Rex Orange County Is Major

00:00:08 Speaker 1: Pushkin. Alexander O'Connor wasn't expecting the music sharing platforms SoundCloud to change his life. The eighteen year old British musician was just uploading songs for fun, but then people started taking notice of him and his musical persona Rex Orange County. These early recordings started racking up hundreds of thousands of plays pretty quickly, and one of those people listening was Tyler, the creator, who we just featured on the podcast a couple of episodes ago. Tyler liked what he heard from Rex OC so much that he wound up flying him out to La to work on one of his albums, flower Boy. And that's not Rex's only famous collaborator. Randy Newman, the legendary singer songwriter, duetted with Rex on his toy story classic You've Got a Friend in Me. After all of that, Alex aka Rex is still only twenty one years old and he's hid another major milestone. He's just released his major label debut, Pony. Rex out over the summer with Rick Rubin to preview some of the album for him and to talk through the tracks. He discusses why he's collaborating less and less with other artists these days, and how that's helped him find his voice for his new project, which he wrote, recorded and played almost entirely by himself. This is Broken Record Season three liner notes for the Digital Age. I'm justin Richmond. Just a quick note here. You can listen to all of the music mentioned in this episode on our playlist, which you can find a link to in the show notes. For licensing reasons, each time a song is referenced in this episode, you'll hear this sound effect. Let's listen to now. On Rick's conversation with Rex, Orange County three Testings, let's talk. Okay, so since I saw you last, where have you been? What have you been up to since I saw you last? I've been I've been mainly at home in London, and I haven't I haven't gone away too much. I haven't actually been in America too much or anywhere else. I've kind of just spent a lot of time in my own space and with with the people who I've made the first music ever with and kind of just like gotten back to how it was, how it always worked best after trying a few things. But it was probably like a period of time after we first met where I was trying working with other people, and certain things worked and a lot of things didn't. It's very difficult to let people in. I find on the whole when you when you have a lot of control already, but I spent a lot of time at home yet writing and finishing figuring out this next album. Yeah, it's it's it's great that you gave yourself the time and experience of training those different things to see what works and what doesn't. Because some people, once things get rolling, kind of get on a track of starting a project and then sometimes going maybe not the best direction and don't really stop and think, you know, don't pull back. So it's great that you got to do all that and see this works, this doesn't work, And absolutely no, I'm so grateful I did, because it's I'd hate. The last thing I want is to feel as if I feel as if I've settled for something that isn't maybe right, And you do have to try those things more importantly to know that they're not right maybe than that they were. We've got a song for the album that's pretty good and it's with a cool person or whatever, but it's if it's more valuable maybe to go try that thing and realize that it didn't working. Absolutely come back home and not work with those people anymore. For sure. I like to think that there are no there are no failed experiments, you know. It's like every experiment we learn from and we see what works and what doesn't, and it's really helpful in finding our direction. And it's impossible to know an advance, you know, until you do it, it's impossible. Of course, I agree, totally. I'm really anxious to hear. Of course, maybe we should hear. Looking forward to listening. Okay, great, all right, it's and it's mainly mainly me and there's no other sort of like listed features. Actually, the only other voice on there is my girlfriend and one of the only other instrumentalists other than the producers, Pano playing bass, which is amazing. But I don't I don't want to give too much context. But that's generally like, that's okay, hopefully that makes some sense. Let me just make sure it's actually stopping talk about it a little bit. It's completely not what I was expecting at all, much more upbeat, much more I'll use the word poppy in a melodic way. Whereas I feel like your your the other music of yours that I've heard before was more more about the style and less about the melody. And now it's really has a different energy, but it still has the vibes of the original, or i'll call it it's not moodiness but emotion of the original short style, sure, but in a completely different context. And it's really surprising and refreshing. I'm so glad you reacted that way. I'm definitely I definitely feel as if it was melody. Like the song was not lyrically developed at all right at the beginning, and it existed for a week or so as just the melody and the structure and the chords existing as as a thing before the lyrics actually, and so it kind of just like that was already very much so solid. And I've been listening to that voice memo of me just like mumbling it over and over and stuff, and it's kind of like it was way more based within the just the song and the melody actually, I think primarily and it wasn't necessarily about what I had to say first off, So I think that I'm glad that came through. I also really love there's there's a part towards the beginning of the song, when the beat drops out and the sound of the vocal really changes. It's subtle, but when it changes, it gets much more intimate and it's a it's a beautiful moment. Yeah, it's really like tasteful productions. Yes, sir, thank you. That's me and my good friend Ben Batsy, as well as just me and him in a room. He makes my last album, he makes this one too, but he he became pretty much my rock of just like my my code, producing my partner along the whole way. And he did a lot sonically that and it taught me a lot actually sonically just explained why things he felt like things sounded better like this or didn't sound as good like this, and actually informed me a lot on that kind of stuff as well. And I'm and now it allows me to go and be like, oh, I think the second verse should be really up close, so that the vocal comes up and it becomes more intimate and you can talk about it and just a feeling level. But he can just achieve that it feels really fresh. Thank you. I'll play this next one. Let me just ask, can you can you guys send in a pad and a pen thanks. Okay, this next one is the one you know, but I felt like he deserves to be honest. When we come back, Rexel breakdown face to face the new track, which is heard We're back with Rex and Rick talking about the style face to face. So how did that one come about? That one was actually the first thing I made on my laptop after my last album, and it was the part this the keys part that is just like the sign waves doing the really simple two chord part, And it actually existed on my laptop for a long time before I figured out what I wanted to say on it or figure out where I wanted to take it musically. It was always just this thing between two chords and had a few synth lines on top of each other and just a few bits of it really, and what happened was over time. It's kind of about it. The song itself is about feeling like you want to be back home with the person you actually want to be with, and missing the person you love and feeling like you're stuck in some kind of situation elsewhere geographically and literally, that thing where you're all where else where you don't really want to be with people who you don't really want to be with and your and it's literally I had to get I had to have that situation, which was bigger than just that one day of like feeling that thing and having phone calls where we both wake up, we're both on the phone with each other, but she's in bed. We're both in bed, but she is the morning for her and I'm about to go to sleep. Whatever. It's really surreal when you're just like really angry but really really missing someone at the same time and feeling emotional. And I had to have that before I actually wrote the whole song in one go lyrically one of the only times that really happened, and ended up fitting it to the original project that was not meant to be. It was the original instrumental was just for whatever I was going to write over it, but obviously it kept its place. But when you wrote the words, did you write the words with the chords in mind or did you write write it more like a poem and then realize that they worked over the chords the latter I wrote them as a wrote the verse three year I then found that it worked over this music. Yeah, I imagined it to be some kind of disco ish sort of one twenty one t tempo of just fall to the floor and I can imagine it, but I didn't. I didn't hear those chords necessarily, and I just fit them. Yeah, pretty much what you just said. That had the lyrics and then fit those two everything else interesting And when did the beat come? The beat was actually in the original logic far, which was just some logic drums that which is putting on the keyboard. It sounded like like I could imagine the beat being there from the beginning, but I it can sound like that, but it doesn't feel that happened. It sounded like that, so I was curious. Yeah, no, that was that was always there from the beginning, but never was never meant to come in until it was always meant to come in where it came in. Yes, yeah, but it's still I feel like that beats implied through the whole thing, you know, like I feel that energy when the beat comes in. It doesn't feel like, yes, it feels like dramatic because it's a beat, but I feel like we're already in that rhythm. Yeah, clearly you're prepared for absolutely. That's great. So the musically it didn't change much from the original idea. Not a lot there was well, there was a lot of chipping away, adding things that we felt like within the studio having like different you know, the melotron in the bridge and the idea of having the strings they're all not and like there were things that conversations that me and Ben had for a long time, but actually on the whole, yeah, pretty much came in in a certain way and and was done over two or three days. The first time got it to a certain point where it pretty much sounded like an rough version of this pretty much, but then there was a lot of details that we wanted to go into overtime and changing certain bits, and it's kind of hard to remember in ways, it's almost like it's a blur of like it was always I could from the day that I've figured out that poem would work over this thing. It's kind of just since then, it's like, well, I mean I just put it there and did my best, and he did his best. And that was hard to really explain completely understood understand that in the in that moment of the burst of creativity of like discovery, a lot of things happen very quickly, and sometimes I know in my experiences. Sometimes I'll hear something after we've recorded it, and I don't even remember that it happened, because it's you're kind of in this zone where things are just happening, and then afterwards you look back it's like, wow, that's incredible, Like I know I was involved, but I don't really remember how that happened exactly. Very exciting. It's a thrilling feeling. It's like almost being in an altered state. Yeah, yeah, you're like it, Yeah, do you do you feel that way? Often? No, Often it happens. It's it's I feel like a lot of the time in the studio, we're waiting for that to happen. I don't think about it as waiting, but there's a lot of times when sort of we know that there's something that needs to happen. You're just kind of waiting until the stars align, and then all of a sudden it starts happening, and then it's sort of feels almost out of control that it just this momentum starts. I always when when I realize it's happening, I always try to relax and just think, okay, I just hope that it goes as long as it can go, yeah, just like stay out of the way of this momentum that's arrived. Yeah, within the air, definitely, I have that. I've had that a few times. But it's it's you always. I think you always had an intention, but you never it's hard to explain the process. But in the middle I can just look back at what I originally was trying to do and go, well, I did achieve that, or I didn't, but it's still great and it's better for it, and we found something else that I wasn't expecting. But it's hard to sometimes pin down the moment. In the middle bit, I think absolutely absolutely. And when did Pino play on it. He played on it probably three quarters of the way through making it, so it was already practically like it just had a like a synth base. I think before that was just kind of driving on like halftime of the drums. And I think what happened was I was speaking to someone who said, you should try and not do everything yourself, and you should try and invest in people who are really really great at their craft, because if they've spent their whole life doing that one thing, then you probably on paper they can do it. They can do it the best or whatever. It's like going compared to you. You're competent. I'm competent on bass, and there's a lot of album, A lot of this album I played the bass on, but it was not because those songs didn't necessarily in my head feel as if they deserved like the you know, it wasn't all about the bass. I don't think those other songs, but that one for me and bending him and I had a conversation where it was like do we just you know, after soon after that other conversation about you should invest in you know, other people who do they think, not do everything yourself, I just said, why don't we get Peno to play on this song? And I think we joked about it before and was like, imagine if he would ever do such a thing. But you realize these people are around and they do actually play, you know, their instruments for people when you ask. So you just had to ask, and it was a very very special moment for me because I was just a big fan of him and all his work and having him to do it so quickly and I'm sure I know you've watched him. Yeah, that's fantastic. Did you play him the original bass part or did you just play him the track with nothing I played? Do you know what happened? I played him the We sent him the song and it had the sign basin, and he actually called me to find out how I wanted to do it in terms of keeping the sign basin or not, because he was like, I quite like how it is in there, and I wonder if we can have the digital based and the meet the live human based working together. And I was like, I'd like to know that. We'll see if we can or can't. And he came in open minded, and we quickly realized that it was better with just him than the since. But he was he called me to say, what should we do with that? Because I'm interested to know that. I said in the email, it's like it's already a bass part there, but obviously it's a case of either switching it out or seeing how it goes. But he actually picked up on that and we had the conversation and it worked out for the best. What would you say, what would you consider your influences throughout everything or in general? I don't think we ever talked about this before. Maybe not. I feel like as a child, I was very open to kind of a lot of different types of music, and I was inspired a lot by bands and I played the drums, so I was listening to Wheezer and Blink one eight two and Green Day and to put to put like a corner of those type that type of music at a young age I really loved. And then there was this thing, now that's why I call music CDs where they would have just like a compilation of pop music. And it's like but they would they would have like Homecoming by Kanye on there, or they'd have like like Atomic Kitten or like there was like there was like real like pop or just like Girls Aloud. It was there was just every sort of side of pop music that was still working on the radio could go on this compilation CD. And I think I was just exposed to a lot of different stuff. And you I soon realized. I didn't real realize until maybe a couple of years ago. But you certain like certain things you're drawn to and always like certain things. Certain places resonate with you or don't. And it's very easy it's hard to like fake enthusiasm. Actually, if you if you're somewhere or you hear something that you're not actually into. So there's certain things for me. I think I just always was always drawn to things, not necessarily who they would buy. I would never be like I love that artist, everything by them is great. It's like I find that hard even today to say I love everything from one person. It's really a small handful of people who've ever done that for me. But I found people like Kanye and people like Stevie Wonder at a young age, and his discography was one of the first things I've really found, like there were so many different styles but just using a lot of the same chords, but so many different chords in different keys, and just realized I thought I'd kind of just realized what genius was. But then at the same time, it's schooled. People would show me Eminem and jay Z and have like, show me an MP three player in the flesh and someone had I had an MP three player with one Eminem song and one jay Z song, and I think it was I think it was fac by Eminem Unfortunately We're not. Unfortunately was amazing, really but like that was like one of the first rap songs ever heard, And then I believe it was What more can I say or something from the Black album by Jay I think, which was at that time. I was just kind of like I didn't know what that even was, and that was just my first introduction. So I kind of I feel as if I was just gravitated towards what was put in front of me. But then there was so much put in front of me. I didn't have to get into all these other bands from pop bands from the UK and stuff. Certain things. I was into certain songs, but there was a lot of cause, and I think a lot of theory and certain vocal melodies and stuff actually that I wasn't like always driven to melody. Sometimes they would just be the cause and they would be a vocalist doing something that actually didn't really resonate with me, but I could just point out certain bits that I loved about it, mainly music. Actually, honestly, I haven't really had a lot of I'd be lying if I said I'm really influenced by films and stuff, because I'm not. But I do, you know, I enjoy watching films like a lot of people. But I think most of what truly truly resonates with me is either just like people saying words that make me want to go and do something or real like sound at sonics and chords and music from any type of person, any type of band. Just just a lot of influences really that could go on a long list, but I think when I really put it down to just what resonates with me, I think that's that's all. And I've just I love music as well, so it probably it helps you know when did you start experimenting with chords? It moved from drums to two keys. I mean I actually probably experimented with the keys before the good idea. I've probably experimented with keys before drums, and was playing like Cold Play songs on the piano at a young age, like whilst learning drums. But there was there was a point when I was at school. I went to a place called the brit School, and when I arrived there on my first day, I met a guy called Jim who played the drums, and I came as a drummer as well. And in the year there was sort of like four or five people that played drums and they had everyone performer a set like not a set, sorry, like a solo performance on the first dick, so we could all kind of like show the year what we did, and I remember watching Jim play drums and I was I just thought, I don't think I'm a drummer. I think he is a drummer. I think I'm someone that is competent on drums, and i'm I love drums, but I also I've spent I've spent time doing a bit of keys, I've spent time doing a bit of this, and like singing and stuff, and Jim or I'm assuming, having not knowing him at the time, I was like, I guess this guy's just spent his whole life doing drums because he look he sounds like someone who's put so much into the drums, which I've I can't catch up on that. And there's so many people out there, you know, it's very instant, like, well, that's probably not my calling. I think that's his calling all someone else of that sort. And what happened was I probably that sparked me to think that I could just do something else. And people were putting me onto other solo artists that I was unaware of, and like singers who played the guitar, and I never really was interested in the guitar as much. It was more the piano, and so I kind of was like, well, if I can translate the chords from the piano over to the guitar, I don't have to be much of a guitarist. I can just be someone playing music through a using a guitar. So I can't play really a guitar solo competently, but I could still to this day, I'm still just more of just a chord guy if you want. I just kind of translated it over to that. But it was at school, middle of school, and I realized it couldn't be a drummer, didn't want to be a drummer, would rather be something else, and also had a lot on my mind I wanted to talk about. And they came at the right times together, and I was like, what else can I do? Let's just, you know, found a way, spent the summer in someone's house just recording and very amateur in a good way and very diy and just yeah, it just all came in. It was the right place, right time. It was lucky. It was quite early on in my life, to be honest, and it was, yeah, how old do you when the first thing you put who you released your first piece of music? I think I had just turned seventeen. Wow, I think i'd maybe all just a few months after being seventeen. On SoundCloud. Yes, SoundCloud has been good to you. It really has. It really has. And I did the first album there as well. And then you watch you like, go on SoundCloud every day and watch it go up and you're like wow, and just start. It's not on actual streaming services yet they really it was me. You know, the artist does it whatever. The music speaks for itself, but the platform is was really genuinely useful for that. I wonder if timing had anything to do with it as well, because I feel like when I heard about you, I was listening to a lot of music on SoundCloud, and I feel like lately I haven't been listening to as much on SoundCloud you as well. I haven't, I definitely have. It's interesting. It's like, I wonder how that works. It's just fascinating. What are you listening to music on at the moment. I've been listening mostly to like classical music and jazz from all different places, but not so much usually. The only the only new music that I listen to is when a friend tells me to listen to something sure, And for some reason I went from a phase of not listening to much hip hop to listening to much more hip hop, much more new hip hop, which I'm really enjoying. Yeah, yeah, great, it feels like a it's an interesting moment in hip hop because I'm hearing I'm hearing. Usually the thing that most excites me about music is when it sounds like something I haven't heard before and it's really surprising. Yet I'm hearing some hip hop now that is not so surprising. In some ways, it's ordinary, yet it's a very very very good version of ordinary, and I like it. Yeah. So that's that's a little bit of a new experience right now for me. Great. Yeah, I do love some new representually love some new rep And there's definitely that element of it's not necessarily surprising. What new and hip hop have you been listening to that you like? I like the Baby I feel. I don't know if you've heard the Baby should listened to him. He's a d a baby and he's from North Carolina. He's from Charlotte, and he's just got a very he's got a specific flow that actually talking about it's like you don't I haven't actually really heard much exactly like him. I just mean I enjoyed. He's very clever lyrically in his beats are very simple and effective. And I think a lot of this new rap actually some of it's very simple and not effective. A lot of it's some of it when you get it right, and all subjective. Again, like some things resonating me, some things don't. But some of these rap songs feel very effective in their simplicity, and you don't, I like not hearing ad libs before when you first hear it, and then later on listening, I mean like that's where the energies come from, of them shouting behind their other vocal But I didn't even realize the first few times. Now that's a simple thing. But that's just an observation. It's hard to listen names. There's there is also so any names in the conversation, I think absolutely, and now more than it's endless, it's endless, and it feels like the turnover or the excitement about music. It moves much faster, Like when I hear something, even something that I really love, I listen to it and then there's something new that replaces that slot sooner than later, which used to be the case. Used to I used to really live with things that I liked for a long time. Of course, so it's happening, feels like it's happening less not sure why. No. I wonder if it's just because of the amount of things that are out and I wonder if that means that that gives people a reason to be less impressed, and maybe just it's landfill amounts from music to the point where it's like, well, okay, once, once you're done with something. Once it's not if it doesn't really if you don't love it, if you don't again, like if it doesn't really really resonate with you, then you're it's quite easy to feel like you can just move on to the next thing and hope that there's something else, because there probably will be, because there's so much music out I'm speaking from the perspective of maybe a listener that I've can't necessarily relate with. I don't know what I'm guessing this is an assumption, but I think it's just quite a lot of music out there. It's true. Let's see the next one, let's hear it. When we come back, we'll have more of Rix conversation with Rax Slange County and we'll hear his new song Stressed Out. We're back with Rax slannge County song stressed Out, I have that one calling about. That one was actually one of the two songs on there that I wrote in a small house by myself in a place called Devon, which is in the countryside of things, about four four and a half hours probably from here, I would imagine, And I decided to go and be by myself for a week and try and write things because I'd spent a lot of time with like I've mentioned earlier, with instrumentals and ideas that were either waiting for vocals or just had some vocals and waiting for the rest of them, and I was feeling like sticking with saying in the room listening to them over and over again, or in the presence of someone else. I just felt as if it was just maybe going to be a good thing for me to remove myself from all of it, be in the same country, but just take some time out and take some space. But it was very difficult, actually, and I actually wrote that on the last day, on the Sunday. I did seven days, and I wrote on the final day and recorded a demo that some of the vocals and the keys in facts recorded off my phone. Still on the same things on there, and it's kind of like it was a moment of confusion and frustration and feeling as if people, you know, there are people in the world that do take advantage of you, And there's a lot of themes of that across here all of the songs. But it was it's kind of like the epitome of me being frustrated and stressed out. It's called stressed out. But it happened. It came from a really annoying period of time where I didn't write anything in that week and that's all I wanted to do, and then write on the last day of course, sort of finished the one thing that I really didn't loved and allowed to. I wonder if it's as short as it is because you wanted to get out of Devon. Yeah, that's probably the case. It probably is. It feels it it's almost like a personification of my trip. It was a but it's beautiful because again it captures a feeling in a moment and it feels different than the rest. So it was a successful even though you had to have this lonely week. Yeah, you got something beautiful from it, exactly. That's that's like exactly how I feel. It's definitely got something out. It's definitely worth doing. Yeah. Yeah, where would you say you recorded the majority of the album? There's a strong Room. There was a studio in London called Strong Room sorry, and it's in East London and it was in a small room that belongs to the producer Ben and we did a lot of it in there and then mixed a lot of it in a slightly bigger room there and that pretty much all. I went there pretty much every day for a lot of days, just to track things and try things, and a lot of playing and things like a lot of you know, just years and stuff that that didn't make it. But was that that again, like just the idea of going there for as much time as I needed to to get all the options, to be aware of what we didn't need to do and what I didn't want to use. But mainly mainly in that small room. And then that that Devin for this song and one other song I'll show you as well. How many how many songs would you say you started that didn't make it? Like how many, just so I get a sense of the scale of the project. Sure to end up with ten, it was actually not a lot more. There wasn't a lot left over. There was probably three or four that were considered heavily considered. In fact that there was there was probably five, and the first three or something happened at the beginning of the album where I thought they were going to make it, and they just didn't end making it, but they were really worth while having there. It was only probably five songs there was. There was a couple of things towards the mid There was in the middle where a lot wasn't finished, and there were other songs that weren't finished and haven't been finished since. And I'm okay with that because I sort of just got to a point where it was like, what am I really trying to say? There was maybe fifteen, maybe fourteen fifteen songs, and I was towing between ten and twelve, and I just realized my attention span is definitely not long enough these days to really give up, like put up with more than ten to twelve songs. I think realistically, I'm a fan of short. Short these days just feels right. It feels right it does, and I think other people I can't speak for other people, but I think people are the same. People say it was too long, or like I absolutely, you know because it was or whoever's album or whatever. It's like, I feel like, you know, over twenty songs is just I can't imagine loving all twenty of them. I'd rather hear two eight song albums, yeah, than one sixteen songs, And even if it's the same songs, Absolutely that makes a lot of sense. Yeah, actually I agree. But if that answers your question, yeah, yeah, I think so. But so you said you got to fifteen contenders, But were there many other songs started? Like in the experimental phase? Were there many starts that just never went anywhere? There were a lot of small Yeah, there are a lot of very small starts that never went anywhere, so like really just voice notes of ideas or there was like a lot of voice notes where it's like I just knew straight away that I'd be improvising and playing the keys or the guitar, and then a lot of those just never went anywhere. And that's hope. I was always just they weren't particularly like valuable, and I would know quickly if they were valuable, so like it would be this one is like, oh, this is going to be the blueprint for this song, and it ended up being whatever melody I was coming up with off the top of my head end up being the melody for the whole song. And you just stick. I just ended up just sticking with things, and I'd say, yeah, there was a few that was probably again like maybe ten or twenty other like random things that or just logic files you open up, make a couple of things. But I hate I really don't like that feeling of pursuing something that I know maybe isn't worth it or it's not the time, as there's something about it where it just feels wrong and I feel like i'm forcing so and so I do usually cut it off pretty quickly and try and only puts you the things that feel this is gonna be a great song and I'm gonna love it, and that's, you know, great, cool. Let's hear the next one. So this last one is the last one. Yeah, it's really ending on it's not the same anymore. It's better, it's really hopeful ending. It's really nice. That was definitely intentional. Yeah, it's funny it's not same when you hear s not same anymore. Immediately we go to missing the past and it being a negative and it's worse now always, but it's not the same anymore. It's better. It's really feels like a new message. I love it that. Yeah, that was that was actually had to happen. Really, I would hate to have ended it on a really negative note like that, or just there's a few songs where that actually happens. It starts while I'm sounding as if I'm pretty upset about things, or just sound as if I'm not happy and ending up you know, you get the journey's literally just the story is just it was I'm like coming out of a bad time. The resolution through the song, Yeah, yeah, that's that's the therapy itself. Is the is the writing of it, and you get to the end of the song and it's like and that sort of cured my for the moment for now, I got. I got this song out of it from just talking about it. Where did this one come in the writing? In the overall scale of the project? Where did this one show up? This was actually fairly early on and was written on guitar with which was as in and and and just actually the guitar part was written without really any of the lyrics again again was just written as a pegiated part, like yes, yeah, yeah, or it was definitely just and only acoustic as well. And that whole middle section where there's it's a whole bridge of way different chords that somehow resolves back to the original that took That was kind of the main challenge for me, was just writing something lyrically that could work over that whole section there. So the bridge was there from beginning. It was always really really spectacular. It's one of my favorite parts. Thank you. That was definitely, yeah, it was. It was absolutely meant to be there from the beginning, but didn't have the context over it yet. I just knew I wanted to take it all the way from like really solid, safe, basic pop chords to all the way over there, you know, seven six nine chords and like and just do do something I hadn't quite done. And found a couple of other shapes that I'd not used on any of the songs and I wanted to use. I wanted to use that as an opportunity. It was based totally based on the guitar and then at one point realized I knew the whole time it could be the last song. And there was a moment where that the sax players, same guy on all the songs, came in and did his parts on this that felt like they really tied the song together and made it definitely had to be the last song. Yes, and his melody, that melody at the end that is him as well as came from his head. So it's kind of like it feels like the ultimate sort of concluding reflective feelings. It's actually really kind of somber but very positive, and had to just write. The chorus actually came pretty quickly. All the lyric es actually for this one came quite quickly. It was very easy for me to talk really honestly and be really brutal and b it didn't take so long. It was how much of the track was together before the words came. M We said more just over the guitar. Was it over the track? I think it was more. It was more just over the guitar, and then we over time added a lot of the drums and brass and flutes and the strings obviously as well, which was probably the last thing on it. And then we're just you know, turned right down to just be there to add rather than be like another feature because there's so much going on. But yeah, it was Actually it was a guitar based for a long time, and then all the other elements came over time. Beautiful. What percentage of the songs would you say came on guitar versus piano? I think there's more on piano. It was. I'd say percentage wise is about sixty forty or maybe slightly more piano, but only only you know, only a little bit more, only a bit more, really, And some things were then translated to keys or vice versa. But it usually stays. They usually stay from where they began. They usually stay in that place because I feel like the chords the way you touched either instrument are not the same at all. We can get a similar thing out of both, but in no way are they the same instruments. So it's like they're two separate things. And I think that's the best thing about both of them, that they're not like each other. Cool man, I'm so happy you shared this with us, and I'm so happy you made this. Thank you. I'm so happy that you allowed me to come over here and play it for you, because I really am. I'm glad that I could. Many thanks to Rex Slunge County for spending time for a set Broken Record. His new album Pony is out now wherever you get your music and had to Rex slannge County dot com for tourdens. You can check out more of rexoc's music by visiting Broken Record podcast dot com and subscribing to our playlist. For this episode, Broken Record is produced with help from Jason Gambrella me Lobell. Our theme music is by Kenny Beats. Stay tuned for next week's episode with Brandy Carlisle and Tanya Tucker. I'm justin Richmond.