Wednesday, Apr 21, 2021 • 17min
Porter Robinson - Get Your Wish
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Porter Robinson is a Grammy-nominated electronic artist and DJ from North Carolina. In 2014, his first album hit #1 on Billboard’s Dance chart, and he was named MTVU’s Artist of the Year, and one of the top DJs in the world — but then, he got stuck. He didn’t release his second album for seven years, until April 2021. In this episode, he talks about what he was grappling with in those intervening years, and how all of that became part of his song "Get Your Wish."
For more, visit songexploder.net/porter-robinson http://songexploder.net/porter-robinson
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Porter Robinson
Hrishikesh Hirway
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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
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Hrishikesh Hirway
01:26
Porter Robinson
is a Grammy
nominated artist and DJ from North Carolina.
In 2014, his first album, hit number one on Billboard's
dance chart, and he was named MTV
US artist of the year and one of the top DJs in the world. But then he got stuck, he didn't release his second album for 7 years until April 2021. In this episode, he talks about what he was grappling with for all those years and how all of it became part of his song "Get your wish".Share
Porter Robinson
02:06
My name is
Porter Robinson
. I first started touring internationally at the ages of 18 and 19. I was just like a nerdy kid in high school, and I had been making beats on the computer purely for fun with no expectation of success ever.Share
02:23
But Friday afternoons, I would get out of school and I would go get on a plane and I would do a show that Friday night. I do a show Saturday night, I'd fly home Sunday. And people were writing about what I was doing, like the first whiffs of success that the adults are proud of you. I would be lying if I said it didn't shape my identity in some serious ways.
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02:46
I really was addicted, and I was really wrapped up in the kind of sense of self-worth, that I got from that. "Get your wish" was written around this time when I was basically saying like, "I'm not sure that I want to be successful at music". I'm pretty sure that the attention that I've gotten so far has been bad for me. But I wanted to make music so badly.
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03:16
It's a real place of comfort for me, to just be touching an instrument. Because it's so much easier for me to toy around on the piano than it is for me to have a conversation with somebody. So, just a ton of my time at home is spent sitting in front of the piano and it generates a lot of ideas in the end for me. I put on this metronome app on my phone and I placed my phone down on my piano. And I just played this incredibly syncopated thing.
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03:53
That was on 15 October 2018.
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04:11
The piano where I record almost all of my demos is my mom's childhood piano that she had growing up. And it's the first piano I ever saw in my entire life. The way that I placed my phone down onto the piano, It created this.
Share
04:29
I have probably 2000 voice memos that begin almost identically of me. Putting my
iPhone
into this little slot on this piano, so like, I hear a similar sound to that all the time. But that sound just sat perfectly over the metronome. And just kind of became the overall groove for the whole song.Share
04:58
As I simplified the rhythm and simplified the chord progression into just the two chords. It felt like something that was going to be a lot of fun to write to. You know, especially with this altered voice
Share
05:20
I'll make it right again, "But it's no use," you said, as my hunger grows and grows
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Porter Robinson
05:20
I put on this pitch manipulation thing and once I gave it this like very sort of feminine cute character. It really helped me, I felt like I could say anything. It felt like I was wearing a mask, you know, and I could really tell the truth about what I was feeling. Because it was too scary for me, I think, to sing openly with my real voice. So putting on this mask of this voice processing effect. This was a step towards being able to be as open-hearted as I want to be.
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06:06
I'll make it right again, "But it's no use," you said, as my hunger grows and grows
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Porter Robinson
06:17
The 1st verse goes, "I'll make it right again", but it's no use, you said, as my hunger grows and grows. It's like a desire for validation or attention, or success. I think you can feel the shame that I feel around it in the way I'm talking about it. The pre-chorus goes, "When the glory tries to tempt you, it may seem like what you need, but if glory makes you happy, why are you so broken up?"
Share
06:49
I knew from years of having been on tour and, you know, having played the big festivals and done these massive tours, that I was still left feeling pretty unfulfilled. And I was really sad. I realized external validation is a cup with a hole in the bottom, and it can never be filled. And there's never enough.
Share
07:11
So in this song I'm asking, wait, what is it that we're actually hoping it's going to happen here? Because clearly it's not going to be that if I get to the next level of fame and success, that's going to be the thing that fixes all these problems.
Share
07:29
When it gets to the chorus, the image in my head is like somebody maybe screaming into a mirror. It's like somebody trying to fully reckon with themselves and like shake themselves awake. Like, what do you actually want?
Share
07:46
So tell me how it felt, when you walked on water, did you get your wish? Floating to the surface, quicker than you sank, idol, idol
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Porter Robinson
08:08
In this chorus, it's like if I scream this loud enough at myself, then I might come up with an answer.
Share
08:15
The second verse of this song was a total struggle, because I felt like, if I didn't answer the question that was set up by the chorus, then the song was just a big nothing. Like, why am I continuing to do this, if I know that this ultimately won't fulfill me?
Share
08:33
And then I just started to think about like what my favorite music has done for me. I thought about
Daft Punk
and Bon Iver
and I came to this answer that I'm making music for the other mise out there. People like me that rely on their favorite artists to get through a hard time.Share
08:51
That allowed me to just suspend that question and just kind of allowed me to move forward.
Share
08:57
Don't say you lose just yet, get up and move ahead, and not only for yourself,'cause that's your role, the work that stirred your soul, you can make for someone else.
Share
Porter Robinson
09:15
Because I was no longer paralyzed by the question, did you get your wish? Did you get the thing that you wanted? Once I finally realized the answer is "no", but that's okay. The world opened up.
Share
09:48
Idol, idol
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Porter Robinson
09:54
I got excited about the idea of using loops again after many, many years of feeling like that was taboo. And the first time I threw a swinging loop on there, it was one of those things where I was like, "Whaoo".
Share
10:11
As a music producer, when you first start, you're basically just arranging loops. And then you come to a point where you feel like you've graduated from that and you sort of take pride in arranging your own rhythms and arranging your own samples.
Share
10:23
And I think that there's a third level where you realize that none of that stuff matters. And you know, at this point you'll just use anything if it works. This loop is something that I guess it's not really meant to be heard on its own, but when played in combination with the rest of the drums, it just adds something.
Share
10:42
It's a little bit of like, I found out within the last year or so that in perfuming when people make perfumes fragrances and things like that. It's not unheard of for them to add to 1% of the mix a little bit of fecal odor.
Share
10:58
The idea is that it gives it more substance, and it really can't be consciously registered. Now, obviously nobody wants to be like buying poo scented cologne. But when it's just suddenly layered in there.
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Hrishikesh Hirway
11:12
So you're saying these drums are your poo of the song.
Share
Porter Robinson
11:15
Yeah, yes. This drum loop is the'90s like fecal odor of "Get your wish".
Share
11:33
That sound is a field recording, it's a meadow slash forest sound. And to me, nature is kind of like this stand in, this is metaphor for health being mentally healthy and physically healthy and trying to find some sort of well-being.
Share
11:53
One of my absolute favorite sounds in the song is the piano solo. It's just like 6 or 7 notes in the last chorus. It's this upright piano sound, and it goes like. What I love about it is that in that section of the song, everything is pumping to the kick drum.
Share
12:22
I just let that piano sit on top of all of that, not get pumped by the kick. It feels so human to me, I don't know, just this little bit of expression that doesn't get pushed around by anything else. I just love that sound and something about the way that harmonizes with the vocal and sits on top of the rest of the track is like my favorite moment of that song
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12:44
Idol, idol.
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Porter Robinson
13:05
No one's heard me sing that song in my natural voice before, and maybe I'm being down on myself, but I think my natural voice is pretty unremarkable. I'm not like a singer-singer, I'm not trying to win any singing competitions. And that's part of why I leaned on this high-pitched voice character so much is because, I felt like I really needed to sing, and my normal voice timber didn't really do it for me.
Share
13:29
But as I filled out that "get your wish" chorus, it just felt a little better when there was a small little hint of my natural voice in there. Because part of the journey for me towards becoming as vulnerable and as honest and sincere as I hope to be, is going to be like being able to sing for real, to say the things that I want to say sort of unmasked.
Share
13:55
My own desire for attention and success and love from strangers. It feels like a monster that I manage. Who doesn't desire love, you know what I mean? Who doesn't feel good when somebody tells them that they did a good job? It's part of me, and it's not my favorite part of me, and I fear it at times. So my story that I'm cured of wanting attention, that I'm cured of creative block, that's just not real life, but I think of trying to get closer to being the person who you want to be, it's like I see it as an upward spiral.
Share
14:34
As long as you're generally moving in the right direction, that's something you can feel proud of.
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Hrishikesh Hirway
14:47
And now here's get your wish by
Porter Robinson
in its entiretyShare
15:37
"Porter Robinson - Get Your Wish"
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Hrishikesh Hirway
18:29
Visit
Song Exploder
. net to learn more. You'll find links to buy or stream, "Get your wish" and you can watch the music video.Share
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Hrishikesh Hirway
19:48
This episode was made by me, with editing help from Teeny Lieberson and Casey Deal, artwork by Carlos Lerma and music clearance by
Kathleen Smith
. Song Exploder
is a proud member of Radiotopia
from PRX
, a network of independent listener supported artist owned podcasts.Share
20:05
You can learn more about our shows at
Radiotopia
. fm. You can follow me on Twitter and Instagram @HrishikeshHirway and you can follow the show at Song Exploder
. You can also get a Song Exploder
t-shirt at Song Exploder
. net/shirt. I'm Hrishikesh Hirway
. Thanks for listening.Share
20:28
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