Speaker 1: Hello everyone, and welcome to another episode of Inside the
Speaker 1: Studio on iHeart Radio. My name is Jordan run Tug,
Speaker 1: but enough about me today, I'm speaking to one of
Speaker 1: the most innovative and influential groups of the nineteen eighties.
Speaker 1: Named for a quote from pioneering psychologist Arthur Yan of
Speaker 1: their stunning breakthrough, The Hurting helped bring the topic of
Speaker 1: mental health into popular music and radio hits like Mad World,
Speaker 1: Shout Sowing the Seeds of Love, and of course, the
Speaker 1: immortal MTV classic Everybody Wants to Rule the World helped
Speaker 1: inspire the sound of a host of contemporary artists, ranging
Speaker 1: from the Weekend Lord in the ninety to hip hop
Speaker 1: titans like Drake and Kanye West. The duo parted company
Speaker 1: at the dawn of the nineties, only to join forces
Speaker 1: once again for the well received two thousand three album
Speaker 1: Everybody Loves a Happy Ending. As the title suggests, this
Speaker 1: was intended to be a short lived reunion. Most of
Speaker 1: the tie up loose ends musically and give fans a
Speaker 1: sense of closure, But now, almost two decades later, they're
Speaker 1: back with the tipping point. The record had something of
Speaker 1: a difficult birth, taking shape over the course of nearly
Speaker 1: ten years. Early sessions with a crew of outside songwriters
Speaker 1: left the band so uninspired that they nearly parted company
Speaker 1: once again. But then the pair got back to basics,
Speaker 1: holding up in a room with acoustic guitars, just like
Speaker 1: they did when they first teamed up as teens. The
Speaker 1: resulting record is a stunning display of musical virtuosity and
Speaker 1: radical vulnerability, inspired in large part by the death of
Speaker 1: Roland Orzabal's wife. Occasionally dark and moody, but never Maudlin,
Speaker 1: it's a hopeful meditation on mental health, mortality, and moving on.
Speaker 1: I'm so happy to welcome rolland Orzibal and Kurt Smith,
Speaker 1: who together are Tears for Fears. In the statement for
Speaker 1: the album's release, you had words to the effective before
Speaker 1: everything went so right. First, everything had to go wrong,
Speaker 1: And I feel like that's how the best arts it
Speaker 1: a little bit of adversity. Uh. You originally working on
Speaker 1: a very different album made with a host of outside writers,
Speaker 1: basically a collection of potential singles, rather than an album
Speaker 1: that that spoke for you and your shared experience. And
Speaker 1: I think I've read that you jokingly called it UH
Speaker 1: twos for Fierce to Musical, which sums it up pretty well.
Speaker 1: How did you go from there to the tipping point
Speaker 1: which is just so deeply personal and meaningful and honest
Speaker 1: and just has such a surplus of soul. Was there
Speaker 1: a point when you know you realize you had to
Speaker 1: go in this different direction? Um? Yeah, I think so.
Speaker 1: I mean we were, as you said, we we've it
Speaker 1: felt like a collection of attempts at a single. So
Speaker 1: so the premise was, you know that we we should
Speaker 1: go and write with you know, modern songwriter hit writers
Speaker 1: produces um and try and drag us kicking and screaming
Speaker 1: into the twenty one century. Um. But the problem with
Speaker 1: that is you don't have a shared history. Um. They
Speaker 1: don't have that. The lyrical content um, and the subject
Speaker 1: matters really kind of secondary to them. Most of the time.
Speaker 1: They're looking for sort of melody lines and production more
Speaker 1: than anything else. And we didn't feel it was particularly honest,
Speaker 1: and by the end of it, well, we felt we
Speaker 1: were left it with. You know, basically, we had this
Speaker 1: finished album with twelve tracks. There were twelve attempts at
Speaker 1: a modern hit single, and it didn't have any storyline
Speaker 1: or arc or EBB and flow and really didn't tell
Speaker 1: our story. Um lyrically, it didn't have the depth, and
Speaker 1: so we kind of went back to the drawing board
Speaker 1: and went full circle and decided to sit down in
Speaker 1: my house in Los Angeles and write with two acoustic
Speaker 1: guitars and see what came from that. And this one song,
Speaker 1: the opening track of the album, No Small Thing, came
Speaker 1: and we had in in. In the sort of interim
Speaker 1: period between deciding we wanted to finish this and writing
Speaker 1: that song, we'd gone back over the old material to
Speaker 1: decide if anything there was worth keeping, and we decided
Speaker 1: we really liked five songs. The recordings were secondary. We
Speaker 1: just knew those five songs fit in with the storyline,
Speaker 1: and um, so we we set about finishing the other
Speaker 1: half of the album and No Small Thing was the
Speaker 1: first thing to come. And then it became kind of easy. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, it was it was us realizing that we
Speaker 1: really are an album band and not a single band.
Speaker 1: We've never gone in search of a hit single, never
Speaker 1: have done in our careers. We've you know, the singles
Speaker 1: we've released have only ever been singles taken from an
Speaker 1: album we have finished. So um, we went, you know,
Speaker 1: we we went at it with the viewpoint of finishing
Speaker 1: something we considered to be a good album. You mentioned
Speaker 1: those small thing It's such an incredible way to open
Speaker 1: the record. It opens with a sound that I don't
Speaker 1: traditionally associate with you, that kind of Southwestern acoustic guitar,
Speaker 1: almost like a Malty Robins song. I got kind of
Speaker 1: like al Paso vibes or something like that. It's it
Speaker 1: really sounds like that was such a great breakthrough for
Speaker 1: you when you reconnected as songwriters again. What what was
Speaker 1: that experience like for you? Slipping back into those those
Speaker 1: roles together kind of nose and those with guitars. What
Speaker 1: was that experience like for you? Was it easy to
Speaker 1: get back to that place? Yeah, I mean it was easy.
Speaker 1: I think, you know it was the comfort level was fine,
Speaker 1: and sitting down with two acoustics. We hadn't done that
Speaker 1: since the hurting, and so it was us literally going
Speaker 1: back to our roots. UM and I think you know,
Speaker 1: Roland especially felt something was going to come from that
Speaker 1: and and it did, you know, Um and Roland went
Speaker 1: away and started working on that song. He it was
Speaker 1: during just after that the writing session lockdown happened. So
Speaker 1: Roland went back to England. Um, and and then he
Speaker 1: couldn't get back to America. So then we started just
Speaker 1: sending things back and forth to each other via email,
Speaker 1: and Roland basically finished a lot of the song when
Speaker 1: he was back in England, the sort of writing aspect
Speaker 1: of what we had started. And he eventually got back
Speaker 1: to America when they let him back in the country
Speaker 1: at the end of August, and we went back into
Speaker 1: the studio in September. We were done by Christmas. So
Speaker 1: when you know what, when you know what you're doing,
Speaker 1: process becomes easier, and I think left to our own devices,
Speaker 1: and when we're both on the same page and we
Speaker 1: both know what we want and that happens to be
Speaker 1: the same thing, um, it becomes an easy process. It's
Speaker 1: when we're fighting and looking for something that the process
Speaker 1: is harder, when we don't quite know where we're going.
Speaker 1: I can't think of a better opener to me, especially
Speaker 1: with the line I've just got one more song to sing,
Speaker 1: one more story to tell. It's hard not to take
Speaker 1: that as autobiographical, knowing knowing your your background and your history. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I think so taking a way back to your
Speaker 1: your previous album two thousand four is everybody loves a
Speaker 1: happy ending. Did you have any notion that you were
Speaker 1: going to carry on making records together or was that,
Speaker 1: like the title, kind of meant to be a nice
Speaker 1: way to to wrap things up? When did you when
Speaker 1: I guess, did this process of wanting to make a
Speaker 1: new record start for you? Well? Yeah, I mean, as
Speaker 1: you said, with a happy ending, Um, it was. It
Speaker 1: seemed like a good way to finish, literally a happy
Speaker 1: ending of Kurt and I getting back together after a
Speaker 1: nine year hiatus. Um. And it was a fun record
Speaker 1: to make. It was. I relocated my family to Los Angeles.
Speaker 1: All of a sudden, we were waking up to a
Speaker 1: blue sky doing the school run under this with in
Speaker 1: this beautiful weather, drop the kids off down onto the
Speaker 1: tennis court, back into the shower, then down to the
Speaker 1: recording studio to to do. Work on this album was fun.
Speaker 1: We had a lot of fun working with chant Pettus,
Speaker 1: who is a great communicator between the two of us,
Speaker 1: a great modulator. Um. Yeah, we were very happy with
Speaker 1: the record. Um it was very different to anything I've
Speaker 1: done in the previous decade. But yeah, I mean we
Speaker 1: didn't we we went act to promote it. We had
Speaker 1: quite a bit coverage, good radio play in Britain, we
Speaker 1: did some popular TV shows in the States. But we
Speaker 1: looked at the record sales the next day and we
Speaker 1: found that people were thinking, you know, people were like, oh, well,
Speaker 1: it's Tears for Fears. We love Tears for Fears. Let's
Speaker 1: go to the record store. So they would go to
Speaker 1: the record store and then they buy a copy of
Speaker 1: the Greatest Hits record. So you're you're not you're not
Speaker 1: really shifting new product um. Following that, no, there was
Speaker 1: no plan to make another record. I sort of came
Speaker 1: back to England. The project cycle had finished and over
Speaker 1: the years, over about ye must have been about more
Speaker 1: than a decade, we just got better and better and better,
Speaker 1: and we started to get this great reputation playing live.
Speaker 1: And I mean, what is your process like for for
Speaker 1: writing these songs. Is it more of a case of
Speaker 1: almost like no small thing where you're starting with acoustic
Speaker 1: instruments and working out chord sequences and melodic parts, or
Speaker 1: do you actually start with um, getting a bunch of
Speaker 1: scynth lines together and kind of working on almost like
Speaker 1: a sonic bed and use that as the bedrock for
Speaker 1: the track and build it up brick by brick how
Speaker 1: or is it a combination of both. It's a combination
Speaker 1: of both. Of course. Around seven years on this album,
Speaker 1: we we've tried pretty much every meth writing available. We
Speaker 1: worked on about in the excess of thirty songs, so
Speaker 1: right at the end, um we could cheery pick. But
Speaker 1: it was you know, we say cometh the hour come
Speaker 1: of the songs because it was only in twenty twenty
Speaker 1: that we we stumbled across the heart and soul and
Speaker 1: guts of the record. Everything that came before it was
Speaker 1: just leading up to that moment and listening back to
Speaker 1: the songs we chose when we've sequenced them, it was
Speaker 1: just an incredible experience. I mean, that's something I love
Speaker 1: about your records is that they do stand together as
Speaker 1: a whole and tell a story which I feel like
Speaker 1: it's a lost art. I mean that's a degree of
Speaker 1: care and a skill that I think that we've we've
Speaker 1: lost in recent years. Uh. In your words, what is
Speaker 1: the story of the tipping point? Is there a way
Speaker 1: to that? You know that that that you sum it
Speaker 1: up amongst yourselves, Well, I mean, so much had gone
Speaker 1: on in the world, um, and then you know our
Speaker 1: personal lives over the previous bunch of years. You know,
Speaker 1: obviously our specifically site Roland's wife passing away during that time.
Speaker 1: Obviously that was a big bit, had a big effect
Speaker 1: on us, Roland in particular, and UM, So obviously there
Speaker 1: are songs there about that. UM. But also on top
Speaker 1: of that, you know, we've gone through political upheaval worldwide,
Speaker 1: the rise of the right wing worldwide, four years of
Speaker 1: Donald Trump in America, the Me Too movement, the Black
Speaker 1: Lives Matter movement, the climate climate crisis, the start of
Speaker 1: the pandemic, So there was a lot of subject matter. UM,
Speaker 1: and now they're certainly we weren't, you know, stuck for
Speaker 1: things to write about. And I think all of that
Speaker 1: is included in parts on the album, some more obvious
Speaker 1: than others. But but I feel the overall sense of
Speaker 1: the album is one of of of of hope, you know,
Speaker 1: that there's life at the end of the tunnel. UM.
Speaker 1: We didn't want it. Our intention was not to make
Speaker 1: this sort of modeling record that was kind of depressing. UM.
Speaker 1: You know, I think that especially tracks like Rivers of
Speaker 1: Mercy on the album, UM, which really does sort of
Speaker 1: talk about redemption more than anything else. You know um
Speaker 1: and I think that the redemption and hope probably a
Speaker 1: two themes going through the album that that you know,
Speaker 1: our answers to all those other things that we talk about,
Speaker 1: you know, without getting into too much depth on every track,
Speaker 1: I definitely feel positive by the time I finished it. Oh.
Speaker 1: I second, I mean, Rivers of Mercy is an amazing track,
Speaker 1: as I feel like it does such an amazing job
Speaker 1: of juxtaposing the the upheaval in the streets at the
Speaker 1: same time when we were kind of in an enforced
Speaker 1: imprisonment for lack of a better word, in our homes
Speaker 1: do to the pandemic, and I feel like that that
Speaker 1: strange kind of push pull that's going on internally and globally,
Speaker 1: really you feel that in that track, and especially coming
Speaker 1: right after the track My Demons, which is I love
Speaker 1: the interplay between those two songs. Me My Demons is
Speaker 1: just such a monster of a song sonically and lyrically,
Speaker 1: I mean, My Demons don't get out much what a
Speaker 1: what a line, and then following with the comparative gentle
Speaker 1: sonic scope of Rivers of Mercy. I love the interplay
Speaker 1: between those two songs. In particular for me, that was
Speaker 1: really such a key moment in the album that that bend. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think that's um, imprisonment is a good word. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's I think that's kind of what was happening. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was. It was very strange. Um, that's for rivers
Speaker 1: of Moosey. We ended up writing songs of the band
Speaker 1: instead of writing songs with all these strangers and people
Speaker 1: play as he has been with us for you know,
Speaker 1: for a long time, and Sharton Pettus presented us with
Speaker 1: this backing track which was so calm, beautiful and serene
Speaker 1: and had a sense of longing within it, and as
Speaker 1: it was so beautiful to put a liraing melody too. Yes,
Speaker 1: this was the time of Lockdown number one in Britain
Speaker 1: and it coincided with the most incredible Mediterranean weather here.
Speaker 1: So here I am in the West Country. Plenty big enough,
Speaker 1: plenty enough space, you know, three acres, tennis court, recording studio,
Speaker 1: all kinds of things, not much of a prison, or
Speaker 1: a rather an elegant prison, shall we say. And feeling
Speaker 1: this well, you know, this forced imprisonment, as you say,
Speaker 1: that felt like freedom at the same time. And you
Speaker 1: went out to the supermarket and there are security guards
Speaker 1: but and then it was it was a very calm
Speaker 1: and peaceful time. But when you turn if you put
Speaker 1: on your computer, you turned on the news, you're looking
Speaker 1: at all this rage contrast between the peace you can
Speaker 1: feel inside and the information you're gleaning literally from thousands
Speaker 1: and thousands of miles away. That is the zeitgeist. It's
Speaker 1: not reflecting your inner state. So that's what that song's about.
Speaker 1: And you're right, we come out of my demons. They
Speaker 1: don't get out that much, especially especially lockdown um. But
Speaker 1: it's just this. We start with the sounds of the
Speaker 1: of the riots and sirens, and then we we sink
Speaker 1: into this incredible feeling. It's almost like you are letting
Speaker 1: yourself go, and you're letting yourself fall back into the ocean,
Speaker 1: into the supportive waters, into the waters of redemption. And
Speaker 1: it's almost suggesting that really the only way acts of
Speaker 1: rage violence, some of it of course is understandably justified,
Speaker 1: but the way forward is to find a place and
Speaker 1: this might sound a bit hippie dippy, a finer place
Speaker 1: of food gifts, because that's literally the only way you
Speaker 1: are going to cleanse yourself. I think that's well said.
Speaker 1: I mean, there's there's It's been commented on throughout your work,
Speaker 1: throughout your history, but on this particular album, in particularly
Speaker 1: the appearance of of of ghosts and specters that you know,
Speaker 1: we we we sort of try to keep it bare.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's there on the tipping point and in
Speaker 1: a sense on my demons as well. Is making music
Speaker 1: a kind of exorcism for you? I think it's a
Speaker 1: way of acknowledging those ghosts, um acknowledging how important people
Speaker 1: who are no longer here are. For instance, the title track,
Speaker 1: it's a love song, but it's a love song for
Speaker 1: someone you've lost, and that love it never goes. It's
Speaker 1: locked in with your memory of them, and that in
Speaker 1: itself is a beautiful thing, but yeah, it goes. It's
Speaker 1: a symbol we use, we have used all a lot
Speaker 1: in the past. I mean, thank you for sharing that
Speaker 1: with me right now. And on on the songs. I mean,
Speaker 1: there are so many moments on this album, I mean
Speaker 1: the title track and please be happy among them that
Speaker 1: that do come from from this this very personal tragedy
Speaker 1: and and trauma and darkness, and and for that, I mean,
Speaker 1: as a person, I apologize, and I'm sending you my
Speaker 1: Best Wishes? Was there a concern about putting these moments
Speaker 1: on the album, knowing that you would have to revisit
Speaker 1: them on stage and you know, doing press for this
Speaker 1: or what there had almost seemed almost disingenuous as artists
Speaker 1: to think, well, it's silly that this is what I'm
Speaker 1: dealing with right now, to pretend it's not happening. I
Speaker 1: write about something else is not who I am. How
Speaker 1: did you kind of strike that balance? Was it? Was
Speaker 1: it a concern for you to put these out there?
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't think it's ever a concern. You know.
Speaker 1: Our concern initially really was that it didn't have the depth,
Speaker 1: but it didn't have the meaning, and it didn't have
Speaker 1: talk about subjects that were dear to us. You know.
Speaker 1: I think that the best use of music for us
Speaker 1: normally is to put these feelings into some sense of order,
Speaker 1: you know. And you know I've said before that you
Speaker 1: know a lot of the time when you're in these
Speaker 1: moments of crisis or trying to work out what is
Speaker 1: going on in the world or things externally, um, your
Speaker 1: mind tends to go on this eternal kind of loop
Speaker 1: of doom, you know. And the way we tend to
Speaker 1: work it out, is to put it into so on
Speaker 1: and somehow compartmentalize it, makes sense of it. And you know,
Speaker 1: a lot of the songs, I would say most of
Speaker 1: the songs in this album are an attempt by us
Speaker 1: to make some sense out of things that are going on.
Speaker 1: So in that sense, it's quite cathartic and and therapeutic
Speaker 1: for us, Um And consequently you end up with an
Speaker 1: album that has far more depth and far more meaning
Speaker 1: to you personally, and I think to an audience, because
Speaker 1: I'm sure a lot of people who listen to our
Speaker 1: music are going through the same things and have the
Speaker 1: same emotions. And you know, especially with you know, the
Speaker 1: loss of someone in the sense of as you mentioned,
Speaker 1: tipping point and please be happy the loss of Caroline Um.
Speaker 1: You know, you're looking at the TV and you see
Speaker 1: images and hospitals, you know, during the pandemic where people
Speaker 1: all across the world are losing people. So in that sense,
Speaker 1: it becomes more of a global thing than a person.
Speaker 1: It's it's interesting to view this record against your your
Speaker 1: first the hurting. I see them as as linked in
Speaker 1: a certain way, almost as uh, you know, inverses or
Speaker 1: mirrored image images of each other or something like that.
Speaker 1: At least I see them certain similarities there. There are
Speaker 1: definitely similarities. I think the difference is that the hurting
Speaker 1: was you know, they're both a little angst written, but
Speaker 1: on this album, I think we're making sense of what's
Speaker 1: going on, whereas I'm there, I think we're more railing
Speaker 1: against what is going on. We're angry at what's going on.
Speaker 1: And this one comes from a or at least leaves
Speaker 1: you with a far calmer feeling and a sense that
Speaker 1: you know will work it out at some point. It's
Speaker 1: just interesting for me to think of how you started
Speaker 1: out pre Tears for Fears in the group you were in,
Speaker 1: and then even as teens playing you know, Bloister Call
Speaker 1: and led Zeppelin and original songs that were done in
Speaker 1: that similar style. Was there a lightbulb moment for you
Speaker 1: in terms of realizing that you could that would lead
Speaker 1: you towards new kinds of songs that you could write
Speaker 1: that would help you, uh process emotions, I guess in
Speaker 1: a way and use music almost like as a as
Speaker 1: a tool as opposed to you know, kind of these
Speaker 1: more I don't want to say, you know, rock centric,
Speaker 1: but you know something with maybe a little more depth
Speaker 1: was there, whether people were there, either other artists or
Speaker 1: people like Arthur Yanoff that, Um, it's kind of lead
Speaker 1: you into realizing that music could have this whole other
Speaker 1: layer inside the electronic music. So all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: the two became a viable proposition because of the gene,
Speaker 1: because of the tape machine, and we quickly adopted this
Speaker 1: style and found we were very good at it. And
Speaker 1: what was great is we could we could completely as
Speaker 1: your ring and express the emotions of for the first time,
Speaker 1: which we weren't really doing any before that writing personal songs. Um,
Speaker 1: you know about what was going on inside us. But
Speaker 1: it was the combination of that with these crazy electronic
Speaker 1: arrangements that made the whole thing something something very special.
Speaker 1: And it was our emotional honesty of early tears for
Speaker 1: Fears that kind of separated us from a lot of
Speaker 1: the what we would call utopian synthesizer groups like Human League.
Speaker 1: Um synthesizer groups could who would only play a keyboard
Speaker 1: with one finger. It was a kind of little bit
Speaker 1: punk we were. We were actually guitarists, and so we
Speaker 1: were kind of approaching It would also be in the
Speaker 1: orchestra at school, had been in the choir, and we
Speaker 1: were approaching the arrangements in a completely different way. Yeah, man,
Speaker 1: I think also that combined with you know, at the
Speaker 1: time when we left graduate obviously you know, we we
Speaker 1: had decided that we wanted, you know, songs to have
Speaker 1: more meaning, We wanted to talk about personal emotions, personal trauma.
Speaker 1: But also we around that time there were albums by
Speaker 1: Peter Gabral's Third of one I would side, um Talking
Speaker 1: Heads remain in like David Bowie Scary Monsters, that really
Speaker 1: took production to a different level. So not only were
Speaker 1: we deciding to write songs that had more far more
Speaker 1: meaning and more and more personal meaning lyrically, but we
Speaker 1: were getting into recording. The band we were with before
Speaker 1: really had no interest in recording. I mean they we
Speaker 1: were literally when in the studio and played live and
Speaker 1: recorded it and that was that. Um, you might as
Speaker 1: well just stuck a mic up in the middle of
Speaker 1: the room of the room. But we actually became interested
Speaker 1: in production and how these albums sounded so big, How
Speaker 1: was that possible? Um, So we actually got far more
Speaker 1: interested in studio work, which the other people in the
Speaker 1: band that we were in at the time, had no
Speaker 1: interesting studio work. I'm curious about your your home setups now,
Speaker 1: I mean rolling in particular. I had fantasies of you
Speaker 1: having the Santa's Grotto of you know, vintage since d
Speaker 1: X sevens and Profit fives and Lynn drums, and then
Speaker 1: I think I've read interview recently that apparently this is
Speaker 1: not the case anymore. But what are they? What are
Speaker 1: your your home setups? Like, yeah, I had this, I
Speaker 1: had this life laundry back in about to fans and seven.
Speaker 1: Um My, when I went through l A to do
Speaker 1: happy Ending, my studio, which was full of electronics was
Speaker 1: left to go sort of MAULDI for about a couple
Speaker 1: of years, and I came back and nothing really was working.
Speaker 1: So yes, at one point I kind of virtually had
Speaker 1: the history of the electronic keyboard. And then when my
Speaker 1: wife and I, my late wife designed did that we
Speaker 1: were going to turn the recording studio into a guest accommodation.
Speaker 1: The builders came in and they literally stood me there.
Speaker 1: They pulled out keyboard by keyboard and said you want
Speaker 1: to keep it? You want to keep it? Uh no,
Speaker 1: and don't want to get working. So I gave away
Speaker 1: or I sold at times, you know, all kinds of
Speaker 1: things from PPG way to point to two profit fives
Speaker 1: to rolland Jupiter eights to all kinds of rack communts
Speaker 1: that I've used for decades, and now I've got them
Speaker 1: all all on a laptop. There's more power in a
Speaker 1: laptop nowadays than the entire SSL studio that I had
Speaker 1: with a computer that was taller than me, you know,
Speaker 1: not that I'm very tall, but it was still still sizable.
Speaker 1: I just have Indiana Jones voice in my head saying
Speaker 1: it belongs in a museum. But I guess if I guess,
Speaker 1: it makes sense too. I mean that, do you um,
Speaker 1: is there anything that you miss about, you know, recording
Speaker 1: to tape and sort of the more hands on analog
Speaker 1: recording experience. Analog tends to be warmer more than anything else,
Speaker 1: you know. I mean, this is why I think that
Speaker 1: for us it was I mean, you know the reason,
Speaker 1: I mean, we would love to have released this album
Speaker 1: last year, but the prime reason it wasn't was because
Speaker 1: we had to wait for vinyl. You know, trying to
Speaker 1: get vinyl pressed is pretty difficult these days, and and
Speaker 1: the vinyl issue of the record was very important to us, so, um, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean that there's a certain warmth to analog recordings
Speaker 1: that you miss, but there is a convenience to digital
Speaker 1: recording that makes life a little bit easier when you're
Speaker 1: in the studio. You haven't you don't have to be
Speaker 1: so micro focused on every tiny little mistake because you
Speaker 1: can easily correct them. There. You know, you're not splicing
Speaker 1: tape anymore. You have the razor blade. And yeah, getting
Speaker 1: back it's a little bit of what you were saying
Speaker 1: earlier about um, your lyrical themes. I mean, you were
Speaker 1: so instrumental in helping tape the conversation around mental health
Speaker 1: into popular mu usic and and normalizing it and paving
Speaker 1: the way for so many artists. I mean, one that
Speaker 1: comes to mind off the bat is the is the
Speaker 1: rapper Logic who had a huge hit not too long
Speaker 1: ago that was titled after the number of the National
Speaker 1: Suicide Prevention hotline and and made a huge difference in
Speaker 1: I think they said that there was a spike in
Speaker 1: calls to that hotline, some exponential number as soon as
Speaker 1: that that song was released, And I think a lot
Speaker 1: of that, you know, starting that conversation and popular music
Speaker 1: can be drawn right to you. I mean, how do
Speaker 1: you feel, uh, you know, the shift going from something
Speaker 1: like suffer the children to today and being being a
Speaker 1: part of that change in conversation and normalizing that, well,
Speaker 1: I still think it's it's still a difficult area. There's
Speaker 1: no doubt on it. It's still I mean, it's not
Speaker 1: as to do. In fact, yesterday I did a whole
Speaker 1: our podcasts purely about mental health, not bad music. If
Speaker 1: you can give someone a sense that they're not alone
Speaker 1: in their states, in their desperation, then you know, that's
Speaker 1: the good things. The least you can do. Music in
Speaker 1: that sense of plays an enormous part. I mean I
Speaker 1: remember some of the you know, some of the letters
Speaker 1: we got from from people after the hurting, and they
Speaker 1: were heartbreaking. Yeah, I mean we still get people stopping
Speaker 1: us now saying you know that the hurting helped me
Speaker 1: through my college years, which is incredibly gratifying. Um, you know,
Speaker 1: it means that you've done something that had some depth
Speaker 1: and some use. But I think you know the word
Speaker 1: you use, which is, you know, something that's used a
Speaker 1: lot when you're bringing up children as well, and if
Speaker 1: you talk to psychologists, is normalizing it that's the thing
Speaker 1: you know there and we still do it as as
Speaker 1: adults where we think, you know, something is completely abnormal
Speaker 1: when there are you know, thous if not millions of
Speaker 1: people going through the same thing. Um, but the first
Speaker 1: thing you're you know, you do as a parent when
Speaker 1: your child has anxiety or any issues is too normally
Speaker 1: normalize those issues, to let them know it's not abnormal.
Speaker 1: And that's their safety net, you know, is the that
Speaker 1: that knowing that what they're feeling is not abnormal. So
Speaker 1: then and it doesn't become then a panic and it
Speaker 1: doesn't get out of control. So um yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: I think, you know, treating ourselves like we treat our
Speaker 1: children would become would be useful at times. Absolutely. I
Speaker 1: think that's a beautiful answer. And in a wonderful note
Speaker 1: to end on, Kurt Rowland, thank you so much for
Speaker 1: your music and your time today. It's meant the world
Speaker 1: to me for so many years. It's such an honor
Speaker 1: to talk to you. Thank you so much. You're very welcome.
Speaker 1: We hope you enjoyed this episode of Inside the Studio,
Speaker 1: a production of I Heart Radio. For more episodes of
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