Blue Lights Drum And Bass Remix

[Lashawna Vorhees]

Id like to play a song for you now that comes with an admission. This is probably back in 2005. I liked a girl a lot, and so I gave the girl my number, and I didn't get her number. And every day that went by, I was optimistic-slash-masochistic enough to believe that this was gonna be the day that she'd write. Because obviously you'd wait five. You'd wait five! And then it became six, I'd go: I get it, you wait six.

The call never came, but I bonded with this song as I lay heartbroken on the floor. It's Imogen Heap, "Say Goodnight and Go." It is such a beautiful, sexy song about desire. It's probably the crushiest song that's out there that I can think of.

The year is 2000, and back then they had loop CDs. This is well before you could just use Logic or Protools or anything on your computer to make records. There was just CDs of loops. And i found this one loop, and it was just [imitates simple drum pattern]. And I put it into the computer, and I played guitar over it.

I'm talking about a song called "Your Body is a Wonderland," that began for me as sort of like this R&B idea of a song. Now, here's where it gets really interesting. Whether or not you think that song is genetically high-quality, or genetically cool, everyone that I would go on to play that demo for would just melt. Check it out, it's "Your Body Is A Wonderland" on Sirius XM.

One thing you learn as you start to dig into music of the past is that it's just impossible for any one artist to have every one of their albums be received relative to how great they are. No one is spared. Not even Paul McCartney, who released a record after his time with the Beatles called Ram. And only now is it getting the recognition that it so richly deserves. I discovered it some years back while I was making Paradise Valley. And I'm gonna play for you a song that just blows me away because it's so sweet, and it's unique, and it's interestingly recorded! What a touch. What an unbelievable touch. [Plays "Ram On"]

A giant influence on my songwriting is Ben Folds, and especially Ben Folds Five. I was attending Boston's Berklee College of Music in the late 90s, and was so happy to be listening to pop music with this kind of musicality. Because I was highly musically in-depth when I was at Berklee College of Music. And to have pop music introduce me to as much harmonic complexity as some of the other music I was learning, that was awesome to have both sides of the brain working at the same time. And perhaps I have a band like Ben Folds Five to thank for the music that I went on to write. I always hear a little bit of Ben Folds Five in No Such Thing, my first single on my first album.

In October of 2010, I went into Electric Lady Studios in New York City for what would end up being a record called Born and Raised. And I remember being in Studio C up on the third floor, and I had a harmonica. And something about this cadence of playing the harmonica that I had sounded to me like the words: "born and raised."

And I was just in some mode where, I couldn't not write every day. And a song like this really began as the sort of DNA contributor to the entire album. There's always a song you write that stands up as the captain of the rest of the songs that you will write for an album. And the rest of Born and Raised was driven by the DNA of this song. And... glad that I went straight into the studio to work out whatever I had in my head and my heart.

How lucky was I to be ingesting all of this great music in the world as I was a kid? I have the music of Billy Joel and so many others to thank for my career. This is such a fun song. It doesn't sound like any other song from the 80s. It's a love letter to doo-wop, maybe in the way that my album Sob Rock is a love letter to the late 80s. It wasn't until recently that I realized that artists like to go backwards and pay homage to the music that influenced them. And I think Billy Joel did that in the case of this song, "Uptown Girl."

I remember every place I was when I got knocked out by a song. The year was 1997. I was going to school in Boston at Berklee College of Music. And I was at an Urban Outfitters and I heard this song by Bjrk and it knocked me out.

Now, back then, there was no Shazam. You had to ask the Urban Outfitters sales associate, hey, what's that? Hey, that's "Joga" by Bjrk. To this day it still does the same thing it did to me the first time I ever heard it. Let it happen to you.

[Jeff Buckley] had a song called "Your Flesh is So Nice." I was very moved by the sort of fluorescently-lit utilitarian alien kind of direct language of that. And that, in some way, inspired me to write "Your Body is a Wonderland."

Paul McCartney is the king of melodies. That's all there is to it. Hearing his melodic ideas, I don't know how you do it. I mean, it's easy to reverse[-engineer] a lot of people's songwriting. You can reverse-engineer. At its best, you go, "cool." But the greatest to do it, you can't really quite reverse-engineer what would have made someone think the thoughts they thought to create those melodies. [Plays "Listen to What the Man Said" by Wings]

When you think Coldplay, you generally think big, anthemic, massive songs. Massive great songs. What I find so lovely is that they released a song fairly recently, within the last three albums, called "Magic." And it's really minimal and sparse and cool. And I'm gonna play it for you right now. You might not even have known it was Coldplay, because it's just not in their normal sort of language. But that's why I like it. I like the music that doesn't totally fit in the "This Is" category of a band. It's called "Magic," it's Coldplay, it's cool.

There was a little bit of "Your Body is a Wonderland" that helped me write "I Don't Trust Myself With Loving You." Because as I began once again to write a sort of sexy, slow R&B-style ballad, I thought: I cannot do this again and go into the "here are the ways in which I want to love on you" lyrics. And so I decided I would do the exact opposite, and that I would actually tell you why you should probably go elsewhere. I would later go on to sort of do exactly that! If nothing else, I'm a prophet of my own behavior. Let's look at this song, "I Don't Trust Myself With Loving You."

Gravity is one of those songs I thought was just neat. I had written it in one night. And when I came home I thought, well, that's a nice one to have in the quiver. It grew overnight in my head and in my heart. And by the second day, I'd listened back for maybe the tenth time and went, "oh." It's like it had blossomed in front of me, as to what it really was. I'm very proud of the song. It's one of those ones that's gonna go with me through the rest of my life, and I'm happy it's in the sidecar going along with me. It's Gravity, check it out.

The year is 1996. I'm working at a Coconut Music, that was a record store in my town of Fairfield, CT. And there was this incredibly precise, short, pristine song that came out called "Roll To Me" by Del Amitri. They were ahead of their time. I think the song's like two minutes and, like, ten seconds. So enjoy the next two minutes and however many seconds and listen to a perfect pop confection. It's "Roll To Me," by Del Amitri.

The year is 2008. I was in a relationship that I was so desperate to make work. And I love desperate heartbroken thinking. Just some of the most twisted logic in the world. Maybe, I thought to myself, if we don't talk, we'll never collide. We'll never have these collisions and these misunderstandings if we just never talk. And this song, Edge of Desire, began as a demo called Words. And the key idea was: don't say a word, just come over and lie here. This is Edge of Desire.

You know, there aren't many modern songs that put a lump in my throat. Maren Morris has a song called "To Hell and Back," and it is just as powerful as a song could ever get. I think Maren's great, I think this song is great, and I think we should both listen to it.

Occasionally I will hear a new song that is so good that I can't believe it is not more popular than it is. And it makes me want to say something, and I do. I say it in my head all the time. And I say it to the record companies in my head. I don't say it out loud. I won't even say it out loud right now, cause it's in my head. But what I say is: do your job! Do your job! Listen to this song! Is your only job as a record company to just enter your artist into the TikTok roulette game?! Do your job! Listen to this song, people! It's Annika Bennett, "Madwoman," and it is as good as any pop song has ever been. And I'm proud to play it for you. Do your job. LIFE With John Mayer. Do your job.

You know, I think everyone has that one album where their musicality intersects with the happiness in their life. Sort of attaining the first feeling of control of happiness in their life. For me, that's an album called Continuum.

I remember the making of the album as much as I remember the music on the album. And I was only interested in making the music that moved me the most. And at that time, it was soul music. It was R&B music. In fact, I was listening to [Smokey Robinson's channel] Soul Town on Sirius XM every day on the way to work.

What I'm most proud of is that I didn't walk into the studio to try to cover anything, or say, "I want a song like this Ray Charles song." I just brought the feeling of that music in with me, and created something that I think was pretty new, and was married with blues music and pop music.

You know I love Blue Nile if you listen to LIFE With John Mayer long enough. This is "Tinseltown in the Rain." For our muso friends, this record [1984's "A Walk Across the Rooftops"] was actually a sort of prototypical test of the Linn drum. So most of the drums on this record are Roger Linn's Linn drum, which would go on to be just absolutely fundamental in the creation of '80s music. Prince is famous for just being an artiste with a Linn drum. The record is so clean, it is like a sushi meal when it comes to the cleanness of the tracks, and the use of negative space. It's just gorgeous. I can't recommend The Blue Nile enough. Check it out.

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