Phoenix's "1901"
Update: 2025-02-20
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Fold it? Fallin’? Or something completely different? This week on One Song, Diallo and LUXXURY break down “1901” by Phoenix, exploring the split between rock and electronic music that occurred in the 2000s, how their relationship with producer Philippe Zdar brought that electronic influence to their sound, and the guys try to definitively solve just what this song is about.
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Songs Discussed:
“1901” - Phoenix
“If I Ever Feel Better” - Phoenix
“Ballade de Melody Nelson” - Serge Gainbourg
“Losing My Edge” - LCD Soundsystem
“Deceptacon (DFA Remix)” - Le Tigre
“Floating” - Jape
“Meddle (Baron Von Luxxury’s Technicolor Remix)” - Little Boots
“Phoenix” - Daft Punk
“Feeling for You” - Cassius
“1999” - Cassius
“(If It) Hurts Just a Little” - Donna Summer
“I Love You So” - Cassius
“I Feel a Song (In My Heart)” - Sandra Richardson
“Why I Love You “ - Jay-Z and Kanye West
“Lisztomania (Classixx Version)” - Phoenix
“Cyan” - Kindness
“We Danced Together (SebastiAn)” - The Rakes
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Transcript
00:00:00
"Luxury Today's Song" is an indie pop anthem from a French band that straddle the line between electronic and rock music.
00:00:06
- "Syn Ray Diallo." - Oh, God.
00:00:08
- And this song is so much French. - That's right, Diallo. This song was massive.
00:00:13
Not only did it reach number one on the Billboard alternative songs chart, but the song has been featured in dozens of ads, TV shows, and video games.
00:00:20
And most recently, the band performed the song at the closing ceremonies of the 2024 Summer Olympic Games in Paris.
00:00:27
- That's right. And as soon as you hear it, you'll be saying, "Hey, it's one song, and that song is 1901 by Phoenix."
00:00:34
- You got the note. I love that.
00:00:53
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00:01:48
- I'm actor, writer, director, and sometimes DJ Diallo Rural.
00:01:51
- And I'm producer, DJ, songwriter, and musicologist Luxury, also known as the guy who whispers, "Interpolation."
00:01:58
- And if you want to watch one song, please go to our YouTube channel and watch this full episode.
00:02:02
And while you're there, please like and subscribe.
00:02:03
- All right, Diallo 1901 was Phoenix's first massive hit in the US, but you had actually been a fan for a while.
00:02:10
- Yeah. - How did you get into Phoenix and why did they mean so much to you?
00:02:13
- I think it started when I was listening to BBC Radio One. That was where I got all of my sort of like weird music first back in those days.
00:02:20
And as I remember, they played, "If I feel better."
00:02:23
And I remember like, you know, old-school style going to record stores being like, "Where am I going to find this record, if I feel better, if I feel better?"
00:02:30
- Did you know who was by? They didn't know that. - I don't think so.
00:02:32
But I knew enough of the lyrics where I used the nascent web to figure out the name of the band.
00:02:38
- Are you just Googled what you were? - Yeah, I probably out-avisted it.
00:02:41
- I did some geosities. - Did you ask Jeves?
00:02:44
- I think I'm out of Ask Jeves. And Jeves came back with Phoenix and then I went to Melrose as one used to do.
00:02:50
And they used to have all these record stores along Melrose here in LA.
00:02:54
And I remember exactly where I was when I found it in the stacks.
00:02:58
Like when I found it in that box, I pulled it out and I was like, "This is the album, this is the song."
00:03:03
And I remember I went looking for it because I thought it sounded like a cool, jamira-quite song.
00:03:08
- Oh, interesting. - If I feel better, it sounded like it was clearly played by a band, but it felt disco-y.
00:03:13
- Right. - And you and I have always connected on disco and sort of those kind of sounds.
00:03:18
- And also the overall app of where it's sort of bandy disco-y, we're going to be talking about a lot about that today.
00:03:22
Elements of rock, elements of indie, elements of electronic are all kind of in there.
00:03:27
- Yeah. I mean, to this day, if I feel better, is one of my favorite Phoenix groups.
00:03:31
[Music]
00:03:40
It's so interesting here in this back with like 20, 25 ears because they were so ahead of their time
00:03:45
and sort of bringing, first of all, France, French music, and up and from Sir's Gansbourg.
00:03:50
There's like a little, there's a spot between Sir's Gansbourg.
00:03:53
- Are we going to see Sir's Gansbourg? - Are we going to see Sir's today?
00:04:00
[Music]
00:04:04
There isn't like, necessarily a lot of French music that I'm listening to,
00:04:07
until Daft Punk basically in the gap.
00:04:09
- Yeah, there's always been like a little, I think it's the language barrier.
00:04:12
- Yeah. - There's always, like England has always
00:04:14
flooded the American market with all these bands, all these sounds.
00:04:17
And France had never really had, it's like, American moment.
00:04:21
You can argue that it is the generation of Daft Punk, Air, Phoenix.
00:04:25
These are the guys who sort of like get America in a big way.
00:04:28
- Yes. Listen, all you French people out there,
00:04:30
"G'em la belle exe g'on", you know what I'm saying?
00:04:32
- You know what? - You know, this is my love for French.
00:04:34
- But French music with French lyrics to American ears can be challenging.
00:04:38
It just, it hits different, as we should say.
00:04:41
- As we've seen in English. - But singing in English makes a difference.
00:04:44
And also, what I'm really struck by in this listen,
00:04:46
I can't believe that song is from 1998,
00:04:48
is how much it would fit in perfectly today with the French music of this moment,
00:04:53
with like parcels and L'Empératrice, all these great French bands
00:04:58
in the wake of Phoenix and Daft Punk and their contemporaries and air,
00:05:01
who are setting the stage lane, the groundwork for a new French emergent.
00:05:05
So, hearing that are early Phoenix songs.
00:05:08
It's crazy that it really sounds like today.
00:05:10
- And I will say in preparing for this episode,
00:05:12
I was actually surprised that you weren't already a Phoenix fan.
00:05:16
Like part of the reason we do this podcast,
00:05:17
because we connected over Indy, disco, New Disco and Electro,
00:05:21
which is a lot of what Phoenix's appeal was, and when I was like, "Let's do things,"
00:05:25
you're like, "Oh yeah, I gotta know who that is." I was like, "What?"
00:05:28
- No, this like, listen, I have to bring back an object from another episode.
00:05:31
And I think we all know which one I'm talking about.
00:05:33
That's right, the cauldron of Envy made an appearance on the killer's episode.
00:05:37
This is an era, it's important like where I was at the time.
00:05:40
Matters, this was-- - You were making music.
00:05:42
- But it was, and it was such early days that I really paid attention
00:05:44
to stuff that was similar to what I was doing, but like,
00:05:47
better or more successful in ways that in retrospect,
00:05:50
I'm able to kind of analyze and be like, "Oh, that's why I missed the boat a little bit on this."
00:05:54
- I am. - So curious, in 2000,
00:05:55
was your sound more approaching James addiction,
00:05:59
or was it more, you know, Baron von Luxury?
00:06:02
- In 2000, I was making the transition from the earliest,
00:06:05
like, and this is actually relevant to this episode, how they made this song.
00:06:09
I first started making music with a four-track machine and a guitar in my apartment in New York City,
00:06:14
and I would just record little ideas, and then I would move on.
00:06:18
And by the end of the tape, a 30-minute tape, I would have like 100 ideas,
00:06:22
but I would never go back and develop any of them.
00:06:24
And this is foreshadowing for the story of this song, which is really interesting.
00:06:28
So I just, like, live for a number of years with fragments of material and no band and no partners.
00:06:34
It was just-- - But you had the gear.
00:06:35
- And I had a stack of 30 tapes until one day, I moved to San Francisco,
00:06:40
and my music career began.
00:06:41
When I hired a woman, I'm so excited to give her props,
00:06:44
to Patty Boss, who came to my house, I answered a Craigslist ad, and she converted all of my tapes to
00:06:50
digital. So I could look in early pro-tools and be like, idea, idea, idea. Oh, I can mix and match this.
00:06:56
I can read-- - Oh, this could be a verse, and this could be a chorus.
00:06:59
This blew my brain up, and it just changed the chorus of my music career.
00:07:03
- Your Craigslist story ends much better than mine, I will say.
00:07:07
It's a happy Craigslist story. Mine's are dark.
00:07:10
But it's so interesting that you say that because Phoenix is really emblematic of this split
00:07:14
that's going on in rock music at the time, where some bands are leaning further
00:07:18
into traditional rock sounds, turning up the distortion pedals,
00:07:22
other bands are starting to incorporate more electronic influences.
00:07:26
I mean, I feel like you're emblematic of that.
00:07:28
- In this time period, I went back and forth between the two.
00:07:30
Because really, when you are making a band or a musical project happen,
00:07:35
there's a sort of binary moment where you have to decide,
00:07:37
is this going to be on the stage with a drummer?
00:07:40
And people listening to songs with vocals?
00:07:42
And of course, there's a wide range. It could be instrumental. It could be jazz.
00:07:45
The point is, that is distinctly different from, or is it for DJs to choose to play
00:07:50
in their set in between other songs at a similar BPM, with similar sounds,
00:07:55
and it's functional to get the people dancing, or they're sort of looking at each other.
00:07:59
And of course, they're big upping the DJ.
00:08:02
But it's a bit of a binary, it's one or the other.
00:08:04
But in this moment, which, call back to a few of our other episodes,
00:08:08
this is another blog house episode.
00:08:10
We talked a little bit about this era, where the blogs are where a lot of music is released.
00:08:15
- That was downloading. - Free MP3s on the blogs.
00:08:18
This is an era in the early 2000s, where our sister episodes,
00:08:22
where this would be like, yeah, yeah, yeah, as episode, the back of listen to that,
00:08:25
that the deaf punk episodes, big one.
00:08:27
There are bands like Cutcopy, an empire of the sign, and the presets.
00:08:31
And they are perfectly on this line of making band-eam music, like guitars and singing.
00:08:39
- But they have electronic elements. - Sure.
00:08:41
And one solution that is come up with, thanks to the blogs, is you can still be a band
00:08:46
and get the DJs because of the renexes.
00:08:49
And that's the big epiphany in this moment.
00:08:51
I will say I was such a huge fan of all these groups that you're naming,
00:08:54
and one time I did book Cutcopy, and my one interaction with them, kind of prickly.
00:08:58
- Oh no. - Those two are pretty prickly.
00:09:01
But I love everything you're saying, and it just reminds me of the LCD sound system, Larry.
00:09:05
I hear that you're in your band, and so do your guitars, and bought turd tables.
00:09:08
- I hear that you're in your band, and have so good turd tables, and bought turd tables.
00:09:14
- That is the 2000s to me, because every band had to make a choice at some point.
00:09:18
Are we more of a, or because I feel like that punk was more for the dance floor.
00:09:22
That punk and justice, they went that way.
00:09:24
And then, you know, a lot of these groups, Cutcopy, Phoenix, a lot of them,
00:09:28
went more bandy as time went on.
00:09:30
And wonderfully, we're going to talk about that a lot on this episode,
00:09:33
because it is behind the scenes how this song and this album gets made,
00:09:36
is going between these two worlds, having a foot in each camp, and sometimes in the recording of a song,
00:09:41
sometimes with just production technique, sometimes with choices at the instrument level,
00:09:46
at the sonic level, like how you're carving the EQ for the guitar.
00:09:49
All of this is in the mix, because there's inspiration also coming from the DAF punk phenomenon.
00:09:55
- I actually think that Phoenix and a lot of these groups figured out for the album,
00:09:59
it's going to be a band. - That's right.
00:10:01
And then, we're going to come in and we'll get, you know, the hot remix or the classics.
00:10:06
- 100% right, yes. - You know, like we'll get, whoever's remixing at the time,
00:10:09
we'll get them to do our dance floor version.
00:10:12
- Absolutely, and this is like, this is like when MasterCraft is like all over the place.
00:10:17
All those, all those, you know, death from above, DFA remixes that we love so much.
00:10:21
- Yeah. - For a long time, I thought that Decepticon by Latigra was the DFA remix.
00:10:26
[Music]
00:10:34
- Not the version that I came to know was the original version. - I feel like this is a little
00:10:38
bit of an era that gets under-talked about, and I feel, I'm excited that I'm proud that on our show,
00:10:42
we bring blog house into the conversation so often, because it was- - We get it off of the blog
00:10:47
since we know most of those blogs, it's like 404 cannot be found. - That's right, all the like,
00:10:52
what is it? Z-Share links. - All that, Z-Share, all that stuff is just gone. It's like,
00:10:56
it never exists. - Right. It's really important because I think we live in a post-bloghouse era,
00:11:01
insofar as don't forget that, especially in America, like we're Americans, this isn't true everywhere,
00:11:06
but in America we had disco demolition in 1979, July 12th, in Kandinsky Park where they burned
00:11:11
disco records. And for about 20 years, disco sucks was a whole question sort of presumption of
00:11:17
the culture. - It was a sue. - Disco is bad. It's corny. It's cringed. - Yes, even the Roxbury
00:11:22
boys on SNL were continuing to- - Yeah. - Oh, look how lame they are not. - That's mainstream, by the way.
00:11:27
Underground, it was cool. We loved it. We didn't stop loving it. In Europe, they didn't stop
00:11:31
making it or loving it. - No. - But what happened- - They didn't stop making it- - Yeah.
00:11:34
- How going to Troy? - That's right. - Huge mainstream. - That's right.
00:11:37
- Media here in America was like, dance music is inherently bad. - And one thing that happened
00:11:42
with blog house is that a new generation grows up without a memory of that culturally. They just
00:11:46
are hearing dance music. They just are hearing electronic music. And they're just like, wait,
00:11:50
this is good. It's a mystery. Exactly. It's mysterious to them, understandably so, that it would
00:11:56
ever be considered sucky. - Wow. - To that point, Holy Ghost was a great underground-
00:12:02
- Oh, great band. - Yeah. - Under GFA. - Great group. - And my connection to Phoenix
00:12:07
is that Holy Ghost, I think I knew Holy Ghost. I knew Sam Valenti had- - Yeah. - Ghost
00:12:12
national- - Yes. - And Shout out to Sam. - And I'm pretty sure it was Holy Ghost who was like,
00:12:17
ask Desi O'Dell, our mutual friend, like, hey, do you have somebody who you want to spend
00:12:21
this Phoenix after party with in New York? And shout out to Desi O'Dell. Thank you for
00:12:27
thinking of me. She was like, you know, he's a writer on late night with Jimmy Fallon, but
00:12:31
he's a really good DJ. And, you know, we worked together at the standard. So she called me in,
00:12:36
and it was at the Tribeca Grand Hotel. - Oh, yeah, remember that place? - This day,
00:12:40
one of my, it's called the Roxy Hotel now. But back then, Tribeca Grand, and they had an amazing,
00:12:46
you know, music lineup. And I got to spend this after party for the, for the Phoenix show.
00:12:50
To this day, it is one of the best DJ experiences of my life, because I was able to play all these
00:12:56
underground, you know, remixes and songs. The one that's really sticks out to me is such a hard
00:13:01
song. And I was like, I don't know if I've ever even spun it out since or before, but it was
00:13:06
called Floating by a group called JAPE, and it was the D-I-M remix. - Oh, man. I don't know if you hear that
00:13:12
song played loud on those speakers for an appreciative crowd. - Okay. - Is a rush that I feel like
00:13:17
only DJs can really appreciate. - If I'm ruling, if I'm topping at the bit to hear it, I think our
00:13:21
listeners are too. Can we hear a little bit? - Yep. - I mean, I could listen to it. - This music was so fun
00:13:33
in this era, it reminded me. There were no rules. - There were no remixes. And it was dirty and it was
00:13:38
disgusting. - It was dirty. - Like the production was like in the red, but like it sounded amazing.
00:13:43
- The wavelengths are like blocks, but which we've talked about other shows, but I have to point out,
00:13:48
we owe a lot to Fisher Spooner. When Fisher Spooner came out, like not a lot of people were doing that
00:13:54
sound, you know, like that hard sound. And again, that song sounds much different when you hear the
00:14:00
album version and just a band playing it. But that kind of remixing was what took it to the dance floor.
00:14:06
- Yeah, absolutely. And I have to contain myself with excitement. - I just want to play. - Because you
00:14:12
got to imagine like people were really dancing to it. Like I don't know if all of them knew it,
00:14:17
maybe half the crowd heard that remix, but like that to me is like classic blog or all. - But this is
00:14:22
Indies Lee's American apparel. This is the co-personate. - Kitsune. Kitsune was putting up a compilation. - Yes,
00:14:28
they were Tuesday nights at Sina Space. You know, that's what they're spinning. And I'm there. And I'm
00:14:33
participating in this. - You're at Subtonic. It's Laura Manhattan. You're crazy. - I'm participating in
00:14:37
this like way on the periphery because I have this band in San Francisco and it's luxury. - San Francisco's
00:14:42
was a little off the beaten path. - So off the beaten path. And I'm making music, which is inspired by
00:14:47
the same stuff. But I'm at this moment in 2007, especially because I've just had this failure of a
00:14:52
UK tour where I'm in the red and the band breaks up. And we go places and like it's just not really
00:14:58
happening. So I come off and I'm like, man, what do I do now? And my friend, John Atron,
00:15:03
shout out to John Atron. We started DJ night. We started a blog. It's called Disco Workout.
00:15:08
And this is when I didn't know that we would one day become friends by used to visit Disco
00:15:12
Workout. - That's the thing that I did that people were like, oh, we like this. Your music not
00:15:16
so much, but your blog. Listen, this is the moment that I change what I do to be more in line with
00:15:21
what I'm excited by, which is remixes like this in the blog house era. So I became Baron von Luxury.
00:15:27
And I did my first series of remixes. And they kind of in this moment, like people, I went back to
00:15:32
prepare for this episode. And I forgot about like all these height machine write-ups and blogs I was
00:15:37
on like, I'm still on the height machine with a lot of blog love from 2007. I totally forgot about it.
00:15:42
But I just wanted to read to you from the fader. This is November 20th, 2008, quote,
00:15:49
when Little Boots, this is such a 2008 quote, when Little Boots played at the fader fort during
00:15:55
CMJ, we spent a lot of time thinking about how her performance was much better than it needs to be.
00:15:59
So when I am sound, record label out of LA, shot over this Baron von Luxury remix of Metal. We were
00:16:05
all over it, especially the first couple of minutes of bass line. So thick. It sounds like Baron von
00:16:09
Luxury opened the door to a club where Little Boots is playing. We're going out without leaving our desks.
00:16:13
That is so 2008. Blog house, like listening to this music, like in your headphones, dance music,
00:16:27
it's all these genres are blending across and over. You could dance at your desk.
00:16:31
So let's talk about the history of Phoenix, this band. As we said in our deaf punk two-part episode,
00:16:37
which we've haven't heard, go back and listen to it. It's really good.
00:16:41
This group, Tomas and Guy had a band called Darlin, named after a Beach Boy song, and there was
00:16:48
a third member of the group, and that third member was Laurent Broncoitz. And when that group broke up,
00:16:56
he got in another band with Tomas Mars, Deck Darcy, and Chris Mazalai.
00:17:02
We also known as his brother, by the way. Yeah, there's a lot of others. So like literally Phoenix
00:17:08
is related to that punk, which is insane. It's like how many people are in France?
00:17:12
And it's almost a two-perfect analogy for what we've just been talking about, about the split,
00:17:17
you know, half of the band decides at the time, as we talk about on the episode, when deaf punk first
00:17:23
had their demos, it was more of an indie rock band. And they were like, we're going to the dance floor.
00:17:28
One of the songs was more electronic, and obviously Gimann and Toma Bungalter were like,
00:17:32
this is kind of what we want to do a little more of, less of the band thing. And that split
00:17:37
into some perfect analogies. He's like, hey, I'm going to deal with my brother over here. I like playing guitars
00:17:40
with my brother and being on stage with someone else singing and playing drums. Absolutely.
00:17:45
Laurent goes by Bronco. Bronco. And Bronco's little brother is Chris, the guitarist for Phoenix.
00:17:52
And basically he goes and they form this indie rock, what they call it, a garage band. And this is
00:17:57
interesting. They actually, they meet in school in Versailles. Yeah. Like this is not Paris. Versailles
00:18:02
is a very different hour out of Paris. Yes, it's a suburb. Yes, it's, it's, it's totally, it's like,
00:18:07
it's like if you find out your favorite grungy group is from Silver Springs, Maryland. Yeah.
00:18:12
Which happens sometimes happens. No, this on Silver Springs, you know what you did.
00:18:17
But there's this quote from Tomas that I really liked. He says, I lived in a museum. The frustration
00:18:23
we had was that everything great happened in the past. And they wouldn't give the chance for
00:18:28
anything new to happen. There were like two shows happening there when we were kids. One was Pink Floyd,
00:18:33
which wasn't really exciting. Trust me, dude, I get it. But it was exciting because something was
00:18:39
happening. And one was Tina Turner. So how does this small conservative town? Yeah. Difold. Yeah.
00:18:44
Christian also has a, a great quote. He says, as a band, we had a new name every two weeks. We were
00:18:50
the senior retas. We were lovebo. By the way, I like the senior retas. The senior retas is a great name.
00:18:55
Might have to grab that one and come up with an album called Dance at Your Desk. Then he says maybe
00:19:00
about 95 was when we actually picked the name. Tomas and I were in the same bed. He went Phoenix.
00:19:06
Ah, we, he doesn't remember. I love Phoenix. And by the way, I always heard another story. It went
00:19:12
something like this Phoenix. Oh, we, it actually not. That's how it went. Your French is far better than
00:19:17
my friend. Phoenix who maybe it was an aprogrical story. But I had always heard that Phoenix got their name
00:19:24
from the song on homework, The Dapunk album. Which, you know, right. I'd always heard that. Actually,
00:19:37
but I guess maybe that wasn't true. In addition to the connection to Dapunk, there's this other
00:19:41
connection where apparently in the early days of being labelmates with the band Air, which I love
00:19:47
the best. Oh my god. Phoenix was their backing band on several of their early UK TV appeared. That's
00:19:53
crazy. I can't wait to watch those. So after the success of Dapunk and Air, they decide, Oh, you
00:19:58
know what? There's actually the chance that we're going to be able to do this for a living. There's a
00:20:02
chance that we can blow up as big as they have. It's true. Like it's kind of fun to say it in this
00:20:06
context, but like representation matters. And like there aren't a lot of French bands taking over
00:20:10
the world until Dapunk and Air are kind of break, break the mold for that. And suddenly it becomes
00:20:16
like French bands were really cool. So again, I adopted this group very early. You were an early
00:20:22
adopter. An early adopter. I mean, I'm a late comer. United great album alphabetical. Maybe my
00:20:29
single favorite album just because this is a time when me and my friends like we're fully on board
00:20:35
with Phoenix. And I feel like this is our album with the group. It's never been like that great album.
00:20:40
And along comes Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix, which I never knew that was the title of the album as a
00:20:46
person who picks up the album and looks like the title is Wolfgang Amadeus. And the word Phoenix is
00:20:50
underneath there to talk about the band. Literally the other day when we were texting. Yeah, I was like,
00:20:54
oh, yeah, Wolfgang Amadeus and you're like Phoenix. And I'm like, yeah, that's the band. And you're like,
00:20:58
no, that's the title. And I'm like, what are we talking about? Who's on first? But I did not know that
00:21:01
that was an official part of the title of the album. The three words are right next to each other. It's
00:21:04
an easy mistake to make. It was easy to assume that the name Phoenix was on there. And it's kind of
00:21:08
crazy title. Tomah himself, Mr. Mars, said, realizes, look, Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix is kind of
00:21:14
pretentious. It's also very silly. And then the brothers, when they told their mother,
00:21:19
she cried. She thought it was the end of us. They thought the album title was just the death knell
00:21:24
for the band. I love that she cried. Yeah. And she's like, no, why? Pooh, Pooh, I know that word.
00:21:31
So that brings us to 1901. And we can't talk about Phoenix without talking about Phil Zadar. He's
00:21:36
there from the first album. As I heard the story told by Tomah himself, he was like, listen,
00:21:41
we worked with a bunch of producers on that first album. None of it sounded right to us or those
00:21:46
producers. One of the producers was literally like, never touch my boards. You can never touch my boards.
00:21:50
Philippe was the first one who made them feel like it was a collaboration. Can you tell us a
00:21:54
little bit about the relationship with Philips' art? Well, yes, I can. I can indeed tell you a little
00:21:58
bit about Philips' Zadar, ZDAR, not his real name, but an incredible, incredible numb de plume.
00:22:04
Born Philippe Serbonisky, he unfortunately passed away in 2019. Right. The age of 52 tragically fell
00:22:10
from a building. And it should be noted right at the top for those of us who really like French touch.
00:22:15
You probably know Philips' Zadar as one half of Caches. Can I just say Caches is one of my absolute
00:22:22
favorite electronic artists? They're so good and so important. Yeah. Who these under song,
00:22:26
groundbreaking French touch era bands that Dath Punk made it to the Pyramid and Coachella,
00:22:31
but not everyone did. I feel like my feeling for you was probably the first song of that type
00:22:36
that I had ever heard because there was a girl who I thought was cute and she was just like,
00:22:42
she was like, "Hey, have you ever heard this song?" So Caches is a group that ZDAR forms with his buddy.
00:22:56
Hubert Blanc-Funkal. Hubert, aka Boom Base. The two of them form Caches together. And they are,
00:23:02
again, one of the seminal French touch artists. We talk a lot of French touch on our Dath Punk,
00:23:06
double episodes. We won't repeat ourselves here, but it's one of our shared favorite genres.
00:23:11
And here's another song by Caches. This is 1999, and it's from the album 1999.
00:23:16
And of course, that's a sample of Donna Summer. It hurts just a little from 1982, which
00:23:31
Diallo will now play for you. And then you may know this track, it's called, "I Love You So" from 2010,
00:23:46
one of the biggest, biggest numbers. So epic. Great opener or a closer for your DJ set,
00:23:58
or just drop it right in the middle. And that is also a sample of this song, Sandra Richardson.
00:24:03
I feel a song in my heart from 1971.
00:24:05
And last but not least, interpolated by Watch the Throne, Kanye and Jay-Z in 2011,
00:24:21
which is why a new generation may come to have known both of those songs, thanks to this.
00:24:26
Or I should say interpolated.
00:24:30
And that's a replay, that's an interpolation.
00:24:36
In addition to being incredible dance producers as Caches, they're also a production team.
00:24:43
They worked with MC Solar, another pioneering French. Yeah, in the 90s kind of breakout,
00:24:49
like Global Bridge Rapper. Yeah, French Rapper. And they did a couple of tracks with him,
00:24:53
a couple of albums with him. And then they go on to in this burgeoning field of electronic
00:24:59
rock crossover. They work with a lot of bands like Cutcopy. Cutcopy, who were prickly.
00:25:04
They work with Chromio, France Ferdinand, Sebastian Tellier. And they did one of my favorite
00:25:09
underrated records, Kindness, World You Change of Mind. One of my favorite, like it's just unsung.
00:25:15
If Philippe Zadar is the unsung hero of this episode, maybe Kindness is the unsung record of this
00:25:21
episode. But the way Zadar talks about producing, and I think it's interesting, because the word
00:25:26
"producer" is one of those words in music that has a wide range of meaning. It can mean everything from,
00:25:31
I don't know, the Rick Rubin school where it's sort of vibing, but not necessarily hands on the
00:25:37
board, to the Kanye's and mustards of the world who are producing by manipulating the samples and
00:25:43
the sound. And Drey. And everything in between. So he obviously is capable of all of the above,
00:25:50
but a big part of what he does is apparently kind of bringing a vibe to the process of making records,
00:25:56
kind of being somebody who's opinion people trust, who has very specific ideas about what sounds good
00:26:01
and how to get there. He's an incredible technical producer. And one thing I found a quote that I
00:26:06
thought was great from Philippe Zadar, quote, "There are a few things in your body that you don't control,
00:26:11
like swallowing, sweating, and your heartbeat. This is exactly how it feels for me producing."
00:26:15
So some people call it, quote, "producing." I call it helping. It's totally natural. So I feel like he's
00:26:20
one of these people that's unattached to having like, it's got to be my way or the highway. More trying to
00:26:25
bring out in the band, what is natural to them and finding a way through. Which makes a lot of
00:26:30
sense. It's such a personal thing for him. Like, apparently when he heard "List of 80" in 1901,
00:26:34
he thought, "I cannot not do this work here." Yeah, yeah, he was sold.
00:26:38
Well, speaking of that record, we're about to play the stems. So after the break, we'll dive into
00:26:43
some of the chaos behind how this song got made, and I promise you, you will hear one of the best songs
00:26:49
that I could ever recommend on this podcast. That recommendation is coming up. We'll be right back.
00:26:54
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Buckle up everybody because the Kardashians are back. The new season of the Kardashians
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is now streaming on Hulu. All right, welcome back to one song luxury. Before we get into these
00:31:04
stems, I just want to set the scene, okay? So, Philippe, one half of Cache's, you know, he's just
00:31:10
moved into his new studio and apparently like construction site. Yes. Like there's this
00:31:15
best, it is not finished yet. There's no, it's not finished. There's no air conditioning. It's very,
00:31:20
very rough. They even had to like reach out to some plumbers to get the toilets back online.
00:31:24
But they said they actually appreciate this. They said a two-night studio was not the vibe that they were on.
00:31:29
It's almost an on-the-nose metaphor for the state of all their songs and different bits and pieces
00:31:33
and little four-second ideas. Some of them are songs, but a lot of them are four-second fragments,
00:31:38
all the way up to 12-minute fragments apparently, which they have recorded over the course of 18
00:31:42
months. Each of the four members of the band has a recording device, like a little voice recorder.
00:31:47
This is before the ubiquity of iPhones. And similar to my like cassette tapes for
00:31:52
tracks from my New York, you know, apartment non-finishing songwriting days I mentioned before.
00:31:56
They are also not all complete ideas and Philippe Zadar is extremely helpful in helping them
00:32:02
piece it all together. So to quote Philippe Zadar, the songwriting process in many ways where this
00:32:06
record was quote, "gluing things together." So they would have hundreds and hundreds of ideas
00:32:11
and part of his objective ear would be like, "Oh, this could go here. This could go here.
00:32:14
This could be good with this." They described it as being like a big collage or a tapestry.
00:32:19
And actually, as I was listening to the song this morning, that opening line jumped out to me,
00:32:24
which is counting all different ideas drifting away. I was like, "I feel like we're going to get
00:32:30
into the lyrics a little bit later." It's obviously there's a lot of poetry going on here. It's not
00:32:33
necessarily a direct storytelling narrative beginning to end. And it's poetry by a person who's
00:32:38
second language. That's right. And I think sound is a big part of it. And the fragmentary nature,
00:32:44
one last thing I'll say, which is important, is that, and I'm glad I get to finally bring this up
00:32:49
on an episode of One Song. Brian Eno, one of my heroes, has a songwriting tool called Obliq
00:32:56
Strategies, which in 1974 he put together with Peter Schmidt. It's a bunch of playing cards
00:33:01
that you bring to the studio when you're stuck and they have these little co-ons, these little
00:33:05
phrases. Honor thy error as a hidden intention. And when you don't know what to do, you pull out a
00:33:11
card at random. And it'll say something like, "Repetition is a form of change." Look closely. I love
00:33:16
this one. Look closely at the most embarrassing details and amplify. So apparently they made a lot
00:33:21
of use of these cards. And just I'm thinking about the process of making this record. It's fragments
00:33:26
of ideas. It's sort of bouncing off of the zen deck of cards from Brian Eno. It evokes a lot of
00:33:34
bowie to me. It makes me think a lot of how like Bowie would make records in the 70s in the same way.
00:33:38
So really cool kind of echoes of that era. I feel like any of those in the writer's room.
00:33:42
Yeah. It's not pretty cool. For once, let's actually open with the synth base because that's
00:33:47
where the song starts. Let's listen to that giant big abrasive, shall we say, violent sound that
00:33:54
starts the song. I think it's angelic. It's a little bit violent. I think it's a little bit violent,
00:33:57
but let's hear it. Woo! So it's like very Gary Newman. It feels really you turn on a synth for
00:34:10
the first time and it's the most preset, preset sound before you start building clever things with
00:34:15
your synthesis and your ADS R knobs. That's the sound of the synthesizer before you do anything.
00:34:20
And it's great. And it's very big and it's very rock sounding to me. It's interesting. I found a
00:34:25
quote where they talked about what they wanted to achieve in the sort of the sonic picture for this
00:34:30
song was quote, we want to achieve what AC/DC is achieving. And I hear that in this. I kind of hear
00:34:37
like instead of a big guitar, they're using this big synth kind of as like a big AC/DC rock guitar.
00:34:42
Retro is almost always running on a 20 year clock. And so what was 20 years before 2005? And you
00:34:48
dig, oh, there was a lot of there was a lot of heavy metal in the 80s. So that makes a lot of sense.
00:34:53
So I don't know what synthesis because they don't know what synth it is quote. We do a lot and we
00:34:57
don't remember at the end. So they propose that it might have been a corg or it might have been a
00:35:01
CS80, but the important thing is they use the CS80 is a big expensive old 80s instrument late 70s.
00:35:07
But they also had these really cheap toys and they mixed and matched all these sounds and all
00:35:12
these aesthetics because they really wanted low five and high five. So there's a lot of low five and
00:35:17
high five in here. You can make that sound on an expensive synth, but you can also make it on a
00:35:20
really cheap one. And it almost doesn't matter. No, it's interesting when hearing Philip Zidar
00:35:25
has broken down the song wonderfully on, I think, musicradar.com might be the place to find that
00:35:30
interview. He talks about how in the production process for this song and the entire album, he's
00:35:34
kind of equally bringing in rock thinking as well as electronic music thinking with his
00:35:39
background and caches, et cetera, but also he has a hip-hop background. And a lot of his inspiration
00:35:44
is coming from Timble and as well and any RD as he quotes in a few places. So it's interesting to
00:35:50
hear in this moment with this synth. This synth is meant to be quote, the synth is Malcolm Young.
00:35:55
It's the rhythm guitar player from AC/DC. It's performing the function of a big sound that's
00:36:00
consistent throughout and it's rhythmic. People don't give AC/DC their due enough for being like
00:36:05
rhythmic. There's a lot of like rhythmic cool things happening in that band. So that's what's
00:36:08
happening there. It's two monocents. They're panhard just like you would guitars. And that's why it's
00:36:14
so big. It's like a wall of sound. Panhard for those just listening just meaning that it's in a
00:36:20
very distinct stereo. So and there is bass which is largely mirroring in terms of the same notes
00:36:27
in frequency but different rhythms. I'll play it for you. And then I'll play both of the basses
00:36:32
together. It's to get another episode, another two bass episode and we can talk about how they interact
00:36:37
or don't. So Deck Darcy played both the synths as well as the bass guitar. Here's the bass guitar.
00:36:42
One, two, and one, and two.
00:36:48
And a double-duty Deck Darcy. That's a lot of deets. I prefer... It's my favorite Indian
00:37:03
double-duty movie. And here, let's hear both Deck Darcy basses together. That is so sick.
00:37:14
But let's be clear. That's the Daft Punk song, right? Like that's the electronic direction of the band.
00:37:21
Had we continued down this path exclusively, you can turn this into an electronic music jam.
00:37:27
You can turn this into a DJable trap. And many remixers did. Yes. But it's interesting when you were
00:37:33
playing this song a little earlier today. The first thing I noticed about the drums is that when they
00:37:38
come in, it's definitely, you know, kick snare, kick snare. It's not, you know, just for on the floor,
00:37:45
boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. Yeah. So we hear some of the drums because the drums are real distinct.
00:37:49
Yeah, let's listen and we'll talk on the other side about what you're actually hearing.
00:37:52
So interestingly, what you hear... I like that little like wood blocks. I think...
00:38:02
A little bit later, it gets a little bit more syncopated with the snare in this section.
00:38:08
Ah, yes. I'll give you a little bass. That's on the bridge, right?
00:38:17
We're still in the verse, actually. But check this out. This is when I was listening. I was like,
00:38:23
oh, wait a second. Oh, wait a second. Something's going on here in the pre-chorus. And I'll play that for
00:38:29
you now. That's the mumble where I was like, okay, these producer ears, you probably hear it too.
00:38:39
It's like, that's a drum machine or that's a sample I should say. And I went and exploring how
00:38:44
the drums got made, it turns out, are sort of fifth, another, I suppose, unsung member of this band,
00:38:49
here of the episode, is the drummer who's consistently been with them all this time, but is not
00:38:54
technically cut into the songwriting. Is Thomas Headland. He's a Swedish drummer who was in a band
00:39:00
called Cult of Luna, but he's been their consistent session in live drummers since 2005. Wow.
00:39:04
So when you see them live, you see him. And the credit says drums, quote, "sampled from" and played by
00:39:11
Thomas Headland. That's an interesting credit.
00:39:14
And what they did was they did a mix of, he performed the song and then they cut out a snare hit,
00:39:20
a kick drum hit. And Thomas Mars actually starts life as a drummer before he's a singer in his own
00:39:28
dance. That's like us. So he uses it, I don't know which MIDI controller, but some NPC type device,
00:39:34
or once you load a sample in, you can play the drums with your fingers. And so he's playing this
00:39:38
beat. It's a combination, in other words, of a live drummer. There is some programming. There is some
00:39:44
on top of it him triggering the samples, like kick snare, the toms, etc. And last but not least,
00:39:51
they play high hats and crash cymbals in the room with live instruments. So it's this hybrid of all
00:39:57
these ways of getting percussion sounds in one. This is a little bit normal now, but in this moment
00:40:03
in 2008, when this is recorded, these are all kind of new ways for a rock band to be making, to be
00:40:10
having their drums come together. It seems harder than just say, "Hey, Edlyn, come to the studio."
00:40:15
It allows them, though, to give them... He knows where the studio is. No, no, he's in the studio.
00:40:21
God is number. But I think they dismissed him after he recorded a take of performance. And then they
00:40:26
used what he used because they're trying to get that electronic music, that caches, that French touch,
00:40:32
sound underneath it. And one way to do that, as we heard in isolation, is by having the drums have
00:40:38
this perfection. So you don't want... Don't tell that to Dilla, but I understand what you're saying.
00:40:43
Well, for this type, for house music, I suppose. No, exactly. And especially when you're trying to
00:40:47
mix stuff in, sometimes that live drummer, he might be feeling it, and he might speed up the tempo,
00:40:52
he might be slowing it down. But it's so nuanced. It's like for a moment to moment, because in the very
00:40:56
next part, you'll hear those open high hats that are being played by just a picture of a high hat,
00:41:01
and one of the guys with a stick going, and here's what that sounds like.
00:41:13
So to be clear, I know that sounds simple. We have a sampled kick and snare being performed
00:41:20
on a little finger pads by Toma Mars with the, with the tongue. And then somebody else,
00:41:25
another layer is the high hat on top of that. This is a pretty cool production technique,
00:41:30
especially for a rock band in 2008. And it's wonderful to me to bring together. You can almost say,
00:41:35
it's never been like that. Phoenix fans get it. It's a wonderful hybrid of all these sort of
00:41:41
French musical ways of making music coming together in one place, and Philippe Zadar at the core of it,
00:41:47
making it happen. All right, let's go to guitars. All right, let's hear the brothers Mazale,
00:41:53
Laurel, aka Bronco, and Christian on guitar. I'm actually not sure who plays which part. So let's
00:41:59
start with the first part that starts the song. It's a little jangly vampire weekend-esque thing.
00:42:05
So that runs consistently, or very, yeah, yeah, yeah, it's actually.
00:42:13
This could be naps. I heard the naps. Yeah. So that's happening in one guitar while the other
00:42:21
guitar mirrors that M3 and 4 and I'll play the second guitar isolated, then I'll bring them together.
00:42:28
Oh, that's so satisfying. And by the way, I hear that there's several guitars in there. I'm not
00:42:39
able to isolate them further, but that combination of notes is forming some really wonderfully
00:42:44
chromatic, like complicated chords, I would say, or complementary. And they sort of rub
00:42:50
momentarily and then they resolve. It's really kind of sophisticated. I hadn't really noticed it
00:42:54
until this listen. So here's how that goes with the other guitar, and then I'll bring us some other things.
00:43:02
So fun quote from the Mazale brothers. Quote, "We avoid playing like guitarist in classic rock bands,
00:43:19
where there's usually a lead in a rhythm guitarist. We like it, but it doesn't work for us,
00:43:22
because we're at the same level. Sometimes the lead guitar player is like technically the one with
00:43:26
better player, because you can do these like fast runs and so on and stuff. But he says each of us
00:43:32
plays as little as possible the older we get the less we play so that the more the lines are clear
00:43:36
and more subtle. So they're really approaching their guitar parts. Not like I want to have my like
00:43:42
prowess be heard loud and clear and fancy, but more like this is a piece of a larger pie, larger puzzle
00:43:49
that I'm sharing with my brothers in the band." And the guitarist feel like they're on the right
00:43:54
that the rhythm section's taken us on. Yeah, that's right. One more thing I have to say because it's
00:43:59
in this era, I can tell you from personal experience. With me, the remix or in that moment,
00:44:04
being coming from the rock side of things and wanting to make it, wanting to make my remix is something
00:44:10
DJs will choose to play. I have to talk about something called side chain compression,
00:44:15
which Daft Punk a little bit introduces and we talked about on that episode. It's just a production
00:44:19
technique where they kick and the snare, everything else ducks for a second. It breathes. In other words,
00:44:26
in the way you can sometimes tell an old record from a new one in the electronic area is that old
00:44:32
records they didn't do that yet. They hadn't learned it yet. But with Daft Punk, when you hear a lot of
00:44:36
times, it's just, which I love. That's one production technique that Philippe Zidar brought from his
00:44:43
electronic experience into the rock milieu in here, is he brings that technique to to 19.01. So you're
00:44:50
telling me that if we listen to the track that all the other instruments sort of dip down a little bit
00:44:55
when we get to when we get to the bass and snare. It's going to that like electronic versus rock
00:45:00
balance, 51.49. We get 51. We get a little 51% electronic when you do that dipping of the synths
00:45:08
and all the highs kind of duck a little bit. It's very subtle. I love that. But that makes sense.
00:45:12
Yeah. And I can totally hear that. We've got to talk about these urgent synths.
00:45:16
Yeah, let's talk about them. In the pre-chorus, we're hearing the synth rise and this build,
00:45:21
almost to comical levels. Let's listen.
00:45:24
This is a massive tension release moment. Let me give that to you in the mix. That's happening
00:45:40
at the end of the chorus where everything is like build, build, build, build, build.
00:45:43
Makes my heart sore. It makes my heart sore. It's just riding on the 5, 5, 5 chord, 5 chord.
00:45:58
And then when it hits that high high note. Back to the one. Now it really is last call.
00:46:04
And there's a little ostinato on the keys here. A little, a little synthy things happening.
00:46:14
A little thing that you might not notice that's happening in that section too.
00:46:20
That happens in both of the choruses. And that's pretty much for the synth. There's all these sorts
00:46:25
of little bits and pieces floating around like that. That should have sort of enhanced the emotional
00:46:30
feel of what's meant to be happening in that moment. Like the tension release in that moment.
00:46:35
But I'll say, speaking of emotional feel, we have to play some vocals by our friend Tomas.
00:46:40
And I'd love to hear just his very first line to me is just absolutely fantastic. Can you play
00:46:46
the beginning of verse one? I love this verse. And I swear to God, when I first heard it,
00:46:50
I thought it was a mistake, but it isn't. No, it's great. And we're going to clarify some lyrics out
00:46:54
there because I know a lot of us have been singing a lot of gibberish for the last 20 years.
00:46:58
Can an old dip in ideas drifting away. That little dip there, right?
00:47:04
Yeah. But here comes my, my favorite line is the next line. Let's hear it.
00:47:07
I'm looking at the lyrics right now. And so it all makes sense. But like when you hear that with all
00:47:16
the music underneath it, like there's something about the actual rhythm and cadence of the lyrics,
00:47:21
it's like perfect. Can we just hear just that section with just the vocals and the drums? I just
00:47:25
want to hear the vocals and the drums real quick. Can an old dip in ideas drifting away.
00:47:30
Like that's solid. Like you know what I mean? Like there's something about that. Okay, we just want
00:47:41
to be like, past and present. Yeah, it's very punk rock. Yeah, I love that. And it's so surprising to
00:47:49
me. Like every time I hear it, it's like I'm not expecting the melody or the rhythm. Not to mention
00:47:53
the lyrics and the meaning. Like it's all, it's very poetic. I can't think of a better word.
00:47:56
It's so simplistic. But like it surprises me every time. Every choice is astonishing in its own way.
00:48:02
Like why did he go there? Why did he go there? Why did he do that with a little, little hiccup in
00:48:06
there, which is intentional. Like in every performance you ever hear them do, they kept that in.
00:48:10
It might have been an accident in the moment they recorded it. Maybe not. But I love that it's
00:48:14
there. I love that in this hyper-produced, you know, refined production and mix. They're like,
00:48:20
no, this gives it some humanity. Yeah. Maybe balancing that with some of those robot drums,
00:48:24
right? You have this like very vulnerable like human voice moment. I love it. Can you play me?
00:48:31
I want to hear the chorus. Obviously, we all do. But I want to hear verse two real quick. Can you
00:48:35
play us verse two vocals? Does it that time too? So must be intentional.
00:48:58
Now, you know, I was a history major. And so anytime you throw a date or a year into a song,
00:49:05
I'm on board. I'll come to your concert. But here's what I like about this. He says, 1855 and 1901.
00:49:12
I want to say between 1855 and 1901, Paris hosts essentially the World Fair, the Exposition
00:49:20
Universal. We'll sit five times. And there's this quote from him that I love. He says,
00:49:25
this song is a song about Paris. Paris in 1901 was better than it is now. It's still nice,
00:49:31
but 1901 was better. This is a fantasy about Paris. And he literally sings about watch them build
00:49:36
a material tower, which you know what that is. And he says, think it's not going to stay anyway.
00:49:42
Think it's overrated. Like, there's so much like Parisian like stuff. And in that era, famously,
00:49:48
the French Parisians hated the Eiffel Tower. The joke of the time was the best place to be in Paris
00:49:53
in 1889 was at the Eiffel Tower. So you couldn't see it. I just love how French. I love how
00:50:01
France this this whole song is. And again, to hear the isolated vocals, you realize just how
00:50:07
punk he's like pushing out those words. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. Listening to the Acapella really
00:50:12
brings that home for me too, especially as we start from the drums and bass and kind of move upwards.
00:50:16
We have this basis, which is one, it has all the things we've already talked about, but so much of
00:50:21
it is that French touch and electronic in a rock context. But now we are definitely not French touch
00:50:25
anymore. These vocals are very punk rock. They're very just human. They're very kind of natural
00:50:29
sounding. And the vocals and melodies and lyrics are just evoking. They're just no two people probably
00:50:35
hear the same thing, you know, in a way that's so different from your sort of typical pop song.
00:50:39
Totally. Now I'll make a grand confession to everybody who's listening. I've always thought
00:50:45
1901 was called 1901 parentheses falling. I did not know what he was actually singing in the
00:50:53
chorus. So why don't you just hit us with the chorus. And for sure, I'm not the only one who
00:50:57
thought he was saying falling, falling, falling. For we are wrong, those of us who thought he was singing
00:51:03
falling, please place the chorus. Maybe we are. Maybe we're not. I've listened to this a few times.
00:51:07
It's an open question. What's happening? Really? Yeah. Internet. I'm not certain.
00:51:11
Play it for the people this year. I'm not certain.
00:51:21
No, listen, what do you think it is? Listen, when you isolate the vocals, okay, so the internet and
00:51:32
many people claim he's saying fold it, fold it, fold it. And when you listen for the D, okay,
00:51:38
well, don't beat me up. I thought it was the other. What I'm saying is fold it is and I hear the D
00:51:43
now. Like if you play it back again, you end up or if you are listening and you do the back button
00:51:48
for 15 seconds, you'll hear the fold. You'll hear that D in fold, but I can also see why for
00:51:55
these last two decades that it was fall in, fall in. Oh, I thought, what do you think it is?
00:52:00
I think it's probably folded. I think a third thing altogether. I kind of thought it's about to get there.
00:52:03
What do you think it is? I think it's fall dead. Play it back. Listen again.
00:52:07
The fourth one. The fourth one. I think that fourth one is fall dead.
00:52:14
Fallen, fallen, fallen, fallen, fallen.
00:52:18
Because it's definitely different than the first three and he's got a French accent.
00:52:21
Yeah. It might be folded. It might be, I don't know. Maybe it's fall.
00:52:25
Also, in a note part of this song, he says fall out. So it wasn't wrong to think fall in,
00:52:29
but now he's just fall dead. I think that's my preferred answer.
00:52:33
I think I'm going to get on genius and correct everybody.
00:52:36
Not to get too dark, but he's talking about falling out of the Eiffel Tower. I don't know.
00:52:40
It could be falling out of the Eiffel Tower. Now, now, you know, what is about falling out of the
00:52:44
Eiffel Tower? Did I miss something? I mean, it's brilliant. If it's true, listen. We got the lyrics
00:52:51
corrected on that Warren G song when he came through. So maybe this is a case where this
00:52:55
podcast will make, you know, we'll make the internet stand up. Mr. Mars, miss you.
00:52:59
I'm all dead tomorrow. Come on the show. If you are listening and you are,
00:53:04
you are friends with Phoenix, or maybe you are Phoenix, or maybe you are in the band.
00:53:09
More likely, mathematically, you are a copula just in terms of how many of them there are.
00:53:13
If you're a copula, please come on the show. Is it fall dead, full dead, or fall in,
00:53:17
or something that we have not even hit upon? I'd love to know.
00:53:21
No, there's a great quote from Tomah talking about how he is a French person speaking in English.
00:53:25
Quote, we're singing in English, but singing about stuff that probably makes very
00:53:29
little sense to Americans because it's thought of in French. We love that it's weird and there's
00:53:33
something very French about it. And I really love that idea that like, yeah, at the end of the day,
00:53:37
he speaks pretty good English, but he thinks in French, and there is some translating going on.
00:53:42
And it's probably he's got some words that just come out of it. I remember being in France. I
00:53:45
spent my junior year abroad in France, and I was by the end of it. I was dreaming in French.
00:53:52
It's a crazy phenomenon, which gave me just a teeny bit of insight to an actual bilingual person.
00:53:57
There must be some crazy, interesting combination of words and phrases that just kind of come from
00:54:02
both languages and sounds. So it sounds like that's what happened here with some of these lyrics.
00:54:05
When I was in France in 2001, when I was in Paris, I was kickin' it with the Moroccans,
00:54:10
man, you know, like we were just blasted a lot of Tupac and hanging out.
00:54:14
That's awesome. The best food in the world, too.
00:54:17
The Moroccan food in Paris is so good. Oh, dude. They thought I was one of them.
00:54:21
We can't get out of this without playing the top part of the chorus, which is what everybody
00:54:25
screams drunkenly at one in the morning when your dancing at electric fields, shout out to electric
00:54:29
fields, great party. Listen, you're hearing some very, very light reverb on that,
00:54:53
and then at the very end, you get the only delay.
00:54:55
Dad, he's still dead on that last one, but you know, he's got a French accent, so maybe he's
00:55:00
dead, full dead. I've been saying it right now, I think it might just be full.
00:55:05
I have to hear it one more time for my own.
00:55:06
Fall dead.
00:55:08
As he's saying, fall dead. The lesson here. Never trust anyone with a French accent.
00:55:13
You mentioned earlier about how this is not the lesson. That is the lesson.
00:55:18
I don't know. Undisputed. Fight me. That's right. You mentioned earlier how this song was
00:55:24
placed in dozens of ads, TV shows, video games, and really Phoenix was one of the first bands
00:55:29
that I could think of to really realize the power of song placement.
00:55:33
Just a little bit about your experience with getting song placements in ads and how Phoenix plays
00:55:38
into that. Yeah, no, this is a really interesting moment. Now, it should be said that they decided to
00:55:43
give this song away as an MP3, as a free, I remember that when that was like a big thing.
00:55:47
A big marketing move in 2009, free MP3, but it's also a real choice because that means that people
00:55:54
won't pay for it if it's a hit song. So it's a brave choice in a way to try to break the band one
00:55:59
that obviously paid off in dividends. But getting the MP3 through the blogs into the hard drives of
00:56:07
music supervisors, among other things, obviously paid off because the song gets used in what is
00:56:12
a Cadillac ad. Eventually, it's in rock band and guitar hero. It's in gossip girl. Melrose place.
00:56:17
So smart move. It pays off. And I have to say that personally, I had a similar thing happen
00:56:23
to me in this moment where my publishing deal, I have to thank from a placement of one of my songs
00:56:29
in an ad. Amazingly, it was sort of like lightning only struck the one time, but I had a song. It was
00:56:35
used in a Pontiac ad for the Transformers movie with Megan Fox. And I'll just play a little snippet
00:56:42
from that. Now, if you watch on YouTube, you'll see this 15 seconds of content in this ad is a
00:56:58
perfect storm of Transformers and then sexy Megan Fox. And it's my voice and it's explosions.
00:57:03
This is the placement that got me signed to a publishing deal that led me to come to LA to start this
00:57:10
phase of my life where I'm like living in LA making music. And Billboard had me come be on a panel
00:57:16
to talk about the musician's perspective of having your song get placed because it was like, this is
00:57:20
the new radio. Do you know how your song got discovered to be placed? I was hustling my music. I was
00:57:27
hustling my demo and I sent my demo shout out to Heather Kramer. I sent a physical CD. Oh my god,
00:57:34
you're like I'm getting so many triggering memories of the CD burners and the mailing address and
00:57:39
going to the post office. But I did send one CD to Heather Kramer and Danny Benner. Thank you guys
00:57:45
for signing me and starting my career in music. And it led to this placement, which is like you can't
00:57:50
get a better placement right out of the game. So you actually said it to somebody and they were like
00:57:54
they're like, they're sort of like an agent and they're like, Hey, why don't you use this on the
00:57:58
person, the music supervisor for the commercial was like, Oh, this sounds good for Transformers.
00:58:03
Yes. And then Heather passed my demo along to Peter Lloyd. I love getting all these names in
00:58:07
here who signed me to my publishing deal, my entire LA career begins in this moment. And again,
00:58:13
it's that the blog house, the music placements, this is the age of radio is dying, trust your
00:58:18
radio. This is the age of Napster. This is the age of iTunes. All of this is new. So suddenly there's
00:58:24
a new way for me in San Francisco with no music industry contacts to kind of break through and get
00:58:29
heard and get seen and get signed, which is really just such a crazy moment that I'm so lucky I was
00:58:35
able to participate in. So do you all know why do you think 1901 still has such a lasting impression
00:58:40
to this day? Listen, I think it's a great song. You still hear this song when you go out to certain
00:58:45
electro theme nights here in LA. And even when I went to it was at the Echoplex, it wasn't electric
00:58:53
fields, which sort of specializes in this genre, but it was just a random night at the Echoplex.
00:58:58
This song came on and I swear 20-year-old, you know, Gen Z kids, when it gets to the head. Like they
00:59:07
knew it. It was it was it was as cathartic for them as I remember when you would take all the music out
00:59:13
with halfway there. I'll live it on a prayer. Like when you when this song when I was new. When this song
00:59:21
was new, I got, hey, I was doing Bob Misfits. I was doing open format clubs. Like you could always
00:59:26
take out the music and everybody would sing that Bon Jovi part. Nowadays you can take out the music in 1901
00:59:32
and everybody sings and screams that song. That's amazing. Just put the volume all the way down and
00:59:36
the crowd does it for you. Yeah, that's incredible. I mean, Phoenix, this is a group, their legacy is
00:59:41
secure. You could argue that they are in some ways the biggest French band. Yeah, just just pure
00:59:47
band of our lifetime. So they're they're they're legacy estate. They've already, you know,
00:59:52
Play Coachella, a million times. I do want to say something about their remixing. There are so many good
00:59:57
Phoenix remixes out there. But one of my favorite songs of all time is the Classics remix of
01:00:03
Listomania. I would encourage people to just go out and listen to the whole song because it starts
01:00:07
really quiet. And then it builds up to this thing. And then there's like this really enjoyable midsection.
01:00:13
And just for, you know, our legal purposes, I can't play on that much of the remix, but I am going to
01:00:19
play the breakdown for you real quick and encourage you to go out and listen. This is one of my favorite
01:00:22
songs. Favorite remix of all time. Listomania Classics version. Let's go.
01:00:26
I feel like I've spoiled a great movie by showing you the final scene, but the route it takes for it
01:00:43
from the beginning to get to that point in the song. Yeah, if you're listening to loud in your headphones
01:00:47
or haven't already ever heard in a club, I guarantee you'll have some of the same chills run over your
01:00:52
body that I feel when I hear that song. I remember a bus in that one out too. I remember one thing in
01:00:58
the moment when that remix came out. It was a moment when we were talking about this whole episode,
01:01:01
it had this sort of theme about like obviously rock and electronic and where the lines are. I remember
01:01:05
thinking at the time as I was making remixes myself. I remember thinking, oh, I wouldn't, I don't
01:01:10
want to use that rhythm which is called the clave. It's like a two three clave. I remember
01:01:20
thinking that it was corny because to me it was a little too electronic. It was bringing a little too
01:01:25
much from that genre in. It was just like a balancing act that in my mind for my own work, I was like,
01:01:30
I would never do that. And then just like a year or two later, I started using it all the time.
01:01:33
I've always kind of liked it and I understand well, yeah, like it's just like putting too much,
01:01:38
you know, fudge on your Sunday too much, too much hot sauce on your, all the red beans and rice.
01:01:45
All of these are very hungry right now. I am a little bit too. These are all little micro choices
01:01:50
that sort of lead to the selection of genre. Like putting that in there, whereas the other things
01:01:56
we've been listening to earlier in the episode that are kind of like harder and more abrasive and
01:01:59
they're sort of distorted like those remixes that were sort of more the rock camp. This is sort of
01:02:04
more like, okay, and probably broadening the audience. I think like adding the fact that such a sonically
01:02:09
beautiful song, this classic remix is really gorgeous. I think it led the way for like our new disco
01:02:15
era. But I remember how significant that remix was, so I'm glad we played it. Okay, Luxury,
01:02:19
start for one more song. This is the segment where we share a deep cut or a hidden gem with you,
01:02:23
the one song nation and with each other. Sometimes for the first time. Luxury, my man, why don't you go first?
01:02:29
Okay, well, I'd love to give some props to one of my favorite artists of the past 10 years. Another
01:02:33
real big influence on me. It's Kindness, which is just a one person operation. It's Adam Bainbridge,
01:02:39
but they go by Kindness, and this song is called Sian from world you need a change of mind.
01:02:44
What's the name of this song? The song is called Sian. It's about my favorite color.
01:02:57
That's awesome. As Philips, it our help produce that one, and I just love its break beats on the bottom.
01:03:04
And since and vocals, and it's very indie rock meets electronic production. It's right in my lane.
01:03:09
Well, in that same vein, mine is definitely a hardcore intellectual remix of a rock song. My
01:03:17
one more song this week is by the rakes, and this is the Sebastian remix to their song We Dance Together.
01:03:23
I sign that we should move together somewhere wall. We moved to the street where they tried to hook up you.
01:03:33
The song just is hard. This is where the unification of Diallo and Blake is just perfect. I love this.
01:03:39
This is everything that we share. I just like that hard. It's got a throaty low bass line happening.
01:03:44
It's already low. It's definitely going to happen. Guest appearance might throaty low on this episode.
01:03:48
As always, if you have an idea for one more song, you can find us on Instagram and TikTok.
01:03:52
You can find me on Instagram @DialloDIALO, just six letters. And on TikTok @DialloRiddle12 letters, I'm sorry.
01:04:01
I haven't counted the letters, so I'm a little bit nervous right now. You can find me on Instagram at LUXXURY.
01:04:07
That feels like seven. And on TikTok @LUXXURYXX, that feels like nine.
01:04:14
And now one song officially has its own Instagram and TikTok. Go follow @OneSongPodcast for exclusive content
01:04:21
and all the music debates that you love. You can also watch full episodes of one song on YouTube right now.
01:04:26
Just search for one song podcast. We'd love it if you'd like and subscribe.
01:04:31
And if you made it this far, I think that means you like this podcast.
01:04:34
So please don't forget to give us five stars, leave a review, share it with someone you think would like it.
01:04:39
Really helps keep the show going. Luxury help us in this thing.
01:04:42
I'm producer DJ Songwriter and musicologist Luxury.
01:04:45
And I'm actor writer-director and sometimes DJ DialloRiddle.
01:04:48
And this is OneSong. We'll see you next time.
01:04:51
This episode is produced by Casey Simonson. Our associate producer is Jeremy Bimbo,
01:04:55
engineering from Marcus Homme and Eric Kicks. Additional production support from Azat Boykin.
01:04:59
The show is exactly produced by Kevin Hart, Mike Stein, Brian Smiley, Eric Eddings,
01:05:03
Eric Wow, and Leslie Guam.
