It was sort of cult like. Honestly, when I was in the middle of it, I was absolutely deranged.
As regular listeners will know, midnight chats can be about anything, which is good. Because tonight's episode is about demonic chihuahua's, the joys of humping the wall, and the enduring appeal of Alanis Morrissette. That's the kind of entertaining pick and mix of a conversation that you only get with a guest like Mike Hadrias, better known as Perfume Genius. I'm Greg by the way, good evening, Thank you for joining me. Welcome. The chat that you're about to hear is pretty fresh.
Recorded last week, so mid November twenty twenty, Mike was at home in Los Angeles, California. I was envious of the warm sunshine streaming in through his apartment window while we chatted. His dog, Wander was playing with her favorite chew toy in the background. Lots to get into, not least some conversation about the release of Perfume Genius's fifth album, the gloriously titled Set My Heart on Fire Immediately, which
came out back in May. A strange time might admit to release a record a couple of months into the COVID nineteen pandemic and quarantine and all the rest of it. We get a bit into that, but recently he's been trying to make the best of the situation, coming up with some imaginative solutions for his live performances on some of the huge US late night talk shows. We also chat a bit about the dance project he was involved with last year. If you don't catch that in the conversation,
it was called the Sun Still Burns Here. Also, it's been ten years since his debut album Learning, so some reflections on that and his favorite place where his music has been used in a movie soundtrack, because it has been loads and there's a certain drama to perfume genius stuff that just seems to lend itself to that kind
of thing. So naturally, as always, I've put some links to the stuff we reference in the episode descript that will be below wherever you're listening to this, and it includes the thread about the one eyed dog, and that will make sense in a minute. Just finally, this is the penultimate episode of the run of Midnight Chats. I'll be back next week with the final one of series ten. All our guests have been great this time round, but we've got a really good one lined up for we
take a break for Christmas. So as always, if you are a first time listener, or maybe you've been tuning in for ages, please do rate the podcast, leave a review, or tell a friend. It all helps spread the word. But until then, this is episode one hundred and two of Midnight Chats in the Great Company of Perfume Genius. Can I start by asking you about chuahwas, because we've all had a tough year and you've got to take
the sort of smiles where you can get them. On the other day, on Twitter, you asked your followers to send you photos of their Chiuawa dogs and you'd pair them with the song. People were sending you all sorts of amazing photos of dogs and you were pairing them with Elliott Smith songs and something I.
Know I loved. Because there are so many, there's so many submissions, I couldn't get to.
All of them who knew that you were.
I felt also felt bad too, because people that were sending me like chiuaua memes were much easier for me to pair with the song than just sort of like a canted shot of somebody's small dog, just like on a couch. So I had to like really investigate, like I don't know the things around the chihuahua, and then like try to like look in its eyes and see if they could glean any sort of vibe from it
for the song. But if they send me like a chiuaha with a knife, like I'm it's pretty easy for me to figure out which song or which genre.
Maybe, I mean, who knew that chiuaas could come in such varieties as well?
Did you?
Did you have any I knew that? Did you? Did you are? You're kind of quite familiar with the all the different kinds of chiuaha.
Yeah, for sure for an apple head chiuaha. Like, I don't judge any chihuahas, he love them all, but I do prefer an apple head. That's just I had shape. Yeah, I like that shape of hed.
There was one there was a chihuahua with one eye, and you said that you paid it with a Robert Wyatt song. I think.
That might have been my favorite. Yeah, I was wondering if anybody could feel that like connection to me. Wait, he doesn't he has two eyes, doesn't he?
Oh? I thought I thought it was a one eyed chiuaa. I could be wrong. I could be wrong, you.
Know, it does er Wyatt had to im sorry, I think so we can edit it out if if it's yeah, exactly, I don't want to wish you.
Yeah exactly.
I'm pretty sure he has too. But it was that wasn't the connector.
But yeah, what else was on there? There was some some particularly angry looking chu hours on there, and some ones with sort of like demonic looking eyes as well.
I noticed there was a lot of like red eyed chiuhahas chiuaas with syringes and knives, and yeah, I mean that's why I like them though, because they're sort of deranged in whatever direction they're going, whether they're like joyful or satanic. It's like it's this specific kind of chaotic wildness to it and abandoned. That's why they're so like savage, you know, but they're also very sweet. Do you have to like those things existing in the same small thing?
Have you got a chiuaa?
I do? Yeah? What's your ord to you? Oh?
In a sunny spot? Brilliant for Wanda wonder, fantastic for listeners. Mike's Mike's Jiuawa is looking very comfortable on the on the floor in a in a beautiful sunny spot in the morning in Los Angeles, living the life. To be honest, I think that looks like a good.
Yeah, for sure. Honestly though, I feel like it's a it's like a coded message to me because I'm supposed to take her out for a walk. So she's just in the light of like the outside, you know what I mean, like trying to guilt me into how much she wants to actually be out there.
What kind of personality is one the guy?
She's not very obedient, She's needy, but not like whiny, you know what I mean. She more just like looks at you and will kind of glare at you. She doesn't like beg but she does like energetically. You know. When we got her, she was very shy, very sickly, and very kind of meek. And then over the years she got very bitchy, you know, But I love that.
I don't know, I have this whole like I'm scared of talking about her because I kind of thought about her life story and like what her story would be the other day and it was very close to mine. So I realized that I'm like fully projecting. You know. It's like, oh, you know, that's why she's like that, she just went through a lot and now she's sick of taking shit and blah blah blah. I was like, oh god, that's like exactly what how I think about myself.
So I'm asn't in talking about her at all. Sometimes I feel like I get too into it, yeah, you know, and then I feel like I'm in like an indie movie about like some I don't know, somebody talking too much about their dog and everybody's like rolling their rise or something.
So away from smooth Oaks, then how are things at the moment? What does your average day at the moment that like.
Oh god, I'm doing okay. No, I've been all over the place. You know, there's a lot going on externally. Internally there's a lot of room too for me to think. And I'm lucky enough that I can am able to stay home. But it also kind of makes me cannibalize myself in a lot of ways, Like if I don't have somewhere for my energy your brain to go, then I just sort of focus it inward in a bad way. And I'm really bad at creating good things to do.
You know, if I don't have like a routine, then I just kind of sit there and like think, sometimes that's really fun and sometimes it's really not. It's usually both of those things in equal measure. Like it's been half the day like laughing and then half the day like spinning out. So that's my routine.
Yeah. Yeah, in the UK at the moment, we're in a second total lockdown. So right, I don't know what situation there is in LA, but it's no meeting with other people that aren't in your household, et cetera, et cetera, so pretty stringent stuff. And everybody's freaking out about Christmas because they're you know, they don't know whether they can go and meet their families for Christmas and things like that. So it does feel like a moment where of real
sort of high anxiety for people. It's that space where the space of the unknown where you just don't know what's going on. So it is Difficultyeah, it is difficult. Is there anything that you kind of still manage to do day to day that helps? As in you know, do you still you mentioned there that not having a routine can be difficult. Do you still manage to kind of do and things every day you guys for a walk or anything like that that just keeps you so grounded?
I do. I mean I exercise pretty regularly, which is very new for me. That's only the last couple well maybe even just one year that I've been doing that, And the only reason that it's become a habit is because it truly makes me feel better, you know what I mean. Like I've always thought that I'd be motivated about vanity or just wanting to like get in shape for some to look better anything, But that's never motivated
me at all. But once I started exercising and feeling like more, I don't know, it almost like gives me more access to to myself, to my body, to being present in a way, or I don't know, it just sort of smooths it gives you access to my more access to my life, and then also smooths it a little bit. It just sort of like it's almost like anti inflammatory for the spirit. So I tried to do that,
but it's so counterintuitive a lot. You know, like if you're feeling down, it does not feel like the thing that you are supposed to do to get up, but after you like do it enough and realize that it actually works, like it's a little better. It's very strange. I feel like I'm just old, and so I have a long history of like depressive time periods, and then I have some history of like healthy practices and stuff, so they're just all kind of mixed together now, Like
it's not when I was younger. I feel like whenever something would happen to me, I was just fully in it, you know what, even like, oh my god, the world is, you know, everything's horrible, and I was just fully in it. And I can't. I don't really do that as much anymore because I have so much history of things getting better and or looking back on it and realizing that I had completely lost perspective, you know, Like I have a lot of history of some healthy practices now, so
they're just all kind of mixed together. It's kind of it's very chaotic because you can you end up acting from your anxiety, but knowing you're doing it. You know, like I have this like awareness of how I'm acting.
Definitely, when something like the pandemic comes along and it changes, you're forced to change your behaviors. Some of those things that are your basics that you then can't do. So, like you're talking there about exercise, same for me, like getting out and like just some of the basics of having like a decent night sleep, going for a run
each day or something like that. They seem like such simple things, but then when you can't do them, it feels like you're sort of untethered and you're suddenly just like, oh, I don't feel those are my things that I do, my sort of pillars of how I keep my mind attached. I think there's definite truth in that for sure.
While so you have to be soft on yourself when you're not doing any of those things and when you're completely giving in to whatever like immediate comforts that are probably not going to pan out very well, you know, but I don't know, just trying to be soft with yourself in general, and that like makes it more room for you to actually take care of yourself, you know, which also is counterintuitive to me because I feel like I can shame and guilt myself into doing things, but
it's never really worked.
In terms of like if you go back to the springtime, so February March, when obviously COVID nineteen sort of entered all of our lives and changed things. You were on the verge of you started releasing music from the new album, and you were almost on the sort of beginnings of the promotional trail, something that you were probably quite familiar with because obviously you released four albums before that. So yeah, did it feel like the sort of ground was shifting
beneath your feet a little bit? Because you knew what it takes to go out there and promote an album, and then suddenly it's like, I'm promoting an album in a very different time now. So what was that experience?
Like, I mean, it was wild because I kind of gear up for that whole experience. It's like a year and a half of my life, like touring, doing press, you know, like after the record is done, then the whole next year and a half is this really outward facing energy of like promoting and playing and singing and talking about it. So I kind of have to None of that ever really came naturally to me, So I had to really work, you know, and a lot of
things are second nature now. That made me uncomfortable in the beginning, but it's still this very like outward outside energy. But to do all that while very much being like inside my house and being you know, not seeing anybody in person, not seeing not playing shows. Everything's on zoom. It's supposed to be this thing that's like I'm trying to connect to other people or bring it to other people. But at the same time, I'm lucky that, you know,
it is, it's there, like the music itself is. You can listen to it, people can hear it, you know. And I made a couple of videos before I couldn't roll around on people where I rolled around on people, you know, And so I got a couple of those out before it was not allowed.
Yeah, po rolling around on people is not allowed anymore. Yeah until twenty twenty one, until there's a vaccine.
Yeah, Dolly Partner's vaccines coming out.
Yeah. That was one of the more unlikely headlines that I read recently. Dolly She's like she's a superhero, isn't she. She's always there.
Yeah. I mean, she don'tate so much of her money, and she's still super rich, and she looks amazing. She seems like she feels great, you know what I mean. But I don't know how to explain it. That is not the case for a lot of really rich famous people. Yeah, you know, they they have their they have the acting nuts, which people are crazy, they're just crazy, which people are completely insane. They have their own specific brand of it.
I mean, Elon Musk or something. Once you get to that level or Jeff Bezos or whatever, you know, you don't what do you do with that amount of money? Then you you can't help but lose your mind to a certain extent, surely.
Yeah. Well, and there's no real reason if you're not nice to care about anyone else anymore. Yeah, you know, because everything's said up for you just to kind of do and get whatever you want, So why should you look outside of that bubble? So if you're a dick, then it's just becomes this really surreal, like super villain dickness.
When you did come to release the album and we were living in lockdown times, let's just call them, that, was there any part of your mind that thought, maybe I will postpone the release of this or maybe maybe actually conversely, this is a really good time to put this out because people have a bit more time and maybe they're they might listen more intently to something, you know, I think that I've heard people speak about both experiences
during the last six months eight months. Some people saying I've turned off music, you know, I haven't, haven't listened to it at all. Other people saying it's been my total solace like music. I've listened to more music than ever before. So what were your thoughts on that?
I mean, I think I could go either way, and it's complicated. I think there are some really great elements releasing it then and some definitely some negative ones. But I mean I don't have any free of reference for it. I didn't know, and also I kind of just make it and then trust the people that I'm working with to know all that side of it, because I'm not very good at that side honestly. Like I'm good at doing interviews, but I wouldn't be able to set them up,
you know what I mean. So I don't mean I'm good at doing interviews like I'm so excellent, and I just mean like I I will do them, and I don't mind that part of my job. But I'm not like a planner or I'm not ambitious in like a business way, honestly. So I listened to the people that are taking care of that part of it, and they said that we should put it out, and I was like, okay. I mean all I did was listening to music in the beginning of Lockdown. That's all I do honestly, anyway.
Was the old stuff that was resonating with you. It's something new come out that you really loved.
I mean it's usually old stuff, honestly. But there were a couple records in the beginning of Quarantine. Alice Bowman put a record out, and I was listening to her album a lot in the beginning of Quarantine. It was very, very comforting to me. I love her voice. I love there's a lot of really familiar elements to it, and maybe we just have some of the same influences, so it's like really comforting to me. But it's also, you know, something new. I like those things existing. At the same time,
Westerman put an album out. I really liked the album. He probably thinks I'm obsessed with them because they talk about them a lot. I really, but I don't listen. Yeah, well I don't listen to I don't honestly listen to a lot of new music. So if I do like something, then then I'm going to bring it up, and a lot of times people don't know about good music, even though there's a lot of ways to find out. Yeah, or maybe I want them to like what I like. Yeah, you know what I mean, Like I like this, and
so this should be important to you. Yeah. I have a little bit of that energy for sure. Honestly wish it didn't like us to watch this movie, like forcing people to watch a movie that I think is good because they must experience it.
Yeah, I definitely do that too. I definitely do that too. You mentioned there that like normally when you'd put an album out, you'd go and do Yeah, you'd go and perform it for four people, you'd go on you'd go on tour, you'd go and do TV appearances, et cetera. And you have done some of the TV stuff. So what was the experience like of going out You went out to Joshua Tree to record a performance for the Jimmy Kimmel Live Show. What was that like? Because I
loved watching the videos. I thought they were great.
Essentially, we've've all just been home the band, We've all just been home, and then suddenly we're playing and singing. You know, we're not like in a van. We're not we don't have this like awareness of people or all the stuff that usually gears you up for a performance.
So I tried to pick venues or situations that felt like eventful so that it kind of it provided some contexts for that feeling and if it wasn't the usual thing, you know, so having this playing outside and that and the sunset and Joashua Tree and having it be kind of a destination. We all to drive a couple hours to get there, and I kind of had that feeling like we're about to do something and kind of helped
you gear up for it. And we did a live stream and I specifically picked an old theater that I thought would even if no one was there, that it would give energy, you know, like that in itself would be like helpful to the energy, not distracting, just make it feel more creepy or haunted or something that you can you can utilize.
Did you play it to an empty studio? On Fallon as well?
Which one was the foul?
And then Jimmy Fallon, maybe did you do that one?
Because oh yeah, no no, and that one that was very much just like in a venue that was empty, you know what I mean, And like I kind of liked that all the lights were on, Like I didn't try to make it look all moody, like we're playing a show and not I showed the empty theater. I showed them almost there, I think at the end. Yeah, I mean, it's still kind of novel in a way, like I can still get off on it if I'm aligning right. I'm sure I will definitely get sick of
that every single time. It's so surprising how easily I click in to just okay, like I'm singing, I'm dancing, I'm moving, I just kind of it's like in my body, and it's so satisfying. I forget how much I miss it. And I also forget that it's what I do now, you know, because I don't know. I don't have a lot of reminders. I don't have constant reminders anymore.
You've had to adapt and do new things, like you just described going and doing the Joshua Tree thing, playing to an empty TV studio Like normally you would when you put an album out, some of the things that you do would be very familiar. You'd be doing similar things each time. So is there a little part of you that has quite enjoyed having to come up with ideas to meet the challenge of what the situation is created.
Now. Yes, in the beginning it was not. I was not so grateful for that. Well, because I had a lot of ideas before all this of what my show was going to be like, and I was working with someone to design lights and projections, you know, and I really wanted to make it. I wanted to make the show that I'd always wanted to do, but didn't really have the capability of can you hear my dogs playing with their toy?
I can hear something I was thinking, is that squeaking in the background? I can hit?
Yeah, you know. I was going to have like piles of rope that I was riding around and and I still can do that. I guess I don't. It's not like rope is gone. I can still source some rope, But I guess. I originally was trying to fit all of those ideas I had into this new like framework and these new limitations, and that wasn't really working very well.
But once it started trying to think about, okay, let's scrap all that and just think of trying to think of some new ideas that actually use those limitations or like work within them instead of trying to jam stuff in there. It's gone better, you know, it just feels a little more like how it is now too Yeah, for better or for worse.
I wanted to ask, well, I wanted to briefly jump back a bit further in time and ask you about the debut album Learning Actually, because it was released ten years ago. Now, what's the sort of overriding feeling when you look back on that body of work a decade later.
I don't think I had an awareness that it was a decade later, But when I was writing my last record, I was thinking a lot about that album because I'm honestly most proud of those lyrics than any of my other records, or if it's not the lyricsist Selms, it's the way that like I thought about writing and just the practice of writing was a lot different than than it is now, and I wanted to go back to that because it was very I'm still really proud of
those lyrics, you know. So I tried to write that way when I was writing this most recent record, which was something I wasn't really doing the last couple so it was more exploratory in like every direction, especially the one before this one.
So was it this sort of innocence of it that you could recognize in those in those first songs. What was it about those songs that you wanted to get back to?
Was they were more storyline? They were more like slice of life y even if I wasn't, you know, specifically saying the story like he went to the store or something there was a store in it, or like that someone's name or there are more world world nouns and things that kind of it was, I guess more like
showing instead of telling a little bit. And though as I went on and the songs became more like telling people how I'm feeling or trying to figure out, honestly, a lot of it was just ended up being about me more specifically, not that they all weren't always about me, but I used stories to kind of in scenes to paint the picture of how I'm feeling, And in a way it was more accurate than me trying to actually just straight up say it, because I've never been very
good at that. That's the whole reason I make songs to begin with this, because I have no idea how to talk about how I'm feeling most of the time, but I definitely know I am feeling a lot or too much or whatever, and so I make these little scenes or portals or something to get it out. The record before this, I think just the way it sounded and the way the world I kind of built sonically, that was doing it, That was communicating it for me,
you know, And the lyrics were too. But in the very very beginning, it was essentially only the lyrics, you know, that was like the main thing, and then everything else was underneath. And then it kind of slowly moved to the music and the lyrics underneath, Like I don't want to talk shit about myself. This feels like I'm talking shit about myself. But now I feel like there the last record felt like a harmony of both of those things.
I felt like I was still being experimental and thinking about songs in sounds and writing, you know, when before I used to feel like I was doing one or the other. You know, I started singing in Gibberish so I wouldn't think about the words and he would only be guided by the sound and have that be communicating, you know. But then it kind of came hard to fit lyrics into the gibberish. Afterwards, I kind of found a way to do that, I mean, because I've been
doing it for ten years. But that first record was also the first songs I'd ever written, so now I'm kind of learning how to do it all as I go.
In terms of actually getting back in touch with the essence of those lyrics that you liked so much from that debut album, did you physically go and put the record on to remind yourself of that or do you didn't need to because presumably the majority of the time you're only revisiting those songs when you perform them live now, like ten years later.
It's more just thinking about that time and what writing felt like it meant to me then in a way that was different than it does now, And a lot of that probably had to do with that. I I didn't know anybody was going to listen or hear it, you know, so I didn't have to carry that idea even though I like that, you know. And it also that has been a big giant fuel to me too. So it's just finding a way to bring all those things together and not have them be conflicting.
I want to talk a little bit about music fandom, because we've already mentioned some albums and some artists that you've really enjoyed the work of this year. But going back a bit further in terms of the artists or some artists that you really connected with specifically, people like Alanis Morissette and Liz Fair and Cyndi Lauper, all names
that you've name checked a lot over the years. What was it about those artists that really spoke to you so much when you were first discovering music or or really discovering a passion for music.
Well, I got Liz Fair. I think I got Whip Smart first, which is your second record, maybe sixth grade, So what is that like twelve thirteen, and before then I was mainly listening to pop music. But I don't I think I stall I've told this story before. I feel like she's another person thing. So I'm obsessed with their But that's okay. It's because it's true. It's because
it's true. So and I'm not a liar. But I stole a spin magazine from the grocery store and she was in there and they were talking about her stage fright and her lyrics, you know, and I was like, Wow, that sounds really I don't know. Something about it was
very interesting to me. So I bought her CD and I had never heard anything like it before, and I had never heard someone singing about the things she was singing about in that way and without shame and without apology, and I don't know, it just completely changed everything for me. I was like, this is who I want to be, this is how I want to feel, this is who I want to hang out with, you know. And I also it felt like a companion to me. And a lot of feelings that I was having that couldn't figure
out are aspirational or how I wanted to feel. I had never really thought of music as doing that, and so it just changed. I just became obsessed with music and listening and I really that record, I think, is what kind of changed everything for me.
One of the other autists I mentioned just there is Alonis Morissette. And then here was the onny of the other day that I realized they've made a musical about Jagged Little Pill, and it's a Broadway music really about this. It won like some Tony Awards or something the other day, and I was like, they made a musical about Jagged Little Pill. That sounds brilliant because that was that album
was sort of omnipresent when I was growing up. It was you know, when you think of albums that were always playing in the car when you would for whatever reason you're going somewhere, You're like, that was the album that was always on. And Yeah, and I was going to ask you whether you'd heard about the music or even seen it. I think it only opened last year. It's probably shut now because of the COVID.
I haven't seen it. Well, that's what was amazing about that record is that it had some nasty ideas, but like your mom was to car, you know what I mean. So it's just like there's something really powerful about that to like hear like a woman singing about those things and having that be like widely loved and feeling that when I was young, it was like was inspiring.
Your experience of working with different disciplines. Last year you did The Sun Still Burns Here, which was a project well you probably better for you to describe it rather than me, but it was it was a move outside of just the music making that you've been doing the last couple of years. How was that experience. What did you take away from it and is it something you want to want to pursue further?
Yeah, I mean so much went into that, so much, like I took so much from it. It's kind of like talking about my dog. I feel like I'm not. It was sort of cult like. Honestly, it felt very culty like. When I was in the middle of it, I was absolutely deranged and the things that I was talking about are crazy. I influenced my record, influenced a lot about how I was thinking about where I was in my life and who I love and what I'm doing.
It like really rocked me, but I didn't know what. Essentially, in the beginning, it was me and Kate, the choreographer. She reached out and we wanted to make a dance piece that had live music in it, where those two things weren't super disconnected. It wasn't just a band playing on one side and then a dance happening on the other. I wanted to dance and if they wanted to sing, which that didn't end up happening as much, but have
those things be mixed together. I also wanted to go about writing the music for like an hour long dance piece and not having it just be like textual ambient music. I wanted it almost more like an opera. I wanted them to be songs, you know, and the songs are like ten minutes long and longer and more experimental. But I still tried to make it something that if you took it away from the dance, you would want to listen to it, but also having it not be really
able to exist without the dance. But it was just a whole new way of writing. And then it was a very different way of performing because I was with a lot of other people in a very different way. Like with the band, I'm usually the one throwing myself around everywhere and screaming and you know, homping the floor and everything. And now I'm like humping the floor with like seven other people that are also doing that, you know, and I would like look up and it's like whoa,
They're in the exact same place as me. And even in rehearsals, like humping the floor, that's something that I was doing before I was a musician, you know what I mean, Like getting into some weird energetic space with a wall. Not always humping. It could be something more sacred than that. Not this, I'll just you know what
I mean. But I was getting to weird places physically, energetically, and then in rehearsals, like I would be looking out the window crying at a car for no reason, like I'm just looking at a car crying, and I would look over and LoVa and other dancers looking at the same car crying, and it's just nonsensical but very real thing meeting together. And that's what was so beautiful. It is like work and real life mixing together when they used to feel very separate.
It sounds very visceral, like I had a real like physical effect as well. I mean always that means to state the obvious of the physical element of it, but like excavating loads of feelings and chemicals. Oh yeah, everything mixed in together.
Very very much like that, you know, And like I feel like all I really do is sit around and think a lot about Oh I want to leave my body, I want to go to space, blah blah blah, like all this wild ship and I'm just sitting still. I'm not I'm just thinking. But then I was doing all those feelings like in movement and with people, and just like screaming into someone's like backbones, and like someone's biting my shin, and I'm like, you know, I'm like somebody's
screaming at God or something. You know. It's like very exciting to me that these things were happening. I wasn't just like making a joke about it or doing some weird song in my room by myself about it. It is like I had company and I was in my actual body. I wasn't you know, I was in. I was there, Like these people are real, this room is real, and my body is real.
Your music has soundtracked some iconic moments in movies and TV over the past decade, thinking of eighth Grade and Thirteen Reasons Why, and my favorite, which was stip Away used in books Smart. Are there any places where your music has been used that you've been particularly really pleased with, Just like that is perfect in terms of bringing a moment together.
The book Smart was pretty perfect, like that like big coming of age moment with like a kind of a big explosion in the song. I love how I'm soundtracking either like deaths, a lot of deaths, or like teenage like coming of age things, you know, those I'm into that when any of those are captured perfectly, it's like really not like a death. I don't feel like a death capture profectly. It just means like a really like heavy moment, and I don't know, it's cathartic to me.
That's like why I make all of the songs, so if I feel like I can help that seen be more of that in a movie way. Well, those are the songs you remember too, Like I feel like I remember all those when you're teenager and you watch those movies and those moments. Those are the things that you hear around with you. So I feel lucky to have that sort of place in it.
It's a big one for me. ISS songs on video games as well, really like place a certain time for me, like because video game soundtracks and stuff. I mean, I don't play a lot of video games now, but I did when I was younger, and so the songs, some songs are still ready attached to that for me in the same way that TV movie song.
I didn't realize it, but one of my songs on the last record, somebody said that it sounded a lot like the Final Fantasy theme song, And I listen to it and it's almost like the harp kind of the heart part in the very beginning of my song Leave is very very close to it, and I had been playing a lot of final Fantasy around when I was making that record. I didn't even intend to.
Do it, just absorbed it.
I mean that song that's specific little line. I don't think it's a heart, it's some generated instrument, but it's so like classic I feel like I can borrow from a little bit. I feel that way about if you're gonna be influenced by things, it should be like classic things at least twenty years ago, at least twenty yeah, or something that's like an immediate classic. It's very strange to me when people are writing songs that are clearly influenced by something like six months ago, like just.
Have just wait a little bit you can hear on the radio. And so that's why it sounds jarring, I think, because it just feels like, yeah, you'll you're borrowing ideas from two minutes ago, and that's why it sounds nope, no, great again. Yeah.
It's kind of a conic though, when I think about it, like everybody kind of has the same All American singers have the same sort of like faux English accent too that they're all singing in. Yeah, I've never really missed. It's not even an English accent. I don't even know what you call it. It's just spec I think it's from a cheering like a lot of the guys have this kind of vaguely cheer any sound to the what they're from, like Idaho, you know.
Yeah, I suppose. The final thing I wanted to ask you about was like, every time you've made a new album, you've you've come to sort of inhabit a new world visually stylistically, and everything feels so coherent. What's going around your mind now, Like has it been a creative time recently or not at all? And what might happen next in terms of where you want to take things, And you've got any thoughts about what you might want to do next year and things like that.
I think it's starting to happen. I honestly felt it felt like a like nothingness for a while, but I think things were happening in the background. I'm definitely going to have a lot to respond to and definitely have a lot that I haven't processed that I'm going to have to so I can start of feel happening, and I want to be able to present the music for the dance in it. I want to share that music, and I want to present it in some sort of way, like when I'm not really able to tour that show
at the moment and I'm not able to dance. So I've been working on something that can still have all those elements and be shareable, have it fit in to this moment. So we'll see how that goes. Future future thinking. It's very futuristic my idea. Yeah, so we'll see.
Great. Well, I look forward to what you're going to come up with. Listen, thank you, Mike. I should probably let you go and move the dog.
Okay, yeah, I gotta walk Wanda anyway. Good night,