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Steinhoff. Welcome to Switched-On Pop.

I'm songwriter Charlie Hearting, I remember when my friend Preston first introduced me to disclosure, the British musical duo made up of brothers Howard and Gaia Lawrence and I realised I was hearing a type of dance music that was both familiar and yet somehow totally new.

And I was hooked. And of course, I was not alone, their 2012 collaboration with Sam Smith on the song Lache garnered global attention and a Billboard Top 10 hit in the US, and they've since released collaborations with the likes of the biggest stars in music the weekend.

Lord. And Kelly, can we just have a chance to talk about weekend, but it's their full length albums that I really love, they just have this kind of energy which energy happens to also be the title of their new record.

And so the other day, I'm browsing the live streaming platform Twitch, and I see this video of disclosure breaking down music off their newest record with such precision and passion that I knew we had to speak with them. So the other week and I spoke with Howard, a guy over Zoome, about how they keep finding ways to make new sounds and create energy and dance music.

Here's that conversation.

Hi, everyone.

Where disclosure, I'm Guy and I'm Howard, and we're coming to you today from my studio in North London, though you've never firmly settled into a single genre, you're often celebrated for your house, music production and your new album, Energy moves really into a lot of new territory. What kind of sounds were you wanting to explore on this record?

Well, again, so we spent more time writing this album than we have with any other record so far. Like this was I mean, at least three years of actual writing for this one, whereas the other two were like less than one. So it was a very different process. You know, like for the first three records, we wrote like 15 songs and then scrapped three of them.

Whereas for this one we wrote 200 and scrapped 189. And so it's very different, you know, so like there wasn't really one particular direction we wanted to go in at the beginning because we knew we were going to write a lot of music. So we were just very free. And like specifically, we're just trying to be experimental. You know, we were just like, let's just try and make stuff that we haven't done. So we were just making stuff in three or four and like crazy time signatures and like different, like, types of chords that we wouldn't normally use and strange sounds and all that stuff we explored a lot more like different percussion sounds, mainly African and South American sounds for the drums especially.

And I mean, the chords that I write have generally throughout my life have just been getting more and more jazzy. So hopefully at some point I'm just going to reach like full jazz and have to leave the band.

Coltrane. Yeah, yeah.

Well, as a professor of jazz history over there, I'm sure Professor Sloan is very pleased about that. Yeah, right. Yeah.

So, yeah, no, there wasn't like a very conscious choice to go in any particular direction. But the one thing that we did sell up on when we were deciding which tracks were actually going to make the cut was like it was which songs came together the easiest. So like which songs we wrote the easiest that we had most fun writing and just we didn't have to, like, spend three months grafting, you know. Yeah.

And I think that's where the house music comes in. So we seem to be able to write those quite like fluidly and enjoyably, whereas when we try and get a bit too technical, it's like the hard graft, you know, and they should be they should be a space for both, you know. And yeah, even though we haven't put a disclosure album in five years, you know, in that gap, we have explored those areas.

You know, I did a tune on a mayonaise album, you know, is the new black Mr. Caputo's. I was saying Mac Miller as well, we had to do so hard to find one devil trying to call your life.

You know, our website, we're known for House because it's like, I guess, the biggest songs that we've done as disclosure. But, yeah, for sure, you know, the diehard fans, the ones that are tuning into Twitch anyway, they don't know what to expect every time we make something in life because we don't know either. You know, we just we just always true to ourselves in the studio.

And we're also like, I think, terrible identifiers of genres, you know, that we never know what songs, what genre songs are.

And like Lache, everyone calls that house tune. It's so, isn't it? It's not at all like that.

Yeah, it's like a six eight soul plus dubstep with Trappe hats and house and yeah, but like it's called Howsam on iTunes or whatever.

I don't know.

You mentioned incorporating African rhythm and African percussion into this album. And one of our favorite songs off this album is the title track Energy, which is a really nice example of that influence, how we got to take it to another level.

We're grooving in the studio. Oh, yeah. What's the story behind this song?

So it's actually a more of a South American area rather than an African area. This one, the original drum sample is from an old library record from the BREWTON catalog. So I became friends with one of the guys who owns, like, all of it. And he was very kindly, just like, you know, whatever you want to use will make it super easy for you guys to Claire and I traveled through hours and hours of this stuff. You know, for those who don't know, library music's like TV jingles from back in there back in the early days.

So there's everything on there from Arter Cheese and like hilarious stuff to kind of Beach Boys acappella stuff to classical to like film music. It's also sorted by genres as well. So, you know, we were looking through the real mall. Yeah. Africa and South American percussive sections now and again, you get these really interesting moments like this track.

So that's all the drums like, well, not the cake and all that stuff we've added over the top. But that's like the body of, you know, the immediate big whistle and all that stuff that's going on in the background. And yeah, I think I've pretty much made that by myself. I think just. Yeah, you did all the jazz. I did. I did this big K.

I knew that needs to be some chords and then yeah.

That's how it's area.

So we added the chords over the top and then the idea to bring in Eric Thomas, the one thing we to do. Will you focus all your energy flows, are you hear me? I think we were together and we had the idea of using his voice again, just because I mean, ever since we did when a fire starts to burn, I think we always felt like, you know, as catchy as that song is and everyone finds his voice very recognizable.

It wasn't like doing his message and his life's work much justice. You know, it's just a kind of repeating, catchy phrase. When a fire starts to burn.

Right, and it starts to spread, you go out to, oh, I don't want to do not what you like. When a fire starts to burn, right. And it starts to spread, you're going to have to owe more to do want to you like fire. We're just a big fan of his.

You know how it came around the other day and he was listening to him on the way here. Like, I was like, oh, you're listening to Eric, like just for fun. You know, we do that.

He's he's an amazing motivational speaker for those who aren't familiar with this kind of now iconic voice. Who is Eric Thomas and how did you hook up with him?

Yes, Eric is from Chicago and is known like other than Eric Thomas. He's known as the hip hop preacher at the hip hop preacher. So that's kind of his deal. You know, he's like he's saying kind of very profound motivational stuff in like a way that hopefully let younger people can relate to.

When you want to succeed as bad as you want to breathe, then you'll be successful.

The way that I stumbled across Eric's work years and years ago, like ten years ago, something was we wanted to work with rappers like, you know, as we have finally done now if this album. But we didn't know any rappers because there aren't any where we're from, you know. So like, we didn't know who to play. We can't just, like, call Jay-Z and just, like, get Jay-Z.

So we were like, well, let's just be clear. We still can't do that. We still can't do it.

We're still climbing that ladder.

And I wanted to find someone with a cool speaking voice to sample and, like, chop it up rhythmically and make it sound like a rapper. And so I Googled something like, I don't know, like Detroit man speaking or like Chicago man rap.

So I don't know, come out. It was now and it was one of the first things that came up. And I just immediately loved everything that he was saying. He was just like, get your shit together.

I don't do well in math. You're right. You ain't never studied. I'm not good at writing because you have never written before. But I dare you to fail in writing for a whole year to see if you can get to the end, I dare you to fail. I dare to take that same class. Oh, no. I dare you to stop dropping classes like yourself.

And this time I was just like, yeah, I like this guy. Right, cool. And so I downloaded, like, one of his YouTube videos. It was like an hour long and just like sifted through all the different bits, you know, as cool as his voice sounds and everything.

It was nice to get in, you know, what he contributes to in his work to the world, you know, because I think especially in a time right now, it resonates quite well, although we made this song, you know, long before 2020, it was definitely a reason why we chose it as the first single because it was never going to be the first single off the album. But, you know, once all the madness unfolded and we pushed the album back, it made perfect sense to use it based on its lyrics purely.

Now, what are some of the message that you're getting in this track?

I mean, it's mainly just like the positivity that Eric brings is what we were trying to do, because Eric speaks about a pretty wide variety of things. But the stuff that really coincides with our beliefs is the kind of self responsibility involved in making your life better. It's easy to blame it on other people and or like some sort of like the system or like a conspiracy theory. But in in my opinion, in our opinion, like change starts from within, you know, and you can you can really bring that change to yourself actively rather than just kind of waiting for good stuff to happen.

Hmm. Yeah.

He speaks about that a lot.

And I think that just that one line where your focus goes, energy flows and that's, you know, a famous line. I think Tony Robbins uses that a lot as well, you know, and they're all just these really amazing, uplifting motivational speakers. Yeah, it goes well with house music. You know, I think a lot of people have sampled things like that before. Eric's just our guy.

He's he's the one we go to. People like identify his voice with us. Now, we've opened every show with his voice. Yeah. Yeah. And like, kind of in the band. Yeah.

I love that you're known a lot for your collaborations. Yeah. And I want to move on to another track, one of your newer singles birthday, which has kaylani and said as collaborators.

Let's take a listen to a little bit of that to get it in our ear to make changes to. Yeah, birthday is one of if not the oldest song on the record, so maybe the R and B influence is there because it's still sort of, you know, closer to Karakul than the end of finishing energy. Maybe. But, you know, your second album. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And that's got a lot more RB like vibes on there, but none of that's planned.

We just kind of go in the room and jam like musicians and we just make something with the artist.

And that day we made made this transition. I mean, to me it's it's still got an element of dance music about it.

It's just because it's half time is what makes it feel a little slow. But like when I listen to it, I don't do the dubstep. I'm kind of like it's upbeat to my ear. So I think you kind of choose where you land on that one. And again, that's why we also did our own VIP like garage remix of it, which is ForFour, you know.

But you can have it both ways, and we've had an equally good reaction to both versions, which is, you know, rare, that doesn't usually happen.

People pick sides, but a lot of people saying, like, I'm so happy both of these exist. So, like, I think we wrote that the probably the end of 2017, 2018. So it took a long time to come out. But yeah. So initially the whole song was just said singing and she had her own second verse as well. And I think we took it away for a few days and we had the idea that it might be a really cool idea for a duet.

You know, the whole songs about this X and this person that you're thinking about, you know, maybe we should incorporate that person somehow and they could chime in. And so, you know, we all said, who would you like that to be? And she was like, I could ask Kaylani. And we were like, yeah, that would be great. If you could just do that, that would be fine.

You know, people say stuff like that in the studio now and again, you know, oh, we should get this person, this person. It always just goes into thin air or doesn't transpire. Said is is true to her word. Clearly and honestly. It was two weeks went by and then burned. The files were in like I don't think we even spoke to Kalani. It was like we knew she had to be. We knew she liked it.

Bam, here's the files. Like, Wow. And a load of ad libs and a load of harmonies and stuff as well.

You. So, yeah, we were super excited about that, and, yeah, it's not something we usually do, you know, we never really send beats out and collaborate over email and things like that.

But the reason that we don't normally do that is because, like, people send stuff back that we don't like, you know, like and then, oh, like they send something back with notes that are out of the K or like really out of tune or something like that.

And we just can't I can't live with that.

And so, like, we like to get in the studio and work with people because that way you can just say like, oh, can you push that note or whatever? Yeah, because we're much more musicians than producers. I mean, I've moved into the producer role more over the transition.

Yeah, yeah. But, you know, deep down I'm a drummer and I like to jam. And so, you know, a lot of this record, the ideas are kind of jam based, you know, is going in one time to a degree. But, you know, I'm making the drums and how it's thinking of the chords in his head. Like, there has to be that in the room moment where someone just starts singing a little melody and you go, oh, I like that.

And someone says, maybe a concept like, oh, yeah, I've just been going through this really annoying thing where I don't know whether or not I should call my excuse. Birthday's coming up and it's annoying. And, you know, you don't get that over email or I don't know, maybe Zoome is a way forward and all of that.

But for us, like, you know, as musicians, it's like, yeah, we grew up playing instruments with our parents and with each other and our friends. So but yeah, Kelani just sent back this verse that was just completely polished and lyrically perfect and fit exactly the sentiment of the song that we had originally, because she totally rewrote the second verse, you know, that we had we had one originally. We've said and Kelani didn't sing that she made her own one and completely different melodies, completely different lyrical content.

And I just loved all of it immediately, you know, like it didn't want to change one thing about it. So, yeah, it was an exception to our rule of normally never doing that.

Yeah. Why is it important to have that in person collaboration? Is there a moment from from this process with said that stands out where there was some spark that you couldn't, you know, capture sending files back and forth?

Yeah, for sure.

And I think the main one is that, like, we often work with artists from outside of our genre, for example, Fatimata, any that any design needs to be like, she doesn't really know any house music and she doesn't know much of our music at all.

I don't think she even knew who we were and we hit her up.

And like that means it's very unusual that she'll be able to match exactly the sort of art that we want, you know, and like the same thing with Blick Bassy.

Oh, yes. Oh. You know, he is knowledge of house music is pretty minimal because it's not his bag, you know, it's not what he normally listens to or makes. So to get in the room of someone like him is super important because it means that he can throw ideas on us and we can, like, tell him which ones we like immediately, you know, and if you didn't have that, you would spend like years in that process of, like, trying to work out what it is the other person wanted.

Well, I mean, you know, the same thing a kind of applies to Fatimata is different because we essentially sampled music, I bet.

No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, man, we have to make Jenkins even all that jazz like it.

But I guess I didn't ask for a white stripes on my face and a hand and. HCF KUAR Olingo is from Chicago, so he knows a bit of house music, but he definitely doesn't know any UK garage like we had to play him.

What guy referred to as a garage starter pack was like all of the old school Mukerjee hits the same, the same, the same thing.

It was awesome to work with him on it because he brought something new to the table.

OK. It's important to get in the room because it's quite hard to match vibes of someone who's not used to working in this genre. This episode is sponsored by Reason Studios. Reason is a suite of music software tools that helps music makers of all kinds tap into their art and unlock their creativity. And we love reason, especially because it makes us the fun. It plugs right into whatever workstation you already use. And if you're ready to give yourself permission to play with music for the first time, reason can also be used standalone.

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Let's get the drums going. Let's get those heads going. And I always use REDRUM. It's got a sequencer on it. So in that sequence there, I would put my snare and then my kick point for me. I could go for what I know and like go straight to the track analog synthesizer and pull up a good bass there.

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The kind of breakdown of labor that I'm detecting here is like guy on drums and bass, Howard on harmony and chords. Is that a rough approximation of the workflow?

It's pretty good. Yeah. It's basically like guy on drums and production and like generally sonically crafting it to make it sound like a disclosure song. And then I'm just like a songwriter who joins in on the fun and I'm just critiquing as well.

Yeah. You know, I'm like the filter that all of Howard's ideas go through. Yeah. It goes in the laptop. So yeah. Although I'm not playing, I just can't play the keys. I know, like I know what I like in my head. And sometimes I wake up with melodic ideas and whatever, but I can't play the men. I have to draw them in, whereas I was just super good at keys so he could just jam these amazing ideas out very quick.

Yeah, I like get my head much more in the laptop and like crafting the overall space.

So we weren't always like this though. Like we when we started making tunes as disclosure, it was very mixed. You know, I would still make loads of the drums and I would still make loads of the chords. And we would like decide. But we slowly worked out the like. We used more of my chords and we used more of his drums. So, you know, we just started playing to our strengths a bit more. And people always ask us, like, you know, all your brothers and you work together like you must fight all the time, like the oasis or something.

And we're like, nah, we don't, because we don't tread on each other's toes, you know, I do my stuff. He does his stuff. And then we come together at the end and it works well. It meshes together. And I think that process of it messing, mashing together is probably helped by the fact that we are brothers.

I feel like you're making Nate really jealous right now. Who wishes that his parents also planned out having a brother who played the drums so that you could play the keys and then you would just have a family band? It seems like it was very, very well planned out.

Hmm. Yeah. Yeah, I was definitely partly true. Aslak as well that we both fulfill the other role. You know, you said it wouldn't work as well if. Well, that's Oasis right there, isn't it? They both wanted to be frontmen and it was a bit of a fight.

I definitely have a distinct memory of, like because guys started playing drums when he was like three years old and I was born three years after him. So like, by the time I was like five, I remember guy being really good at drums already and my dad handing me a bass guitar on my birthday and being like, you do this like this is what you should do. And I was like, okay, cool. And then I just became a bass player for like ten years and slowly worked out that I prefer piano.

Yeah. Yeah.

Does birthday maybe illustrate that that process, that kind of work flow, could you take us through the collaborative process of building that track together?

I came out of the chords first.

Just those four chords that go round for the majority of the song, and I was just jamming those out while Guy was picking a sound because we have it on like a keyboard, and then I'll be like scrolling through sounds. And he's like, oh, can you just play something while I choose the sound? So I wrote it while he was doing that. And we ended up with that sine wave type thing and then said immediately liked those and was like, yes, let's use those to be like cause the guy recorded that end and they just looped, you know.

So then once they were looping I could then say, we've said and we'd start writing melodies and lyrics and I think we wrote the chorus first.

Can I call you on your birthday to make sure that you're okay? What's your favorite part? Go, go, go, go away.

And as soon as we started doing that guy had decided the song was going to be in half time and he'd started making this like really garages CPB to it.

And then we were like, OK, it's really cool that we were enjoying it, we were like, but it needs to go somewhere else now. So I wrote the chords to the middle, which are the really crazy ones.

We didn't know what to write over that we didn't really have, like an idea, so we were like, let's just let's do ad libs over the whole track and see what she does in the middle.

And she just did this like super dope things. And we did those twilight years and if in doubt froze over as, yeah, I found.

No. I think I like the bison, I reckon you gave me a guide on the nose because that Redan think of playing with the triplet kick is very me.

Yeah, that's often the case with baselines is all play based in kind of just with my left hand while I'm playing chords. And it's normally quite basic just following the chords or something, or maybe doing 15 or something. And then I'll come in and like stegosaurus it and make it really crazy and decide how it moves, where it bends, where it modulate.

Yeah. Yeah. I like all that stuff. Yeah. Just as long as, as a basic I think I just coined that term.

They just come and Stegosaurus. I've never said that before but it kind of work. I've never heard that before.

I get what you mean Tim. That's good. Very evocative. Yeah. It's really fun to hear about your collaborative process.

And one of the things that we appreciate is seeing that you you do do a lot to highlight your collaborators. I want to go to one more song on your record, which has some really interesting samples and collaborations. I want to talk about the track tornado.

One, No. One.

Since your last album, Karakol, you've been really expanding into music from the African continent with your track Delamar literally money, money, money, money, money, an ultimatum.

Both with Fatoumata Diawara and your song, Tornadoes Are continues in this practice of.

I barely did anything to this song, it was all guy, yeah, which sometimes happens with us, like it's always kind of been the way that occasionally they'll just be a song that the other one doesn't really want to do anything to because it's already done.

Yeah. And I'd also say it's not strictly on the album. You know, it was on the EP that preceded the album. Yeah, it's on the deluxe version on Spotify, but you won't find it on the vinyl or the CD or anything like that. But and there's a reason behind that. You know, it's we had all the album done before we released this song, and that was definitely like talks of it going on. But it's an extremely sample, heavy volume.

You know, there's not that process of man Howard starting this together from scratch. You know, it's it's taking like EKOS song and reworking it and making it into something totally different and new to what it was. And for us, like that EP that we put out was a very sample heavy and last show in the world like, hey, look, we do sampling too, because we've not really done much like in the past, to be honest.

So, you know, the first two albums are all music from scratch. I think Seattle's got two samples on it and maybe three. And then Carol's got like none maybe does definitely doesn't make hardly any. So, you know, we've kind of gone in reverse, like most people maybe start out sampling and then get into it. But we're just playing around the other way. So, yeah, the EP showing off, you know, our sampling.

And also, I think kind of we thought it might prepare people's eyes a little bit for where we were going with energy, like with this new vibe, you know, with the much more percussive element from different parts of the world. You know, there are two songs on energy that aren't even in English. So, you know, there's that's a bit of a jump from working with the weekend. And Sam Smith, you know, so I think is like a nice little stepping stone and bridge towards the album Cantando.

You're sampling Cameroonian artist Echo Rosevelt. What brought you to this sample and how did you decide it would be fitting for a treatment?

I think I found it just browsing Spotify honestly, like or YouTube just going down a YouTube wormhole, you know, I mean, I spent most of twenty seventeen listening to nothing but like music from different parts of Africa. That's how we found Fatoumata. I mean, everyone has their Fela Kuti moment, you know, where you just become obsessed for like a year or whatever. And we had that. And so, you know, that leads you down different paths to different, different people.

And I'd also heard this song like sampled a couple of times in other house tunes, but much more in a loopy kind of way. It wasn't like they taken the whole song and revamped it. And I just felt like it had so much potential to, like, absolutely take the roof off the club. And it was more of a mix thing than anything. It was a production thing. You know, I didn't really want to add too many original elements.

It was just boosting everything that was there and like taking it into a place where DJs would play it. It needed like energy.

It needed a little bit more of a boost to bring it into, like the now. And I think that's what we managed to do if the drums and the extra bass line and it's a different structure to the original as well. But yeah, in terms of finding it same way, I've kind of found all my sampled songs that I like. Random YouTube as you just blog and wormholes, man, hours of wormhole.

You know, it's like something we've discussed on the show before is the way that the the Internet is this. Powerful tool for eroding certain geographical or cultural barriers and allowing you to access music from across the world at the click of a button, but maybe the dark side of that is the erasure of the artists and the communities that are responsible for generating this music. So I know a guy, you know, maybe crafted this one particularly, but I think this question would be applicable to both of you.

And it's how do you think about the the ethics of credit and collaboration when you work with artists who might be outside of your community, outside of your culture? What does that look like for you?

Well, you just make sure you do it, make sure you credit the person. I mean, that's the first step. I mean, it's never crossed our minds to ever like nick someone else's song and not credit them. I mean, look, we're lucky. We've got an awesome team around us and our management who are on the same vibe as us that, you know, credit needs to be given where credit's due and everyone needs to enter into a voluntary agreement.

You know, if someone doesn't want us to use their sample, that's fine. No problem. You know, doesn't matter. We're all doing nothing that'll happen one day probably has happened in the past. But I would say we've been very fortunate with everyone we've approached with samples before. Everyone's been super willing to to collaborate all the way back to Eric Thomas to now this. So I think it's yeah, a lot of that problem I think comes from, you know, back in the day when people weren't doing that as much and weren't giving credit where it was due.

And, you know, we don't want to pick ourselves up and say we're doing everything perfect or anything like that. But we do try our hardest, like we do follow every sample to its route, like who owns it, if that's a label or a publisher or the artist, we do our best to find that person. And sometimes it takes a long time. The last track on our previous EP or where you come from, that song took us a hell of a long time to clear with Khamal, the singer of that one.

You know, he's 84 or something now and it's been through label after label after label. And and he emailed us last year saying something along the lines of thank you to the, you know, for the use of that sample. Because of the royalties that I've made off of that song, I've finally been able to fulfill my life, dream of buying and owning an exotic collection of birds.

So, you know, if we all said no one's allowed to make music that isn't from your own culture, you're not going to get those beautiful moments like that. You're only going to be putting up walls. You're not going to be bringing them down. You know, I think the collaborative aspect of music is one of the best things about it, but it should be done with respect and care.

You've got to find those birds and sample them for your next record.

Oh, God, yeah. That would be amazing. That's a video of him with them online. Is that real? Yeah, yeah, yeah. When we first heard about that, I was really over the moon for him. But then the more I've thought about I'm not even sure I agree with owning birds. Yeah. So I don't know. Yeah. There was a lot of like moral blurred lines there.

Yeah absolutely. There's been so much fun. Before we go, what else can people expect from this album?

I think the best way to summarize it, like briefly and overall is that it's like our most diverse album that we've made in terms of like the palette of sound, the inspiration that we're letting in. You know, before we were kind of strictly house garage and then a bit of more songwriting and in the next one. And that's all stuff we grew up with. And, you know, now we're exploring stuff that we're listening to now, like as adults, like exploring the world of music, like exploring the music in the places that we visited, you know, like South America and like Africa, like places we've been to and seeing something.

And that's made us go home and think, yeah, I wanna listen to more of that. And that is being put into the music, like through our subconscious, you know, because like I said earlier, if you're in the studio jamming, you're only really jamming.

If you're like being true to like the music that's in your mind. And if you do what I did and listen to Fela Kuti straight for a year, you try making music. That doesn't sound a bit like that. You know, it's going to happen. And that's great. That's like what inspiration is all about. You know, like us doing our twitch thing has proven that to me. You know, we're doing a competition at the moment with the guys on Twitch where we made a song live.

We sent the parts out to anyone who's bought the record. And and then tomorrow we're listening through all of these amazing remixes that they've done. And, you know, some of them are a disclosure, a bit of a rip off, and that's fine. They're all like thinking, I'm going to try and do what I've learned on the stream. And I've I've watched disclosure now for, like, hours making their thing. So, again, like, you try and not sound like disclosure if you've only been watching us teach for eight hours.

So that's how it's on the up is like it's us being very honest and true, like about the music we love and doing our thing with it. And then, yeah, all the stuff and the message is about positivity, you know, strength, happiness, courage. Like we made this album for nightclubs and for people to dance to en masse in a massive field. And, you know, that's not happening. But luckily, I think the message is still kind of relevant and works in this current situation, or at least that's what people have been telling us on Twitter.

So that's. Well, I'll tell you what, I put it on this morning just before seven o'clock in the morning and my one year old immediately started dancing. So I think the energy is working.

Excellent. Yeah, this one's for the yoga playlists and the dads out there.

Thank you. Not just say. Switched-On Pop is made by Nick Sloan and Charlie Harding were produced by Bridget Armstrong and Megan Lubin, edited and engineered by Brandon Farland, illustrations by Thomas Gottlieb and social media bar our executive producers on Kuroi and Kelly Nelson, who were a member of the Vox Media Podcast Network.

You can find more episodes of Switched-On Pop at Switched-On Pop Icon and at Switched-On Pop on social media. A quick reminder, if you go and take our quick survey, that would mean the world to me. We really like to know who's listening, what's going on, what's important to you. Go to Vox Media Dotcom Slash Pod survey. It's in the show notes and come back next week because we're going be talking with some of my favorite artists and country music, which is going through this major transition.

We chatted with Brandy Clark and Keith Urban. It's going to be a really fun time full of country music. So catch us next Tuesday. And until then, thanks for listening.

I'm Julia Freelon and I'm the host of a new series called Go for Broke.

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