#158 The Case of the Missing Hit
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From give up this reply, M P, J.

vote and I am at school.

So alex, i'm going to tell you a story that I think you sort of remember, but maybe don't know the details of. okay. So last brain, I I went to a therapist because I was having hard time with a good stuff and I was completing the serapis like, I am just like, so obsess with this, I can something about this and the therapy has something to me that no there. Before he was like, we were considered the idea that .

you might have A O C day. Yes, I do .

remember this. And at the time was like, I definitely don't like whatever else is going to me I deadly do ocd like there's no part of my life that's about compulsive neatness or order like I like walking pig pen.

I can to test to the truths that but .

what the guy said he was like, well, there's a kind of O C D called pure o where you don't really have noticeable visible compulsions. Instead, you're just extremely, extremely obsessive.

Okay, that that reports with the person that I know.

yes. So he gave me the test. I was off the charts and like IT was one of those moments was really healthful because there are all these parts, my personality that have had struggled with that .

I also kind of snapped into place.

It's like fighting your horoscope kind of like there is so many times in my life for you. Some is like, oh, when you just stop thinking about IT, when you let IT go, when you get over, why do you just not look at that? And I always been like, you're joking.

But then there's this other thing that happens where sometimes my brain just locks on the things that don't matter at all. Things are just small and stupid. Like finding somebody the other day about the size fight book.

I'd wrote a kid and I tried to remember the name, and I couldn't remember the name. And I was like, oh, this is the rest of my day. The rest of my day is trying to member the of this book and my brain will not change the channel until I deal. What was the book that you're die .

in the ARM think god.

But but like I know everybody, experience is that I experienced, I still got much more deeply.

Okay, I am saying to you.

because the story that I want to tell you this week, it's about a man who's living in exactly that hell, like the hell of having something stuck on the tip of your tune that just will not go away. I feel like I was uniquely qualified to help him, and so I tried. The story is a super export.

So this week art listener with an unusually thorney techy problem is a guy named .

tiger gette. So I I am I live nothing else um I am an artist of film director.

I was very intrigued your email i've been i'd like that .

I can't overstate how much of the sister and me crazy.

well.

tell me about the problem. So this this the problem began. This was probably, I don't know. This is a couple months ago now I was leaving. I was leaving a dinner party with with my wife. I think I was A A holiday party and I had had I had had a couple of beers and or driving back to our place.

And as I tend to do, you know, i'm trying to get her attention maker laugh and i'm seeing this song let's stuck in my head and she's asking me like, what is this what is this weird song you're singing? And so I was like, you don't know this song. This is like a huge thing in the nineteen.

I can't believe you don't know this song. So I pull my phone out to try to find IT so that I can put IT on blue to that we can listen to IT on the drive home. And I can't find a single layer to the song. I can't figure out, you know, who made IT.

I nothing, no information anywhere on google about about this song and the next you know the next ten fifteen minutes of our drive home is is quiet because i'm just sort of city sitting in the passenger sea like frantically searching for this for this song and I I eventually get home. It's like know ten, thirty, eleven o'clock at night and she's like, i'm going to bed and I was like, cool, going to stay up. I gotto figure this thing out and i'm i'm awake for the next six, three and a half hours.

google. And every time I searched something new and found another dead end, I was getting increasingly frustrated, but also kind of scared. Like IT started to dawn on me that there was something, that there was something really bizarre happening.

IT just IT felt almost like he'd found like a hole in the world, like a glitch. He said IT wasn't like this was the best song in the world like that wasn't the problem the way he described IT. He said it's a song where it's like the courses are kind of in the star of you two, but the verses are very bare naked ladies.

So far you're selling me like a song that I really don't want to listen to.

What door you can't but just the point is not whether that is a good sung. The point is that because Tyler couldn't find that you just .

could not let go at the thing I would wake up in the the d night, new and puter and that like this, these lyrics were kind of like filtering into my brain because the lyrics of this song are not ambiguous here. It's like there are a million.

And one things that you should be able to just type into google and and immediately pull up, you know, the right song and instead google is returning these like wildly literal search results, like one of the lyrics Better than a assault for a bride or something like that. And i'm searching this and it's just pulling up pictures of like of like royalty, you know, like sultans and royalty and their family. And like this is the weird thing that there not there not absolutely nothing on the internet about this song.

Does he know how he remembered the lyrics so clearly? Was the song he heard a lot?

Yeah, it's a sign that he said like he would have heard a lot in like junior high high school era when he's grown up in arizona. Okay, which also means that he has remembred the song with what I have to say is a remarkable clarity for over two decades.

So the the interview, the kind of interview, two measures, it's .

like this, do, do, do, do, do.

do I think it's put on and I think it's like a flute and the whole kind of concede of the song is Better than like, Better than you know that they sort of rattle off a bunch of things like the year Better than a when the the g string Better than the promise of a good nigh lame but I don't know.

I did like to sort of that .

is that is very, very nice, ladies. Y right. And then the and the course is like share youtube. IT has this sort of grand like arena arena sound do IT you know yeah what in its catchy .

even like your rendition of IT like it's like IT has like nokia ring tone yeah there's .

like an reward me and reward me equality to IT for sure.

This is this.

I'm like you don't recognize. No, nobody. So the next thing tiger did to solve this, IT was such a IT was such a desperate attempt at a solution.

So Tyler is not a musician, but he decided to try to record the song on his own using like adobe premier, because he's a filmmaker. So he recorded like a multitude version of IT, where he is doing every single instrument with his mouth, with his mouth. Do any here you made? I absolutely do. Okay, this is true. And fired.

To do never have to worry because I I hate to say one of the reasons this doesn't help much as because .

person not necessarily like a natural born singer. No.

he .

would be the first say .

love with.

IT reminds me of a lot of bad ninety songs .

that does remind me of chicken china, the chinese chicken.

which is actually called by their navies. China, the chinese chicken. You a long stick and your being stopped stick watches.

IT reminds me of savage .

garden and .

to be .

cooler.

no fuck and song, no bad song.

Ah it's like there was a moment in the middle of nineties where White all rock bands had to have sort of like the cadences of rapping in their songs and this like belongs to .

that moment yeah well, Tyler, sorry, this is in your head. And additional thing that just .

makes us very frustrating and confusing is that Tylers one one hundred percent sure that this song was a pop song. He says as a kid, he didn't listen to anything that was obscure. Or in the, he says his taste music, which is completely mainstream, right? So whatever this was, IT was something like bank on .

the radio would .

have disappeared.

yeah. I mean, there are regional .

hit at the same thing. You know, maybe this is just big in arizona, but the one thing he found on the internet was a post on a forum called the strat talk to com, which is for strata castor fans.

the car ah and from uh so it's supposed .

by guy who goes by po man and this guy on .

the forum had posted this question that that basically was like this song was in my head but I can't find IT anywhere on google and then on on this this forum post. He list some of the lyrics and they're the same like the lyric are similar enough that they are definitely from the same song that I am remembering and he even when as far as to play the sort of intro, like the first two measures of the intro on his guitar and posted on youtube.

The thing about this guy is he's posting from trinidad, tobago.

Oh, okay, not a regional hit.

not a like somehow the song was heard by po man who is intrined and debo and tire who is in fact I zona, but then completely different or night.

Tyler had already tried mastering po man on the form and no luck. I D tried also no luck either. So toller's. The next step had been been to take the song he had made.

And then he tried to plug IT into this APP called sounds sound hound is lexie im, except the idea is, somehow is supposedly you just sing a Melody into the open of swiss people to recognize the song. That's really cool. yes.

So he tried that. IT hadn't worked. So that's really came up with .

the point of my own.

which is this going to fight us, get tayler in the studio and then just make a way higher quality, way more accurate version of the song from his memory. And when you take that copy, poking and sound, sound. And then what happened?

So that was the plan after the break last into us.

Welcome back the show. Okay, a couple of weeks o my friend Christian hudson, who is a singer, singer in a ay, he basically put together band for me, just a venture. Great musician.

He knows who he said would be willing to help me with this project. I met them on a sunday morning in a parking lot of this recording studio called united recording in holly's wood, the band, I would describe them as cool in an unintimidating way. They were just a game of really smile. Dudes, j gans and me.

should we go in?

yes. yeah. Hi, I know. And is this really a bit you? So we walk in the studio and was like, oh god, this is just uncompleted fancy.

Like this was a studio that drinks and natural built in less Angeles. I started think about the ban that actually recorded the song. Like, did they get to use this to do this? Nice to do IT. Um it's a beautiful like wood panel like the walls had. All the records are really like, right you all the things .

reported here and now.

and I feel so bad, we're joking. I was turning IT a little bit queechy at that moment because we are really recording studio through four musicians. And there is an engineer just like, what business do I have trying to recreate a song of a song, gay's memory? And that is the moment when Tyler shows up the guy with the song, said Tyler, as you got. So we go to the control room. They're like, hey, we've got like a runner if you guys needs snacks or anything, which is a guy horseless to you who goes to get your snacks.

I didn't know that there was such thing.

I didn't know either. Anyway, tired me, all the musicians we gathered in the sea circle. I reset the plan.

So I A, I make a like problems. I help. Okay, so this guy, so he feels like everyone is sort of enjoying the chAllenge of this. But nobody really thinks towers going to remember this song one up to really makes something out of IT, like we are taking a crappy facilities ed footprint of a dinosaur and trying to imagine and recreate the dinosaur from that footprint. So I take up my iphone and I played hours recording to joe people we'll be working with.

Song I am thinking is reminding me of one particular song. No, I didn't. Oh, that is, what is that one week? yeah. O, K, yeah. So at this point, my friend Christian, the guy who gotten a band together, this imo, or he realizes what he's got himself into um he leans over the main he goes i'm going to have to sing this because Christ is a very talented musician but it's true the way he thinks his songs.

Sounds nothing like to do for earning. yeah.

So anyway. The band leaves the control room, goes in the live room.

and they start warming up.

The crazy thing, the thing that I didn't expect was that basically Tyler immediately transformed into lake, a very confident music producer, like he was running around. He he like, he was like, okay, good.

hard to do this.

Like the symbols, I think need to be a little more shimmery. Like basically to this.

Is there a is there a more? Is there a sparser baseline? IT feels busy like there's something .

the guitars have a little more like edge guitar like from youtube.

Way to turn down the level of happiness.

He was so specific in his musical instruction a way that I would never be able to be. IT sounds .

like trying .

to make a police sketch.

Yes, it's also like a police sketch, except in this case, the due who got moved has perfect recall for people's aces. Like tillers started coaching the drama, he started aching the basis the guitarists who also play flute. And then he jumped in the vocal booth with Christian and was coaching .

him through vocals. And yes, I never have to worry because I know you. Are you Better .

than toler was so high .

of the thrill .

of seeing the song to back to life. First of, he made his wife coming the studio to say, because, like, this is real. This is real. You can see the science real.

And then he he, like, like, in the middle of IT.

he called her, he called her and he came. He drove over the studio and he was clutching his hair in his hands and like pure joy. And then he even actually arted remembering part of the gotten. No, there is guitar solo.

We use the guitar, share your love with. And IT goes back, and and it's.

I'm very, i'm very happy for Tyler. I know I felt great.

I felt like we'd actually gainst this thing out of his memory and turn IT into an actual road map we can actually use to find the real song. Do you wants to hear? IT, okay.

Your body is such a cheaper for actually saying .

these lyrics. He kind of kill .

that what they seem. I never have to worry.

Better than a Cherry on .

a ripped creams sunday.

The guitars are shimmering. They're very much random guitar shimmer.

This is so.

right? So then .

you ran IT through the thing.

figured out what IT was. We put IT into sound down, no result. But we now had, like a real version of the song we could go play for people we could find something to.

Who recognized that I had this feeling like I was Carrying almost like an artifact in my pocket, like we'd plug this song from whatever late nineties nap ster graveyard IT had been entered in and IT was ours. Now, you know, was like having a baby try saloo s in my pocket. So I figured the best place to take this would be the music critics.

So I called branding clink berg. He is a senior editor rolling down. Okay, here.

We go.

I do not know this. Okay, i'm sorry. Um let me do you omit to grabs some people in the conference room?

Yes, oh my god. Yes, please. I can get there.

There's a bunch of people who would be Better suit to have heard this.

Oh my god. Thank you so much. Brain was a very effect that he is twenty eight.

There are a lot of critics, everyone her older than twenty eight. So he grabbed five of them. He said. Between them there was over a hundred years of pop music and experience. In one one you're talking to the long stone brain trust, and we were Young in this time period and listening to a lot of modern music like this. yeah.

So I played for them. Nothing.

no, nothing, nothing. They thought that because they didn't recognize the song IT actually meant the song probably didn't exist. That either a super elaborate prank or something .

is very strange here.

Something often though, and guys, he tell the truth, he work for a viral market. Their honesty. God best guess was that this was a hoax that Taylor was just lying to me.

But I believe Tyler. So I went for her second opinion. I called jesica harper. She's a legende music credit SHE used at the pitchfork. You an mtv news, right?

Here .

you go. OK do.

You like.

Part .

of .

IT really?

Yeah.

this song probably exist. Where did he live?

He lived in an arizona. He'd in suburban arizona. And he said he only listen to the radio and not cool radio.

I love that chAllenge. This is weird. And IT was a mean singing, yeah, he was a rock band.

So the one other place he found IT on the internet when he looked there was a post on a strategy casta guitar forum. And I was in turning that in tobacco.

It's a major label.

record major label.

right? Get yeah because there's like no there's like no indie record that would have like literally got around the world to your places like that IT. We've had to be something that was a charting hit.

But then if it's a charting hit, how's IT not on the air net? C yeah.

This is a railer meter triangle. They've both sail .

through the song.

okay. Can you send me a copy of?

Yes.

okay.

So next percent tried was an email. Robert crisis a, no, Robert Christie is, yeah, I like dinner of american .

pop music like you you contacted rover cro.

cro about IT as like he's heard every pop song since one thousand nine hundred six seven. And so he told me to email the song, which I did, said, you know, actually the person who would really know this is rob sheffield, which was the same thing, the wrong in stones editors. That said, everybody seems to agrees that rob sheffield is the human encyclopedia of forgotten pop music. He would definitely .

know IT when IT comes to terrible music from the vault of collective cultural memory. I'm the janitor .

with the broom.

so can I play this mess?

yes.

Have a good one night, Better than a books for the many page pictures, even if.

Is this ringing any bell?

No, it's not any bells i'd love to to hear, just like a bit of IT.

Yeah, let me play for you.

Thank you.

Something I picked up that I didn't pick up the the first time yeah is uh, the reference to the bet page pictures yes, which is like that that's that's that's super specific. That's definitely late nineties. That's definitely not early nineties. I I. Not a lime, I would bet to tell that that is a that it's nineteen ninety seven to ninety nine.

What do I do?

I have you tried like this, walking from town to town with .

a ukeles .

our doors that feels .

like the punishment is like what my sentence.

So this is the point where my obsessive range just really duck gets team because despite all this work was I song, the song was winning. IT had warmed itself in my brain so terribly, actually realized it's been decades since I heard a pop song that I could just immediately look up online to get out of my head. And he was like, in the meantime, my brain's defenses had atrophy.

Like during the day was kind of fine. Like i'd walk around having the song, i'd see people in the hallways and sing lyrics. Them IT was at night. Then I got really bad. I'd go home, I eat dinner to get in bed, and I just lie there, stant ceiling, the guitar solo, just seventeen seconds of music looping on my head for hours, until literally three A M.

The something I never see. I never have a break. the.

I have an obsessive brain. I'm used to obsessing over things. This was uniquely bad. IT was just a Melody, a Melody and this question, which was starting to feel, Frankly infuriating.

How on god screen? Th, can you have a hit radio song that actually just gets favor ized from history? And IT wasn't just me like one of these nights I got a text from Christian, the singer. He was also awake, also humid IT to himself. Hello.

do. Your brain is broken .

the way my brain is broken.

It's like Tyler has like a contagious his patients zero. And now I we all have IT. I talked to j and max, uh, who who played on the session.

I guess they had dinner the other night specifically to talk about the song because they both are having the same I guess, the same thing that we're having or it's just can't get IT out of their heads. You're like, what? something? So now about this.

they met how to have dinner just to talk about the song. Yeah, that makes me feel so much less alone.

I really hope you figure this out. I I know.

So at this point, I kind of escalate things. I decided, obviously, have been going about this all wrong for whatever reason. This only not reach the point where critics today still remembered IT.

And so I thought to myself, who is the person who would have been around back then? Who is sign? Definitely what a matter to when I came out. And the only name I could really come up with was Stephen page. Stephen page was the former from of the very naked ladies.

Okay.

because my thinking was.

everybody keeps saying that the verse of our mystery songs sounds a lot like the verse of one week. If I ve been the front man for the band that did one week, I ouldn't notice the songs that sounded a lot like our song. So I called the seven.

Hello.

hi Stephen has .

i'm great how you i'm good.

I'm calling for a real reason yeah so Stephen was the lead singer, the benny ladies, back when they were in songs like if I had a million dollars goofy pop songs that told millions and millions of records so first things, first, I played in the song. Okay, here you.

One first.

every.

Like there are elements in that that are very, very naked ladies and there are little things like there's the flute part, like when we had a song who needs sleep that had a flute thing in IT like that yeah and then like the in the course is that no, no, no, no on the guitar, which is like very, very naked ladies, but that stuff is more very naked ladies to me than the song itself. The song itself makes me go. That's what people thought we had to like.

oh, wow.

Steven did .

not recognize the son, but he was also able to help me with the mystery, the that question of, like, how does a pop song just disappear? He said that as somebody who's actually in the late nineties music scene, this completely made sense to me. Can you imagine the band that would have written the song.

oh yeah, there is an error there in that like whatever ninety seven, two thousand and two where there were bands largely who grown up in the bar scene, who had this kind of mix of by the history of being a cover band, uh, who then morphed into a band who had originals. And at that point that was the absolute peak of the record industry, one thousand hundred and ninety eight, two thousand. That was when the record business made the most money. In the history of the record business, IT was the bubble IT IT was the real estate bubble or the dcom bubble of of the music business.

though Steven described IT. All this money pouring in, they actually make things feel really unsafe for musicians because the labels were just in full speculation mode. They were treating the bands like penny stocks.

so they were signing bans left, right and center.

interesting. So was like you. So it's totally an error that would support somebody who pops up, does one thing and then you never hear from them again.

Yeah, it's also possible to that sometimes these bands would have A A soner to that. They would test on some radio stations and the'd never get the record deal. Or they get the record deal in the album would never come out. The song wasn't yeah, we kind of like, you know demo ing a stuff. They may be doing a test market, doing some research, they would call IT doing research on the record.

So you you write the single, you record the single, you get a mix engineered. They played on the radio. And then if people didn't respond, IT in like flax and IT just disappeared.

sometimes that was the case or the record would come out and not not in any promotion, but stuff might seem like seem like it's a hit when it's you just happened to be hearing IT if time as well as being tested in your market.

That's so strange, god, for those bands that must have been so hard like.

oh, I know so many bad, great bands to who know where you. We're in debt up to their ears, but with the record company. And the record company would either not put the record out eventually or they put IT out and dump IT and they get dropped. And then you've seen as a band, they got dropped and they could is hard to get .

second chances then. So this band could have been .

one of those IT is fully possible. The always played on the radio but never actually released, which would explain why I ever made IT onto the internet. This was the first person I spoke to who actually had a working theory for how tailor could have heard of the song a million times on the radio, but then also how the song could just disappeared. And Stephen had idea for how to find the song.

which is what he said .

to do is just go find a radio program director. Or in the late nineties, right? Because the idea was just like the record label.

S were constantly sending new music to the radio station, and the program teachers were the people whose job was to listen all this stuff. So I found one personal liotard. He's worked for one one hundred. And I in the .

sign that got a real distinctive Melody to, with, with the flute playing there. And IT would IT would definitely stand out to me if I knew that, you know and that's that's a really dirty sounding song and .

I think that I would absolutely so president had .

never heard the song. He was absolutely sure okay, but that was okay because there's one more avenue to try, which is actually Christians idea. The same from .

the band IT might be worth reaching out to like producers from the time .

I because probably like there was one producer who did like half of these guys albums yeah probably .

and usually when you have a bit like is either trying to sound like another band or whatever, they would always try IT like the guy, I think is nothing, Jerry, but he produce the blank one, eighty two stuff. And then every band that sound of a link when I did do is like, let's get this, get a record right? Maybe there's that. I love of that for the bare naked ladies IT.

Turns out there is her name is Susan reuters. Hello, hi. I was where? What did IT answer? funny. Well, first there was dead silence.

And then there was A A tones that sounds like a complex tone that was kind of rising in pitch.

You hear everything musically.

Oh.

about that. Well, at least you hear things more musically than I do. So Susan, on with David lender, did the bulk of the bear naked ladies production, and I put her the song.

Wow, this ring .

about no so he didn't remember IT .

but he .

had a totally different theory um I have a .

strong suspicion that what he's hearing in his brain is a hybrid that IT IT might feature a verse from veronica ladies and a course course from something else when the brain is forming memories and has take a pattern of neural activity. And IT has a tag that title n with this protein, but that pattern is pretty done, fragile.

okay. So I think I should have mentioned about Susan SHE actually left the music industry to pursue a car in academia. He knows the time about cognition, how the brain works, but her theory that this is actually a false memory for Taylor, that is, two song cities fusing together. That's actually theory, mostly based in her days as a music producer, he told me the story about working the studio.

I remember when time france was we were at rehearsal and he was at the piano, taken a break and he's just noodling around with something. And he he liked IT the thing. He was noodling around with any looked up and he says, that's really nice.

Did I write that? He wasn't sure he liked and he was a sure if that was one of his or not before prince worked with cross. Be still a nation. I'll never forget this, uh, walk into the studio one morning after they had been up all night working on a track and the engineer was just putting IT away so I heard the track and he was just instrument at this point I said, oh, I love that song and I should look at me he said, what song? And I said, the one you plan right now, love, don't live here anymore.

can he said, no.

we just wrote that and recorded at last night. And I went, no.

you, because it's some radio.

So Susan's point is even professional musicians can sometimes make up, whether they're writing a song or remembering a song. And SHE thinks Tyler just made the opposite mistake, like he thought he was remembering songs actually using like chunks songs he have remembered and writing a new song with them. Is there something musically to hear the song? And just IT sounds like, what what about the signing you thinks that could be two times, ross, together?

Musically, IT doesn't really, doesn't really sound like a single. The radio was so damn competitive in the nineties, you had to be dam good. And a IT sounds like the kind of song that would have made the great as as a nice album cut. But I kind of suspect my strong hunch is that that song is an invention.

Susan's theory both made sense and sent me into a total tailspin. Because at this point, what I realized is that the song, obviously is this terrible year warm. It's fully suck my head, but it's an earworm that can never be removed, because the cure for an earworm is to listen to IT. And if this song does not exist.

something to listen to IT. This is actually my worst nights.

And honestly, like i've been walking around for weeks thinking about how unusual and interesting IT was that Tyler, a non musician, had a sort of almost photographic memory for pop song that he had not heard since he was in high school. Susan's explanation for what was actually going on a made A A lot more sense.

Sure, but that still isn't. Explain our guy and printed in to baka.

P. A, yes, that is what I thought. So actually, I went back to the strategist reform.

I went back to that post. He knows two things. One, peaceman actually did not post very many of the likes the song. He had that opening Melody, and they had, like two lyrics, really. So IT was fully possible that Taylor had composited the part of the song that he remembered with something else OK.

But the other thing I noticed in the original post is that peason man actually mentions posting questions about the song on facebook. And so I was like, oh, I should try to find that facebook post, because the whole time i've been searching for the song powered, been searching for the song. Everybody been searching for the song.

We've been searching lyrical on google. Nobody looked on facebook. So I start packing lyrics in the facebook, and I get a hit, a hit that leads me to the first person i've ever played the song for, who actually recognized that.

familiar?

yeah.

Well, have they do that all for memory?

Yeah.

wow, I thought everyone forgot about that song.

So this is evan Scott leon. Three, three members of some is because .

he rote the song fucking .

get out here.

So, 啊。

so, so when I did that facebook surge, I never found P. O. man. I found this other posts from a guy in the Philippines who posted the entire layer to the song, like everything tile. Remember, the versus the course is actually a little bit more. And this guy at the bottom, this post, hopefully identified the singer, do you want to know how ever ended Operating a hit pop sign that disappear from the internet?

Of course I do.

So events from Green or north. Ola, he was thirty years old and at the song, and he says that basically just popped into his side.

Songs like that, they kind of fall onto lap are are totally an organic experience. They just kind of grow and grow. And I wanted something that was you really pop in, and I wanted to create something that had a really catchy beat.

This song that just sprang from events head, he called IT so much Better um and who were you listening to at the time? My career influences musical at .

the time i'd been listening to a lot of youtube and you can probably hear that you probably AR that can hear yeah so so that's probably where that I came from. And there is a band, and I can't remember the name of the band, but I was kind of like an industrial ban that had really sync a pated vocals. But I bed, bed I bit, and I just can't remember the name of the band, but I was listened to do a lot of stuff like that in .

the versus to me, sounded like very naked ladies.

Yeah, I never thought about that. D, I never really got.

So I was very sorry. Learn that evan actually made this song completely alone. No band like he played every instrument himself.

I when he was done, he just sent IT to this company that could print cities for you. And when he would play shows locally, who just give the cities out for free. okay?

The thing that happened next is a part that just feels like the embarrassing dream that every musician has, that they don't tell anybody which is out of the blue. He get a phone call from the sky. Y he says, hey, our universal music. H wow, the largest music label in the world. They sent a lincoln toward AR to his house.

First of I live in Greens, woof coloneus. It's black, a medium size town. It's not a big town. But they said, in this town, car is really nice town car with this driver, really cool guy.

Just tell me stories and talking up a storm and and so I get to the, I get to the plane and i'm in first class, then I get off the plane and this you know how people hold up signs with your name on now no one has ever said that there's a guy with a sign with my name on and he takes me to the hotel and and and I get into this big, huge, sweet. And you know, how do you how do you absorbed that kind of experience? I, I don't know.

I am as he thinking the song's really quirky are they are sure it's gonna a hit. But IT didn't matter. The whole thing was like a fever dream. He had a whisk into this meeting with doug, boris leger's label exact at the time, the guy who ran universal music.

I walked in there and he says, you like ice cream and I said, yeah, I love ice cream. And he says something into this monitor on his desk. And then this beautiful, like six foot tall, I guess IT was a secretary on ano.

But SHE comes up with this tray of ice cream. Check this out. Ice cream like coconut, like this amazing, like coconut flavor ice cream that's like organic coconut favor ice cream in Martini glasses.

And I at, I sit there and I eat ice cream with dog Morris. And there is a rapper called juvenile. Yeah, I know juvenile.

And he had a song called back that. Asa, yeah, I know back. That asked, when I first time I was in doug Morris office, he played me that all. I thought, wow, this this is makes my song look really stupid IT was just funny because, you know, doug Moore at the time was probably in his sixties and he was really digging this song. You and next thing I know, I was signed in a IT all kind of happen so fast that was really unbelieved.

That's ridiculous.

yeah. But it's like as soon as he signs of contracts, things go down hill. They actually go down hill in a way that really reminded me of everything, Steven from bronic ladies and said first, they don't do IT. You'd expect they don't record the album like real studio with a full band.

They just released his .

literally just took a thing made and started sending into radio stations. Okay, the label did officially put the record out, but they basically buried that there is no national tour. There is no more money for promotion, Evans says. Actually remembers the moment where he reads what was happening.

They have these drop dates where they um they put the record out and then it's always on a tuesday at least IT was back back then. I was always on a tuesday and the original drop date was september nine through something like that. I can't remember exactly. And the first the first red flag was when they said, well, we're moving the the drop date and I just knew that symptoms was up. They were talking all about business and all about radio spins and all about, you know, i'm not getting enough radio spins in this place and i'm not getting enough in that place and you know is is going to sell if we hear and then you know, ever we need you to call some people to see if you can get a Spark go on.

and they wanted you to call radio stations.

and then they want to me to call radio stations. They want to me to call friends to, if I could get, you know, and I ended up, you know, this is, this is really crazy, but I ended up paying, I sending a check to a friend in new york and said, I need you to go out and his named gary, I said, gary, I need you to go to that the big record store, what was IT called? Like virgin, virgin, good.

Huge virgin. yeah. I said, go out. You know, here's a check I want you to put in your account.

And I want you to go out and just buy handful of the city. Just every record story you can find IT just buy handful of the city and he did. But you know, I just wasn't enough to to to keep a going on.

And did you at the time, did you feel disappointed that I didn't turn into .

the bigger thing I felt? I felt bad because I felt like I had let them down because they are really expecting IT to, you know, be a big hit song. And I just felt kind of guilty because was IT something that because I started to think that maybe just because I didn't recorded in a real big study, I did IT in my bedroom. You know, maybe I gone in and done a huge big recording of IT, or at least gotten IT remixed you I don't know.

I think it's weird that you feel you disappointed because what sounds like as they were like that just .

try IT yeah like there's throne speakee against the .

wall and to see if IT sticks .

beateth yeah exactly.

So after the label dropped him, evan just returned to his Normal life in Greens ro. He says he went back to just playing local shows, mostly covers. This is happy.

He says he's a profession musician. He gets straight songs for TV and movies. And he says, actually, without so much Better, he doesn't think he would have had the confidence to really pursue a career in music.

So when can we get a copy? The song.

oh, he failed to me. Let me play for you.

It's a ja heart instead .

of a fluid. The drums .

are way heathy or two.

It's all eleven.

I have you in my dream.

Tayler remembred this distorted .

dinah ah. Better, Better yet, we bring some day.

Of course, I also believe for Tyler.

my heart is pound. This is crazy.

Wow.

yeah. Holy shit. yeah.

wow. Great on.

And I pretty for Christian in the second. Oh.

my god. Oh, my god.

how did you remember .

that .

i'm gna immediately. When were off the phone? Listen to the song on repeat.

That's awesome. Yeah.

Evans got all some. If you want to see him alive. He plays every wednesday at print work.

Be strong and Greens were rina tilers flying? Go see in the spring. And Tyler said he's going to personally add the lerach to so much Better to the internet. 突然 来报。

For bio, assisted by me, pj bo t and house golan were produced by sheraton panama, the abandon damon mary and a fully just a Young and a mano jogesh. Our exactly pressure is in a hour you need a spotify players of the songs from the epsom at reliable dot limo, such Better. And my intraparty cohoes outscored band has recorded his own version of the son, which you can hear at the file that rocks.

If you make a version of the song, please send IT to us. We were mixed by rick quan patching by Michelle Harris, our intern, at least awaye. Thea music is by the mysterious breakfast matter cylinders. Additional music is episode from drive matter cylinder, tim Howard and marie ramoo special things this week to our band, Christian lee hutson, max weber, logan home and j. rudolf. Thanks everybody everyone stone, Christian hord, andy Green, David Brown and steamer and brian higher and to Chris, wait for us metal okies wish a catch her away and Emily, joe Mason, matt lever is a small lemony you can keep in your apartment. Thanks for listening.

We'll see in three weeks.