Chappell Roan and Olivia Rodrigo's Super-Producer, Daniel Nigro, Tells All
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I'm Brian Hyatt. This is Rolling Stone Music Now. Today we have an interview with someone I've been anxious to talk to for a while. Daniel Nigro. Daniel just got a Grammy nomination for Producer of the Year. And he's the co-writer and producer for two of the biggest and most exciting artists of the past few years. Olivia Rodrigo and Chapel Roan.

He's also done great work with Conan Gray and Carolyn Palachuk, among others, and he started his career as the frontman for the band As Tall As Lions. He's played a huge part in making pop a lot more interesting, and we had a really revealing conversation about just how he and the artists he works with made that happen. Here's my interview with Daniel Nigro. ♪

It's been an amazing few years. I know you must be still trying to wrap your head around everything that's happened in the past few years. It's definitely been a pretty crazy, I guess, four or five years, four years. It's been a pretty amazing time. I feel really fortunate that my life changed for the better during the pandemic when everything took a full turn.

which is pretty insane. You've worked with a bunch of people, but obviously the huge breakouts, Olivia and Chapel Roan, the thing that those two artists have in common is they broke so many rules of what the record label started to think was how pop music was made and what pop stars should be. And you've been a big part of that. And I think it's so much less assertive

assembly line than the way that pop music wants to be, bearing down on songs, bearing down on every syllable, breaking rules of structure. We could sit here for an hour and I could list all the rules I think that you've broken with these albums. But you kicked around, and we'll talk about this, in the songwriting world for a few years. Did that...

engender in you a sort of idea of some of the rules that needed to go down, that needed to be broken, things that were not being done right in the typical way that pop songs were being written? It's interesting. When I moved out to LA, I feel like I always look at my pop songwriting career. I started in about 2011. So we're talking about 13 years at the moment. And I look at the 2011 through 2014 was the beginning of my career.

Then you have 2014 through 2017, which I consider like the dark period. And then I have when things turned around for me around 2018. So I'd say 2011 to 2014 was like the learning years. I was learning under Justin Raisin and Ariel Rekshide. And well, basically, Justin and I were kind of

working under Ariel and then Ariel was taking in some of our ideas and he'd bring them into the studio with the artist that he was working with. And then once we had success with Sky Ferreira...

And then about 2014 hit, I wasn't a producer at the time. When I was working in those first four years, I was just writing songs. And I would go in the studio and Justin Ario would be producing and I would be in the background being a writer on a couch and coming up with ideas and try to be creative, but not like actually sitting at the computer and working. And then I started to build my own confidence as a producer. Well, I should say that I wanted to learn how to produce and I was learning all those years, but I definitely wasn't good enough to be a

a solo producer. And I took my step back in 14, 15 is when I started to go, okay, I need to produce songs. I want to be a producer, but I'm not that good.

and I'm going to learn. Sorry, I know we're going on a tangent, which is basically the pop structure. I was what a lot of people call in the music industry, chasing, which is when you're hearing what's currently popular and obviously you're not a successful songwriter. You're trying to get into the business and start to get "cuts". The way to do that is to write songs in which maybe other artists will cut.

And so then you do what I would call a lot of chasing, where it's like, oh, these songs are popular right now. So like dance, remember, if you remember in like 2000, I don't know, it was like, it was like really heavy, like EDM, like 128. There was just all these songs, like, you know, the Don't You Worry Child. ♪

Don't you worry, don't you worry, child. She has got a plan for you. Don't you worry, don't you worry. Calvin Harris was at the top of the charts, and these great songs were being made, but then everybody that wasn't the A-tier songwriters were trying to write songs that could try to compete with those A-list songs. And then you're not working with the artists that you can get the songs to, so you're chasing it.

And I learned a lot. I didn't have a lot of success at that time, and I wasn't really getting a lot of cuts, but I was learning a lot about the music industry and how it worked, which led me into the period of time when I finally kind of gave up on the chasing. I don't want to say gave was the wrong word, but when I decided, okay, this clearly isn't working for me. I'm not happy. I love making music. I love music, but I've lost the plot a little bit.

for myself. And good thing is that it seems so logical. The change in step in 2017-18 feels so natural.

But it's amazing that it took me that long to realize it because it took basically about seven or eight years to realize, oh, I'm not doing this right. Duh. And I remember my manager, Ian, at the time was always pushing me, like years before that I actually made the change, was always pushing me like, stop chasing. Just find an artist that you love and work with them. Make good music with someone that you like. And I'm like, what? And it's so hard to even instill that in younger producers and songwriters because every time I see...

an aspiring producer and they ask me certain questions and they're like, "How do I get there?" Like, "How do I get to work with Olivia?" Or, "How do I get to work with Chapel?" The answer isn't like, "How do you get to work with that artist?" It's, "How do you work with an artist that you can help them become the next person?" Too many people are so focused on trying to get to whoever's already successful. Basically, I had all these things in myself that I was working on as a producer and as a songwriter, and I think I took those things that I learned, those mistakes that I made,

for all those years when I worked with Olivia and with Conan and with Caroline Polachek. It was stuff that I was bringing into those sessions to kind of help push the projects further. To answer your question more specifically, the thing that I love about, I'll talk about specifically Olivia because she was obviously the first one to really break

She really didn't care about the structure or the pop structure. She just wanted to write a great song. And whether that song had a third chorus or skip, the second verse was completely different melodies than the first verse. She just loved making music and making songs. And she was so like a gut reaction to everything that we made. It was like, I like it. I don't like it. It's so...

straightforward. What can people with a rock sensibility learn from the pop world? And what can people in the pop world learn from people with a rock sensibility? Because that's another key thing you've brought in. The funny thing for me is like, it's that

To me, they're the same. Like pop music is rock music. It's using similar chords. It's all to me, a song is like a song and then you dress it up with production. Like you could dress it up with a guitar. You could dress it up with a Juno synth. And it's kind of what I do a lot of times and what my specialty sometimes is when I work with artists is helping them like what I call like create mood boards because our songs are so song focused. Like a lot of music, a lot of pop music,

And I hear this from other producers. They'll always ask me, like, how do you write the songs? You write them, because we go in there, we build the track up first, the drums are banging, and it feels really good, and then we write a song to the track. Yes. And for me, I should say, I write songs...

and because i'm a songwriter i write them first and then when i'm done writing the song then we produce the song and to me what i like to do with artists is often which is also it's it's a good thing because it really can help a song be shown in the best light but also can be like a real

curse because you could get lost which has happened to me before where you try out a production and I'm not a hundred percent sure this is the type of production it should be and then I change it and then I change it again and then we're on version three and the artist is I don't know you're confusing me so

To me, it's all about the production and how you dress up a song that will call it a pop song or a rock song or an R&B song or a country song. I think that's at the core of what makes your work stand out. Both of those things, that not seeing a difference

between a rock or pop song and the writing of the song before the making of the track. I think you can hear that in everything you do. And it is, we were just talking on this podcast the other week about the sort of return of what we called song-ass songs, which is just like real actual songs that

that can be played acoustically. Because if you look at the top 10 of Billboard over the past 20, not all the songs, you'd be hard pressed to break down some of the songs, which is fine. There's room for lots of great ways of making songs. But for a while, I think the world was a little starved for song as songs. And that's something you've been really helpful in helping bring back to the charts.

I think it's all cyclical. Like when you think about the 70s, you have your Paul Simons and Neil Youngs and Carole King, Billy Joel. Like you go through the years and kind of Harry Nielsen or whoever it is. Like you have this big period of a lot of songs. And then in the 80s, which I also love, by the way, like I don't actually think there's no right way or wrong way of making a song. But...

Then you get to the 80s where everything became rhythmic. And I think Paul Simon even talked about it, like at some point where he felt as a songwriter, he was like, like the song isn't the song, it's the rhythm. What's making a song popular now in the 80s is rhythm. And he had to change the way that he made music because he realized he had to put the feeling of music first before the song itself. Absolutely. We should say that even for people who privilege the kind of songwriting we're talking about, like

Graceland was made track first. So as you say, there's all sorts of ways to do it. And I think, so I just think that it changed, it's like it ebbs and flows. I bet you we have this conversation in two years, three years from now, we're going to be looking at it and be like, wow, like remember from like 2021 to 2025, how like everything was song based. And then 2027, it was just like, we all went back to rhythm again. Like it's,

You never know. And the thing that I realized for myself, and I think that what I always try to tell other people is, it took me so long to learn this, is that you just have to kind of stay true to what you do. And obviously there's learning and changing with the times, but if you constantly just try to do what everybody else is doing, you're always going to miss whatever the trend is. And if you just kind of stick to what you naturally like and love, you will line up with the zeitgeist every once in a while.

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It's interesting to look back at As Tall As Lions and listen to, which was, of course, your band before you moved into this area of the music industry, and to try to find, you know, hints of what was to come. The songwriting is very strong. After sometime

But you've said that you were always kind of trying to be a little bit more poppy than maybe your bandmates were comfortable with, and so maybe not all of that ever got through. Yeah, I mean, it was tough. I actually listened to, I forget when it was, like so many, I think because of like obviously the success of the Chapel record right now, it's every once in a while, like people in my like past will come, like old friends or old work colleagues will come

They'd write me a nice message, "Oh my God, I just saw you here. I didn't realize you did this song," and made me think about "As Tall As Lions." I got a couple of messages last week or two weeks ago, and it made me think about our records, and I went back. I had not listened to our last record, "You Can't Take It With You."

in many, many, many years. I started just going through the songs and I was like, wow, it's so crazy. I feel like we just kept on missing the mark. I know there was good intentions behind certain songs or the way that we were trying to produce it, but we always got off track and it always came out wrong. And oftentimes I feel like that's kind of why I became to work with the types of artists that I like to work with because I believe oftentimes that like

For myself, I should say, I just always wish that I had somebody when I was younger, when I was in my early 20s, that just helped shift me a little bit. Like, oh, that's cool, but you should listen to this Neil Young song or whatever. Just give me a better reference. Or be like, well, this is how you record drums like that to make it sound smaller, like

Just because we're in this era doesn't mean the drums have to be really big. Actually, small drum tones would make the song feel much bigger. And I never felt like I had somebody on my side that was helping me with that problem solving. And that way, things always kind of went wayside. And so I feel like that's part of my DNA as a producer, to help people not make the same mistakes that I made or something. Do you think there's a world where a band or bands could...

start to have chart success again or is the structure of the way things work now just against it in so many ways that it's going to be solo artists for the foreseeable future i think that there is a world for bands to kind of see some big chart success like i just said before i can't name you a specific band at the moment watch out for this band or watch for this but i can say that

I just feel like the way that things are cycled, that there's going to come a time where it feels that the world is ready for it. That being said, I just feel like because we have computers now, it's just harder for bands to form because I feel like when I think about even myself as a 16 or a 17 year old, not that I, we, the technology didn't exist because it did exist. But at the time I didn't know what the technology was. So like,

To make music, the only way to make music was to get together with a drummer and a bass player and make music. Whereas kids today can go, oh, I want to make a song and I want to make it sound good. I don't need other people to do that. People are just less inclined in general to get together to make music because you don't have to. And therefore, it just makes less bands happen, I think.

It is interesting. I know that, especially on, I think it was on Olivia's second album, that there's parts or songs that were recorded live in the room with a live band. So, All American Bitch. And Ballad of a Homeschool Girl. Yeah.

I should go.

really great at teaching me to be like, I was, if anyone was like scared to like go and make live recordings for like a big rec, a record with such a big artist. Cause even like, you know, we have these imaginary rules in our head of like, Oh, that's not how music is made today. I felt like I thought that like at the beginning when she was like, I wanted to feel like really raw and really live and like the tempos to fluctuate. Like, okay, I know exactly how to do that. And so I,

The thing that we did, which was pretty cool, was that we wrote the songs first on acoustic guitars. I should say, All American Bitch, she wrote that song. I helped, obviously, with some changes, but that was the song that she brought in the idea for. And then...

Ballad of a Homeschool Girl we wrote together. So we structured them out on an acoustic guitar. In Pro Tools, structured the whole thing out. Made a demo of myself playing the guitars and the bass and programmed some drums to give it a structure so that she can hear all the parts. Like, okay, this is how it's going to feel and this is how it's going to build and all those things. And then, much like I would do a song normally, just a rough sketch, when we got it to the point where she was happy with it,

We went into the studio. It was the drummer who actually played the drums on most of the record, the guitar player who played a lot of guitars on the record, my friend Ryan Linville, who's an amazing producer but also a great bass player. And so I got the three of them together, had the song ready in Pro Tools so they could hear the parts and where I wanted the changes. They listened to it a bunch of times. We muted it, and I played it, you know?

And it was like, and I was, to be honest, I was shocked. Not shocked, but I was like, this could go one way or another. Like we could try it and it might not work. And then when we were done, we just spent like three days in the studio. And I remember the engineer, Dave Shiffman, he was like, wow, like this actually worked out. And I was like, yeah, it did. I think we were all pleasantly surprised that everything that we used, that we tracked, we ended up using, which was like, it's rare sometimes to go to the studio, track all this stuff. And it's all usable material. Listening to Good For You...

I've thought that you could play that for like, if there is a young rock band,

But play that for them and be like, "See, this is how you can arrange a rock song with a more modern sensibility." I've listened to that a lot of times because the way you pull the drums and guitars in and out, the way you pull parts in and out, it would be very unusual for a band to do that. A band could do that, but they wouldn't think that way. So it's so interesting to me. I think a lot of people are surprised that song was completely made in the box.

Every part of that song was recorded just directly. It doesn't surprise me. But I think that was the fun part when Alexander and I produced that song. Actually, there's one instrument...

that was recorded live and it's the hi-hat. We felt like with that song we needed to give it some element that actually made it feel like only a drummer could play this. And so Alexander and like he we sat in the room together in the it wasn't even in the drum room but literally in the the writing room and brought the hi-hat in and worked on all the hi-hat patterns to make it sound like it was a live drummer playing the song.

Super smart. So the story of Chapel Roan being dropped from Atlantic is quickly becoming this infamous legend, like the people who turned down the Beatles. Famously, like, nothing here, they can't sing, whatever those... And it just, it does seem a little bit, unfortunately, for all respect to those executives, but it does seem emblematic of...

those stories that you hear again and again of a moment when a label doesn't get it. And I know you were happy about this. It gave you the ability to start over. You were not sad about it. But at the same time, the idea that you could send a label, Pink Pony Club, in its form that we know. It wasn't like some different version, right? It was Pink Pony Club. That was exactly how you hear it. Exactly. So they don't even have that excuse, like, oh, that wasn't the version. No, it's that version, which is pretty evidently like a fucking amazing song. Oh my God.

Were you confused that they couldn't hear that?

I have to be careful how I answer this question. I think I'll speak generally for a second and say that I'm never surprised when you look at this landscape of 2020, 2021 pandemic, right? When you look at that time period, Pink Pony Club was made before that. So there's not really an excuse to it. But there was this really like large period of time, maybe two or three years. But there was a couple of years where...

record labels were only looking for things that were viral. It was one of the saddest times for me in music because it was like, how are we going to make the song viral? What artists are we signing that's already viral? It was like this whole thing.

where their eyes were only set on things that were already going. TikTok was really the focus as well, right? And TikTok was just the focus of everything. Artists would have a song. People have come to me, especially because of my work, with how specifically I work, the amount of times that I've been hit up by a record label, I'm not single out any record label, just saying in general. We have this artist...

They have this 15 second clip on the internet. It's literally not a song, it's a part of a song. Can you get together with that artist and make it a song and make it a production? And it became this thing where people were finding these little tidbits on the internet

and then trying to make it into a whole song or a whole production. And it's just so tough because you feel so bad for the artists because these artists, they're not in the music industry, they haven't been going through the ins and outs of understanding how record labels work. They don't even have a full song written. They're dealing with all this crazy nuance to the music industry and how to navigate getting your songs out there and

I just felt like it was this really dark time for a lot of people. And record labels were... And I say that because record labels weren't focusing on any sort of artist development. The philosophy was literally just like, get the song, put it out, and let's make some money. Nobody was looking at it from the sake of...

posterity or like how are we going to build a catalog? Because ultimately, I always tell the artists that I work with, like, I listen, everybody, if you're a producer, if you're a songwriter, like you, you want to, you like having hits. When you have a hit song, it's a good feeling. Knowing that everybody likes your song feels great. When you look at careers that feel iconic or legendary over the course of 20, 30 years,

those careers weren't built off of like a couple of hit singles. It's built in such a different way. And I actually don't feel like it's built any differently today, you know? Because they're being built at the moment. You won't know for another 10, 20 years, like who right now is going to be culturally relevant

Or you're going to look back and be like, who was that artist that everybody really liked 15 years ago? And I'm always trying to instill that in the artists that I work with. As long as you make great music that you really believe in, you could stand behind and really work up the craft of songwriting or the craft of the production of the songs, and you will build that career. It sucks to know that a couple of years ago, everyone was so focused on virality, because all that really matters is...

putting out great music over and over again. It doesn't matter if they're hits or not, just like great songs that your fans can build up their own version of you to love and to behold and to carry with them and want to go see the concert because concert's two hours long and I want to see more than one song. Yeah.

And definitely more than 12 seconds, yeah. And of course, the irony is so many things from Chapel have since gotten super viral, not by aiming for it, just by making great songs. I think that kind of goes back to what I was saying at the beginning, that there were a lot of ideas that were, in my opinion, wrong in the way that people were approaching making songs and making artists. And this is about the rule breaking that you started to do. But...

The funniest thing to me is the objection to the two guitar solos in Pink Pony Club, which are definitely some of the coolest parts of the song. But those were there because she wanted them, right? Yeah, I remember. Actually, it was funny. I was listening back to earlier versions of the song when it was just her and I riffing on ideas. I was like, what was it before? Because I would work on the production...

And then I'd send her a bounce and be like, here's where I'm at with the song. I remember when she heard the part after the bridge, she was like, no, I want like, I want a guitar solo. So I was like, wait, what did I have before the guitar? I don't even remember what was before the guitar. Because even in my head, I like, I reimagined it as like the guitar solo has always been there, which wasn't the case. And it was like a synth solo. I had a synth solo.

And it was funny. And listening back to it, I was like laughing, like, oh my God, like, because my head wasn't like, oh, we got to put a guitar solo here. And even though the song actually does have guitars in it, like the chorus hits with like big dirty guitars and stuff. But she was the one who called for a guitar solo. And I remember like I went in, worked on it and I sent her a version. She was like, no, it needs to be more melodic.

So me and Sam like workshopped what you hear now. I think it was the second pass that we made it super melodic and she loved it. It's cool because generationally speaking, and I was thinking about this because I actually was thinking a lot about

Have you ever watched the documentary Some Kind of Monster? Oh, yeah, sure. The Metallica documentary? Yeah, more than once. When I was a kid, I was obsessed with Metallica. I'm putting them on the same... It's weird to talk about them in the same way because sonically they're very different, but in a lot of ways...

I'll actually use Metallica. Metallica is a great example of the rise of Chapel in the sense of like, as a kid, I discovered the Black Album first. I probably didn't discover it until I was like 10 or 12. It had already been out for years by the time I heard it.

And then it was like, I discovered the Black Album and then you ingest it. And as a kid, for a lot of kids, they probably can't relate to this now, but it's like, you listen to that record as a CD over and over again. Then you start, after two months or six months, you get tired of it. And then you're like, oh, wait, there's another record. Yeah.

And Justice For All. And then, oh, there's Master of Puppets. And I probably spent two years going through the catalog, finding a new record and this going backwards. That was one of the great things about Chapel's success with Good Luck Babe is similarly, people found Good Luck Babe. ♪

And then they were like, oh, wait. There's this whole album. There's this whole album. And then they could slowly go back and dive into the album. Oh, wait, there's an EP from before the album. People were diving backwards. And granted, it was only over the course of like a two-year period that they got to go backwards. But similarly, they got to go backwards and discover and even discover her like how...

funny she was on the internet before she had the red hair. People can like fall in love with that character the same way that like I discovered Metallica when I was a kid. So going to the guitar solo and Some Kind of Monster, I always think about that scene. He's like, but if we don't do the guitar solo, that dates the song to today. Because we used to do guitar solos, but people think guitar solos are dated. Can I say something that I think is bullshit? This whole fucking solo out, you know, dates the whole thing. That's so bullshit. You

If you don't play a guitar solo in one of these songs, that dates it to this period. And that cements it to a trend that's happening in music right now. I think that's stupid. My brain is like, guitar solos are dated because I listen to Metallica and Metallica's guitar solos are from the 80s. It's always great as a producer and a guy in his 40s to work with a younger artist and have the...

the fresh perspective of like, that's not dated to me. That might be dated to you, but that's not dated to me. It's often the opposite of what people would imagine. That it's because they, they're never going to be worried about people saying they have old taste because they're young. It doesn't matter. They can like anything they want to like. And that's the beautiful thing about like, that's why I love working with Chapel and love working with Olivia because their reference points are always current because of their age. And so I'm always learning.

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And so it was Dave Stewart's son, Sam Stewart, who played those solos. And you knew him because you worked with his band. So Sam is a guitar player of a band called Low Moon. And I produced a couple of Low Moon songs back. I don't think it was like 2018, 2019. I produced a bunch of songs. So I've known Sam for a long time. Sam's like such an incredible guitar player. And Liv is like basically around the block from me. So it's really great because...

You know, something that I also had to learn as a producer, because growing up as a producer, growing up as if I was like, it's been that long, but when you're working with no budget and you're making songs like for...

an artist doing a demo and you have, and like, nobody's paying you to make this demo. Cause that's the other, the weird part of the pop landscape is the fact that like, like you only get paid after you're completed the work, which is like, I always say like, it's like asking like a contractor to like, you're only going to pay them after they finished the bath, like they've completely installed the bathroom. And you're like, like what other industry works that way? And if they don't like it, they can go like, we're not paying you. And you're like, but I just spent three weeks working on it. Back in the day, I would play everything myself.

And not because I wanted to, but more so out of necessity. So it was also like over the last few years,

I've been actually learning to take more of the role of the producer and be the listener of the songs when it comes to working on a certain type of song where I need a certain type of guitar part, a certain drum part. I call this guitar player or this drummer. That's something that I've actually, which is it kind of got lost, I think, because I think that was the way it used to be for many years. When you look at records being made in the '70s and the '80s, it was like, oh, you call in the musicians to play the parts and the producer was the producer. Whereas today,

We think of a producer as like the person who does all that does it all, you know? Which I think is not actually was never actually the role of the producer.

I think the role the producer does it all definitely came from hip-hop. That influence of what a producer is, the interesting thing is to be a cross between what a producer used to be and what a producer is in the hip-hop era is an interesting thing to innovate. I feel like that's the role that I try. It's like half and half. Sometimes I'm the person playing all the instruments because it's just...

easier, and I know that I can play that bass part. It's funny on songs, I'd say half the songs I produce, I play the bass on, and then half of them I don't play the bass on. Because I'm like, oh, this part's complicated, needs more of this syncopated groove, and

And I'm not that type of bass player, so I'm going to call up Ryan to play the bass on it, because I'd rather listen to what he's playing and know the right part, as opposed to be listening myself and thinking if I'm messing it up or something. One of the many fascinating things about...

the work with Chapel was it wasn't just writing songs. It was forming this new idea of who she was as an artist, bringing in the danceable fun stuff after she had been a very serious singer-songwriter. Not that she's any less serious, but bringing in the fun pop stuff and very deliberately reconstructing her as the kind of artist who could be comfortable doing that. And so that must have been... That's a very interesting transformation to me. Sure. I have to give...

I have to give her the credit for it in the sense of like, she was the one who came in with the concept like for Pink Pony Club. The thing that I will say that's really beautiful about the chapel story is her, like because she got dropped and it's always tough to like, like, like use, because you were talking before about like, like, oh, it's becoming this like legend of like the story. Like, and the one thing that we had going for us that's,

is never that easy for artists to have is time. Time is something that you really can't like, everybody's career is different and the trajectory of it and the expectations that are put on you and stuff.

Chapel had this period of growth within when she first signed her record deal and then the pandemic hit and she was dropped. But I always talk about, and this isn't even talking about specifically with Chapel, but I think that the thing that I look at that I was lucky to have

was those years during the pandemic where everything slowed down. And I think maybe that's something to take for a lot of artists, maybe. But I think with Olivia and Chappell both having those years where it was chill and having time to reflect on songs and to write a song and then not think about it for a little bit and not feel the pressure of like, "Okay, you got that song, let's go. Let's put it out. Let's do this thing." That kind of feeling we didn't have of the rush.

And that enabled, I think that helped Chapel to grow and start to feel comfortable in her new role and stuff. And similarly for Olivia, like I felt like we had this time because, and I actually told this story the other day about driver's license, where I was like,

We made driver's license during the pandemic. ♪ Got my driver's license last week ♪ ♪ Just like we always talked about ♪ ♪ 'Cause you were so excited ♪ And at the time, my studio was my, well, I say at the time, it's still my studio, but like it's different 'cause in early, in mid 2020, I was living in the house as well. So I was, my studio was also my work, my live workspace. And so my bedroom,

was literally like the wall shared with the writing room of the studio. And we had written Driver's License, and I was starting to work on the production. We had laid down all of our vocals to a mini piano, just so we can get the vocals down and structure it out and figure out how fast it could be or how slow it should be. But when it came time to me playing the piano, I would go into the studio every day for, I think it was about six days. And basically, I went into the studio every day and...

I would just, and I say go to the studio, it's like I went from my bedroom into the studio, which was like a six foot walk. And I sit at the piano and I had the mics all set up and I'd play the song.

And I'd record it and I'd be like, oh, it doesn't feel right. And just having, and I did that for six days in a row where I get up in the morning, I'd play it a couple of times and I'd see how it felt. And I remember on like day six was the first time that I was like, oh, this feels really good. Like I'm playing it just with the right emotion that I want to play it. And I think it's just more so telling the story of like during the pen, during that time was slow and we had time to go back and like reflect and

and listen again and make sure things were right. And I feel like not all artists have that sort of like that luxury of like the time to develop themselves and the songs to develop themselves and that kind of thing. If you listen to Feminine Aminon. Can you play a song with a fucking beat? Hit it like Rambambo.

I'm not sure it was intentional, but you hear that evolution in one song because it's like the beginning is pensive singer-songwriter and then it makes that leap into fun pop. I love how it encapsulates that whole thing, complete with one of my favorite moments in pop of the last five years when you play something with a fucking beat. It's just so phenomenal. I mean, that song is... I love that song so much.

for that exact reason, because I feel like when Chapel was still on her old record label, there was this whole conversation about, like, basically, we were starting to make fun music. We had Pink Pony Club, and then we had made Naked in Manhattan, and Naked in Manhattan wasn't ever put out on her old label. It was a song that was being worked on at the time. And I remember they were, like, basically, like,

She can't be both. Like, she has to be...

pop music or it has to be this sad singer-songwriter pensive music. It can't be both things. And I remember getting so mad because I was like, I know her personality and it is both. If you're hanging out with this person, it's clearly it's both of these things. If an artist is going to stay true to themselves, they have to be true to themselves. And that's being both of these things, which are very strong

sides of the pendulum, which to me was the most exciting part of the project was that like, not only can she be both, but she sounds great.

good and she sounds not even good she sounds great being both like when she sings a pop song i'm like oh my god i love this artist i i want to listen to this song over and over and when she sings a sad piano about i feel the same way i don't often feel that way when i listen to artists so like this is pretty special and that's what part of what i was i felt so crazy about i had my mugatu moment of being like i feel like i'm taking crazy pills and anyway

When we made Feminine Omen on, it was sort of an accident in the sense that, and I told this story recently, but basically there's that Eric Pride's cover of, it's the, Call on me.

And we were in the studio and I was just, can we just make a song that's just like one word or one phrase? My wife and I listened to this song in the car and we just want to make a song that kind of feels like similar energy to just like, it could be you just singing one word over and over again. But the beat is really fun and hypnotic. After some workshopping in the studio, we came up with

feminine omen on. I started mapping it out in Pro Tools and made the beat and like we're going through it. And but we quickly realized after like working on it for like two or three hours, we're like, this really isn't captivating enough for like four minutes. Like, like it's a cool part, but I think it's a part, you know? And then somehow I forget, I honestly forget the genesis of how it happened. But then it was just like, what if we like

did like a dramatic like theatrical shift and we actually started the song and did like a complete fake out. The crazy thing is it happened within, we wrote that whole song in like one day or like the majority of it, like the verses and the chorus were all written in one day.

but I just remember like when we did it, Chapel felt the same way of like, just like, we were like, oh, this is the intro to your record because this is like, this is who you are. It's both of these things. I feel very lucky because I don't think that often times with an artist, you get to like make a song that kind of like

Paints the whole picture, you know so I feel very fortunate that we were able to create that song because I just felt like it was like the perfect like piece of like this is who she is, you know and Generally one of the things that I love about the record is the spoken word bits the gang vocals all the interesting backup vocal things you do it's very much a signature of the project and

How did that kind of come in there? I think going back to what we have talked about before, like, I think the thing that Chapel and I had making this record that most people don't have was the time to, like, make a song and kind of live with it for a few weeks. Or, like, we'd spend two or three days in the studio, like, digging in. And then, like, we would leave the studio and I'd give her, like, a bounce of the song. And then over the course of weeks or something, we'd talk. Like, we wouldn't be working all the time, but we would talk and be like, hey, like...

What'd you think of that song that we made three weeks ago? She'd be like, Oh, I really like it. You know, like, I think that maybe it could be faster. I think that maybe, you know, we can add like, and having those moments where like we would, the time away from the songs, um,

helped so much in the character development of the songs. Because we could listen and try things and it never felt like, "Oh, we're in the studio today, we have to get all the stuff done." It was like a lot of the work was actually done out of the studio and spent just when the songs were living in our cars. I think a lot of songs like Casual and Red Wine Supernova really benefited from time. Do you remember when her spoken word little raps became a thing?

Actually, you know what? I do remember. We were working on Naked in Manhattan. And I feel like Naked in Manhattan was the... If Pink Pony Club was the blueprint of like, oh, this project is turning into a fun project, then I think that Chapel felt the confidence. Once we had Pink Pony Club and it felt really good, the next song that we were working on was Naked in Manhattan. I think in Chapel's mind, she wanted to step it up a notch. And I remember we spent a lot of time

working on the post-chorus, you know, the touch me, touch me, touch me, that part. Like that wasn't the initial idea. Like we had multiple ideas. We always knew there was going to be like a quote unquote drop part. We just weren't sure what it was. And I remember the first time, one of her first ideas, which I still love. I think I posted a clip on my Instagram story last year of it. Cause we have this one where she,

I actually did it in her iPhone. I had her like, I told her like, oh, just like, she was like, I wanted to say something crazy. Like that bitch is deluxe. And I was like, okay. And I remember being like, that's interesting. And then sure enough, like, like she sent me like a couple of voice notes, like different tones, you know, like really intense or like really soft. And I remember I was like playing with like,

putting these little words and I forget, we came up with some other phrases too. But we put all these phrases in the post-chorus where the "Tachibwee" part was.

And I actually remember at the time thinking like, oh, this is really cool and this is really fresh. And like, it's so different and she has so much attitude and so much swag. And I was like, this is so cool because I didn't even expect her to go there, you know? And while we didn't actually use those phrases, I remember that like opened up the door of like, oh, like she's,

She can talk on these songs. She can say, like, it doesn't have to be sung. And her tone and her voice is so cool that it can work. That was probably the moment where, like, in my head switched at least to know, like, oh, this, we could go even further with this. How to go, it's such a big swing and it connects. I made it so it's like...

It takes such guts to go for that kind of song, both from the producer and co-writer and from the artist, to just be like, we're doing this. We're doing a YMCA type thing. Fuck it. And it's either going to be huge or nothing. And it ended up connecting. Was there a psyching yourself up portion to that song? Well, I'll say that a couple of things about Hot To Go are interesting. I think that we couldn't have made that song unless we were super close. Like, we have such a good creative relationship that...

As Max Martin once told me, he uses the phrase, daring to suck. And you have to dare to suck sometimes. And it's one of those things where like big concepts can also kind of what you're just saying, like fall, like wrong in a certain way. And I remember, but I think because Chapel has so much confidence and also because of our relationship

relationship where like, like it's okay to be vulnerable and it's okay to like come into the studio with a crazy idea and no, and there's no judgment. Like, it's like, if you come in with an idea and you want to say it, you say it and let's go for it. And we stick by each other's side on it. And, and,

She came in with that idea. And I remember being like, honestly, I think my thought was like, yeah, let's do it. And I think my initial thought was like, oh, the way that we'll make this quote unquote cool to me was like, we'll speak H-O-T-T. I was like, I remember thinking if we want to

yeah, if we want to keep it like feeling like interesting, let's like make it like spoken word, like talky. Let's use the word talky. And we just, and the crazy thing about that song was that we wrote it so fast. It was like, I think we made the whole song in like two hours. And yeah,

She, yeah, she just, I mean, that's the special thing about Chapel is that she, it takes a certain artist with a certain confidence and a certain swagger to get on a microphone and sing it. And you go like, that's awesome. Like I think her and I did a talk recently and I was like,

It's her. Like, if I got on the microphone and sang the same lyrics with the same melodies, you'd be like, that's not it. Like, it's all about her and how good she is. And that's what makes the song so special. And finally, I just wanted to hear about what you're working on now and hopefully a status report on Chapel's next album. There's not much to report. We're just getting started on it.

I think the one thing that we took from making the last record is that time is a big factor in making sure that things are right.

We've written some great songs and we already have a couple of songs that we feel really great, really excited about. And more songs will come over time. And the thing that I love about Chapel is that she has so much confidence in what she's doing and that always shines through in the music. And so there's already so many cool moments and so many unexpected moments of her. And what else are you working on now? I'm helping co-producers.

Conan Gray I'm doing helping out with his fourth album I'm diving into that right now and a couple other like there's a couple of songs that I'm working on that like I don't like to talk about them unless they once they I always feel bad like it's like you say you're working on it and then it doesn't come out but I know that I can talk it freely and say that this I'm working a bunch of Conan stuff a bunch of chapel stuff and a couple other things that like maybe next year you hear about it and do you think that chapels album will come out next year or do you think that's too I think it's too I think it's too early to tell I

Fair enough. Taking your time. Daniel, thank you so much for taking the time to do this. It was great talking with you. Thank you so much, Brian. I really appreciate it. And that's our show. We'll be back next week. In the meantime, subscribe to Rolling Stone Music Now wherever you get your podcasts. And please leave us five stars and a nice review on Apple Podcasts and Spotify because that's always appreciated. But as always, thanks so much for listening and we will see you next week.

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