Wednesday, Mar 28, 2018 • 14min
Jack Johnson - You Can't Control It
Play Episode
Jack Johnson is a grammy-nominated singer-songwriter from Hawaii. He's had four number one albums on the Billboard charts. In September 2017, he released his seventh album, All the Light Above It Too, and in this episode, Jack Johnson breaks down a song about parenting, politics, and the ocean. It’s called "You Can't Control It."
songexploder.net/jack-johnson http://songexploder.net/jack-johnson
Read more
Talking about
Speakers
(3)
Jack Johnson
Hrishikesh Hirway
Noel Gallagher
Transcript
Verified
Hrishikesh Hirway
00:00
You're listening to
Song Exploder
where musicians take apart their songs and piece by piece tell the story of how they were made. My name is Hrishikesh Hirway
.Share
Break
Hrishikesh Hirway
02:26
Jack Johnson
is a Grammy-nominated
singer-songwriter from Hawaii
. He's had four number-one albums on the Billboard charts
in September 2017. He released his seventh album, All The Light Above It Too
. And in this episode, Jack Johnson
breaks down one of the songs from that album. It's about parenting politics and the ocean. It's called You Can't Control It
.Share
Jack Johnson
03:09
I'm
Jack Johnson
and happy to be here. This song, it started from a little jam that my good friend Zach Gill
, that Zach
and I had made, he's got this little space in his garage, we go in there sometimes and just jam around make noises and stuff and this one day I jumped on the drums and he started playing on the keys, and then I added a little bass part to it.Share
03:35
Zach
, we're like brothers, he was born on the same day, same year, everything. We've been friends since we were 18, we would get together and stay up all night, and like get a four track out, write down ideas and then try to sing them, and I learned a lot from that.Share
03:49
He was the first person I ever met where you know, I felt that comfort to share lyrics with and those kind of things, I love playing the drums, probably my favorite instrument to play, but I'm pretty limited in my drum beats. But it's just so meditative to sit there and get into a groove.
Share
04:13
So we're just goofing around and I think it was time for dinner and we're like, "Don't forget the idea, let's just put it down". Yeah, he sent it to me like a month later, he's like "Remember this jam" and I was thinking "That's nice".
Share
04:23
So when I started making the record, I played it for my friend Robbie that was helping me produce Robbie Lackritz and he dug the groove but the first thing that Robbie said when I played it to him was like, "That's cool but we gotta get rid of those nineties drums, sounds like every nineties hit right there". And I was like, "No way, I was like
James Brown
, funky drummer beat". He's like, "Nah, not at all" he was like "that's more of the Wonderwall
beat"Share
Noel Gallagher
04:50
Today was gonna be the day, but they'll never throw it back to you.
Share
Jack Johnson
04:55
And so anyways, I was like alright, whatever, I was a little offended, but not that much. So when we started I went with like a cross-stick on the snare. And instead of trying to use my foot, which is pretty clumsy, I just took the mallet and hit the kick drum with my hand, just started with the boom, boom, boom boom.
Share
05:19
So then I would go with the high-hat and it was nice because I could use two hands on it and you know. I can do all these things that I can't do if I'm sitting behind the drums, we just kept layering it.
Share
05:38
And then we were kind of both thinking like it needs a little more like ambience, a little more ethereal kind of a feel. We had this old school tape machine Robbie passed it in through the tape as soon as it came through that machine, I was like, "oh record that, that sounds so cool!".
Share
05:54
And then he started doing those like, "I don't even know they're calling you kind of throw it". Every time on the snare, he was like cranking it up and like throwing it. The guitar part was the next part, I added on. I played so much alone that I used to try to fill a lot of the space with my guitar on tracks all on the acoustic guitar.
Share
06:15
And so that's been kind of something nice over the years. It's just started. I realized, oh yeah, guitar doesn't need to be on everything. And I pulled out a little bit. So this one is cool because it doesn't have any kind of rhythm guitar check. I like the way an acoustic kind of grounds it, you know, And then the electric is that one that has a nice sustain.
Share
06:46
It's the first time I've worked with Robbie in the studio and it was fun. Robbie brought his family over two. So we're on the exact same schedules Robbie and I would shape sounds and stuff in the day and then be finished around dinnertime sometimes would be really excited to get back in there.
Share
06:57
So we get the kids to bed like, hey, "call me and your kids are down, I'll call you, mine are down". And then we'll get back in the studio a lot of times. I would write the words back at home at night because I was thinking about how your environment influences your music. Like the noises you hear.
Share
07:11
I live in
Hawaii
. And so for me, it's like I heard a lot of this wave hitting the sand real soft in the summertime. And it's like, it happens about every 12 seconds. It's a pretty relaxing, slow sound. So yeah, the ocean is a big part of my kid's life. To have a 13 year old, 11-year-old and a 7-year-old.Share
07:27
And they know the ocean is really powerful and they see it when it's really calm and they can snorkel and it's, you know, very inviting. And then they see it where there's like days that it's coming up over the bank and underneath our house and like pulling trees down. You know, it's just like a monster that you have to just stay away from. And so they see every side of it.
Share
07:44
So then I was thinking about trying to explain things to my children. Sometimes things you see on the news, things you read in books and you do your best as a father. But everyone smiles. I think it's the best thing just to admit it's like, look dad don't know everything.
Share
07:59
We're just little beings out here in the middle of this vast universe that goes on and on. And we have no idea where it ends. And so that's kind of what this song is. To me is like a dad telling this kid I'm gonna do my best. But in the end, understand one thing like once you drink from this ocean,
You Can't Control It
. You know, just life itself.Share
08:17
Understand one thing yeah.
Share
08:23
And when you drink from
Share
08:28
This vast ocean
You Can't Control It
, na.Share
08:41
Then I added the guitar line that the vocals do in the chorus.
Share
08:60
There was this one sound Robbie found that I really liked. It was kind of like... was almost more air than it was a tone. You know? It sounds kind of like a watery almost...
Share
09:15
That's the OP-1. It's just like a little small keyboard. That's Robbie's little tool. It's very funny because it always has these strange sounds like sometimes he hit me like "prr prr prr prr". "Come on man, give me something I can relate to". But once I heard that the first time I really liked it.
Share
09:32
It's a really interesting time in our country right now there's a lot of division and the political climate definitely influenced even a song like this. The verse has become a little bit about thinking about people who are in charge of things and maybe taking a whole culture into a war.
Share
09:48
Sometimes you look at these people making those decisions and you think what's wrong with this person? I don't know yet. So that that's where it began. Its like did your mom forget to tuck you in?
Share
09:56
Mom forget to tuck you in, make you begin a war within your head. One that you could never win.
Share
10:06
To me. It was like trying to be empathetic with somebody like that. Since I'm kind of singing to my own children in this song. I tried to take it all the way back to when they were a child. Even though like the first instinct is to be like, "what a what a jerk!".
Share
10:18
I mean it's not gonna be empathetic to the point where I where I pretend to agree with it or anything, but I think it's it's important to go deeper. It's really about anybody who wants to build any kind of walls that are going to divide us by race, by culture. I mean, I grew up in
Hawaii
is a very multicultural place.Share
10:33
Like I've learned so much made my life so much richer. So whenever I feel anti-something, I try to like quickly catch myself and say, okay, well if I'm against these ideas and what ideas am I for, you know, and I try to at least come from this place of if you're gonna try to tear something down, what are you trying to build?
Share
Hrishikesh Hirway
10:48
Have you actually sang song to your kids?
Share
Jack Johnson
10:51
Yeah, they've heard that they've heard all the songs. They are really sweet about letting dad play the songs around the house a lot to listen to mixes. I'll put them on like while they're doing homework, and just by the end it's funny I hear them singing little words.
Share
11:05
For me music has always been a very family thing. Even before I had my own kids, I learned how to play guitar on the front porch and like in the living room where it was always a lot of people around my grandma used to live next door and she was always at her house and my brother's kids were always around.
Share
11:20
It was just real natural for me to always kind of right in a way of knowing my grandma's gonna hear these songs. My kids are going to hear these songs. I'm gonna sing all these songs at my house at some point with everybody around.
Share
Hrishikesh Hirway
11:35
And now here's
You Can't Control It
by Jack Johnson
in its entirety.Share
Jack Johnson
11:42
Understand one thing
Share
12:21
If and when you drink from this vast ocean
Share
12:31
You Can't Control It
Share
12:36
Na, na,
You Can't Control It
Share
12:47
Mom forget to tuck you in
Share
12:52
Make you start a war within your head
Share
12:57
One that you could never win
Share
12:59
Send in the troops, send insecurities
Share
13:06
What doesn't matter in the end
Share
13:09
So daddy told you hold your chin up son and
Share
13:20
Understand one thing
Share
13:21
If and when you drink from this vast ocean
Share
13:31
You Can't Control It
Share
13:41
Na, na, na,
You Can't Control It
Share
13:43
With the procession underway
Share
14:23
Understand the magnitude of the melodies that they make
Share
14:30
What's the matter, did catastrophe get your tongue tied in the fray?
Share
14:37
When the band began to play
Share
14:42
Daddy wiped the tears away, he sayd son
Share
14:46
Please understand one thing
Share
14:51
If and when you drink from this vast ocean
Share
15:01
You Can't Control It
Share
15:19
Na, na,
You Can't Control It
Share
15:26
Na, na,
You Can't Control It
Share
15:40
Na, na,
You Can't Control It
Share
Break
Hrishikesh Hirway
17:17
This episode was produced by me along with Christian Koons. With help from intern Olivia Wood. Carlos Lerma creates original illustrations for each episode of the podcast, which you can see on the Song Exploder website or Instagram. Song Exploder is a proud member of Radiotopia from PRX, a curated network of creative independent podcasts made possible by listeners. Like you learn more at radiotopia. fm. Let me know what you thought of this episode. You can find the show on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter at Song Exploder. You can also leave a review or a rating on Apple Podcasts. My name's
Hrishikesh Hirway
. Thanks for listening Radiotopia from PRX.Share
Break
Add podcast
🇮🇹 Made with love & passion in Italy. 🌎 Enjoyed everywhere
Build n. 1.36.0
Hrishikesh Hirway
Jack Johnson
Noel Gallagher