The Breakdown: Willow on 'Run'
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MusicTranscript
00:00I would say that this song is unique in the album.
00:04This song is like the weird sibling of the album.
00:10Hi, I'm Willow, and this is The Breakdown.
00:19The idea for this song was like,
00:20I'm in a situation with this person,
00:22and they're saying things to me,
00:24and I'm trying so hard to be in the moment
00:26and see their sincerity,
00:28and not let my toxic mental pattern
00:32paint them as this person who's trying to attack me
00:35or judge me.
00:36So Chris Griotti is a really good friend of mine.
00:38We made Coping Mechanism together,
00:41and we made a few songs on this record together.
00:43Not every single song is with me and him,
00:45but the songs that we did make together
00:47are some of my favorites.
00:48The way that me and Chris work most of the time is
00:51we have an amazing drummer friend named Asher Banks,
00:54and he will just play for a super long time.
00:57He'll play different BPMs, different time signatures,
01:00different everything, and he'll go away,
01:02and we'll come together and listen to everything that he did
01:04and be like, ah, we like this part,
01:06we like this part, we like this part.
01:07And so the drum part was picked first,
01:10and then right after that, we did the bass.
01:13That's not usually how it goes all the time,
01:15but specifically for this song,
01:17I needed to start first with those two things
01:20because they needed to interplay with each other
01:22and have that conversation.
01:24♪♪
01:27There's a lot on this album is a lot of just drum and bass
01:31because I just feel like it's so primal
01:33and it gets you right there.
01:34When the parts are really interplaying with each other
01:37in the right way, it just goes straight
01:40to that good place inside of you.
01:41For me, I really just wanted to hit that simplicity
01:46but just be super knife sharp
01:49and like this is the exact area I want you to feel this.
01:51When you craft drums, bass, and vocals
01:54in such a specific way that's so thoughtful,
01:58that's a really strong vehicle.
01:59I wrote this song when I was,
02:02I want to say like four or five songs into the project.
02:06And I had been telling my good homie, Chris Griotti,
02:09that I'm like, no electric guitar on the album.
02:11Like, I want it to be super stripped back.
02:14I want it to be super raw
02:16because I wanted it to contrast Coping Mechanism
02:18because Coping Mechanism was so produced
02:21and it had so many layers and, you know,
02:23it works really great for that album,
02:25but I wanted to just kind of strip it back
02:28and have more of like a simple piercing energy
02:31for this album, but also this song.
02:34And what's interesting about this song
02:36is that this was the first song
02:38that we actually added some electric guitar to.
02:41I just was like, you know what?
02:42F it, we're going for it
02:44because I wanted to give it that funky,
02:46like kind of dark feeling.
02:49I wanted it to feel like
02:50you're on the verge of a panic attack.
02:52And I told him, I was like, you know,
02:54I want it to sound kind of messed up.
02:56Like I want it to sound like
02:57I don't know how to play the guitar,
02:58like play something crazy.
02:59And he was like, no, you play something crazy.
03:01And I was like, okay, cool.
03:02So I just went on there
03:03and did some just weird guitar sounds
03:06that aren't even in tune.
03:08And it just made it that much cooler.
03:13So even just that, like I did a,
03:16yeah, that wasn't me there.
03:19That's, that's Chris, love you, Chris.
03:21But then I come back in here with the,
03:25and I told him, I was like, bro, like,
03:27no, it just needs to sound messed up.
03:29Like it needs to just be like,
03:30you're like wrenching your heartstrings,
03:32like, ah, you know what I'm saying?
03:34That anxiety needs to be there.
03:36Saint Vincent does a lot of like really intense,
03:39almost like using the guitar,
03:41not tonally, but just as a feeling.
03:44And that's what I, like,
03:45just the guitar spirit is like coming through it.
03:48It's not like, oh, I'm playing a line
03:49that's in the tune of the song.
03:51It's like, you're about to hear this guitar scream
03:53and the spirit coming out of this guitar.
03:55And I mean, a big inspiration for everything
03:57that I do is Saint Vincent,
03:58but specifically with those guitars.
04:00And it ended up, you know,
04:02bringing that urgency that the song really needed.
04:11Even that little,
04:18like,
04:30so you heard those like,
04:33like those very far away,
04:35like almost guitar feedbacks
04:37that kind of brings that like weird ghostly,
04:40like anxiety element into it.
04:42Like you wouldn't necessarily hear that
04:44when you're listening to everything together,
04:46but you feel it.
04:48Like, you know, in like the Sierra movies
04:49where they play like that really low note
04:51that nobody can hear, but they feel it.
04:53It's almost like that to me.
04:54And this song was really inspired by old school funk.
05:00And I really wanted to like put my little spin on it.
05:02Let's only do the vocals.
05:11And my vocal doesn't have any like slap on it
05:16or distortion on it.
05:20Because we're going deeper into that like emotional place.
05:29I don't want to leave,
05:31but I don't want to stay,
05:34you know, like I can't figure this out.
05:37I'm stuck, you know, I'm trying to escape.
05:42And as you can hear like,
05:46like there's a relief, but you feel the sadness.
05:53Like you feel me going like,
05:56I don't know what I'm going to do.
05:58I'm not brave enough to like face this head on.
06:06The vocals are giving this like ethereal beauty
06:10that would feel like a relief
06:13if it wasn't this deep sadness of me being like,
06:18I'm not strong enough to meet this uncomfortability head on.
06:22I'm not strong enough to see this through
06:25and like really do the self-work that I need to do
06:27in order to see this person as a human being
06:30and not just the metaphor of a threat to all of my insecurities.
06:34And there's this, yeah, that deep sadness is just permeating through
06:37and it's the escape.
06:39I love a good moving background vocal.
06:40Like I feel like there's a moment for like,
06:43the really like stark, like middle ones
06:45where it's like the ones in the beginning of the verse
06:48where it's like,
06:50and then we bring in that like long vocal,
06:53more of that movement.
06:55And yeah, it's just those different textures
06:57playing with each other, having a conversation.
07:14Yeah, so as you can see the background vocals
07:23have a little bit less of that like slap,
07:26like reverb on them.
07:27They have a little bit less of that distortion,
07:29like trying to enhance that funky like,
07:33you wouldn't necessarily expect that background
07:35to come in in a song like this,
07:37putting those backgrounds in
07:38and even like the way that I was singing,
07:40like making sure that I wasn't doing the same things
07:43that I have done in the past.
07:44Like for every album,
07:46there are like vocal isms that I work on for those albums.
07:52And you know, for Coping Mechanism,
07:53it was screaming, growling.
07:55That was very tough to learn how to do.
07:57And just belting.
07:58Those were the isms for that one.
08:00For this one, I feel like it's very intricate,
08:02like changing of notes.
08:05And I'm doing this like, it's not in this song.
08:07Actually, yes, it is.
08:08Yes, it is a little bit that,
08:10like a lot of like staccato breathing
08:13and almost like a weird yodel thing.
08:21So yeah, that's different for me,
08:23but I knew that it would push the emotion across
08:26and there are other songs on the album
08:28that have very similar,
08:30like just breath kind of moments,
08:32but using the breath as almost like a percussive element
08:35as well.
08:36For this song,
08:37there was like a two-day thing.
08:39Production the first day,
08:40main vocal the first day,
08:41and the next day come in and do backgrounds
08:44and mess with the production a little bit,
08:46like maybe put some LFOs on stuff.
08:48Maybe, you know, do some weird stuff.
08:51The emotion was strong.
08:52I had just been through an interesting experience.
08:56So I feel like the song pretty much kind of wrote itself
08:58because I was like,
08:59ah, this feeling is here right now.
09:01In the situation that I was in,
09:04I was just like,
09:05damn, like this person is acting so chill right now
09:08and I'm so not and like I was insecure about that
09:12and usually when people are insecure,
09:14they kind of try to bite back and be like,
09:15well, you know what I'm saying?
09:17And that was kind of my thing.
09:18Like stop talking to me like I'm your friend.
09:20Stop looking at me like I'll let you win.
09:21Like the lyrics are so important.
09:24Like here we go.
09:26First verse lyrics.
09:38Okay, here we go.
10:09Yeah, so like clarity can't be bought.
10:11With every breath that I take,
10:12I spiral around and around and then down.
10:15You can feel the palpable sense of like I'm panicking
10:21and I don't know what to do
10:22and I'm trying to make it your fault,
10:23but it's totally not.
10:25And like I was saying before about the like energy
10:28with which a performer sings a lyric,
10:32that energy is behind those words.
10:35Like, you know,
10:36I'm kind of like talking down to you and being sassy,
10:39but you can hear the fear in my voice.
10:40Like you're not like,
10:41oh, she's so confident right now.
10:43It's like, oh man,
10:44like there's a layer there.
10:45I also want to show you the second verse as well
10:47because there are some lyrics there
10:49that are pretty intense as well.
10:52Second verse lyrics.
11:06So yeah, like twisting every word that you say
11:17until I can't recognize you.
11:18That was one of my favorite lyrics actually.
11:20I actually want to hear that one more time
11:21because I'm butchering it.
11:32I mean, we've all been there.
11:34We've all been there.
11:36Someone's talking to you.
11:37You're like, damn,
11:38like sometimes we're not aware enough in our own mind.
11:41Sometimes we just think it's their fault.
11:43You know what I'm saying?
11:43Like, oh, they were being sus to me,
11:44but sometimes it's really us being like,
11:46I'm feeling weird about myself right now
11:48and everything that you're saying is reminding me
11:50about all the things that I feel weird about,
11:52which is making me judge you even more and more and more.
11:55And so that was definitely one of my favorite lyrics
11:57in the song.
11:58I really am a very immediate songwriter.
12:01I don't like to,
12:02like if I've left a song for too long,
12:05like if I made it and it's not finished
12:07and I leave it for a while,
12:08I'm not usually the kind of person to go back to it
12:11and remake it.
12:13I got to do it right now and the next day.
12:15And if that doesn't happen,
12:17I'm usually like on to the next idea,
12:19which is kind of weird because a lot of artists
12:22that I know like, oh, a song from two years ago.
12:24Yeah, I'll totally go back in and reproduce it
12:26and da-da-da-da-da.
12:27And for some reason I just don't work like that.
12:32I was telling Chris,
12:48I was like, oh, like this, this feeling of anxiety,
12:50like we need to find really simple and subtle ways
12:54to almost subliminally like make people feel like,
12:58oh my God, like why am I feeling like this right now?
13:00And just little touches like that,
13:02getting louder, starting low
13:03and then increasingly getting louder and louder
13:06and louder as the verse goes on.
13:08It really does that job of like,
13:11I'm on the edge of my seat.
13:12I'm feeling this anxiety that you're talking about.
13:14I kind of want to play the second verse
13:15with everything in it.
13:32So it's super, super subtle,
13:40but near the end of the verse,
13:41you start to feel like, oh,
13:42like something's coming out of this darkness.
13:45That's like, oh, making me feel some type of way.
13:47But how I feel about this project,
13:49I truly, truly feel like I am breaking out
13:54of my childhood perception of who I am as a musician
13:59because I have been doing music for so long.
14:01You kind of build up these like mental
14:03and emotional frameworks of like,
14:04this is how I interact with the world
14:06and this is how I am, you know what I'm saying?
14:09And I feel like those mental and emotional frameworks
14:12that I built up were from so long ago,
14:14like being a child.
14:15And you know, with this album,
14:17I feel like I kind of took a bat
14:18and just was like, no, no, no to all of this
14:21like old ways of conducting myself as an artist
14:25and as a musician.
14:26Coping Mechanism was definitely a step towards that.
14:30I truly believe that.
14:31But I feel like this was really like,
14:33okay, now the foot is really all the way down
14:36on the floor in this new place.
14:38And that makes me really excited.
14:50Making music is the honor of my life
14:53and I'm just so happy to do it.
15:00Making music is the honor of my life