Transcript of Jack Antonoff New

Welcome, welcome, welcome to Armchair Expert. I'm Dax Shepard. I'm joined by Lily Padman.

Hi there.

And today we have one of the most successful music producers of the last decade and also an incredible singer and songwriter in his own right.

Yes.

Jack Antonoff. He has produced acclaimed albums from Sabrina Carpenter, Kendrick Lamar, Lana Del Rey, Taylor Swift, Florence Welch, and many more. His Bleachers albums include Strange Desire, Gone Now, Take the Sadness Out of Saturday Night, the self-titled Bleachers, fourth and now the fifth album, Everyone for 10 Minutes. And I was so grateful for this episode because I was in the dark on Bleachers, and now I'm going to—

now you're in the light.

Oh my God.

One song, you're staring directly into the sun, as you'll hear.

Please enjoy this very sweet artist, Jack Antonoff. ¡Muchas gracias! You got a coffee? You like Topo Chico? They're very rare now. Do you know there's a shortage?

I love them. I'll take one. Yeah, I want you to have like one of our 4 reserves.

Yeah, it's worth like $96 now.

The big shortage that I'm dealing with in my life, and I know there are more important things going on in the world, but the kind of almond butter I like Oh, almond butter. The kind I like.

Justin's?

No, I like a company called Woodstock. The one I like seems to be discontinued.

Oh no.

I think I spent more money than people should spend on almond butter, like getting a case.

Stockpiling it.

What's so good about it? I'm a stockpiler.

Me too.

Tell me about it. The texture.

I don't know. I just love it. My life outside of my work is so like, I eat the same thing, I do the same thing. So if I get into something, it's hard for me, which I think is bullshit. I can say that out loud. But internally I'm like, this helps the thing.

Oh, I see. You connect it to like your overall— Oh, interesting. Almost a superstitious way.

I get really anxious otherwise.

I'm painfully the same.

Yeah.

I just ate an oatmeal just before you got here that I eat 100% of mornings. I eat the exact same oatmeal. If I'm in a situation where I don't have my protein powder or my almond butter, yeah, I think like, oh, my sanity is really on the verge here.

Here's the upside.

Yeah.

When you are robbed of your little comforts and you're completely fine, you're quickly reminded. That's nice. Yeah. Yes. Right. How fucking stupid it all is. And it's more if I don't have to think about my life outside of the important things, the people I love, my work.

Why blow you tiles on it?

You tiles?

Yeah.

I think this is this term of like energy units for your brain.

Oh, okay.

I think our friend Eric actually made it up.

Or mispronounced it.

Y-O-U. You tiles?

Maybe he just—

we learned it from him and he does mispronounce everything. But I've now like, that's the real term for it.

We've been using it as if it's a real word and I don't know that it is, but please use it.

Sure.

Yeah. I mean, real.

Reality is, as we perceive it to be, deem it and say it, we— all of our names for things are just people like us sat and thought of them.

That's true.

That's that, you know, just noises your tongue makes. This is how I feel about swearing with my children. I'm like, it's just a noise that comes out. You assign to it whatever you want.

Lately I've been promoting my albums, I've been on the radio here and there, and they're like, you know, no fuck, shit, piss, all this stuff. I'm like, okay. And then we're talking, and then cuts to commercial, and they're like, you know, 11 dead and blah blah blah, torn apart by this, guts strewn everywhere, shot in the face. And I'm like, I can't fucking just like say like, this song is fucking driving me crazy. That is not a problem in the world anymore. Cursing is not exactly, you know, it's our motherfucker at this point is just like means anyone like this motherfucker was talking. It's not even bad. It's colloquial. I just think the stories and words we generally hear in life feels like maybe it's time as a world that we're just like, if a kid says fuck, it doesn't matter.

Let's catch up.

My thing is like, as long as they use it, first of all, they're not allowed to use it out of the house.

They got to use it funny.

They got to be good at it. And both of my kids are good. They don't just do it for the point of it. It's like every now and then one comes out and it's perfectly timed and I'm like, perfect, keep on that.

Like if I had a kid and they were like, pick up my fucking toy, I'd be like, this is bad. But if they were like, the new whatever is un-fucking-believably cool, I'd be like, nice use. Or like if they were like, so this piece of shit tried to take my lunch.

Yes, there's a moment.

Yeah, but I imagine words are actually very important to you More than anything, yes.

But I have an amazing split in my head about when I'm thinking in terms of imparting a feeling and when I'm just talking shit. So a lot of times I'm just sitting around being like, ooh.

You have like two zones.

Yeah.

I gotta tell you something. I'm sure they told you, but like anything that we talk about that you don't like tomorrow, you're like, I wish I hadn't said that thing about Rachel. We cut anything out. So just start there.

It's nice to hear because, you know, my work is so much fun and talking about my work and the interesting experience I have has always been so much fun. And I feel like we crested into this place where it became not fun. And I think we're cresting back into a place where it can be not just— when I say fun, I mean interesting, deep.

What was the peak of when it was not fun? What do you think was happening?

I just think for good reason, the people running the show have been so disappointing that we've all, for good reason, been holding each other to a very intense standard of dignity as dignity has completely gone out of phase. I think that's coming back in a way, but I try to see things, you know, I have my own personal feelings about things, then I have like my feeling when I like pan back and see like, well, what are people feeling right now? I feel like people are feeling starved for community. I feel like people are very bored with things they didn't think were possible to get bored about.

That's interesting. Yeah.

Oh, that's my essential feeling.

I feel like people, yeah, have grown, thank God, fatigued of being angry at everything.

Or realize how limiting it is. Mm-hmm.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And we're surrounded by a lot of people who— I think about this a lot. A lot of the people who are meant to shock us, and I'm not in any way minimizing how horrible and shocking their actions are, but them themselves is not shocking. Can you imagine, like, Trump got up there and was like, I gotta talk about my dad. I think there's something wrong with me.

Yeah.

We'd be like, I know. Even when I see people who I have remarkable differences with having, like, some moment of growth, I'm stunned by— like, growth is everything. It's all we have. And so I think when we're trapped in these endless conversations of people who are not going to do anything differently, we know exactly what they're going to do. We know exactly how they're going to do it. It's almost like a new kind of boredom.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Sadder boredom, not a fun boredom.

Yeah, that's interesting.

Okay, I want to start with saying I'm very, very excited to meet you. And as we just discussed a little bit off mic, I'm friends with your sister Rachel.

Oh, you know my family?

Yes, your older sister.

You know my family?

I was invited to Rachel's fashion show, so I did get to meet her there.

Cool.

I can't say I know her, but hopefully one day.

She's the most well-liked person.

Yeah.

I've experienced. That holds. The reviews are like pretty unanimous.

Yeah, if you got a problem with her, you gotta go away.

Yeah, I remember. So back when we were doing Parenthood, so I don't know if this was 2010 or '11, maybe '09, I was in New York and May and I were there to promote the show. I was hanging out with May and she brought your sister along. And then I came to like her a lot. And then they were telling me, yeah, Rachel's brother's a musician. I was like learning about you. This is pre-2000, I guess, '14, everything kind of exploded.

Oh yeah, so I'm like in a van smoking pot.

And you're like, great.

And they're like, do you want to go to a show? There'll be 9 other people there and you can't leave. Because he'll see if you leave. True.

I don't know why it's so rewarding to have gotten this notion of you back then of you're a musician, but you're kind of like a punk kid. I don't know. And then, yeah, to see you kind of take over the world from a distance, I've always been like, I love that. I have another example that me and Aaron, my best friend from childhood, we were in California when we were 21. We were at a house party. This girl was talking. She's like, oh yeah, my brother's band is really good. It's getting big. And we're like, what's the name of it? And she's like, Korn. And Aaron and I were like, fucking sweet name for a band. I remember For us, laughing was so hard that this girl's brother was in Korn. And then years later, of course, we were like, oh yeah, they're real sick. It's just kind of fun.

But you're little brother or big brother? I forget. Little.

Middle child.

Middle child.

Same.

It's a sort of invisible space in a nice way.

You can choose to be really anonymous.

Yeah, I was just there in my room experiencing my OCD.

Yeah. And what's the gap between Rachel and Sarah?

Me and Rachel are 2 and a half years apart. Sarah's 5 years younger, so we could have similar friend groups. And we did. Sarah was like younger. So when I was 15 and starting to get high, she was 10. That's a stretch.

Yeah.

Yes, it is. Rachel was 18 and—

Yeah, they didn't know each other.

But I would argue you might have been in the same situation I was. It was 5 years and then 6 years and I was in the middle. So there was a teenager that was going berserk and then there was a baby on the scene. So between like the crying and then the teenager that was going berserk, I could have been downstairs lighting things on fire. No one would have known.

Yeah, I was pretty unsupervised. I mean, it was the time I was growing up. Living in the suburbs, being a middle child. And then my younger sister was also born with an illness, so nothing was pointed at me. No one was watching me in a cool way. My parents are wonderful, but I just, I lived kind of maybe those last years of that suburban dream of you to just sort of leave the house, get on your bike and not come back.

Yeah. And no one's looking for you.

And I was just gone. And I would have lots of thoughts, a lot of that good boredom.

Yeah. I think there's tons of trade-offs and positives.

Oh, I don't. I think it's a net negative, but wherever you— I think I know where you're going.

I was also starved for attention, clearly. You know, the second I could, I came here to try to get as much attention as I could. So clearly I craved it.

I did too, but I also believed so deeply in doing something that was worth attention and had like a real intense construct around that. But that also came from like the type of music I was listening to in that community. I was very obsessive about what mattered, what didn't. The rules in my head were very heavy then.

Give me an example.

I sort of wake up to the world. I hear my parents' music, which is great music.

What did they like?

The '60s, like the great stuff. And then I started to hear like the music of the '90s coming through like the radio. And that was pretty heavy stuff too, in terms of what was real and what wasn't. It was made very clear to me. I don't feel now like this is shit. This is the real stuff. There were all these rules coming out of Seattle and all this stuff, the grunge era. You just felt all the intensity. I remember when Green Day put out Dookie, quite quickly hearing about how much shame they had after a Kurt Black— it was just a lot as a kid. I'm like, fucking terrible.

Being a sellout was a really big thing then.

It was a big thing.

Eddie Vedder was quitting virtually. He's like, I'm not a sellout.

Also, pop was coming into its height, I feel like.

Yeah, in a different way. And I missed a lot of music of my time because it was so off my radar. But it was just made very clear, like, the music I was listening to at that time that was mainstream The artists would get to a certain point and just wig the fuck out. They would just be like, this sucks. And that kind of actually was pretty beautiful. But then I got quickly into local music where the rules were even heavier. And then my world got really small. The idea of a major label, if you didn't literally do it yourself, you were a piece of shit. You weren't Ian McKay, you were garbage. But I kind of loved it because it was community. We had a lot of great rules. You didn't put on a show unless there was also a fundraiser.

Oh wow.

There was no show that wasn't $5 or $4 with a can of food. There was political action everywhere, and the fucking music was great. And the scene was so rigid that it really did weed out anyone who didn't just love it. It's like how I hear people who do theater talk. No one's there who doesn't want to be there.

Yeah, right, right.

It pays nothing and it's too hard.

Yeah, very pure.

I think the downside is it was a little self-pretentious.

Oh, for sure.

Yeah. I would think though that the liberating thing about it is if the goal is to not sell out, you're kind of liberated from trying to figure out what people want.

It's weird. And I take so much with me. I wrote about it so much on this album, but there's a part of it that is just who I am. And then there's a part of it that is separate. To me, the concept of selling out, being full of shit, phoning it in, assuming the worst of people, assuming people are dumb, that's all in the music. If you believe any of those things in the music, if you think people need to be pacified or pandered, then That's the worst selling out of all time. To me, it all lives in the music, the shows, what I would and wouldn't charge the audience for.

Uh-huh.

Not trying to pull one over on people. Like, we just live in a— I think we're getting out of it, but I think there's been this kind of get the bag time period where a lot of bad actors have pulled one over on people and you don't want your work to be for a very small group of people who can afford something. That's incredibly boring. How'd you guys meet?

I started out as their nanny.

Peripheral member of our friendship group.

Sorry, cut you off.

No, no. Yeah, we were.

Which led to babysitting.

Yes.

I actually don't know this story.

Oh yeah. Sorry for the listener who's heard it.

Full disclosure, I can't listen to people talk much, so I don't hear Freddie Podcast, which I think is kind of maybe interesting. And I try so much and there's so many things I can only watch something.

Well, first of all, we're on YouTube now, so that helps. Oh, cool. But what happens when you're listening to audio only podcast?

Well, when I was coming up, it wasn't a time of great diagnosis, but when I listened to people talk or It can happen when I'm reading too. I can get sort of like flustered and anxious. I have to be very focused. It's not like I can't do it, but I don't get the joy that other people— like for me, listening to music, watching a movie, that's the thing that I've heard people describe of like their friends on the podcast.

That's so interesting.

It's interesting to me because I have no relationship to— my cousin Jacqueline Novak has a podcast called Pug, which is like brilliant.

Very big.

And she's one of my favorite minds to ever exist.

Yeah.

Can't do it.

Yeah, I mean, I literally can't. And I do, but like, it's like, it's really weird.

Ours is not that good. So this is a blessing that you didn't listen. You might not have.

Listen, we just found out—

you can only say that if it's the opposite, Dax.

He's trying to be so—

what do you find out today?

The third most—

oh my God, I'm sorry, fourth, fourth most streamed podcast of all time.

Of all time. That's amazing.

Pretty good.

I was happy to see that.

Is number 1, 2, and 3 upsetting?

No. Well, no, what I hadn't heard of though, number 2, I've never heard of.

What?

Yes, one was Joe Rogan, which of course number 1 of all time. 2 is something I didn't know. My guess is international.

Okay.

And 3 was crime jokes.

I never heard of number 2.

Then you all are the only one of your type. It's a German comedy. That's kind of—

it's a German what?

German comedy podcast. German comedy. My favorite genre. I do a lot of bits in Germany that don't land. That's my favorite. I try, and they— for good reason. They're—

yeah, they're just not—

but I'm always trying bits and they're not liking it. It's one of the most one of the most successful places for my band.

Really?

Is Germany.

I think the Germans have an understanding of American heartland music that's very pure or something.

For real. Yeah, yeah. I believe that.

Well, hopefully they listen to this, and then they start listening to me.

And then we move up.

And then we get the German audience.

It's we now. Then we move up. That's right.

We get to that number 2 slot. Okay, our origin story. So we had friends in common. Then I did an episode of Kristen's show, House of Lies.

As an actor.

As an actor, I did a two-line thing and she was like, oh, I know you. We chatted. They just had their first kid. And I said, well, I am an actor, but I'm really a babysitter. That's how I make all my money. So if you ever need babysitter, she called the next week, date night babysat for them. And then they had their second kid. They needed a little more help. So I came on as a nanny, worked as a nanny for a couple years. Their second went to preschool and they were like, uh-oh, we don't really have a need for her anymore, but we like her.

Mm-hmm.

So what should we do? And Kristin was like, "Well, would you want to be my assistant?" So I said, "Sure." And then I started doing that. And then I started just kind of taking on extra projects of hers. Like, I would write stuff for her. They'd ask, "Hey, do you want to do this thing for this magazine?" I'd say, like, "I could write that for you." And she was like, "Oh, you'd do that?" Then I started writing all her speeches, and I started writing her commercials. And then we became creative partners. And then Dax stole me right out.

'Cause all this time she's around, and we have very differing opinions on most things. We'd love to argue in our kitchen. It was our hobby. I'm quite the debater. Really? Yeah, very different.

Well, we have—

there's more overlap.

Yes, there's more overlap than—

but we like to make a meal of the differences. Anyways, we love debating each other. And so I was like, I'm going to start a podcast. I love being on them. We should do it together. And then we did.

And now the only thing in our way is the Germans. The Germans, we gotta get them.

We gotta get them. Yeah, it's quite a story.

It really is.

It's wild.

It is weird.

Yeah, this is the part she hates but that I love. She built a house that's bigger than ours across the street.

It's not bigger. Okay, I can't. I can't with this lie. It's still nice.

It's such a great American story.

Here's the problem with everything. It's like the truth doesn't matter. We're just going to go with what's funnier.

You know what I mean?

So it's like, I'm sure you're right.

It's the shiniest thing.

Anyway, she has a house across the street. It's beautiful.

Yeah. Massive.

It is a beautiful house.

It must be nice.

It's a nice size.

To have all that space. Yeah.

You know? So much space.

Yeah. Honestly, space helps me think. I think that's a good idea.

It's not that much space.

Electric Lady Studios, you have your rooftop.

That's actually quite small, but it is a space that helps me. Some places you're just your fucking best. Some places you're, you're fucking worse and that's helpful. I kind of use all of it. I love making music in an anonymous space, like a hotel room. And I also love making music in a space where the literal objects and walls have been there at my worst or my best. But you play with it. I feel like I burn the spaces out and then I reenter them. And I'm here in LA, I have a studio here. I go back to Electric Lady, I have a studio in my apartment. I go there for a week. I'm on tour. I'm working in the hotel. I don't want to be anywhere ever for too long, except with the people I love, but I get very buzzed out because you're afraid you're going to run out of the inspiration that's implicit in that space. I think I fucked myself over at a young age. I just started moving around, started touring when I was like 14, 15. I just think it's like a nurture thing. It's just what I do.

And you're smart and evolved and, you know, like we are very much products of context. So it's like the context keeps shifting and that's going to probably promote different points of view for your art and everything else.

I just think it's healthy also if you're like someone who's hard on yourself. It's the beauty of touring, right? This happened in Cleveland. This is how I felt. Let's say the show was good. I felt off. Well, tomorrow in Columbus, it's the most literal wiping of the slate. I'm in a different place. There are different people. There's a different venue. It's all different. The repetition of starting over every day is very beautiful for me. I've heard a lot of people in my line of work who feel that too. And there's a danger to that too. You don't want to become a non-human, right? Where you're just starting over and over.

No roots.

You don't want to be the type of person that's like, stay at a hotel near home when you get back from tour. Yeah.

And if you're afraid to sit still, that's problematic.

It's just a device in my life that I go back to. I look forward to trips. I think about them. I think about what if I went here and recorded? I have a lot of like hope in that way. And I like to stay there. Uh, a lot of people around me feel that way. I like to dream about doing things.

I was watching a 60 Minutes segment on Ted Turner. I've since also watched a doc that's great about him.

I watched a doc on him too.

Isn't it incredible?

Incredible. What an interesting character.

What an interesting character. But on the 60 Minutes one. Jane was talking about what it's like to be married to him, and she said it's hard because he has a jet, and every 4 days Ted's like, let's go. And I was like, that's my dream existence. If every 4 days I could say let's go. Oh, that sounds good.

My happiest is to have no schedule and choose to just go places. Yeah. And my most unhappy is when the schedule's too rigid. But that's why tour is beautiful, because it's scheduled, but you're also just sort of gone. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's interesting to integrate into your adult life. Realizing who you are, that's not gonna change, and then realizing which parts of those things work and don't work. And tour has been a real fun one cuz I just kind of like just drag everyone with me now.

Well, if you were a middle child and you were running out of the house and not coming back all day, I mean, that's maybe where that stems from. It's like you were kind of nomadic from the get.

There was a lot to run away from and a lot to come back to. I don't know. I think I'm a little more free. I think I used to think it was like a problem, but now I'm surrounded by people who appear to love me through it.

Yeah. Okay. What did mom and dad do for a living? Rick and Shira. Shira.

Strange name, Shira.

Yes. When I read it, I was like, is it Sheera or is it Shira?

Shira. Like you think.

As H-I-R-A? Yeah.

Okay.

Yeah. That's what I would think.

She's a nurse.

And Rick?

He is an amazing guitar player and studied in New Jersey with Reverend Gary Davis Jr., who's a brilliant ragtime player, and then went to college. They met in college. And then when he graduated college, sounds like a Springsteen song, which is what happened. His dad was like, cut your hair. You're coming to work at the shoe factory. And that's what happened.

So grandpa owned a shoe manufacturing facility?

Yeah, called Phoenix Footwear.

Oh, trusted brand. Yeah.

He dies in a car accident. His name is Jack Antonoff. Oh. That's how I become—

So you never met him?

Never met him. And he looms. Loom sounds like a bad word.

That's okay.

Loom's not bad, is it?

It's not bad.

What's a better word for loom that's more beautiful?

He hovers.

Buzzes beautifully or dazzles. I like loom. When I think of loom, I think of like a loomy.

Because you're thinking of gloom.

Is that what it means?

I think, no, looming, looming means like there's an impending disaster.

Looming is like my mother just looms over you like, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, but like looms large.

He clearly was wonderful and was the head of the family and also died at a bizarre, you know, I've experienced death on both sides, shocking and non-shocking. My dad tells the story and it's actually, it's like a movie. My mom was a nurse at Holy Name Hospital where I was born and my dad called my mom when he found out and he said, don't go to work, my dad's there. I mean, it's. It's so stunning of a line. It's crazy. And my mom's like, what? And my story, my parents' story, it's, they're all sort of colored by these big moments of loss. So my dad has the shoe factory. They have Rachel. They have me. This is really in the air. Something happens with the government where you can now just import.

I don't know what point in the '80s the shoe factory started competing with China or wherever else.

My dad tells the story like it was just one day it was over.

Oh, fuck.

Yeah. But he's like a business guy. He's gotten involved in different things when we were growing up. He had a company that did carpet cleaning. We lived a very suburban, normal life. Our world was very rich but small. We did things. We tried sushi.

Yeah, yeah.

Uh-huh. Uh-huh.

I never went to Europe. I went to Disney World.

Yeah, same.

I went to Burlington, Vermont. Loved it.

But I think anyone on the outside would go like, wow, there are two surviving children. One's this incredibly creative and wonderful fashion designer, and one's this incredible musician. I think you're just inherently curious, like, what do you think the quintessential thing they provided for you guys?

There's layers to this. So the first thing I would say is when our sister died, I noticed this, and I won't take any credit away from my parents who were very open to us having our passions, but when she died, I was 18, Rachel was 20. They were so disconnected from what mattered. People my age were like fighting tooth and nail to get into a better college. They were just like, who gives a shit? I was already cooked at that point because she had been sick. It's really hard to care about things other than what's in your soul when faced with that, which is actually why It's a really good time to make decisions when you're deep in grief. It's so clear what matters. When you're in grief, you're not having coffee with somebody you don't want to have coffee with.

Yes, that's so true.

You're not going to see a movie you don't want to see. You're not staying on the phone too long with someone who's bothering you.

You're not ruminating on some object you hope to buy.

Yeah, you don't care. But you do care about the jokes. You care about the food. You're like, it's not everything serious. It just strips away the fog. And so my parents are like, you can live at home as long as you want. In my community, I was a fucking loser because all my friends are like going to college and And it was that time before the college myth had started to unravel a little bit. It was also a time when making art and things like that for both Rachel and I, what's your backup plan was everything.

Yeah, well, you're in a suburb and so everyone's pretty much college bound.

Yeah, and the kids who weren't, it wasn't like, do you? It was like, is so-and-so going to be okay? It's a group of people. The first song on my album is really about this, breaking the generational pact, your ancestral pact. But most of the community I grew up in. Were people whose parents had it worse and their parents had it worse and their parents had it worse. And they arrived at this suburban place where having food on the table, having a roof over your head and a good education was the top of existence.

100%. Safety.

Which, by the way, I don't think they're wrong. But Rachel and I, because of when we were born and because of the circumstance of our family, both kind of severed that and tried some shit and then both ended up living home till we were like 26, 27.

Okay. You're both there for a long time.

Oh, forever. Okay. Wonderful.

What kind of boy were you? I know you were in a public school for a while.

What was the most terrible? It was like the '50s.

Like bullying-wise?

Jocks, cheerleaders, then like me and 3 other people.

That's how I grew up.

Some of us were gay, some of us weren't, but we were all like gay. You know what I mean? Like, it was so bizarre. I wasn't like ahead of my time or anything, but I was just sort of like, guys, what is up? Yeah. And it was so apparent to me at that time how kind of weird and repressed other people were. I would want to be like, Jim, like, you're gay and that's great.

Yeah.

You should just, you know, instead of like beating the shit out of my friends. Right.

So you were a little Miss Fitti, Outkast-y?

Well, I was just so into music. The music I was listening to was very fucking serious, and I was vegan, I was political, and I was talking about all these things. And I was listening to Papa Rugandi's "Let's Talk More Rock" and shouting "Meat is murder." And still believe those things no matter what twists my life has taken. Those are great educations. You know, this is a very New Jersey story. I was desperate to get out. Now we've moved back, but I was desperate to get out. I was like, "Get us out." Isn't that ironic?

We always make our way back.

You know Jersey well?

No, no. But we're on a string right now. We had Charlie Puth on who was talking about his love for Jersey, and then we just had Tom Pelfrey. I don't know if you watched Task. Did you watch Task? The HBO show?

He's this beautiful actor. But I'm pretty hip to anything HBO. I think that's like one of the great—

If you got to take a gamble, that's a platform. But he's from there and he was just talking about it. And then, yeah, the spring scene of it all.

The best way to put it, there's suburban mentality, there's outside the window of the party mentality, there's younger brother mentality. There is no place on earth where it's that literal. LA sprawls out. Tokyo, London. There is New York City packed to the brim, a very small body of water, and then most of the population of New Jersey just stares at it. Think about it scientifically. How much literal energy comes off New York City? Amazing energy turns into sad ash and sprinkles on New Jersey. You are staring at it. Every band is playing there at any night. Everyone's having sex. Everyone's doing drugs. Every Broadway show, every bar.

Movie stars live there.

You are fucking face to face with what you're not. It is so potent. All the other cities I've been to, and I've been a lot of them, they sort of like subtly sprawl. It is dead serious.

You're not here.

You are not there.

Robert De Niro is like a mile from you as the crow throws me. You'll never see him.

He's not thinking about you at all. Maybe once a week you're the butt of a joke. Yeah, maybe.

It's like on planes when you're in the seat behind first class. Just like that. It's like it's staring.

Oh man, I'm gonna take that.

So probably everyone has a really unhealthy, less-than chip on their shoulder.

You were one or the other. I grew up with people who haven't been to New York City in years and live 6 miles away. They're like, why would I go there? Yeah. To get a shittier Italian meal for twice the price to see Annie Get Your Gun? Like, no thanks.

Worst pizza.

There's truth to it, but— And then you have people who are enamored with what else is out there in the world. It's like a storybook. I mean, it's medieval. It creates a fire in you that is wonderful and chippish.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, the beauty of it is if you can be there with your cup full. I had no experience with Brooklyn. I went to a friend's house with like a rooftop thing and I was like, oh wow, this is better than living in the city because you actually get to see it. You get to see what the poster was and you see the Brooklyn Bridge and then you see that and the whole thing's there. So if you're there and you feel wonderful, it's almost like the most beautiful vantage point of the whole thing.

It's where you're telegraphing from. Like, no matter what I do in my life, I'm Someone who is cooked in New Jersey, and I'm telegraphing from what I call the shadow of the city, from the outside. You hear it in the music. I meet kids who grew up in the city. They're just like, sup? Like, they don't have anything to prove.

No.

They saw it all. They did it all. And that's why the Velvet Underground sound the way they do. That's why the Strokes sounded that way. Music and your soul is telegraphing from— you can't ever get it out of you. And I always wanted to talk about it, but in my early years, I had way more like— New York was exploding when I started playing music. Like we'd go into the city and go to the Mercury Lounge and it was every label, every band. It was just, it was fucking happening. And it wasn't because we were there. It was that time, you know, '99, 2000 downtown was one of the great moments. Then it moved to Brooklyn and I was always right outside of it. And it was beautiful and sad, like being from New Jersey.

All right. I want to, because I have some theory about you based on nothing other than reading about you.

Jewish.

Jewish.

I'm kidding.

If you're not Jewish, your whole thing is a big fucking problem.

I will say when I I see the amazing success you've had working specifically with female artists, I think, yeah, he got trained great as a younger brother by an older sister. I just have some sense that you're comfortable with someone being older and a little bit dominant and you're not threatened by it and you know how to work with it.

Oh, for sure. Rachel's— my parents will hate hearing this. My parents raised me great. Rachel also raised me in a different way that was very lucky.

Yeah.

Rachel always says like, uh, I love my parents, not shitting on them, and they will definitely listen to this. But Rachel always jokes, you know, when I came into the world, I was just like, so I guess this is normalcy. And then when I came into the world, Rachel was like, this is weird. You know, she was like telegraphing to me like, hey, it's weird here.

Don't worry.

Yeah, don't worry.

I see you.

Yeah, a lot of weird stuff happens.

You're not crazy. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The moment my brother and I would always have like, we'd look at each This is nuts, right? Yes. Okay, good. Then as long as you know it's nuts and I know it's nuts, then we can— we're good.

Yeah. I had the luxury of having that telepathy right away where she was 3 and I was 1. She was just like, they're weird. They do weird shit. But I got a lot of weird shit.

Yes. Yes.

Yeah.

Did you watch Sentimental Value, the movie?

I fucking haven't yet, but it's one of those movies where it's just like everyone who I love is like, you'll love this movie.

Yes. You basically just said the most important scene in the movie, which is this older sister and younger sister. And she said, the difference between our childhoods is that I had you. Oh, I see Rachel is on the phone.

Front line. Yeah, you know, storming Normandy, like coming out of the boat and bullets are flying, and I'm like 9 ships behind me and like, you guys are going to clean it up and then we'll come in and just sort of like poke at the bodies.

Like, what's for lunch?

Are we going to grill on the beach? Someone said that, I don't know.

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Now, eldest daughter syndrome is real.

It's wild. Rachel carries it all. I'm more transient because I have the luxury to be so.

Yeah. Okay, when do you start playing music?

Kind of always.

Dad taught you how to play guitar, I presume?

Somewhat. He would play to us. I was always pick it up. I'd bang on a piano. It got serious around like 12, 13. But I just always did it.

And a lot of time alone in your room. That's what we were doing my whole life.

It made me feel seen in a way that I didn't feel anywhere else. And then when I started writing music, which is around 12, 13, I felt, for lack of a better word, like I could feel myself in a way that I hadn't ever before.

Control.

Yeah, but also it's a very out of control thing, but just more a bit like how I hear people talk about God and religion. I just believed in it with zero cynicism. There was no edges. It was pure belief. I feel that way to this day. But like communication, I was shy in some places kind of when I was growing up. And when I was writing music or making music, I felt like I was communicating with myself and then an imaginary person who got me. I felt alive right around that. Everything else in my life really stopped.

Do you think though that it was a medicine that without it you would have been in a much worse state?

Oh, I think I'd be dead. I had all these weird tendencies. I was such a collector when I was a kid. Like, I went to, like, a baseball card collection and, like, a stamp collection.

Did you have tics?

A lot of tics. You know, I had to do this or everyone would die. I still have that.

Anxiety.

Yeah, I try to keep it in check. And I go back and forth on it because, like, on one hand it's bullshit, but then, no, it's sort of also like one's religion. As long as you can put it in a good place, it is nice to imagine yourself at the whim of someone you're praying to. But once I found music, that was it. What's interesting when I look back, because my work, there's different sides to it, but it's kind of one thing. And I'm always sort of asked to explain it. And I always just go back to the beginning. I always loved writing and singing. I always loved performing. And then I always loved helping my friends with their music. In a way, my life is no different. It's just, you know, the hotel rooms are obviously nicer and I get to be in studios and stuff, but it's that thing and the community around it. My biggest anxiety is ever, I was always worried someone's going to like quit the band, which was really hard back then because a lot of people did music for fun and I was so serious.

Do you think you stressed other people out around you?

I think so.

Yeah, yeah, like, just fucking relax.

It used to drive me crazy whenever everyone would talk about their plans.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I still have that a little bit.

Really?

When Dax will talk about the future and his future, it's like, well, what about this now? Why are you thinking about that?

I love a no one leaves pact. Yeah, I have that with my band now. I have my partner, we have my family. Like, that comes from the family. No matter what the fuck is going on in my family— and not everyone has this— is like, you don't leave. You work it out. And I didn't realize how precious that was until I saw other people's families. Some people leave.

Mm-hmm.

Now, the most unappealing trait of yours is your— name for a school I've ever heard is the one you went to, which is Professional Children's School.

Yeah, Rachel says it sounds like tiny lawyers, right?

Yes, it sounds terrible. Tell me, what is the Professional Children's School? Because it becomes your gateway to Manhattan.

Yeah. Yeah. So it was a public school in Jersey, and then Rachel was in the musical theater. And she found this place where you could go, and it was for, like, ballerinas and people in theater. I went from a New Jersey public school where everyone would say gay slurs to me, which was strange, to a school where I was the only straight kid.

Yeah.

A beautiful flip.

Yeah. Good for you.

The point of the place, I think it was made for the ballet dancers, was to give you time to do your thing. And I was starting to tour, but I used it as a way out. And like I said, my sister was sick, and I convinced my parents because they were just sort of like, "Yeah, sure. Is that going to make you happy?" Nothing matters.

And we have a lot on our plate.

So if you've figured something out for yourself, and that was a beautiful time, it saved my life in the sense that I think I had more fear, chip, rage about the things I want to do in my life because everyone was articulating to me why it wouldn't work out, which is a terrible thing we do to artists and is not even the truth. There's a lot of work in the field. Ironically, as recent history has shown, you might be better off wanting to do something in recorded music than being a lawyer at this point.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I could do a million years on that alone. But I got there and I just was surrounded by people who weren't afraid of their hopes Yeah, it wasn't embarrassing to have dreams and aspirations. Yeah, there's a lot of rage when you declare that you want to do something.

Why would you believe in yourself? I don't believe in myself.

It's very American. In other countries, you know, being a singer, being an actor, being in the theater, playing music, the government deems it important enough to subsidize. So it's not, fuck you, you want to go play music? Well, I got to work this job. It's like, cool. And I love doing this. I'm a teacher. And in America, there's this sense, and it cuts in different ways. I always say, when you go see a band at a club, club or a bar, right? No one's going to work for free. The bartender doesn't go for free. The security doesn't go for free. The band goes for free. I was taught to eat shit because I was so lucky to be there. And I have so many different feelings about that now. And it's interesting when you tour the world and you see how art is treated in different places. But yeah, there's a lot of that. There's a lot of, oh, you want to do this? Well, then you better fucking get your ass kicked out there. It's a badge of honor, but it's also like, that was heavy.

Yeah.

But I think what's going on underneath is I'm afraid to pursue the thing I want Sue, you somehow have this confidence that you don't deserve, and I'd be delighted if you fail to confirm that I shouldn't have tried. I'm totally sympathetic to that. It's scary to try.

When I was 15, I was in bands. The kids in public school were like, fuck you, why don't you come to do the shit we do? You think you're better than us? When I was 18, all my friends were getting into college and I was still in the van. They were like, how you doing? When I'm 21 and they're realizing that maybe college isn't going to lead to their dream job and I'm still in the van, they're like, good for you, man. I'm cool again. When I'm 24 and they can pay their rent and I'm living at home, still in the van at It's like, how you doing, man? Like, it goes in and out, but you do make that deal or you don't. You're not going to get anywhere toying with what else you could do in anything in life. You just have to make that deal and live by it.

Well, I think this is an adorable chapter. So at, I guess, 15, when you're at the school, professional children's school, you form your first band, or maybe it wasn't your first band, but Outline.

Yeah.

With friends from elementary school.

Yeah.

And then you figure out how to tour. This is a part of the story that gets glossed over. I think ambition is very required. This is such an ambitious thing.

We had a book called Book Your Own Fucking Life. It was a book that went around. It had all the phone numbers of the local promoters in the scene. And that's me and my friend Evan, who was in another band called Random Task. We did the tour together. I think they got from Austin Powers. But we sat down and we called and said, hey, can we come play in Austin on this day?

This is the Bill Gates part where it's like you get a job designing this water and power program at 15.

Like, you're calling around business We thought it was a fucking honor to go on a tour. We weren't like, are we going to play to anyone? Is it going to be worth it? We just all saved up a bunch of money, all the bands, and we went on this tour and we slept in rest stops and we absolutely fucking loved it. It was freedom.

And you were in your mom's minivan?

My band borrowed my mom's minivan. One member could drive and did all the driving.

This is adorable.

I didn't even think about his mom's van, but he can't drive.

But it was crazy. I mean, it was so dangerous, like the Panhandle in Florida. It's just wild what could have happened.

Happen.

Also, if you would have gotten pulled over and the cops would have been like, wait, there's an 18-year-old and a 15-year-old and a 14-year-old.

Yeah, they all have drugs. They all look like they're 9.

Were you guys—

you must have loved weed immediately.

I loved weed. Drinking wasn't that big a part of my culture, but I fucked myself up. I don't want to jump ahead, but height of grief, I took a bunch of acid, hence that line, I want to get better, pain at the acid test, and ruined myself. And it really changed my relationship to getting fucked up forever.

Wow.

I got burned out quick.

Oh boy. What age was that?

20, 21? Yeah, somewhere Maybe that's a gift. I didn't come back for a while. It was terrible.

Okay.

Like, I don't even like talking about it.

Oh, God. Wow.

Wow. Wow.

Horrible. Sorry to anyone listening who's—

Pro-acid.

No, not pro-acid. I'm happy for those people. I'm sorry to the people who I'm triggering because they had that bad trip.

Oh, I see. I see.

Because I can go there. I just lost my sister. I'm with the band. We're like out on the road and we just got some acid and we're like, let's just eat all of it. There was no— it was a different time.

It wasn't guided.

No, it wasn't guided.

No integration afterwards.

It was really hard for me. Called a family friend who was a doctor, and I was like, I did this, I'm not okay. They actually weren't that helpful. They were like, well, it can change your brain chemistry.

Oh great, just what you want to hear when you're convinced this trip's gonna last forever.

Because a lot of my friends got real fucked up on drugs after that, and I was scared straight. Yeah, I was just trying to like hang on to my sanity. Yeah, without it all.

Okay, so that band goes on, you meet a lot of different folks while touring. And the next band is Fun?

No, Steel Train.

Steel Train. I'm so sorry.

There's a band in between.

And Steel Train, you convinced two people to drop out of college.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yes.

So how do we go from Outline to Steel Train? And is there any band breakup sadness there? Were these all easy transitions?

They were easy-ish because I felt like a lot of my life I was surrounded by people who were naturally moving into a different phase and I was just on the same track. And then I think I attracted people who Steel Train toured for like a decade. There is no more legitimate band on the road story. We would go out and we would tour 200, 250 days a year and we played to 10 people, then we played to 20 people, then we played to 50 people, 75 people.

You were doing 200 a year for 10 years?

Oh, for sure. We were just gone.

This is like the Beatles in the German brothel story.

Yeah, we were gone. We lived on the road. It's all we did. All we did was tour.

Still in the van? Oh. Okay, that van really—

Not even close to the bus. I mean, you get good at it. You figure out all the hacks of how to get a good hotel for less money. You pull up and you say, "We're a church group." Don't you kind of miss that time? I miss it with every fiber of my being and don't want to go back to it.

Yeah.

At the same time. I'm more in awe that it happened. It's nice when there's facts of your life that show exactly who you were. We just wanted to be there.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

It was beautiful though. And it was right before it all got really complicated in music. All we could do was play. I hold no judgment over anyone right now, but it got complicated. And all we could do at that time was just go and convince people to let us play, convince bands to let us open for them, tell all the fucking press and TV shows that were there at a moment's notice. Someone cancels, we get to play Conan. It's our big break. I see it like the gas tank. For me, I was cooked. I was just going to stay. But like everyone else, like just when it's like, we're not making any money, this sucks. We'd get a slot early on at a festival, buys us another 6 months.

Yes.

We get to play Conan. My grandmother's like, oh, you know, these things. Things filled the tank back up.

And you were approached by two dudes for Fun at this point.

Well, we had all toured together a lot.

You had all toured together.

I think the three of us recognized liferness.

Right.

Like each other.

The three, hell or high water, we're not deviating from this.

Yeah. That was a side project we started for fun.

Okay. So from the time you formed Fun, is that 2012?

Earlier, maybe '10.

Okay. When does the hit song drop? Is that '12?

'13, I think. Somewhere in there.

Okay. So you have this wildly popular song, We Are Young. Do you remember that thing you did?

You?

Yes. That movie.

It felt like that. Hearing yourself on the radio, like all these things that I thought were not only impossibilities, they were so off my radar. I was so disenfranchised from the mainstream. I thought my path was like, I just looked at things like Spoon or Wilco and just strictly wanted to just play, find my audience and play to them forever. I never thought about being cast out in that big a net. You know, it's easy to talk about all like the shame and intensity. You're in Iowa and your cousin comes to show and there's no one there. There's obviously all those feelings and I carry them today so I can get into them. But truthfully, we wore that shit like armor, man. We were like, we are fucking here. No one's paying us to be here. No one's asking us to be here. This isn't some like American Idol shit where we have a panel of judges. You know, it's a group of people who no one said, oh my God, you're amazing. We played music that we felt like we had to make. Opposite of talent show music, as I like to call it, which is a lot of my favorite bands.

It's like you can't really pinpoint exactly. And we would roll up and play to fucking no one and load our gear and sleep on the floor.

Fuck yeah, no one likes us.

Yeah, we would love when people came, but we were so empowered heard by how much it meant to us.

Yeah, it wasn't for approval. You didn't make it for the approval. So then when it was on the radio, were you embarrassed?

I was stressed because I'd spent my life doing what I do, which is really about my lyrics more than anything. And then I had joined this band for fun, and they weren't my words. And then it got really big, and it really freaked me out.

You had a crisis.

Oh yeah, I started working all night. I also didn't like the idea of having I'm going to play "We Are Young" forever? It wasn't my song, it was my lyrics.

It hurt a little bit.

Well, it was weird because I was getting everything I wanted.

But you felt like it wasn't yours. Yeah.

And so I just went and did my own thing.

You do Bleachers as a solo project in hotel rooms as you're touring with Fun with this huge hit.

It helped.

You had money now. Some.

Maybe less than you'd think because of how it all works. But I remember, you know, that first year starting to be like, oh my God, maybe I could get an apartment.

Also, when you toured with Fun, you're presumably sleeping in a Prevost.

Yep.

That's got to be fucking titties.

All complicated.

Didn't feel right.

Well, I'll tell you what happened. I felt so unseen because I had communicated so much in my life through my lyrics that I wrote the first Bleacher Song, which is called I Want to Get Better, which could not be more of a Cliff Notes of my whole fucking life. Almost to an absurd degree, my reaction to that was like, I'm going to write a song and start a band that completely sifts out anyone who doesn't completely understand who I Yeah. So that first album is so abrasively confessional, but it's cool. It's neat to get something and realize that it's not— we had a number one song and it was really cool. I'm not minimizing it, but I didn't sleep better at night. I actually was just sort of thinking about my lyrics and what I wanted to do and how I wanted to play and felt a little bit like I was getting pulled.

Do you feel like you were getting offered kind of like the golden handcuffs? It's like, oh, this could be a trap and it's an unsatisfying trade-off.

For sure. And also to be uninvited for so long and then to be invited it makes decision-making very hard. I've had this at many different points in my career. So when that first happened, it was like, we got to go to Germany to do this thing. Now we got to go to Japan. We just got this thing. And your humanity is gone because you're just gone. And it's a really beautiful lesson when you learn it, that there's something you want to do. There's something you want to say and you do it. And when you do it, you do it because you do it. Do it, do it, do it. And when people start to fuck with it, even on an absurd degree, people start asking you to do other things and it feels really good. Oh yeah, because all of a sudden you're popular. But I don't want to do that. I don't want to do that.

But, and you're afraid if you don't do that, there'll be nothing else ever again. This is the last thing anyone's gonna offer me.

And until you get your group of people around you right, which it wasn't at the time, you're getting weird advice.

Yeah, a lot of new people enter the scene once, and they've done it before, and you're getting more attention from a label.

There's all kinds of stuff happening, and you have this gut that is so It's so simple. Don't do anything that you're not excited to do. It's so simple. If something feels a little cheesy, it's very cheesy. If something feels like not you, it's not fucking you. It kind of is that pure. And then there's ways of doing things that aren't necessarily you, but you do it your way.

Yeah.

And it's cool.

But that was a tough time. I had music bursting out of me and feeling like it was being quieted by the success of something else. Very strange, guilty feeling.

Very strange.

That is a bizarre experience. Bizarre feeling. Yeah.

And you feel bad about feeling bad.

Yeah. I've had this a few times in my life. Where sort of people are like, "Wow, that must be the best." And it's sort of like, "Well, no, actually it wasn't. It was really hard and complicated because that wasn't my goal." We've talked about this with several actors.

The one that comes to mind right now is Wednesday.

Jenna Ortega.

Jenna Ortega. And I can so empathize with her, which is like, she has this moment of enormous opportunity, and everyone around her, it's such an exciting thing. And they're saying, "You must be so happy." And then when so many people are telling you, "You must be so happy," which isn't a real thing.

They're just projecting all over you. They're just saying, "You got something that I've heard is the thing to get." It's beautiful what they're saying.

They're excited for you.

But no one's ever like, "How you feeling?" Right.

"Are you scared?" I just said to her, like, that's a hard— 'Cause then you're afraid if you're honest with people, you will appear to be ungrateful. And so now you're kind of locked in. You get isolated by this dissonance of everyone thinks I should be feeling so good and I'm not. Not? What's going on? Am I broken?

But you are who you are. I mean, don't make people feel bad, but the spectrum of ungrateful, that's a game you could play forever. One person seems ungrateful compared to someone else. You are living your life and you know when something good has happened, but you also know that you will die and there are things you wanted to do with your time.

It's now yours to lose, which is stressful.

It's very stressful. And I've always been super in touch with that. And it's weird when you do a thing that everyone thinks is for everyone else, but it actually isn't. This is something I run into all the time, especially in my work with Pop about music. This is not a service industry in any way. And because everyone sees it or hears it, they think that it's made for their pleasure. And it's really— not in a mean way, it's really not. Music is made because you feel compelled to articulate something.

Because you're a little bit in anguish if you can't get that thing out in the way you want it out.

Yeah, you have a feeling, and you feel crazy because you can't say it and you can't sing but you hear it and you spend all your time turning it into something reductive, but literally that you can press play on.

Yeah.

Yeah. And then you want to take it out and celebrate it.

And then sometimes people love it or not.

But the act of releasing it, even just now, me talking, putting out an album, you're chucking messages in a bottle out in the world. You're not looking for everyone. Just like in high school, it's like, where's that one kid? Something about them. I'm like, oh, my person. That's it. And when you do something that is public, there can be this sense from people that you're doing it to please the people.

That the puzzle you were trying to crack was how do I get all these people to like it? But that wasn't the puzzle you were trying to crack.

No, the puzzle you're trying to crack is like, if you fucking cut me open, what would the music sound like? Everything you write is the last thing you'll ever write until you do it again. Uh-huh. And you have to do it in a different way. The uncomfortable truth for people who do work like this is that it does dry up. We don't like to talk about it. But very few You either die, dries up, or you're a total unicorn. So I've been in a phase recently where I'm very surprised every time the feeling keeps coming, but I don't take it for granted. I don't sit there and think, yeah, this is what I'll do.

You're dropping a bucket into a well and you're like, what day will the well be dry?

The image in my head is it's a little net.

Yes.

Okay.

Marcus Mumford said the exact same thing, or I think it was him. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You're just constantly trying to catch butterflies.

Yeah, like I could write a song, but who cares? I'm trying to write that song and I would never, when I'm producing a record, I can make it something, who cares? It's like we're after something so specific and you just know it when you have it. Why it's so weird to me when people get in like arguments over music, it's like so obvious when you're going this way or not, but it's really maddening. And I think it can drive you fucking crazy. I'm in a phase now of feeling really grateful for it that I like do something that I can't control. Makes me feel like there's a mysticism to it. It, but I wouldn't name names, but I look up and I look at some people and I'm like, where'd it go? When will it leave me?

Sure.

Terrifying.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. How do you come across Taylor's radar?

Is it from fun or is it from meetings? It was from fun, but we met in Germany.

Oh, ding, ding, ding! This whole thing was scripted. We love that. That is a thing. At the Schunkmenschungklunk Podcast?

Exactly, yeah. Which is when it went number 2 in the world.

It's all based on one episode.

I wouldn't be surprised.

What was that movie that had the great slogan about number 2? It was the Heinz ketchup movie. It was a movie where it's number 2 and that ain't bad or something.

Probably Crazy People, the Dudley Moore where he's an ad executive and vulvas are boxy but good. No, no, no.

It's like a rom-com where like there's a thing that's number 2 in the world.

We're going to have to find it for the fact check.

Yeah. Someone— Someone listening is like, "It's fun!" Someone's punching their dashboard. We're in Germany, we meet at a thing, and quite quickly we get talking about Yaz, or as in Germany called Yazoo, a song called "Only You." Do you know the song?

No. Well, sing it.

Um, all I needed was the love you gave.

Yes, we all know this.

All I needed for another day.

Beautiful song.

It's all I ever knew. Only you.

Yes.

Great song.

Perfect song.

Yeah.

That thing you could weep to it, you could dance to it, you could drink to it. I could cry talking about it.

Yeah! Dee-dee-dee-dee-dee—

yeah, all this beautiful sort of like sad '80s stuff. So she's about to, you know, first time we worked together was on The Making 1989. So we were just kind of humming on this thing together somehow. We got talking about it. I'm about to make the first Bleachers album which really has that tone. And we just stayed in touch and then started listening some music and all the stories of my collaborations are just very simple. You meet, you see the same thing, you hear the same thing, and then you chase piece it together. I'm really reducing a huge thing that's a mountain. And there's great stories about that mountain with anything I've done, but truly what it is, is like, you have a feeling. So when we first met, whether we were talking about it openly or not, we were basically being like, man, Yaz rips. That shit's great. Not bring it back, but that feeling of sort of like the sadness of synthetic sounds, hearing someone fight their emotional way through the machine.

It's pop.

That's something. I think Alison Moyet's voice, I mean, has that thing that all the greats do. It's so listenable and beautiful. So fucking painful.

Yeah.

You know, maybe the greatest version ever of that is Nina Simone, where it's just both things are happening at once.

That's so true.

So we're humming on this thing without knowing we're talking about it. At the moment, it's simple. I love this song. Oh, cool. Blah blah blah. Here's what I'm working on. Here's what I'm working on. We should mess with something. Send her a track.

So it's all done through computer at first? When you say sending stuff, it's just like texting?

Sending little ideas.

How does it become official?

It becomes official in a very simple way.

Okay.

So at this point, like I said, I collaborated my whole life, but maybe like some doors are opening. I'm starting to write with people and do that. 'cause Fun had that hit and I would inevitably get to this point when I would work on a song with someone where they'd be like, okay, now we're going to have a producer do it. And I'd be like, well, I'm a producer. And they're like, totally, what have you produced? And I'm like, all my friends' records. And it's like, bye.

And can you tell us, like, in a literal sense what the producer's doing?

Well, there's many things. So the line between production and engineering is a very blurry one. The most simple way I could describe producing is what will it sound like? What outfit will it wear? Are there the drums like this? Does an orchestra come in? So George Martin, maybe the greatest producer of all time, wasn't playing the strings, but he was saying, well, what if the strings come in here? And then what if we play them backwards? The ideas. I happen to also be an engineer, which is a different craft. They meet often.

What a shortcut. Instead of trying to articulate something to someone else operating, you can do it and quickly figure out, no, that's not right.

I like to search. And so at that time, because I was loving Yazoo and Erasure and And Robin had put out Body Talk and kind of changed everything. And, you know, I bought this keyboard that was called a Juno-6, which at the time was like $700, which is lols now. But, you know, I got it and a lot of my favorite things come from not knowing something great. I play a lot of like cello now or instruments I'm not really acquainted with because you find things without all the knowledge of what you're doing. So I'm messing around on this thing. I'm just starting to make things. And so I was just making tracks that would become became the first Bleachers album and would become the first work I did with Taylor. It just all came from joy and a new soundscape. But that's like any time I make an album or collaborate with someone. You have a feeling, but you don't admit it. The feeling is, what if we did the most incredible thing ever together? You know, what if we got together and did something where 1 2 equaled a million? But you gotta go in with some armor.

You gotta say like, oh, like, check out this sound.

Right. We gotta act a little.

You know when you're at the bar and you're playing the game? It's like 2 pictures the same. It's like 2 pictures of you and then one of them has no ear. Yes.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Coming up on the high score.

Yeah.

And right in that moment, you get very quiet. And when you beat the high score, you don't jump up and scream. You just keep going.

Right.

I always think about that when I'm making records. It's like, we don't sit around and be like, oh my God, that's it. Everyone knows something's happening.

Yeah.

And you just keep going.

Do you think there's a huge undercurrent of like, we could jinx any of this at any moment? Yeah, I think there's a certain—

because you're dealing with magic. Yeah. Not could, like will.

Yeah.

That's why my room at this point, like in the past, you know, somebody's let someone hear something. Thing, it would just die from someone else's gaze. I learned that from Taylor too.

I'm gonna ruin then one of your songs before you leave. My gaze is gonna be so powerful. Should I wait?

But the preciousness, it's a house of cards. Someone walks in, you're building something that only you see, and someone's like, what's that?

Yeah.

Or like, yeah, I would just walk outside and just fly off the roof.

It's like why people don't tell other people what they're gonna name their kid, because you'll hear, they'll be like, oh, Oh, that's nice. You're like, well, I can't name it that now because I hate it.

What do you want? What are you looking for? Are you looking for validation? There's nothing good that comes from it. Even if someone's like, you're the greatest to ever do it, what does that do? What does that do for you? It's such a personal process. And I definitely learned that early on from Taylor, and then early on from when I just really started writing the Bleachers stuff of like, I know what this is. Well, so to finish the story, we made those few songs that would end up being on 1989, and I was waiting for her to be like, and now so-and-so big shot's going to produce it. And she was like, so when should we send it to mix? So she was the first person to believe in me as a producer. It was obviously a monumental cosign, but it takes that. It takes a person to hear something. And you have to remember at that time, she landed the plane so well, but making 1989 was a very strange move. There was a lot of people on the inside that were like, this isn't going to work. Right. Everyone's going to be bummed about this, this and that.

You're going to lose all these fans. And we did that a few times, then we made Reputation, and then Folk— like, it goes on and on. Everything's so high stakes to me that I feel like I love that moment where, like, this is gonna land or fucking not land, but we are just riding this. You're going for it. Yeah.

You're aiming for the fences.

Yeah.

Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert, if you dare. What do you think it is about both of your symmetry that comes together? I don't want to tempt you to jinx everything, but just, are you able to identify what it is about each other that produces this kind of harmony?

We're great friends, which is a beautiful thing, but that's not where it necessarily comes from. We have this third brain we can go to. It's a really weird collaboration because it has nothing to do with anything you want it just is or isn't. You can make something with someone else or you can't. And if you can't and you try, you are going to make something so bad.

I can imagine two, like, hyper-talented people that like each other and are convinced that these two talents combined, you can only imagine the exponential explosion. And then, yeah, the frustration of the magic's not there. Oh, it's insane.

I mean, it's why we've had such a drudge of poor supergroups. One plus one rarely equals two, let alone a million.

Yeah.

Usually it equals like 0.7.

That's so true. A question I always get is, who do you want to collaborate with?

And I'm I'm not even being like cute about it. I'm like, I have no fucking idea. All my collaborations have taken me by surprise in wild ways.

Is Lorde next? After the success of that, presumably people start reaching out to you.

First Bleachers album, and then we quickly get to work on Melodrama and the St. Vincent album Mass Seduction. It's not like something needs to come out and then everyone, you know, it's like people started to understand me. I started to have some songs that people heard that I had co-written, and then I started to have stuff that was my production too. And it was coming from such a different place because at that time I was really buzzing on this big, sad, kind of John Hughes-y feeling, which wasn't really alive in the mainstream yet. It was just where I was at.

So yeah, for people who don't know, John Hughes is Breakfast Club. He's Planes, Trains, and Automobiles, St.

Elmo's Fire, 16 Candles, Pretty in Pink, Uncle Buck. Uncle Buck's so good. Is that— There's Nothing Left but Grizzle and Fat?

No, that's The Great Outdoors. Yeah, the old '96— He's gonna eat the old '96.

I say There's Nothing Left but Grizzle and Fat in my head like 4 fucking times a day. I say that, my friend reminded me of Justice for Harambe, and now I say Justice for Harambe a lot, which was their tick. They say Justice for Harambe a lot in their head.

Wow, wow.

But nothing left but grizzle and fat. Do you know what I'm talking about? The scene?

I've never seen it.

John Candy has to eat an entire steak.

It's called the Old 96er. If you eat the whole thing, you get it for free and they put your picture on the wall.

He eats the whole thing and he goes, I'm done. And then the guy goes, no, you're not. And John Candy looks up and goes, there's nothing left but grizzle and fat. And then the guy gives him the look and then he eats the grizzle and fat. And that is in my head more than music.

But yeah, John John Hughes had this beautiful signature heart in everything.

Well, he's not cynical. The act of making things, touring, making music, it's such a hopeful act. I don't think Lou Reed is cynical. I don't think Leonard Cohen is cynical. Like, I don't think it's possible. The barrier of entry, you have to do the thing, to put it out, to be there. I love the subversion. I love playing with things and music that does that. But the beauty of this is it's so uncynical. That's why I love playing live so much. You cannot go to a show cynically. It's not possible. If you did it, you would just get eaten up by the sincerity at the show. So many things in this moment in our lives happen cynically. Most forms of communication are what plays as just the cynical. When you get to a show, it's like, you're not leaving your fucking house. You're not paying money. You're not going through all this stuff, getting in the car to go somewhere, not even be treated that well because of how the customer service is going. We get into that later. To get into that room, it's like church. And what we do is so uncynical. And then the world is so cynical that they kind of smash together in this funny way.

Yeah. The other way about movies, too. You can't make a movie cynically. It's too much work.

No, no. Yeah, you're honest in the making. I've done it and it doesn't work.

It doesn't work. It just doesn't play.

But it's like, they're also not, they're protecting themselves with the cynicism, but the act of making something is vulnerable.

It's so fucking hopeful.

Yeah.

Like even I know so many people who are like, oh, this is dog shit. But then they get talking to them and they're like, there's something there. Just leave it at that. Yeah.

No, the cynicism is when Pulp Fiction comes out and it's such an enormous hit that people try to make it as a cash grab. And there's 9 movies all of a sudden that are trying to be Tarantino.

Oh, well, the industry is cynical as fuck.

Yes, yes, that's what I'm saying.

Because they can't admit the one truth.

Exactly. But the creators are not.

Which is, we're going to put a lot of money behind something and we have no way of knowing what's going to work. And if they could just admit it, everyone would be so much happier.

And accept it, yeah.

Because hence collaboration, 1 1 1 1 is never— we get to the end of every year, the best albums, the best movies, all the best work it just fucking was. Yeah. And then there's these—

There's very little math.

Yeah, these, like, things that get smashed together that feel like shit.

The only math that works is, like, IP, and it's why moviegoers are a little bit cynical in general because the math does work.

I have a friend who says, "Give me a movie quote from the past 10 years," and everyone goes, "Uh." But you go back further, it's like, you know, "Show me the money!" Right, exactly.

That's scary, actually.

It's an interesting point.

My curiosity is you've had such success with so many of these artists, and I do wonder, is that something you think biggest part of your skill set that you— and it's hard to say yes or no because it sounds egomaniacal— but is there something about you that brings out some confidence in these artists? I guess you hope.

I would imagine.

I mean, well, obviously.

I'm really dead serious about it. So I can meet people there, and I also feel met there. I mean, there's different ways of doing it. There's the path of more fear-based, like, I have the sauce, which I think is ridiculous. But I think when you decide to take a journey with someone is really powerful. I always feel the analogy of like flying a plane. We see something, we're going somewhere, and then we're going to do it. That's how great work is made, is like there's a North Star in the room and everyone's chasing it. Not to simplify something complicated, but I think bad work is made in collaboration when people have different North Stars and they're yanking each other in different directions. And then it kind of has no soul to it because it's all spread across something. But yeah, maybe, I mean, hopefully.

Okay, so just to run through because it's really bonkers and the list has to be said just so that I can then ask the next question, which just 13 Grammys. But Taylor Swift, 2014 Grammy Album of the Year, then Lorde's Melodrama, then Lover, then Del Rey's Norman Fucking Rockwell, then Folklore, then Did You Know There's a Tunnel Under Ocean Boulevard, Del Rey, then Midnights, then Torture Poets Department, and then Short and Sweet, which here's where I really drop in. I am obsessed with that album. My daughter introduced me to her and I can't believe how great that album is. Just every single song is fantastic.

I love it. Thank you so much.

One quick question. When you're there at the Grammys and you have multiple Album of the Year nominations— that's happened before, right? There's a couple albums.

That's trippy.

What do you root for? You don't have to say which.

Is there one?

No, exactly what you think. It's like, this is crazy. Yeah.

And will I cancel myself out?

I try to take all that shit as just encouragement. I try to take it two ways because I've noticed that it brings up a lot for people. I try to take it as encouragement and a moment to be with my family. You know, we don't look back often. My life is so forward, moving. I'm on tour, the next city, the next song, the next thing. I'm so focused on what I'm doing next that anytime we get to go to those things, my dad will cry and we'll talk about the old days.

And oh, that's so sweet.

I like to try to access things at their best because otherwise it brings up a lot.

Because looking back, I assume, is too hard because there's so much pain.

There's pain, and else you just don't do it And I don't make a lot of space for it. I'm not like a big reminiscer.

Yeah. Again, you might jinx everything. If you were to acknowledge how successful you've been, it might go away. Is there any anxiety about it or tension with it?

Oh, sure.

Yeah. It feels—

Yeah, yeah, yeah. For sure.

Again, back to the Jenna Ortega thing. It's like, you would think anyone who collaborated on that many hits in a row must be flying high, but I can also imagine it constantly being met with, then what do I do next? Or does it go away? Or any of those feelings.

Yeah, things come and go. I think the The most potent one I deal with is the feeling of being known or perceived in a way can be beautiful. And also you can feel like a version of yourself is being put on you. On the Bleachers record, on this new one, I really got into, like, my origin story. And I think the reason why I was so compelled to do that was because I feel like— not in a bad way, but just it all gets rewritten. And it's weird.

You lost your agency over it.

Yeah. Like, having any digital footprint or public information about you kind of becomes law or becomes Bible. And that's great. That's really neat. Like all the things you just read, amazing. My soul is in all that stuff. But then there can also be this feeling of you're just yourself and that feeling slightly ghostly in a way. And it's a weird twist because I'm also like extremely private. It's funny. But then I put so much into the music and share so much that you'd have the impression, you know, everything about me, which would be fair. For most of the time, it's like one I'm done with it, it's yours. And you can hear me sort of stammering around it. Like, it's just an odd thing. And I think it is actually getting better, but I think it was really odd in the past couple years. But I think now there might be more grace towards artists and accepting the idea that part of the work is playing with their own hypocrisy, and that the rage you have at your senator might not be for your artist.

Right, exactly. Yeah.

Which makes sense.

Celebrity's gotten nuts in the past few years. It's changed.

Yeah, some people have done some weird-ass shit, and also the world has gotten to a weird place and you just put it all together and I think everyone's really looking for some answers. But when I'm just sitting there writing, I'm not thinking about any of that. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It's complicated. Okay. And I promise you, I'm going to do a real nice chunk on everyone for 10 minutes. Worry not. You do your— The last question I kind of have about your co-writing and your producing is I want to know how does Kendrick Lamar come into the picture? For me, I would be like, I've established myself as I can work really, really well with these female artists and it's a very specific thing. And if I were If I get invited in to work with a rapper from South Central, I might have a little bit of imposter syndrome or just fear of like, oh my God, I'm going to be the whitest, nerdiest person this guy's ever met. Like, what kind of feelings did you have?

I just am so focused on the soul of what is happening. And that's bigger. That's just articulating a feeling, what someone or group of people sound like at any moment in time. So everything beyond that to me is secondary, whether it's genre or personality or age, gender, all of it's all so separate. I boil it all down to there's people in this room, we're all hearing a thing. And like I said, we're trying to literally make it a reality and not just like a conversation or a feeling. So I feel bizarrely comfortable in any situation where that's the goal.

Did you meet him somewhere and start having a chat about Yaz?

Not no though. I have a band with a guy named Soundwave and a guy named Sam Dew. Wave grew up with Kendrick and has produced all his albums and they were upstairs at Electric Lady one one day, and I was downstairs working on something, and Wave texted me. He's like, come upstairs and mess around. Go upstairs, start playing some chords. Didn't leave for 3 years. And that's often how it happens.

It's like love. There's just chemistry.

It becomes like a secret world. That's what I feel like my collaborations are. And that's no different than what it was with that album, Ready album. It's sort of like you find something and then you go apart and you come together and you revisit and you build on it. It's just a giant secret. No one knows what's happening. No one knows what you're thinking, what you're feeling, what it's sounding like. And then one day, boom, it's just out. It's wild. I love it. I love that wild anxiety of something coming out.

But I have insecurities, and I guess I might be intimidated by Kendrick.

I don't feel very intimidated by anyone who is pursuing music. Yeah, because this image I keep— it's like we're all grabbing at something, and all the greatest people I've ever worked with, and a lot of the people you're naming, I truly believe to be the greatest of all time, me in that exact place of we're just all grabbing at something. I would never name names, but the least inspiring people I've ever met are the ones who say they're not know how to do it because it's like, oh, do you? Go do it. And it's often like a lot of things in life that the people who can explain exactly how to do it, how they're going to do it and why you're wrong and they're right are really making up for something. And then you spend time with people who are known as the absolute top of their craft and we're all having the same conversation, which is just like, what if, what if, what if this—

You're comfortable in the uncertainty.

It's all uncertainty.

Yeah.

And then knowing when it's done is pure certainty. I also don't understand why people tinker forever where it's like once you hear it, it's like all you want to do is back up the drive and put a helmet on it. It's like you want to protect it. Like you want to put it in that fucking thing in Beauty and the Beast that the rose is in. It's such a protected space, you know? And then if I like go hang out with people, I'm like, oh yeah, I forgot the world sees you. Yeah, you almost gotta go somewhere because you're my friend from the studio who we like see them through other people's eyes, bang on things to try to find new sounds.

Yeah, it's got to be so weird for you to see the way people are around Taylor, or thoughts around her, or the fainting. Like, she's your buddy. I mean, it'd be like if that was happening with you, which it may be. It is.

It You know what?

I carry smelling salts with me and have them so frequently. Yeah.

Very nice.

You're like, what are you guys doing?

He's like, hi.

He's a person. Yes and no. But also I do see all this as magic. I'm like right there. I don't know. There's so many people in my life, different artists who I've had that relationship to not knowing them, but they very deeply got me through a period of time, saved my life in many ways. So I'm just not casual about any of this. When someone has a wild feeling about someone else, I'm never like, oh, they're just a person. I'm like, yeah, shit's magic.

I get it.

I have my own experience there.

Okay, so Everyone for 10 Minutes is Bleachers' 5th album.

Oh yeah.

Okay. And now here's where I will be very honest with you, and I'm embarrassed to admit, although I've heard all this other work you've done, I've not been consuming a lot of Bleachers.

Very oddly separate audiences.

Yeah, sure.

Yeah.

And I was completely missing the boat. I started with the new album and I listened to all those songs and then I was like, oh my God, there's so many things I like about Bleachers. I hear so much general public flick in it.

Oh cool.

Did you like General Public?

Yeah.

Fuck, they got some John Hughes needle drops, I think. Yeah. I was so into new wave in junior high. That's what I regulated with. I was just so in love with people and so heartbroken. All that music was so perfect for me.

Yeah, so dramatic in the best way.

The horns. I fucking love the saxophone so much. You couldn't make a song in the '80s without a saxophone. It was illegal.

It became frowned upon.

Got a little cheesy.

So then we lost it. But it's like anything. It's how you use it. I mean, look at the guitar. It's like you could make the guitar so cheesy, or it could be the most interesting transcendent thing ever. I love the way Neil Young plays solos where he's like fighting it. Saxophone's the same thing. Synths are the same thing. I love playing with things that have been distasteful and finding a new voice for them.

Just in order, I love Dirty Wedding Dress, Take You Out Tonight. I'm going to say there's a lot of Springsteen in that song.

Dirty Wedding Dress and Take You Out Tonight literally take place where I live at the shore in Jersey.

I can feel it.

That's my music. New Jersey has a sound that is one of the most important sounds in the world, but not documented the same way that like New York, London, Manchester. People obviously know Bruce. But there's so much more to it. There's Southside Johnny, there's that whole shore sound.

We're learning so much.

Charlie is like a historian on New Jersey musicians, and he went to like some famous jazz pianist workshop, jazz clinic.

Yeah, like camp or something.

It's crazy jazz. The way I articulate the way I use horns, which is very New Jersey, is horns are coastal, right? Because when ships come in, you gotta blow a horn. Oh, that's interesting. You know, no one like hits a harpsichord when the ship's coming in. Like, you gotta blow a horn. So you think of horns, you think coastal. You got like New Orleans-type jazzy horns, you got sort of New England, like crab shack, deepee deepe horns. I love this take. Yeah, this is fun. Yeah, LA, sort of Captain Geech and the Shrimp Shark Shooter type, another That Thing You Do reference horns. But then you got New Jersey, which is coastal horns, but big and sad. Big soaring, sad horn lines where it's like there's a duality of there's a saxophone here, which is supposed to be like a wink, but they're playing this super sad long line. Very Springsteen, like God, that line in Secret Garden when it's just like hanging over. I love that stuff.

Okay. And then this happens to me almost quarterly. Monica will know this. I find a song and I listened to it thousands of times. I can listen to songs on repeat.

Me too.

For hours and hours and hours. I never tire of it. And Upstairs at Elle's is fucking—

Oh, really?

Oh my God, dude, I can't tell you the way I've been going through the last 20 years. Electric Lady Studios.

I didn't put periods in it, did I not?

Oh, so I did pronounce it wrong.

You're correct. No, everyone says Upstairs at Elle's because there's no—

I had to figure out— Yes, I did put it together after.

It was on me.

But I was like, oh, is Elle's the Friends house? But then when I listened to the lyrics, I'm like, no, no, this is definitely where you record. Finish up a track, send a text, party on the roof, everybody get dressed. This feeling, if you're artistic, I feel like I just got zapped. It's like to me when I finish a script and I'm like, I fucking did it. And I wonder if we have a similar emotional state where it's like I have to earn joy.

Oh yeah.

And when I earn it, the heights of joy I can reach—

I want to party.

I will let it fucking rip.

When I'm there and I get something I like, by the way, that space up there, it's such like a secret rarefied place because it's all my friends. Like, no one's going to come and go live, so we're just actually completely loose and having fun. And so those nights when it's summer, you feel yourself from something you just made, and then you just kind of group text a bunch of people like, let's have pizza and drink on the roof. Oh, those are the nights. And I'm a believer that it's always the good old days, but I'm like, we're like living in the good old days. And I want to write a song about that. The album ends with I'm Not Joking, which is very intense love song. And then "Upstairs at ELS" is like the credits rolling. I finished the album. Here we are.

Yeah, I was kind of shocked it wasn't like a first song on there, but I guess that makes a ton of sense.

Well, that's a funny thing about sequencing. Like, my manager, my label, they're like, this is probably a hit single. And I'm like, neat. The album is my origin story, then it's people I've lost touch with quite quickly, and then it's my wedding, and then it's depression, and then it's sort of finding God through love, and then the credits roll and I'm at the studio finishing the album. Yeah, but what's cool about these days is people find their ways to things. Yeah, but there's no doubt I understand pop music. Like, that song is very—

my grievance is you've released 3 tracks already on the album that I can listen to on Spotify, which I could hit repeat on, but I have got the early things on the website. So I've listened to this song— yeah, I'm not exaggerating— 50+ times in the last 24 hours, and I have to go to my computer, restart it every single time, and it's it's worth it to me.

That means a lot to me.

This fucking song.

I'm not downplaying that song. I love that song. But it says a lot about songwriting, like capturing a feeling. Not everyone comes and hangs out with me at the roof up there, but everyone knows the feeling of I feel enough joy in life to want to text my friends and hang out, which is kind of a big deal.

Yeah, it is.

Most of the time I think we're all like, I feel like thinking about what I want for dinner and then blowing my fucking brains out is often a feeling, you know? Or like, I feel feel like turning my phone off and pretending no one exists. So when I have those moments where I'm like, let's be together, makes me feel very alive. And, um, I'm trying to do more of it.

But I could be projecting onto you. No, because I feel like I know that moment so well.

You're not projecting at all. It's literally that moment.

Do you also relate to— and I'm just now at 51, the yolk's coming off a bit, and I have to tell you, it's such a lovely feeling— but do you feel the weight of, I have to do so many things, everything I think I might be able to do, I must do the daunting fucking force and burden of that.

Yeah. And it's one of the reasons why I love being on tour so much, because you're like a baby, do nothing because the show is so big. So it kills that voice.

I'm shocked you've never become a big addict, because I'll tell you, I'm more and more understanding my addiction. What I realize now more than ever is that the benders were these little breaks I could give myself of like, okay, Okay, no, all we're doing is getting fucked up for 3 days. We're not going to try to be spectacular at anything.

I mean, that's why Phantom Thread is one of my favorite movies. My wife jokes sometimes when I get sick, it's the best times because everything gets quiet. You know, I'm a little bitch, but I'm not trying to conquer myself in my head.

That's why I love road trips. Not allowed to do anything.

Yeah. I love Christmas time. I'm sure you, like me, had moments during lockdown that were transcendent just because it took the whole fucking world shutting down for me get a break. Yeah, these are things I at once long to work on, and then also I'm like, eh, I am who I am. I go back and forth. I have a feeling, and maybe— do you have kids?

No.

This is my feeling, and you can tell me this is bullshit or not, but I sit there and I think to myself, I'm running towards this thing, and when that happens, it's going to just like rewire me.

100%.

Maybe that's naive. Maybe it's going to happen and there I'll be.

No, it'll— 1,000%. Because the voice of what I got to do is like at 3 on the volume and the what do these children need is at 10.

Yeah.

And it's so liberating.

Well, that's how I feel with my dog, so I can only imagine what will happen with kids.

I'll stop working. Not true. But I will work in a way that is so much more healthy.

Well, I've already started that. Getting married changed that because I always was running. I always had so many negotiations in my head. I was never with the right person. So I was like, am I happy? You know, that terrible sort of like, does everyone get everything? Well, I like my work. Maybe I'll just—

Yeah, exactly.

But then I met my wife on the roof at Electric Lady.

Oh, you did? At one of your come over and get drunk?

You ever heard that Lana song, Margaret? He met Margaret on the rooftop.

No, I have to go.

Lana wrote a song about it.

Oh my God.

That's really sweet. But yeah, we met right there, which is another reason why that place is so special. What's actually, what's interesting about it is when you find some common happiness, your work gets even better.

I have to say, your wife, she's one of your—

She's on your crush list?

Oh my God, dude.

She's on everyone's crush list. Is she stunning?

I noticed that sometimes when she like does something, it looks really beautiful. Like go on the internet and everyone's like, I'm going to kill you to me.

And I'm like, huh?

Yeah.

He was on Fallon. He's like, I fight. Find me in the street. I'll fight.

Yeah. I like the idea. If someone came up to me in the street, I would, I would be so funny. If someone came up to me in the street and was like, I like your wife a lot and I want to fight for her. First I would be like, well, that's up to her, my friend.

Yeah. Yeah.

I'm not in charge of her.

Yeah. But I mean, it's just kind of internet lingo.

This may shock you. I can relate. Relate to that.

Of course.

People like my wife quite a bit.

Your wife's the best.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Had you seen Once Upon a Time before you met her is my question.

Yeah. And she saw Spaceballs before she met me.

Perfect.

No, I was totally aware of her and I met her once prior to the rooftop once. And now it's like a great moment that we look back on. It's so weird. And it was really weird as I met her a long, long time ago at this party. It was actually Taylor's party. And for some for some reason we took a picture. Maybe she saw it in the future, but Taylor just grabbed both of us and there's a picture of the three of us.

Oh, really?

And then two years went by before I ever saw Margaret again.

Did she go to the children's professional school? Because she's a dancer.

There's a lot of weird similarities in our life.

That was kind of a joke, but she did.

Oh, really? No, it's true.

I just know that she's a dancer.

I just assumed that maybe she lived in California and she's like from Montana, grew up in North Carolina. Very similar to me. I mean, I left Jersey, which is a lot closer, but she left North South Carolina, went to the same school.

That's wild.

That is wild.

And now we live in Jersey, which is very much how we both grew up. We're really happy to get out. The way people react to pop culture in New Jersey, there's like a sweetness to it because it's out of the sauce. New York less so, but LA is sort of like everyone knows what you're working on, you know? Yeah. It is a little bit less—

The chatter, yes.

And then you get, we get to Jersey and people were like, you do music? I love I love, um, Billy Joel. Exactly. They're like, yep, you know, we just saw him and he was really good. And I also love Pearl Jam. And then we are going to see Celine Dion.

Yeah, we have a house in Nashville and same, my neighbor's like, they've seen 3 movies in the last 4 years and they're hardly interested. And it's lovely.

They're not like sitting there being like, well, this was an indie movie, but they spent $20 million on the promotion. So is it an indie? You know, like, it's not that They're just sort of like, Zootopia is very good. And they're not wrong.

Yeah, they're not looking for a hot take.

It's kind of how I feel about movies in a weird way. Like, I hear all the sauce, but I don't care at all. I don't make movies. I don't want to make movies. I like making music for movies here and there, but zero ambition. So when I watch a movie, I am just fucking loving it or not. And that's all I care about. Where I know a lot of people who are in the sauce. It's just fascinating.

Yeah. Some separation is nice.

You get to experience people who are hitting you at all different levels, which is also like the show. When I play, there's people coming together from very different walks of life.

I like it because it right-sizes your thing. When you're talking to your neighbors, they're like, yeah, I like music, I like Billy Joel, and I like Pearl Jam. And you're like, oh right, that's the actual spot it occupies in people's consciousness. And I like being reminded of that. It's like people like movies, but they like them. They're not fucking obsessed.

I just love all versions. And very often I always tell my friends, you play live, you see the 1% of fans that know everything about you, which I love. They know every bit, they know every joke, they know everything, every inside joke. And it's like, that interaction is really interesting. But there's also like Jennifer up in the rafters.

Yeah, her friend brought her.

Yeah, and she loves the band for a different reason. Yeah, Jersey's fucking chill.

I think it's very good to get out. Yeah, the bubble.

LA gets hard for me. I don't know if you guys can relate, but it might be because I don't have a home.

He feels that. I don't. I love it here.

Okay.

But I grew up in the suburbs also.

Where?

Georgia. Suburbs of Georgia.

Like Marietta?

Duluth. Very close to Marietta.

There was a club in Marietta called Swayze's.

Oh, I don't know.

And they had pictures of Patrick Swayze everywhere.

Oh, that's fun.

I love Swayze.

That's a little more fun than I would expect from Georgia, to be honest. But I like this because it's a departure from that.

Yeah. I just have no home. So I'm like— Yeah.

Rootless.

Yeah. Okay.

We've had you forever. My last question is, because you've worked with so many people, have you ever been called upon to smooth out a beef between between two artists? And you don't have to tell me who, but have you been brought in?

I haven't.

You haven't?

No. Okay, it's an interesting question.

You can see that happening.

Me too.

I'm trying to think if there's anything. Not really. No, no.

Okay, that's good. Thank God.

I would hate that. Everyone's kind of in their own zone, especially when you're making an album. You're really just like off on your own thing.

But are there betrayals? Does it feel like, oh shit, I guess I can't go work with this person now? Or no one really cares?

Yeah, sometimes, but you always make your own decisions. And I find that The whole world is so different and bizarre and interesting and also all high school at the same time. It's amazing. But you have your people and you stand by them and you ride for them. But no, nothing that really like specifically happened.

Right, right.

You know, anyone who's really bummed anyone out that I know, I try to hang on my friends.

Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Everyone for 10 minutes. It's out May 22nd. You're going to turn me down as you should. It's a very crazy request. I've never done this, but I just want you to know, yeah, I am I am willing to dance with you to that song.

Dubsters DLS?

Yes. I've been dancing all morning to it.

Okay. And I don't know if I want to dance, but here's what I think you should do.

Okay.

Put it on, see what happens to your body, and let's just watch you.

Okay. That's really stressful.

Oh my God.

This is already the most embarrassing thing I've ever done.

I've never listened to the song with anyone who wasn't part of making it.

Okay.

I'm not asking you to dance for me, just to be clear.

No, he clearly offered that up.

What I know is that I can't tell you how I feel about it. I know that.

You don't have to move. You could talk about it.

No, I'm going to move. And Monica will edit out because it's going to be so cringy.

What you might be really getting you going is the drums are a thing called a Lindrum, which probably most popular, like Prince used a lot. It's this great '80s drum machine and it's very punchy. And I think it might speak to your hips. And then we play like a lot of live drums on top of it. And I think maybe that speaks to your shoulders.

Okay, good.

I like, I like all this stuff.

Theory, dance theory.

This is my anatomy of the song.

Literally.

Have you ever danced with anyone on the show?

Never. I've never done this. You know, when I did this to BJ in Chicago, Kid in Anderson.Paak's song, that song fucked me up in a way that I had to dance really on Instagram. And a lot of my friends were worried about me, but I don't regret it.

Relapsed.

Are you here all day?

Yeah, basically.

Like, do you just spend all all day here?

Essentially.

Or do you go to your big house?

I go to my regular size house.

Is it tough to be here in the small house?

Yeah, all I do is look around like, oh my God, you're like Dax. It's just like, poor sons of bitches over here. Okay, are we ready?

No, I'm still figuring it out.

So like, so what happens after this?

We'll do a fact check after this. So that's just him and I.

Everything was facts.

Yeah, we check these facts and it's really fun, but really it's just a chance for us to kind of just talk about nothing and then I'll like check some facts.

Do you ever do episodes with no guess.

No, but the fact check kind of serves it. Oh my God, I love—

I'm almost gonna do this just to make Monica explode.

Yeah, I mean, is it a good vibe if you and I keep talking and he dances?

I know, I kind of want— oh my God.

So then what will happen?

So it's— I can't believe you're making him watch you do this.

I summon Night Alias, finish up a track and send a text. Party on the roof, everybody get dressed. I've been down— Monica's upset.

Oh no, no, no, do not—

oh my God, do not make me participate.

You got a dream, I got a knife.

Me and my friends drinking on a roof.

Is this like a music video?

I'm disassociating!

He's free! Me and my friends drinking on the roof—

I do like this song! Hey!

We did it!

Okay... It's very John Hughes Daxx, the way you're moving. Keep it going! There's blood in the wrist—

I do like this song! This is great.

I kind of like this now. I didn't like it at first. I kind of like it now. Oh my God, why are you raising it? I didn't like it at first. I like it now. He's in really good shape, huh?

Yeah, that I'll give him.

Here we go.

It's like when you do a plank and you have to hold it for the last minute. How much more? Not much, but you truly look uncomfortable. Here we go.

Oh my God, my eyes close and then like open the back.

Oh, that's good. I like that. Okay, it's a new move. Hey!

Oh!

Oh!

This is the show.

This is the show.

Oh my God, it's like a 20-minute, 20-minute long song, you know? Why you make this song so long?

Yeah. Wow.

Very compelling. I'm going to say something, okay? It was upsetting and then it was really beautiful. I really feel like you really like—

I thought I might get you there.

No, you really did get me there. I want to give you the feel.

Just leave the death or the, you know, look, it's like watching your dad. You know, it's watching your dad.

This is how I felt, okay?

Yeah.

And I think we need to do 5 more minutes.

Okay, I'll sit back down.

I felt like first I was like, oh my God, what's he going to do? And then I had that feeling like I'm at a comedy show. Is the comedian going to bring me up? Yes. And And then I'm not even joking, I feel like he's really going to another place and that's beautiful. And then I genuinely liked a lot of the moves because they felt like— is it Anthony Michael Hall in Breakfast Club kind of thing? Ali Shetty. And then I quickly realized that what was going on was really about Monica. Her watching you with love.

Are you sure there was—

and sadness all at once was like the years you spent together, like It was all just happening. Like, I almost feel like her inner dialog was like, that's Dax. I love him. And what am I going to do?

Like, I was acting out.

This is him. He's not putting on a show. It's so earnest. And earnest can be—

There's a chance that that's the video and that's it.

I sign up. I can dance much better than that.

That was really good. You have great moves.

The space wasn't great. In my bedroom today, I was like, I was born to dance to this song.

I love to move my body. I just don't do it to my own music unless I'm playing it because it feels funny.

It feels—

I do love to dance.

I thought that could be the case. Yeah.

I'm not meeting you where you're at. I just— this was about you, and then it was about Monica. I actually felt like there was double whatever glass here. I felt like I wasn't here and I was watching you alone, and Monica was like a ghost watching it.

That's fair.

If I'm being honest, of the 3 minutes, probably 30 seconds of it, I was unself-conscious.

That's it? It felt like the whole time.

It did feel like the whole time.

That's good.

I thought when you went to Monica, those were probably the moments of being self-conscious. You were like, I'm gonna— It's you.

You're my guest. No, I'm doing something very bizarre in front of you. I like it, but it is with genuine intention. It's received of, um, thanking you and hoping you can see what that song does to me.

I will request other videos of you doing it, right?

Maybe to each song on the album.

I will request that people have hype.

I will request that you just do it. I request that it becomes your apologies to Matt Damon.

I would love that. I signed it.

If you have fucking Joyce Carol Oates here, you just kick the table over and just dance in Monica's face, right? If you have Nancy Pelosi here, you just flip to the table and go, you're gonna watch me dance for 3 minutes. I don't want them dancing. Yeah, okay, okay. It's not, it's not like a cheer tunnel. It's not that. It's a subversive, strange moment where you just interviewed, let's say, you know, Barack Obama. Barack Obama, right?

He would have joined though.

He's not allowed. The whole idea, because it's not like, where's Zaynie?

Here's the viral moment.

It's not that. It's, I just interviewed you, and now you're gonna witness me having childlike joy around someone who knows me deeply and loves me and is embarrassed for me. Yeah, you have to sit and watch that.

Yeah. Also, I'm living out probably your worst fear. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I just said this is my worst.

I really— I think we're honestly— because I think when you're interviewed, you're so vulnerable, and this is your guys' space. And then I had to have the weird vulnerable moment of watching you.

I know, very uncomfortable to watch me dance. Almost worse than doing the dancing.

But that's having to walk remarkably. Yeah, but, but, um, that's why it feels tough. It's like now you're in this position.

Dax played with So Dax didn't do something inappropriate, but we all felt like something inappropriate was happening. And that's really interesting. So imagining Joyce Carol Oates sitting here or whatever, and you do that. Joyce Carol Oates is—

She's coming.

Is she coming?

Yes.

Who's coming soon? Can you not say?

Wait, who's coming?

That was a joke.

But do you announce who's coming?

Yeah, well, we don't really, but—

It's always a secret.

It's always a secret.

Okay, so like, if I'm guessing, I don't know.

Manifest something for us.

Okay, how about— How about, um, Joyce Carol Oates?

Okay, okay.

How about, um, who would I like?

Let's use Taylor.

She'd be great.

She'd be great.

Okay, but she'd be—

she'd be really comfortable with that.

I feel like she'd be like, you go do your thing, get done with yourself.

Like, this is what I'm trying to get guys to do.

Vladimir Zelensky.

Yeah, how about Putin?

Wait, what's his name? No, what's his name? Not Vladimir. Um, oh my God, did I just connect Vladimir Putin and Zelensky? What's Zelensky's first name?

Volodymyr.

Vladimir?

What the fuck is— is it really? It's something like— I don't know. Okay, so I'm not way off.

Okay.

Imagine you're getting into it with Ted Cruz and you're really going there. Or like, I'm just trying to think of an interesting character. Lindsey Graham.

Lindsey Graham. That might put him over the edge. He might pass in my presence.

Yeah, he might hit the Rainbow Bridge.

Like, you had to have known, Mr. Shepard, that he would have died.

This big blue marble.

Him watching you do something that is so antithetical to what he's about would kill him. You had to have known Mr. Shepard. This is what they'd say.

I'm trying to—

Are you okay?

Oh, I'm more than okay.

Okay. Just wanted to check.

This is where I live in the place.

I know.

And you know, you are the stagehands here. In the most sincere, non-bitty way.

Yeah.

In the most sincere, non-bitty way.

Yes.

I feel like I owe you that because of how much joy that thing gives me and how much I relate to the moment.

Love it and receive it and put in a formal request for it to be the— and we ran out of time— Matt Damon of this show. Let's get this podcast to number 3 or 2. Let's get it to number 2.

We got to beat those Germans. This might get us there. This might get us there.

Well, this has been a blast.

Thank you guys so much.

First for me, and it's been a blast.

And not a last.

And I can't wait for people to explode to this song the way I just did.

It's a great song. Now I can say, even having experienced that—

in the worst possible situation, you liked it.

I really liked it.

Yeah.

I did have a thought while it was happening, was like, is this a new kind of like strip club? Not stripping, but like, is this like a new thing where like a a guy just sort of like has joy and you sit near.

I think it would be too much for people to handle. Interesting.

Watching a man— tell me to think about your joy.

I think it's—

no, it's good. It's good to show what you just did is the opposite of the manosphere, so I will give you credit for that.

You think that's the inverse?

I do.

It was definitely not—

definitely not cynical.

Yeah. And that's all we're going for.

Okay.

I think Monica's gonna unpack it for a long time, is how I feel.

Yeah, I have a lot to sit with. I have scheduled therapy.

Well, this has been a blast. I knew I would like you because I love Rachel so much, and it was everything. Thank And I hope you'll come back.

If you cut that part, my little heart will break.

I can already read the headline: Dax Shepard forces—

Honestly, that's my worry.

Yeah, forces.

You can't live your life. Yeah, but you know what, you know, do it.

It's got to be me.

You got to be you, and you gotta dance for when you have to dance.

You have to dance for real.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It's the puzzle that needs—

The next time you have like a dignitary or someone.

Yeah, this is just what we do here.

Jack, this has been a blast. Everybody listen to Everyone for 10 Minutes, May 22nd.

Come back.

He is an armchair expert, but he makes mistakes all the time. Thank God Monica's here, she's gonna let him have the facts. Well, he got a free— he got a free dancer out of it.

He did, he did. That could be— that just could be the music video.

I don't know what they would have offered me, what the budget would have been, but it was— he got it for cheaper than whatever that was.

He sure did.

$100 or something. Well, we're both— we both had whirlwind weekends.

Yes, you here in town me in Nashville. I have my brother and his partner Emily in town, and it was so fun. Also, they loved the house, which was really nice. Yeah, last time we checked in, we made a joke about if they say like, go to Malibu, you just keep talking, you know? Like, they didn't say that, you just keep it, keep it going, keep it moving. Um, we did go to Malibu.

Who brought it up? They did. What'd they say?

My brother was like— or I just said, what, is there anything you guys really want to do? And he said, we do want to go to Malibu.

Yeah.

Oh shit, standard.

God, okay.

Do you take Los Virginas or did you take Canaan Dune?

I took Canaan.

Canaan, okay.

I was sort of— I mean, I just follow— I follow my phone, you know? I call my phone.

Good advice.

Jess and I get in fights a lot about which app to use. Sure, I won't say which one he uses.

Waze.

I'm not gonna say it. I'm not gonna say what he uses. I just really dislike the one he uses.

Okay, I only hate one of the three main ones, and I'll remain quiet on which one. But we have Apple Maps, we have Google Maps, and we have Waze, right? Am I missing one?

Those are the three I know.

Rob probably uses a punk rock one that's like no one uses.

It's like really cool.

Yeah, it's like X- Oh shit, I want to do that one.

I'm not cool enough.

Which one do you use?

I use, um, Apple. I use what's on my phone.

Okay.

And I love it.

And I use Google and I love it.

Okay, but we don't—

yeah, it's fine. We're not debating. Generally, when you and I drive together, I know where I'm going. We drove together last week to a screening. I knew how to get there.

Yeah, you didn't put it—

I didn't need that map.

That's the difference between us. I—

you would have mapped even that place that you know? Oh, definitely.

I don't really know that place. Like, I do, but not enough. I need to—

you know how to get to Sunset Tower on your own?

Yes.

Okay. Although, I mean, it's 2 turns, go down Western to Sunset in a pinch.

This is what I like about Maps though, it, it can tell if there's traffic, so it will take you a different way.

I'll never take you the 2-turns version.

Yeah, it doesn't take me 2 turns. No, so 30 turns, which if I'm going on my own, I can get there on my own. If I didn't have my phone, I could get there, but I'm gonna go to turns, right? And when I follow the map, I feel like I'm probably getting there faster because it's telling me.

I think you are. Yeah. Um, I'm living in great stress. Have you read all these articles? They're starting to mount cameras up everywhere as a big statewide initiative for speeding cameras.

Really?

They're going to be everywhere. And I think they let you go 11 miles an hour over the speed limit and then they just automatically send you a ticket. No. Yes.

Really?

Yeah. And I got a list of the places they were putting it, but it wasn't terribly exact. Oh, just like this corridor.

This is going to be horrible for you.

It is.

I'm going to have to learn all new routes.

They're really pushing you out of this city.

They want me gone. They want me gone. They do.

Wow.

Yeah.

Wait, that is—

And then I can't really speed in Mount Juliet because there's so many cops.

So that's— okay. I was actually going to ask you, because in Georgia, Georgia, you cannot speed. They, they, the cops are everywhere. They're in speed traps. There are speed traps. They're in cars that are black, then in black writing say like Duluth Police. So you can't tell that it's a police car.

You're already pulled over.

Correct.

Yeah. Yeah.

And so it's always been a thing and I only go 5 over there every time.

And that's the vibe in Nashville too, right? Mount Juliet. On the highway in Nashville, fine. People are flying.

Okay.

That's kind of fine.

10 over.

Yeah. For people who don't know the culture in LA, it's everyone drives as fast as they want, pretty much, because you actually cannot go that fast because there's so much traffic. Yes. But there, I gotta say, it's state to state to state. California is the least— yeah, uh, oppressive. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They're not running like, um, speed traps and stuff. They're, they're— and they have a whole— I go— when we made CHiPs, I got to meet a lot of the CHP people, and they an actual agenda, which is they just are patrolling high accident areas, right? They're just trying to make everything safe.

Nice. Yeah, it's good.

All to say, until now, people drive pretty fast, uh, on the highways.

On the highway?

Yeah, yeah, everyone's going 80. That's definitely over an 11 over.

That's true.

It's 15 over.

Again, only if there's no traffic, which is pretty rare.

Yeah, but when you get it—

I know, that's why, that's why.

Anyhow, I'm I'm just waiting. I guess they're gonna have like a month grace thing where you'll get tickets but you won't have to pay the fine, and then it kicks in, then you'll have to pay a fine but there's no points.

Oh, interesting.

Yeah, but I just— I don't like the idea of there being a record for your insurance provider.

But I don't really speed, but I just don't like being watched, even though that's kind of weird for me because you're not a libertarian. I'm really not. I'm not. I've gotten more into privacy as the older I've got. For reason.

Yeah, things happen when you're older. That's just how it is.

Yeah, yeah.

Like, my mother was just here and she's like, her trust level with the government is at a real all-time low, right? And I think that's just aging. Yeah, I mean, she always was like a '60s flower power, hated Vietnam, but right now it just feels like every— everything's not to be trusted.

That's true.

At any rate, so yeah, I have to drive pretty slow in Nashville, um, and now it's looking like I'm gonna have to drive slow here. I'm gonna do I moved to Germany. Autobahn. Oh, my last— I thought I was going to retire in Nashville, but not, not the case.

Oh, well, that's a ding ding ding for this episode, actually, because, you know, we are going to try to unseat the number 2 most streamed podcast, which is in Germany.

Kuschendusch. Yeah.

So maybe you should move there to just get like feet on the ground.

Well, we at least know you can have an enormously huge podcast over there.

That's true. And I think you should— second biggest in the world. I mean, I think I'll stay. Maybe we could start doing doing Zooms.

Um, yeah, Germany doesn't feel like the place for you.

It's not for me. I don't think so. I do want to visit there. I've never been there. I'm sure I would enjoy it.

It answers the question, what if everything ran perfectly, right? Yeah, everything, everything runs exactly on time. Everything's spotless clean.

Yeah, they've got a real ethos there, and I appreciate that part of those things.

But then you do start feeling like, where's the, the Parisian vibe?

Exactly.

Where's the sexiness?

And they're— okay, this is the Gämmisch die Hack. Oh, it's like a game.

Well, they're playing it. They're definitely playing a game. They're also— one of them's younger, so they've been hitting it hard. Either he started really young or they've just had an explosive ride.

Got 341 episodes.

Not that many.

No.

So they're— yeah, they're getting a lot of downloads. Oh my God, everyone, every single German listens to it.

Do you think maybe they'll have us?

Right, the guy on the left or right?

On the right.

Okay, yeah, they both have a thing.

Yeah, they're both attractive.

Yeah, the guy on the left looks like Diplo. No, is that his name?

Um, that— Diplo is his name, and being fit is his game, right?

Yeah, he looks like him.

Yeah, yeah, it does. I just looked up Diplo. It does look—

it might be Diplo.

What if it's Diplo?

That would explain why he's got such a huge— now he looks older here. That's, that's comfortable. That's Diplo. Oh shit, I thought it was Dude, that's— they're identical.

Wait, is— maybe it is the coolest podcast. Hold on, Gemisch. Oh no, it's like it literally comes up in German. No, Felix Lobrecht and Tommy Schmidt.

Congratulations, boys.

Yeah.

Wow, man.

Hey, have us on.

Yeah, let's get us— I can hit him with my 6 sentences of German and then we're out. Yeah.

Yep, yep, yep, yep, yep. Oh, it's a comedy audio show, so lots of, lots of shisha. Yeah.

So I went to— I'm fresh off of Nashville. Yes, we started the Hulk Hogan documentary. Yeah, which was incredible. So incredible that we had a reservation for Bricktops at 7:30, and we— favorite restaurant, favorite restaurant. We considered not going.

Wow.

Went to Bricktops. It was delicious. They've taken the ribs ribs off the menu.

Uh-oh, that's— you have notes.

I love those ribs. And then Saturday, more boating. We went and watched them unload the coal for the electric plant, watch them unload the barges. God, we got so distracted by that, we almost missed our big horseback riding adventure. We're out there just watching this thing.

Such different versions of—

I know, we were, we riveted, Monica. The way this pulley system moves the barge and then each scoop, it picks it up like— I don't know how it picks up that cleanly. Yeah, and we just watched them. Anyways, then we had to haul ass back because we had horseback riding, right? We had to drive 35 minutes out there for that. That was a surprise for them. I had asked Aaron earlier in the day how much he weighed because they sent an email saying you can't be over 240. I was like, oh shit, I don't know what Aaron's weight's at right right now.

Yeah.

And then like, then I wanted to tell them, if they asked you, just say 239. But they did weigh us.

Oh, okay.

Yeah, he was fine.

That's not something to fuck around with.

He was fine. He was like 230. Everything was good.

Okay, great.

But when we pulled up, he goes, oh my God, horseback riding! Thought maybe we were taking a helicopter ride because you asked how much I weighed. I was like, would that have been cooler?

He wished. He wished.

So we went, and you know, I thought it was going to be really fun because I like being scared, and I'm scared on horses.

Yeah, there's—

yep, they scare me. I've had some bad experiences.

They're majestic animals, but they are— they have minds of their own. They're in charge. Yeah, actually, this is good for you. You're like relinquishing— this other thing is more powerful than me.

Yeah, it's like immersion therapy of some kind. But of course, we start doing this trail ride through the state park, and it's beautiful, um, but little hints are coming out right away. It's like, how old are everyone's Horse is— oh, turns out mine's 25, right? And they're like, oh, that's about as old as they get. Oh, they said he probably should have been retired. Like, now they— now they start saying like maybe they should— he's past his prime and he should have already been retired. And I'm like, if they lived at 25 and mine's 25, that's like, uh, that's the equivalent of being 100.

Okay, he's, he's a grampy.

Yes, he doesn't want to be out there.

Uh-oh.

Okay, so he likes to follow the leader's horse right with his face on the horse's asshole.

Do you think he had a little bit of dementia? Just a touch of it. He has something on.

He wanted to be nose to butt, but if Aaron's horse got even close to mine, he would jump and kick. And so mine was intermittently kicking and stopping and freaking out and doing more kicking. And then Aaron's was like trying to avoid getting hit by the kicks and almost hit Aaron in the face. And so I just had this complete uneasiness for an hour and a half. Yeah, like, when's my horse gonna really do something wild?

Yeah. And then were you able to laugh, or were you like, I want this to be done now.

Oh boy, both, maybe both. Yeah. And then another, like, there it was a little muddy and slippery, so the horses were slipping a bit. And then, and then one of the, the gals said, uh, oh yeah, these horses have been clumsy all day. So I was like, this too old, should have been retired, they've been clumsy all day. I just kept thinking, like, we keep— kept getting more and more hints that it was gonna go terribly awry. Oh, and then we never rode fast where I could have maybe got in the giggles where I'd be really scared.

Oh, okay.

So it was just this, like, yeah, my least favorite part of it. I'm just having anxiety if my horse is gonna buck me off or something.

Now, did you cycle— I'm more interested in the psychology, obviously.

Yeah.

So were you like, why did I do this? And like, it was for to be funny. And like, at what point am I not gonna do this anymore for bits? Or like, what was happening in your mind?

Existential stuff.

Oh, you weren't? Okay.

Anywho, it was I mean, we started forgetting we were on a horse trip and just started— you know, you have like a guide in front and a guide in back, then the three of us.

Yeah.

And first we're doing horse talk and horse questions and state park questions, and then we're just like, no one's going to talk how we are. And then we're just doing our dumb stuff.

Okay, fun.

It was great. It was great. And then we came back and my neighbor Nate had made this incredible smoked feast for for us, uh, pork butt smoked and 2 racks of ribs that were impossible.

It's good because you didn't have ribs the night before.

That's right, kind of a blessing, really.

Yeah.

So then Nate came over, and then the 4 of us had dinner, and, uh, we stayed up, and then we watched some more. Oh, I left one thing out. We had gone for a walk on Saturday through the neighborhood. Uh, Tyrell was in the mood for some exercise, so we took this long walk, and there was the cutest little boy. He had to have been between 10 12, and he had a little minibike, an old-fashioned minibike with a lawnmower engine and two wheels.

Yeah.

And he was ripping back and forth, and we were like cheering for him. Oh, you know, the first thing we saw him do is he pulled his— before he even knew we were watching him, he pulled his motorcycle over, got off, and moved something out of the road. And we're like, what was that? And then when we got up to the road, we saw he had— he saw a turtle in the road, and he pulled over and moved it out so it'd be safe. So we knew he was a really good boy. So we were like waving to him every time. Every time he'd drive by, he'd quickly wave and put his hand back on the gas pedal, on the throttle. So on Sunday, we got all of my motorcycles out and we were ripping around the yard, and Tyrell hadn't been on a motorcycle in 25 years, so that was hilarious. And, and then I was like, all right, let's go out in the neighborhood.

Motorized horse.

He was on a motorized horse. And we went over to the little boy's house, we went out into the neighborhood. He already had his mini bike out. He heard us in the yard, and his dad said, he heard you and got his out. And I said, oh good, well we invite— we've come over to invite him on a ride. So we went on a ride with this little boy. It was so fun. We just did a bunch of laps of the neighborhood.

That is so cute.

It was really, really sweet.

Oh my God, he probably like—

I have the cutest video I showed you. It's him pulling up and waving.

Oh, he probably— you just like made his whole, you know, probably like day, cuz you know, kids, they forget, they reset quickly. Yeah, but wow, it's really Sweet, really, really sweet.

Yeah, for 36 hours.

I can't believe he moved a little turtle out.

Yeah, he was a nice boy, had a good heart, but he liked ripping around.

Boys like—

that's what Aaron said. If we were in Milford, we would saw that kid try to catch air on it.

Exactly.

Yeah, I wonder if I could jump this turtle.

Exactly.

Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert, if you dare. And then Sunday, massages for all 3 boys. Tyrell had never had a massage in his whole life. I can't believe that.

So that's 51 years.

Yeah.

Did he enjoy it?

He loved it.

Okay, good.

Of course.

Yeah, they're the best.

Yes.

But I know, I'm like, I bet my dad— well, not I bet, I know, like, my dad's definitely never had a massage.

He's never had one.

And my mom either.

Really?

Yeah. Oh, they're so nice.

Yeah, Tyrell was saying he never wanted one because he has hair on his back. That was the whole reason. And Weekly was like, you know, almost all men have hair on their backs. I don't think it would be uniquely disgusting for the massage therapist.

Yesterday I had things I was supposed to do. I had to work, I had to edit, I had to do—

you're a busy woman.

I'm a busy lady.

Can't just be hosting the rest of your life.

Well, no, my, my brother was gone.

Oh, he left?

Yeah, they were gone. So I had like stuff— I had a whole day planned of getting— being productive, and I didn't do any of that.

Okay.

I started going through some pictures because I needed to print some pictures. I've decided, you know, currently my house doesn't have many pictures, personal pictures. There's art. I'm getting into art. That's a— we'll put a in slash bookmark in that. And I have a couple pictures in my bedroom and a couple in the guest bedroom, the guest bedrooms, but none in the living room. And I was like, you know what, I need like, if you walk in here, you don't know who lives here and you don't know who they love, you know?

Yeah.

So I, and I had, I knew I had some frames, but I didn't know where they were. They were in the garage. So I had to, you'll be interested in this, I cleaned out my garage.

Oh my God.

It was really hard. I hated it.

Yeah.

Um, but I got all my frames and I brought them up and I was like, okay, now I need to print pictures. So I went through, I was going through so many old pictures and I was bothering everyone. I was like, you know, texting everyone, do you have this picture? Do you have this picture? Do you have any pictures of this?

You're calling on others also to help.

Yes, I was. And so I was doing that. And then also, you know, the photo book I made for Ryan for Secret Turkey last year.

Yeah.

Artifact Uprising. I'll give them shout out. Amazing photo books. Oh, I hope I don't have another cough attack.

Oh God, don't leave. Um, you can cough here.

Callie is the one that introduced me to them, and she has great taste. So yeah, you know, and you can make these photo books, and they're so cool. They're not your average photo books. Uh, sorry, average photo book places. But I made, um, 3 photo books.

Ah.

One was Golden Globes.

Okay.

Second was SAG Awards, SAG Actor Awards. Third was my apartment. This one was hardest because I was like, I, I think I only want pictures in the apartment. I need to boil it down to 50 pictures.

That's the max.

I was trying to balance like pictures of the actual apartment and then some pictures of people, you know, it's a lot to think about.

Your different meals you hosted.

And we did not take enough pictures in that apartment. I was actually kind of pissed. Yeah, but again, I'm asking people— I was— I, I— not to, not to throw her under the bus, because obviously we love her the most here, but I had to ask Kristen for a picture.

Okay.

And she's just not— sometimes she's not the best at responding, so I got a little nervous because I really wanted to I wanted to get these books in, you know, in.

You wanted to get it off your plate.

I did.

Yeah.

And I asked her, I said, do you have the picture of me, you, Dax, and Anna from the Vanity Fair party?

Ah.

I knew she had it. And then she wasn't responding. And so, you know what? I checked back in and I felt bad. She's a busy lady. She's shooting a show right now.

Yeah.

I did my due diligence. I first texted Anna.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I said, do you have this picture? She didn't, um, but she was on South with Kristen, so she went to get Kristen's phone. This was going to solve my problems, you know? Yeah, but Kristen had already—

for the listener, it sounds like you're crying, but you're not crying.

I'm not crying.

I have— I'm having a cough attack. One of her cough attacks that are springing up more frequently.

I know, it's really— I don't know, I haven't— and now I guess when I'm talking, they're happening. Do you think they're psych— now I'm getting nervous— they're like psychosomatic or something?

Wasn't everything at least half.

I mean, I don't— I'm unwilling to accept this as psychosomatic, like, I— because, you know, I cancel my doctor's appointment.

Oh, okay. This— I didn't—

oh, so I had a doctor's appointment set because I've been getting sick a lot. I've been getting a lot of bugs.

Yeah.

And, you know, this is why single people don't— they die, you know. Yeah, they don't live and they die because they don't go to the doctor. Luckily I have Jess who said, I want you to go to the doctor.

Yeah, yeah.

This is too many bugs and they're lasting for too long. And I was like, okay, uh, sure, maybe next time, you know. And then, but this last bug was lasting for so long, I did make an appointment, had it scheduled, but then I got better.

That's always the case. Yeah, it's like you make the appointment or you show up at the doctor, you start feeling great.

And it was an 8 AM.

Oh yeah.

And I was like, I'm not going. So I canceled.

Okay, great.

Um, I did break the news to Jess yesterday that I didn't go, and he was mad.

Okay.

Um, and now I'm mad, I guess, because I'm— I still have— I, I thought I was better, and I have a little bit of a cough attack. But that's okay, I'm gonna edit it all out so no one's gonna even know what we're talking about.

They'll be like, what are they talking about?

Anyway, so I got the picture. She— I pestered her. I said, sorry to be a pest, but you know, sometimes you have to be pest in life. Yeah, yeah, to get what you want. Yeah, sorry to be a pest, I just really want to get this book in today. And so she sent it to me, and great, that one's sent in.

Perfect.

The SAG Award one sent in. I had asked on— I know, I was really pestering Anna a lot for those. Like, do you have any pictures of Kristen while she's on stage?

Wow.

Um, you guys, you— I got to finish this book today.

I did. She was like, what's going on?

Yeah, what's the rush?

Yeah. And then the the apartment, that was real. I, I reached out to a lot of people— Anthony, Allison, Rachel, um, Jess, Anna. But it was fun for me because I was going back through all my pictures and looking and just like, man, have we changed. Yeah, because you know what's really fun about the apartment? I moved in March of 2018. We started this show February of 2018.

Oh wow.

So it really bookmarks that time.

Yeah.

And it's really sweet to like see over the course of the past 8 years how much has changed, just us personally growing, but also just look-wise.

And also we've all been through the most, right?

You look so different.

Yeah.

But not— you don't look older, you just look different because you've changed your body so much.

I know. Do you think people think I had like reconstructive surgery?

Well, you haven't.

I can, I can confirm we haven't done that. But yeah, it's changed so much. It really— I feel like if you did a before and after, a random picture from Parenthood and now, yeah, you could make some case that I've had like some kind of a face transplant.

Rob, will you put two pictures up, one of Dax during Parenthood and one of him at the Golden Globes? Or this morning?

You're taking photos of me this morning?

I think actually I really did. It was interesting because, you know, I'm always like, why are you— you don't need to like keep working out and whatever. But I've been noticing some other people aging.

Uh-huh. You mean you shouldn't work out or I shouldn't?

You.

Oh, right, right. Okay.

Well, like, just like you're so big, you know, um, muscular, and I get worried that it's, it's causing you to have dysmorphia and, you know. But when I was going back in time and looking at these pictures, and also simultaneously I'm watching some other people in the sphere age. Yeah, I was looking at other pictures of people as I'm— yeah, as I'm—

it's all right there.

Yeah, I was like, oh wow, he does look healthy, like, and that's good. So he probably should still continue on this path. So I have to give it to you.

Oh wow, thank you. And I'll meet you halfway, which is, I think, the area where it's going to be problematic. And this was in the Hulk Doc.

Oh, okay, for the listener, we have a very beautiful picture of Dax and Kristen at the Golden Globes, and then Dax unparented. Okay, you do look younger, but you don't look old at all here.

I look completely different. I look super masculine on the left and not on the right.

You look very—

my beard came in, and since then, like, I couldn't grow a full beard back then.

You look very boyish on, on the right.

Yes. Can you—

sorry, Robert, because I know you're like doing some cool like stuff. I wonder if you can get a picture of Dax and Kristen at the Chips premiere.

Yep.

Oh wow, she's looking so good.

Just perfect.

She's doing amazing.

Yeah, started hot and ended hot.

She's just from A to Z.

And I started at a 6 and went to a 7.

No, no, No, no, no, no, no.

Yeah, I mean, a lot of it is just I was so— I was clean-shaven a lot.

Yeah, she looks the same. Um, yeah, you look— yeah, you're right, you don't have facial hair.

I look like I could sell you a car in this photo from the Chips for Me.

I don't think so.

What are you on the—

are you—

have a large family, sir? Do you— how many passengers do you carry normal?

You guys watch the Fact Check. The Fact Check has visuals now. There's so many visuals and this episode's pretty visual heavy. Yeah, so I would recommend coming and watching. And also look how fast Rob worked his magic.

Yeah, he is good on a computer. It doesn't get better.

Okay, this is actually great because, well, you can't see your eyes, you're wearing sunglasses in the one on the left. That—

let me take them off.

Take off the sunglasses and paint in my eyes, but make them look my current eyes, not eyes from chips. If I had Photoshop, I could, uh I got another one.

No, it's okay. I mean, there must be a picture of you without your sunglasses.

There is.

I found it. You're wearing sunglasses there?

Sometimes I do, yeah.

Oh, wow.

Yeah, why not?

Yeah, sure.

Jack Nicholson always did.

Yeah, I mean, they look nice.

I don't think he ever took his off outside of a movie. He's at the Lakers game indoors. He's got an interview. He's got his shades on at all the award shows. Yeah. It's kind of cool.

Oh, there we go. Very nice. Okay, this is a picture without his sunglasses on.

Yeah, I just look more like my dad now.

Wait, what's happening? Why is Chris in black and gold?

This is a golden gold.

That was the year before maybe.

Oh, that was a few years ago. This is from this year.

Okay.

Is it?

Yep. So this is from a couple months ago.

Okay.

And the one on the right is from Chip. So again, she looks the same, actually wearing complimentary outfits. I really like what's going on here.

Yeah, same dashes of green and blue.

And black and purple. Well, pretty purple. Okay. And it's the facial hair, but also, yeah, you look— it does look like your face has changed shape, but it's because of the neck, of— well, yeah, the muscles.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's weird.

It's really interesting.

Oh, but I was gonna say, watching the Hulk doc, the thing that I think could be in my future that's problematic is both the Hulk Hogan doc and the Ronnie Coleman doc, both I see these guys still lifting weights and they can't walk.

No, you can't.

But they can barely walk, right? They have a cane. He can't get up off the machines, but he's still lifting a ton of weight. And I'm like, what's going on there where it's like you're still very strong but you can't walk?

Yeah.

And you just keep lifting weights because the idea of getting smaller—

yeah, identity—

seems terrible.

Yeah.

And that's a trap I could definitely fall into.

Well, I'm glad you saw that as a cautionary tale.

Yeah. Hang out.

Um, I can still walk pretty good.

Just out of curiosity, now I want to— can you, can you show me at the Chips premiere and me at the Golden Globes? Okay, yeah. So on the left, we don't own that photo on the left. What?

We don't own that photo on the left.

There's a whammy on it, the watermark all over it.

Oh, we don't, we don't own that picture on the left, but we own the one on the right. We don't own either, but, um, yeah. Do you think I look different.

Everyone weighs pretty similar. What do you think?

I actually— I look— I mean, I look— yeah, I guess I look younger on the left.

It doesn't look like you're going to a nightclub.

I do. I'm a little naughty on the left, but I'm more— I'm, I'm smiling with my teeth.

Uh-huh.

Which is nice. Um, your eyes are very dark.

Yeah, but my eyes are pretty dark on the right.

Same thing.

I actually don't think I look that different.

No, no.

Huh. But I, I just—

you just look like 9 years younger. Yeah, younger.

But huh, interesting. I think I, I, I actually think I look better on the right. Okay, no one here wants to comment on that. That's okay, you don't have to, you don't have to. But I do think you like how you're trending.

You look great in both. I don't know that we can really say which is better, just a little different with some age.

Yeah, have my features changed?

No, I mean, if you were smiling with your teeth in the right, I think we would— it would be a better comp, right? But you've, you've said goodbye to that, right? We don't smile with teeth anymore.

There are pictures with my teeth. I, I do both, but, but are people advised not to? I mean, I don't really know the Not necessarily.

It's just like, I never figured them out.

It is supposed— I think you're just like, it's like more model-y. Yeah, or chic or whatever. It's stupid. People should smile. Whenever I'm home with my friends at home and we're taking group pictures, they always make fun of me. They always say, Monica, smile with your teeth.

Oh really?

Yes. Even in group photos?

Yes.

So it's not just a red carpet thing?

Yeah, now I'm just like used to doing it. So I, I—

that's your natural—

now it's become a little more common when there's a camera to not smile with my teeth, right? But these people who've known me my whole life are like, absolutely not, you're smiling with your teeth.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And I like it. They're keeping me grounded. Keeping me grounded. That's right. All right, should we do a little facties?

Yes.

Okay, so this is for Jack. Oh, for the people who haven't guessed or known or watched this episode, this is the one where Dax dances.

Oh yes, yes, yes, yes. So yeah, hot off the Yeah, yeah. Which may or may not be in the episode.

Yeah, we don't know. We still don't know.

We don't know. We'll see.

Um, but just reminding everyone that, uh, Jack loved it.

He's requested that I do it at the end of every episode.

So much so that he texted you as like really doubling down, please do that at the end.

Yeah, and I don't know if it's all just a big trap to embarrass me, or— but I kind of trust him. He seems like a very trustworthy guy. He had a beautiful knowledge of himself.

Yeah, I texted him that I thought You know, obviously we didn't get into this in the episode, but Jack has quite a list of ex-lovers. Yes, yes. And, um, I get it.

Sure.

Yeah, I get why. Yeah, yeah, he definitely makes you feel very seen. He connects, he makes eye contact, he's asking questions.

Um, is that Easy, guys.

It's literally that easy.

Literally that easy.

Yeah, yeah, yep, yeah.

But apparently it's not easy.

It's not easy. It's scary.

It's scary.

The boys are really scared when they're talking to a girl they like.

I know, but you guys, you can do it. You can do it.

You just ask more lions to fight. There's no more tribes to fight off.

Yeah, you're okay. The last thing you gotta do that's, uh, risk, risk-heavy, and you, you just look people in the eye. You ask questions. You do, you do need to be a little vulnerable. Yeah. Um, but he wasn't too vulnerable either. It wasn't like— we've had more.

Yes.

So, but I, I really, I understood it. He connected.

It's a duck, duck, goose. I was in my bedroom and I could overhear Tyrell getting a massage.

Uh-huh.

And this was an hour into the massage, and as I like walked through my bedroom, I could hear him in there asking her a million questions. He was still talking to her, so I'm Summer, she's incredible. And I literally thought like, oh yeah, Tyrell, whose women have always liked— yeah, um, is very engaged in just asking questions and curious.

Curious.

Yeah, yeah. And she's married and all, but I was just like, oh right, that's what— that's how people like each other.

Do you think the phrase curiosity killed the cat is the reason like all of, all of these men are confused?

No, I just think for some reason it's counterintuitive. Intuitive, but I think for some reason men don't know what to ask. Like, they think it's more complicated than it is.

Yeah. Or they— I think maybe they feel like they should have the answers, so they don't need time to like, yeah, show them. Yeah, what kind of a catch they are, right? Right.

You don't need to do that. No.

And oh, for people who are definitely going to ask, I want to cut this off at the pass. Uh, last week I think it was when I said I engaged with something, um, that a lot of people like but I didn't like, or maybe I even said I was reading something. Yeah, it is not Lena's book.

Oh, okay.

It's not Lena's book. So I, I know that's gonna—

maybe people—

I think people are gonna assume that. Okay, I am reading it, and that is not what I was talking about.

Okay, great.

All right, Topo Chico shortage.

Yeah, let's talk about it.

Let's talk. Okay, shortage is going to last through the summer of 2026. That's this summer.

Yeah.

Why is it happening? Coca-Cola conducted maintenance on the bottling factory and found geology issues in the source wells. Oh boy.

All right, that can't be great if you've bought a company and it's all dependent on one source well, but you didn't figure out if that well's—

it's geology issue. Oh. This is like ding ding ding to your peptide. Your peptide was rancid. Your, your peptide wasn't rancid that we know of, but your something in the bottle was no good. Yeah, this is weird. This happened to you twice. Remember when you had that like rancid water, flavored water, and you got a—

at the ranch?

Yeah, and you gotta, um, crazy crazy.

Honest.

And puking.

Yeah, food poisoning.

Food poisoning. Thank you.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

You got crazy food poisoning.

Yeah, but everyone else was fine. Oh, like other people had drank those and then no one else had a problem.

I thought it was in your trailer and it was like—

it was just this brand with this flavor. Anytime I had it, it made me sick. That was a one-off batch.

Oh, I thought it was—

well, I think the 3 times I, I've had it, I've gotten sick.

Oh my God, I think there's just something specific I'm allergic to. So then, then we— then it isn't food poisoning, it's you have an allergy?

I guess. I didn't hear anyone else complaining about it.

Interesting.

And there's big gaps in times when I've tried the product.

Really? You sure you tried it again? Why would you do that?

For fun. I think it was like— I think it was like, like one of the normal water companies made flavored water for in it, right? Yeah, it was those. Yeah, and one of the flavors, black cherry or something. No bueno for me.

Okay. Yeah, I mean, yeah, because it wasn't just Honest, you, you were fully growing up food poisoned. Yeah, yeah, not good. Okay, um, We Are Young release date: September 20th, 2011. That was a fact. Okay, what is the rom-com movie that mentions the Heinz slogan? It's probably what Dax said: Arthur 2: On the Rocks, the sequel to the 1981 hit starring Dudley Moore and Liza Minnelli. The film references the famous marketing slogan, Heinz 57, number 2 in the world, and that ain't bad. Other options: Agent Cody Banks 2, Destination London also lightly mentions Heinz, but it isn't a rom-com. Other famous ones are When Harry Met Sally, but that's just product placement.

Okay, that's standard.

What year has Jack been at Grammys with multiple Album of the Year Grammy Awards. He's been in this position 3 times. Wow, that's awesome.

Wow.

He was the first person to ever be nominated in all 3 major categories— album, record, and song of the year— whoa, for 2 different artists in the same night in 2026. The only other people who've been nominated for multiple albums and album of the year is Serbian Giniya. This feels a little bit like the Spotify list.

Okay.

Pharrell.

Sure.

And Tom Elmhurst.

Huh, I don't know Tom Elmhurst.

Me either. Years he had multiple nominations in Album of the Year category: 2020, he did not win. Um, this one is a technicality because he was not technically nominated, but he did produce the second album on the list, Norma Fucking Rockwell, Lana Del Rey. And then Arizona baby Kevin Abstract. 2024, he won with Midnights, Midnights, Taylor Swift, and Did You Know That There's a Tunnel Under Ocean Boulevard, Lana Del Rey. 2025, he did not win Tortured Poets Department, Taylor Swift, Short and Sweet, Sabrina Carpenter. I know, but they didn't win. Oh, okay. 2026, he did not win Man's Best Friend, Sabrina Carpenter, GNX, Kendrick Lamar. Man, he has some amazing albums under his belt. This is so cool.

No, he's kind of the producer of the last decade.

I know, I know, I know. It's so cool. Okay, the president of Ukraine.

This was upsetting.

Yeah. Um, Volodymyr. So it is— so it's not Vladimir.

Volodymyr.

Very close. Zelensky. Yeah, we knew that. We just—

honest mistake.

Honest mistake.

Yeah, honest mistake.

Ding ding ding. Um, okay, those are facts for Jack.

I loved him.

He was really—

I love him.

Great. Yeah, it's great. Um, I really enjoyed him too.

He's a real artist.

Yes. Yeah, he is a— that's exactly right. He's a real artist.

A real artist.

And how should I say— I probably shouldn't say it, but I think I'm gonna.

Okay.

I think being a real artist, truly, madly, deeply TLC, is a bit of a burden.

Oh, of The worst. Yeah, all of these phenomenal writers wrestle with depression, anxiety. Yeah, I think it goes hand in hand. It's a lot of willingness to sit in a room with uncomfortable emotions and convert them into something.

And like, it's a need that must be met, the need to create. Yeah, it has to be met. And in a way that's different from me, or I won't say you.

Yeah, you can say me.

Me or you, right?

Who, who are creative and have the only place I've ever felt it is just writing, where it's like there have been things I have to sit down and write, but other than that, I love it.

I love writing and have written, and I love creating things, but I don't feel like I'll die if I don't, right?

Yeah.

And there's—

I have too much fun with other people.

Yeah, I can do other— I know I can do other things in this life.

Yeah, yeah.

And not cease to exist, you But he is one of those in the category, like, he just has to. He has to do this.

This is a ding, ding, ding. I happened to read this this morning that Michael Jackson one time called the guy who was producing his album at like 3:00 AM and said, wake everyone up, get them to the studio right now. And when he was there, he explained to the musicians the reason they had to come tonight is that God sends song's down. Yeah. And if he doesn't catch it, Prince will. See, it was literally like either he's gonna catch this song right now or Prince is gonna. So he has to wake up and do it now before Prince catches it.

Yeah, it's really—

and I think he believed that.

Yeah, yeah. And now I don't— who's to say it's not true?

Every time we talk to one of these super prolific, talented songwriters, they're all describing it the same way.

Exactly.

Yeah.

Who am I to say it's the other way? Yeah.

Wow.

And I'm grateful these people who I do think in general suffer a little more and then give us these incredible things. Me too.

Me too. I have a lot of compassion for these artists because their brains are working in a much different way. And that has bad— there are bad things to that.

Yeah.

But then we get to like benefit from their genius. And we also have so many opinions about all of them, right?

It's like, yeah, well, they should behave.

Yeah, yeah, just maybe not fair. All right, well, that is it.

All right, love you, love you.