here<\/a> if you’d like to listen along.<\/p>\nKAG:<\/b> I think there are lots of bad songs in my overall catalogue; I\u2019m not saying this to be self-deprecating but more because I tend to aim for making stuff that feels (for me) like I\u2019m taking a big swing creatively, ideas where I\u2019m not sure I can pull it off. For instance, Priests covered a song from one of our favorite tour van albums, \u201cMother\u201d by Danzig. I was listening to a lot of Nile Rodgers projects at the time and wondering, could we make a disco version of \u201cMother\u201d? Reader, I revisited this track a few months ago and regret to inform you we could not. However! I don\u2019t think this is my worst song. I also don\u2019t think the outtakes from my first solo album that got released a few years ago are my worst songs, even though I\u2019d be so happy to get some of those off the internet. Many are unlistenable! But, I think especially in this day and age of inoffensive, safe, often boring music being made to fill playlists, it\u2019s important to keep being a freak and making weird stuff that might not work. It\u2019s important to record in strange ways and make stuff that makes some people wanna turn it off. There\u2019s nothing wrong with pleasant or forgettable music, but it takes all kinds. To me, maybe my worst song is an old Priests track called \u201cLillian Hellman\u201d. I just think it\u2019s a little lyrically uninspired. I\u2019d literally read a book about Lillian Hellman (an actual line in the song) and wanted to do her justice and I don\u2019t think I did. It\u2019s not shockingly bad or anything and my bandmates contributed perfectly fine stuff. I just think what I did there was filler, probably the worst creative offense.<\/p>\n
YGR:<\/b> That\u2019s probably one of my biggest fears: not to make bad music, but mediocre music. I can see how learning about Lillian Hellman could inspire a song, though. You\u2019ve always integrated real people, real historical events into your work… how do you approach that?<\/p>\n
KAG:<\/b> I think for me it\u2019s almost a question of how to not<\/i> do that. Some artists seem most comfortable writing directly about their own experiences and emotions; that\u2019s much harder for me. My own experiences and feelings are fluid, they\u2019re harder to grasp how I permanently feel about them. It\u2019s not that I\u2019m ignoring my feelings or experiences, I\u2019m just not usually creatively excited by them. Whereas a good story, whether current or from the past, that\u2019s riveting stuff! I want to try to hone in on what about it has captured my attention or feelings. Again, that\u2019s just for me. I love stuff other people write about their own life. Joni Mitchell is one of my favorites. You seem really good at that too actually, though I guess I assume a lot of your lyrics are about real life, maybe they aren\u2019t. Maybe everybody is writing about a character, even when they\u2019re writing about themselves \u2014 and maybe everybody is writing about themselves even when they\u2019re making up characters or telling stories? <\/p>\n
YGR:<\/b> How much did you contribute to the music with Priests, the stuff that wasn\u2019t lyrics and singing? <\/p>\n
KAG:<\/b> I don\u2019t love breaking down the contributions in that band because we split all the songwriting credits four ways on purpose (or three when it made sense to). Being like \u201cthat part was mine, that part was theirs\u201d doesn\u2019t feel like the spirit of the band, which was also the really frustrating part of it sometimes, too. But there were times I was humming a riff or suggesting a rhythm idea. It\u2019d be hard to only ever write lyrics or top lines. <\/p>\n
YGR:<\/b> Was there a clear moment where you felt like, \u201cI am now a musician\u201d? Do you even feel like a musician now?<\/p>\n
KAG:<\/b> I write songs but I don\u2019t consider myself a musician. I just cannot bring myself to get passionate about getting good at instruments. It doesn\u2019t get me excited at all. I always tell people I\u2019m a musician like Irving Berlin, and I\u2019m absolutely trying to be funny when I say it, but as I understand it the guy couldn\u2019t really play piano and he never let that stop him from contributing some of our greatest entries in the great American songbook. Not saying I\u2019ve made anything like that, but I think about how he never let that stop him if I\u2019m feeling bad about my musicianship. My ego is not in the technician aspect of instrument-playing, but I know my rudimentary way around the basics of a few. On this new record it\u2019s mostly me and my producer Meg playing or programming stuff, and then Gleb Wilson on drums (\u201cUnglued\u201d, I think a few others) and \u201cExpo \u201870\u201d bass. Mastering engineer Roberto Schilling added some low-end in a few places like the \u201cI\u2019m Your Man\u201d cover, and then there\u2019s a great guitar cameo from Forest Juziuk on \u201cUnglued\u201d.<\/p>\n
YGR:<\/b> Have you learned anything from \u201cLillian Hellman\u201d? Or is it simply just your least favorite if you had to pick, which you so kindly did at my request?<\/p>\n
KAG:<\/b> I think so, because even though I\u2019ve written stuff that I later think is bad since then, I don\u2019t think any other song makes me wince in quite the same way as that one. I have songs where listening back, I\u2019m like JFC, what exactly did I think I was doing here, but then I remember what I thought I was doing (\u201cI was being Nile Rodgers\u201d, \u201cI was being aggressively literal in a way that I thought would come off cool and exciting but maybe sounds more like a bellyflop\u201d) and I don\u2019t feel that bad about it. I think you should only feel bad if you\u2019re phoning it in or playing it safe. Everybody should be aiming for the extremes where you\u2019re either going to be fantastic or sucking really bad a little more.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Welcome to the inaugural edition of Worst Song here at Yellow Green Red. I had the dubious idea of a short interview series wherein I ask artists I admire about the worst song they ever wrote (in their personal opinion), with the caveat that it has to have been recorded and released. What’s the fun […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15900","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-worst-song"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.yellowgreenred.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15900","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.yellowgreenred.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.yellowgreenred.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yellowgreenred.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yellowgreenred.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=15900"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.yellowgreenred.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15900\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15904,"href":"https:\/\/www.yellowgreenred.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15900\/revisions\/15904"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.yellowgreenred.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15900"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yellowgreenred.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15900"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yellowgreenred.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15900"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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