's funny, 'cause, like,
if you look back to the '70s,
the pop stars of all those eras,
save a few that become legendary,
they do get forgotten quickly.
Like the one-hit wonders.
Ed Gilbert, Humphrey Dink, and--
Captain Netanyahu.
Yeah, the one-hit wonders.
Barry Manilow's still kicking.
Well, but he's--
I'm sure he's got a gorgeous home in Bel-Air.
I'm sure that's where Ed will be.
Probably throwing sick parties.
Okay, so let's just look at some of--
This song is not as interesting as his last hit
that he painted a very interesting portrait.
It was called "Shape of You."
♪ I'm in love with the shape of you ♪
Is that Ed Sheeran, too?
Yeah, you know the song?
So he's number one and two?
No, no, that was his last single.
Yeah, I saw him perform that
at, like, the Grammys or something a couple years ago.
Yes, that was a huge song.
That was interesting.
He talks about having Chinese food with the girl,
all this stuff.
So let's just look at this stanza,
the one question that you think was ripping off Bruce.
"Baby, I'm dancing in the dark
with you between my arms."
Okay, so right there, that's a huge difference,
'cause "Dancing in the Dark" is about a guy
who's, like, by himself looking in the mirror,
just, like, alone in his apartment.
Bruce's song.
Yeah, Bruce's song is about, like,
some weirdo, creepy dude alone in his bedroom.
"Sitting here trying to write this book," he says.
The weirdest line in music.
He says "book"?
Yeah.
"I'm sitting here trying to write this book."
So that song's about some creepy dude
who's just trying to make a case for a girl.
He's, like, alone in his bedroom.
♪ I'm gonna change my hair, my clothes, my face ♪
What kind of message is that for people?
You should be happy the way you look.
Anyway, Ed Sheeran is
"I'm dancing in the dark with you between my arms."
Much more romantic.
He's full of romance.
Girls love it. Girls buy music. I get it.
What, men are not romantic?
Nah, men got too much stuff on their plate.
Too busy.
They're romantic. They're not buying music.
They're buying video games.
Ed has many male fans, Tim.
You might be surprised.
So Ed says, "Baby, I'm dancing in the dark
with you between my arms."
"Barefoot on the grass" is how he says it.
"Listening to our favorite song."
He looks like that Prince Harry.
Yeah, they're both, like, British gingers.
I like those.
Okay, so listen. This is where he turns it around.
"When you said you looked a mess,
I whispered underneath my breath,
but you heard it.
Darling, you look perfect.
Tonight."
Yeah.
So there's some interesting internal rhyme there.
"When you said you looked a mess,
I whispered underneath my breath,
but you heard it.
Darling, you look perfect."
It's...
Interesting.
So now we understand what's happening in this song.
So now that we've kind of gone a little deeper,
we get to the song better.
This is a guy with a girl with low self-esteem.
She said, "I look terrible."
And then, for whatever reason,
he doesn't want to say it directly to her,
but he whispers under her breath as they're dancing.
"You look perfect."
But she heard it.
She heard it and smelt the breath, too.
Would you like when a songwriter paints a picture like that?
I was not...
A picture wasn't painted for me, but...
Under...
It paints a creepy picture, I guess.
Whispering.
A lot of whispering going on that shouldn't be heard, but was.
Well, I guess...
I don't know.
Why did Ed Sheeran...
That's the new mystery.
There's always a mystery in an Ed Sheeran song.
In this song, the question is,
when this girl said she looked a mess,
and you thought she looked perfect,
why did you either, A, keep your damn mouth shut,
or B, say it at a regular volume?
Yeah.
Shake, like, "What are you talking about?
You look great."
'Cause she was between his arms, right?
So are they, like, slow dancing?
I don't like the line "between his arms," either.
Like, his arms could be...
I'm picturing them...
His arms could be straight-- wide out.
They're having, like, a super intimate, close moment.
Between his arms.
And he's just kind of...
In his arms, not between his arms.
Right.
Between is...
Between is odd.
Yeah, so...
That's weird.
I just want to listen to that part one more time
now that we know the lyrics.
# I'm sitting in the dark
# With you between my arms
# Barefoot on the grass
# Listening to our favorite song
# When you said you looked a mess
# I whispered underneath my breath
# But you heard it
# Darling, you look perfect tonight
It's all right.
You know what's funny?
That's, like, such a classic chorus thing,
is when you just tack on the "tonight" at the end.
Tonight.
It makes me think of...
# Hey, so, sister
# Ain't that Mr. Mist on the radio
# Staring way...
# Hey, I don't want to miss a thing you do
# Tonight #
[laughter]
OK.
Coming in at number one.
So, coming-- It's time for number one.
So, I didn't know that, Tim,
that you were-- you're just a rock guy.
Nothing wrong with that.
I'm not a rock guy.
You're a rock guy.
I'm not-- I'm a-- I'm all kinds of guy, but...
Just not hip-hop?
Not hip-hop.
Or pop?
Not pop.
No.
Not Ed Sheeran?
I like jazz.
I like, uh...
Yeah, I like all kinds of stuff,
but pop-- modern pop is a bit alien to me.
Leaves you cold.
OK.
Well, you might be happy to know
that "Against All Odds" in 2017--
The song from Phil Collins, "Against All Odds"?
Is number one.
Again.
It was in a Papa John's commercial.
[laughter]
And it's racing up the charts.
No, the number one song right now on iTunes
is actually by a rock band.
Really?
An alternative rock band.
It's an American band?
An American band.
They're from Nevada.
Jeez.
And they've been around for a while,
or are they pretty new?
They're relatively new.
I think this might be their second or third album.
The band's called Imagine Dragons.
Oh, yeah, yeah.
You know them?
Are they considered a rock band?
Seems like--
Well, they are-- their music has, obviously,
a lot of, like, influence from modern pop production,
but the delivery and the tone, I think you could say,
is somewhere in the tradition of alternative rock.
♪ Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh ♪
Yes.
♪ Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh ♪
[laughter]
♪ Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh ♪
That's not a bad guess.
So this is--
they've really had a lot of hits recently,
so this is their big song right now.
Number one on the charts, 2017, "Thunder."
♪ Just a young gun with a quick fuse ♪
♪ I was uptight, wanna let loose ♪
♪ I was dreaming of bigger things ♪
♪ And wanna leave my old life behind ♪
Is this Jock Peterson's walk-up music?
I think so.
Jock Peterson's walk-up music?
I think so.
♪ Take a number ♪
♪ I was lightning before the thunder ♪
♪ Thunder, thunder, thunder ♪
♪ Thunder, thun-thun-thunder ♪
♪ Thunder, thunder, thunder ♪
It is neat how weird it is.
♪ Thunder, thun-thun-thunder ♪
A little baby voice.
♪ Lightning and the thunder ♪
♪ Thunder, feel the thunder ♪
♪ Lightning and the thunder ♪
♪ Thunder, thunder ♪
♪ Thunder ♪
♪ Kids were laughing in my classes ♪
♪ While I was scheming for the masses ♪
I'm a little confused why this is the number one song
in America, I guess.
I have a slight theory.
This really is, like, the 10th of this song
is kind of big enough for everybody.
Like, this honestly doesn't sound that different
than, like, modern country.
'Cause, you know, like, if you're listening
to modern country radio, and it's--
some of it, outside of a slight southern twang,
has nothing to do with traditional country.
It has big pop drums and big hooks and stuff.
So I think somebody who's into country could--
modern country could potentially, like,
imagine dragons.
Somebody who's into rock could.
Somebody who's into pop, somebody who's into hip-hop.
It has, like, a big beat, a big hook.
It's almost genre-less, I guess, in a way.
- Where's the hook? I haven't heard it yet.
- The hook was-- [imitates baby voice]
was the baby voice. - Uh-huh.
- That's kind of EDM, too.
- Yeah, it's a little EDM.
- You get the idea.
Let's just do a quick lyrical analysis.
♪ Kids were laughing in my classes ♪
♪ While I was scheming for the masses ♪
Honestly, that could be, like, some random Pink Floyd song.
[laughter]
♪ While I was scheming for the masses ♪
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