At the premiere of the Hulu musical comedy TV series, "Up Here," two-time EGOT winner Robert "Bobby" Lopez and his wife, Kristen Anderson-Lopez, said they saw their love reflected on screen. While the new series isn't based on the song writers’ real-life courtship, "these characters have a lot of us in them," explained Bobby. 

Set in 1999, the eight episode series follows Lindsay (Mae Whitman) and Miguel (Carlos Valdes) as they fall in love while navigating old memories, fears and fantasies in their heads. It’s based on a musical the Lopezs premiered in San Diego in 2015. 

"We put so much of our love for each other into this show," Kristen told GRAMMY.com over Zoom. Adds Bobby, "She was kind of on the rebound. And I was just grateful to be able to date anyone because I was living with my parents at the time. We didn't know it was fate at first, but it became clearer and clearer." 

In the years since, the couple have earned a slew of awards for their combined efforts: Two Oscars (Frozen’s "Let it Go" and "Remember Me" from Coco); an Emmy for "Wandavision’s" "Agatha All Along; and GRAMMY Awards for Best Song Written For Visual Media and Best Compilation Soundtrack For Visual Media. Bobby Lopez picked up an additional golden gramophone for Best Musical Theater Album at the 54th GRAMMYs for his work on The Book Of Mormon.  

In honor of the new series — for which the Lopezes wrote 21 original songs — GRAMMY.com spoke with the couple about the stories behind five of their greatest hits. 

"To be clear about it, we're not trying to make hits," Bobby said firmly. "We’re not Max Martin. We don't write pop songs. We're telling a story. If we're lucky enough to have a hit, which is a rarity in this day and age in terms of musical theater, it's because the audience reacts. it's always due, in part, to the story." 

"Who Am I and Who Are You?" ("Up Here") 

Bobby: We spent a good year working on the story, the characters and the concept of the show. It was around March 2021 when we wrote the songs for the first two episodes. The rest of the songs we had to cram into about four months. 

Kristen: It's a song that's about being right at the beginning of a relationship, when there's somebody very exciting. With each step forward, you're creating a trajectory that could either end in a 20 year marriage or end [right there] with a random guy.

[Director] Tommy [Kail] had this brilliant idea of building the sets next to each other, even though [the characters are] in completely separate places. For this one moment, while they're singing in harmony with each other, they're right next to each other. They are only separated by the divide of the scrim.

"Let It Go" (Frozen)

Bobby: It's so long ago that we wrote it that it's almost like we didn't write it. At this point, I'm just sort of a fan of it. 

Kristen: It belongs to everybody now. 

Bobby: The entire story was different when we first came on. Elsa was the villain like in the classic Disney story. She had blue skin and blue hair. The younger sister was the prim and proper one — the perfect princess a little bit obsessed with the details of planning her wedding to Hans. They were sort of unlikable. Elsa was very vindictive. 

Kristen: It was a great live action, but there wasn't the joy and the strong feelings that you'd want to hear songs about. So, we completely revamped the characters. The second child gets to be more of a wild kid. It's the first child who gets the pressure. We created an outline from there. 

There was this moment we called "Elsa’s badass song" where we knew she was going to transform from her perfectionism into the Snow Queen. We started talking about what were moments like that in our own lives where we had so much pressure that the idea of actually the whole thing falling apart would have been a relief.

Bobby: I imagined if I messed up on the SATs and didn’t get into Yale and my whole life was over. That’s how I related to her. You'd feel devastated. You'd feel destroyed but there might be a little spark of relief that the weight of the world is off your shoulder. 

Kristen: That really resonated with me because I was raising two small children and feeling so much pressure from every walk of life: Being the perfect mom, being the perfect wife, having a cool house and the right clothes and being the right weight and having a great career. 

I imagined if that fell apart and I got to hang out in my yoga pants and drink chardonnay for a day. We were walking in Prospect Park and I jumped on a picnic table and tried to imagine what that would feel like. We wrote the rest of the song that afternoon.

Bobby: [The lyric "let it go"] was Kristen’s pitch. Kristen said she wanted to pitch the song title "Let It Go." I said, "Yeah, I get it. I think it’s a little on the nose but why don’t we wait." Kristen wisely ignored me and everyone was like ‘yeah!’"

Kristen: There are very few moments in life where I will go against something we agree on in a public meeting. But in this one case, it was just right. I'm glad I did. 

"Into the Unknown" (Frozen II)

Kristen: Bobby thinks really hard about what is the role of the music going to be in every project. In "Avenue Q," it's about lessons. In "Frozen," every song is about love. And in Frozen II, every song is about growth.

 Bobby: There's no such thing as "Let It Go" part II. You can’t write a sequel to a song. It doesn’t work. In Frozen, Ana is the protagonist…in "Frozen II", it's Elsa’s story. "Into The Unknown" is Elsa's "want" song. We wanted to make it a duet but we didn't have a character for her to sing it with. So we invented this voice that was haunting her and calling her away. It became a mystery of who the voice is.

No one said ["make another hit"] to us and we wanted to create a successful story. We were just told to do it the same way we did the first one: let's make a great story with these two of these characters that we love.

"Remember Me" (Coco)

Kristen: "Remember Me," had to be both a lullaby and also a tour-de-force signature song for a bombastic, narcissistic performer. 

Bobby: We listened to every single hit song that had ever come out of Mexico, and really did our research about the different styles of Mexican music. We're not Mexican. I'm Filipino, and Kristen is Swedish and Irish. It was a process of downloading everything there was to learn. Then we tried to forget about it and write the song we needed to write. 

There was a puzzle-nature to it, because the lyrics had to mean two things and the music had to work in two ways. It had to be an uptempo, slightly smarmy, flashy, signature closing song. At the same time — when you slowed it down, simplified the arrangement with keeping every note of the tune the same and keeping every chord of the progression the same — it needed to transform into something far more sweet, intimate and from the heart. That was the trick of it.

I like to wait, before I write anything, before I play anything, before I feel like this could be it. We had waited and waited and waited. It was really time to write it. When I sat down to the piano after we got the kids out to school, I was still not dressed.

Kristen: He was in his boxers.

I just wrote the lyrics on the F train. But I think an important piece of this is that we're songwriters who had to leave our children at home in New York and go to Burbank to work on Frozen and Coco. We were actually writing little original lullabies for our own girls that they could sing with their babysitter. So it was very close to my heart. It was this idea of leaving a song that's like a bedtime hug for your child. So it really flowed from there.

Bobby: Something that people might not know or understand is that the timeline of when we wrote that song was very close to when we wrote, "Let It Go." We were working on both movies at once. It was just a great moment in our lives. I guess we were really feeling very inspired having young kids. It will do that to you when you're writing for Disney.

"Agatha All Along" ("WandaVision") 

Kristen: "Agatha All Along'' surprised us and came out of nowhere. It was something about the pandemic and this moment in January 2021. We were completely isolated after so many months. We, as a country, were watching this show about a woman who was also isolated. 

Bobby: She’s literally living in a bubble. 

Kristen: That's one of the reasons that "Wandavision" hit in such a big way. "Wandavision" was the most fun job ever. We, as Gen Xers, grew up watching these TV shows. If you were sick, you started with "I Love Lucy" in the morning and by eight o'clock you were watching "Family Ties." So it was in our DNA. 

Bobby: It was a treat to finally have a break from writing musical theater numbers where you have to be so involved with the creation of the story. With this, it's just music playing in the background. We had so much freedom to just execute.

Kristen: It was called "That’s So Agatha" in the script. It was supposed to be a "That’s So Raven" idea. We were in college when "That’s So Raven" happened so we didn't have that in our musical DNA so much. What we did have in our musical DNA was "The Addams Family" and "The Munsters" — all of these themes that were kind of Goth, camp and jazz inspired. That's how we found "Agatha All Along." And the most important thing was also matching Katherine Hahn’s energy.

Bobby: The funny thing was, when we read all the scripts at the beginning of the process, we were bowled over by it. But we kind of forgot a lot of the details. We knew that Agatha was the villain but we didn't know exactly why. We forgot what it was that she was doing all along. 

We asked Marvel before we started writing it, "What did Agatha do again?" They explained it to us and we said we were not going to put any of that in. We don’t understand that. We are just going to write that she did it all along. It was her.

Arooj Aftab, Vijay Iyer & Shahzad Ismaily On New Album 'Love In Exile,' Improvisation Versus Co-Construction And The Primacy Of The Pulse

Nominations for the 72nd Annual Tony Awards were announced on May 1, with a trio of wildly popular musicals leading the way. The Tina Fey-penned "Mean Girls" musical and "SpongeBob SquarePants: The Broadway Musical" each earned a whopping 12 nominations. Following close behind, "The Band's Visit" earned 11 nominations. All three of the top nominated shows are up for Best Musical along with "Frozen," which earned three nominations.

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The "SpongeBob SquarePants: The Broadway Musical" nomination for Best Original Score (Music and/or Lyrics) Written For The Theatre includes a host of GRAMMY-winning artists, such as Steven Tyler and Joe Perry of Aerosmith, John Legend, T.I., Cyndi Lauper, and Lady Antebellum.

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The Tony Awards also announced their recipients of honors in non-competitive categories, including a Special Tony Award that will be bestowed to Bruce Springsteen for his one-man show "Springsteen On Broadway." A full list of the nominees and recipients can be found on Playbill.

This year's Tony Awards will be hosted by GRAMMY nominees Sara Bareilles and Josh Groban. Bareilles was nominated for the GRAMMY for Best Musical Theater Album at the 59th GRAMMY Awards for Waitress. The show will air live on Sunday, June 10 from Radio City Music Hall in New York City on CBS at 8 p.m. ET.

Pit Players: Meet The Musicians Behind Broadway's Biggest Shows

In a repeat from the Oscar success of Frozen four years ago, the movie Coco won on March 4 for Best Animated Feature as well as for Best Original Song. The previous winning song was titled "Let It Go" and encouraged self-expression. This year's "Remember Me" is an instruction that will be obeyed, as songwriting couple Kristen Anderson-Lopez and Robert Lopez must now consider whether there is room for their second Oscar on their awards shelves.

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At the 57th GRAMMY Awards, the Frozen composers won for Best Compilation Soundtrack For Visual Media and for "Let It Go," which won Best Song Written For Visual Media. Robert Lopez previously had won Best Musical Theater Album at the 54th GRAMMY Awards for composing The Book Of Mormon together with "South Park" creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone.

The acronym EGOT stands for Emmy, GRAMMY, Oscar, and Tony, the four major entertainment industry awards voted on by peer professionals. Thanks to his track record of Broadway and television success, this second Oscar win puts Robert Lopez over the top to become the first person ever to win two of each award.

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Robert Lopez has won three Tony Awards for his stage work, Best Book Of A Musical and Best Original Score for The Book of Mormon and a previous Best Original Score for the imaginative Avenue Q, which combined human actors with puppets. He twice won the Daytime Emmy Award in Outstanding Music Direction and Composition for "The Wonder Pets," which ran for four seasons.

Getting The Latest Music News Just Got Easier. Introducing: GRAMMY Bot. Find it On KIK and Facebook Messenger

The GRAMMY Music Education Coalition has officially launched, and it will work to bring musical opportunities to students nationwide, especially in underserved communities, starting with Nashville, Tenn., Philadelphia and New York City.

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A group of more than 30 organizations, including National Association for Music Education, the NAMM Foundation, VH1 Save the Music Foundation, and Lang Lang International Music Foundation, the Coalition will provide strategic funding and services to its targeted school populations.

"The big dream was what if every young person had the opportunity to be involved with music through the public school system," Recording Academy President/CEO Neil Portnow told Billboard. "What if we were able to pool our energy, efforts and resources with others in the music industry who are also doing fine work in music education to attack this big dream? The partnerships we are creating with school districts, teachers, parents, and youth are designed to drive systemic change across geographies and communities nationwide."

One of the organization's first initiatives is a partnership with Disney*Pixar's new film, Coco, which sees a 12-year-old guitarist chase his dreams of being a great musician. Walt Disney Studios, GMEC and Berklee College of Music's Berklee Pulse will collaborate to provide educational materials. In addition, Disney*Pixar will donate 300 Cordoba guitars with Guitar Center providing an additional 300 guitars to be delivered to partner schools before the end of the year.

This first initiative is just the beginning of what the GMEC hopes is a long-term effort to bring the far-reaching benefits of having a music education to students nationwide.

"The benefits of music education extend far beyond the classroom," says GMEC Executive Director Dr. Lee Whitmore. "By increasing the number of students actively making music, we're fostering the development of essential cognitive and social skills that better prepare them for success as well as beginning a lifelong appreciation of music."

Berklee Online Adds Master's Programs For Music Production, Business

Three months after OneRepublic began promoting their sixth album, Artificial Paradise, in February 2022, the band unexpectedly had their biggest release in nearly a decade. The pop-rock band's carefree jam, "I Ain't Worried," soundtracked Top Gun: Maverick's most memeable scene and quickly became a global smash — ultimately delaying album plans in favor of promoting their latest hit.

Two years later, "I Ain't Worried" is one of 16 tracks on Artificial Paradise, which arrived July 12. It's a seamless blend of songs that will resonate with longtime and newer fans alike. From the layered production of "Hurt," to the feel-good vibes of "Serotonin," to the evocative lyrics of "Last Holiday," Artificial Paradise shows that OneRepublic's sound is as dialed-in as it is ever-evolving.

The album also marks the end of an era for OneRepublic, as it's the last in their contract with Interscope Records. But for the group's singer, Ryan Tedder, that means the future is even more exciting than it's been in their entire 15-year career.

"I've never been more motivated to write the best material of my life than this very moment," he asserts. "I'm taking it as a challenge. We've had a lot of fun, and a lot of uplifting records for the last seven or eight years, but I also want to tap back into some deeper material with the band."

As he's been prepping Artificial Paradise with his OneRepublic cohorts, Tedder has also been as busy as he's ever been working with other artists. His career as a songwriter/producer took off almost simultaneously with OneRepublic's 2007 breakthrough, "Apologize" (his first major behind-the-board hit was Leona Lewis' "Bleeding Love"); to this day he's one of the go-to guys for pop's biggest names, from BLACKPINK to Tate McRae.

Tedder sat down with GRAMMY.com to share some of his most prominent memories of OneRepublic's biggest songs, as well as some of the hits he's written with Beyoncé, Adele, Taylor Swift and more.

I was producing and writing other songs for different artists on Epic and Atlantic — I was just cutting my teeth as a songwriter in L.A. This is like 2004. I was at my lowest mentally and financially. I was completely broke. Creditors chasing me, literally dodging the taxman and getting my car repoed, everything.

I had that song in my back pocket for four years. A buddy of mine just reminded me last month, a songwriter from Nashville — Ashley Gorley, actually. We had a session last month, me, him and Amy Allen, and he brought it up. He was like, "Is it true, the story about 'Apologize'? You were completely broke living in L.A. and Epic Records offered you like 100 grand or something just for the right to record the song on one of their artists?"

And that is true. It was, like, 20 [grand], then 50, then 100. And I was salivating. I was, like, I need this money so bad. And I give so many songs to other people, but with that song, I drew a line in the sand and said, "No one will sing this song but me. I will die with this song." 

It was my story, and I just didn't want anyone else to sing it. It was really that simple. It was a song about my past relationships, it was deeply personal. And it was also the song that — I spent two years trying to figure out what my sound was gonna be. I was a solo artist… and I wasn't landing on anything compelling. Then I landed on "Apologize" and a couple of other songs, and I was like, These songs make me think of a band, not solo artist material. So it was the song that led me to the sound of OneRepublic, and it also led me to the idea that I should start a band and not be a solo artist.

We do it every night. I'll never not do it. I've never gotten sick of it once. Every night that we do it, whether I'm in Houston or Hong Kong, I look out at the crowd and look at the band, and I'm like, Wow. This is the song that got us here.

We were halfway through promoting Dreaming Out Loud, our first album. I played basketball every day on tour, and I snapped my Achilles. The tour got canceled. The doctor told me not to even write. And I had this one sliver of an afternoon where my wife had to run an errand. And because I'm sadistic and crazy, I texted [songwriter] Evan Bogart, "I got a three-hour window, race over here. Beyoncé called me and asked me to write her a song. I want to do it with you." He had just come off his huge Rihanna No. 1, and we had an Ashley Tisdale single together.

When you write enough songs, not every day do the clouds part and God looks down on you and goes, "Here." But that's what happened on that day. I turn on the keyboard, the first sound that I play is the opening sound of the song. Sounds like angels singing. And we wrote the song pretty quick, as I recall. 

I didn't get a response [from Beyoncé after sending "Halo" over], which I've now learned is very, very typical of her. I did Miley Cyrus and Beyoncé "II MOST WANTED" [from COWBOY CARTER] — I didn't know that was coming out 'til five days before it came out. And when I did "XO" [from 2013's Beyoncé], I found out that "XO" was coming out 12 hours before it came out. That's how she operates.

["Good Life"] was kind of a Hail Mary. We already knew that "All the Right Moves" would be the first single [from Waking Up]. We knew that "Secrets" was the second single. And in the 11th hour, our engineer at the time — who I ended up signing as a songwriter, Noel Zancanella — had this drum loop that he had made, and he played it for Brent [Kutzle] in our band. Brent said, "You gotta hear this drum loop that Noel made. It's incredible."

He played it for me the next morning, and I was like, "Yo throw some chords to this. I'm writing to this today." They threw some chords down, and the first thing out of my mouth was, [sings] "Oh, this has gotta be the good life." 

It's the perfect example of, oftentimes, the chord I've tried to strike with this band with some of our bigger records, [which] is happy sad. Where you feel nostalgic and kind of melancholic, but at the same time, euphoric. That's what those chords and that melody did for me.

I was like, "Hey guys, would it be weird if I made the hook a whistle?" And everyone was like, "No! Do not whistle!" They're like, "Name the last hit song that had a whistle." And the only one I could think of was, like, Scorpion from like, 1988. [Laughs.] So I thought, To hell with it, man, it's been long enough, who cares? Let's try it. And the whistle kind of made the record. It became such a signature thing.

Adele — "Rumour Has It," '21' (2011)

"Rumour Has It" was the first song I did in probably a four year period, with any artist, that wasn't a ballad. All any artist ever wanted me to write with them or for them, was ballads, because of "Halo," and "Apologize" and "Bleeding Love."

I begged [Adele] to do a [song with] tempo, because we did "Turning Tables," another ballad. She was in a feisty mood [that day], so I was like, "Okay, we're doing a tempo today!"

Rick Rubin was originally producing the whole album. I was determined to produce Adele, not just write — because I wanted a shot to show her that I could, and to show myself. I stayed later after she left, and I remember thinking, What can I do in this record in this song that could be so difficult to reproduce that it might land me the gig?

So I intentionally muted the click track, changed the tempo, and [created that] whole piano bridge. I was making it up as I went. When she got in that morning. I said, "I have a crazy idea for a bridge. It's a movie." She listens and she says, "This is really different, I like this! How do we write to this?" 

I mean, it was very difficult. [But] we finished the song. She recorded the entire song that day. She recorded the whole song in one take. I've never seen anyone do that in my life — before or since.

Then I didn't hear from her for six months. Because I handed over the files, and Rick Rubin's doing it, so I don't need to check on it. I randomly check on the status of the song — and at this point, if you're a songwriter or producer, you're assuming that they're not keeping the songs. Her manager emails my manager, "Hey, good news — she's keeping both songs they did, and she wants Ryan to finish 'Rumour Has It' production and mix it." 

When I finally asked her, months later — probably at the GRAMMYs — I said, "Why didn't [Rick] do it?" She said, "Oh he did. It's that damn bridge! Nobody could figure out what the hell you were doing…It was so problematic that we just gave up on it."

I was in a Beyoncé camp in the Hamptons writing for the self-titled album. [There were] a bunch of people in the house — me, Greg Kurstin, Sia — it was a fun group of people. I had four days there, and every morning I'd get up an hour and a half before I had to leave, make a coffee, and start prepping for the day. On the third day, I got up, I'm in the basement of this house at like 7 in the morning, and I'm coming up with ideas. I stumble across that chord progression, the guitar and the melody. It was instant shivers up my spine. 

"Lately I've been losing sleep, dreaming about the things that we could be" is the only line that I had. [My] first thought was, I should play this for Beyoncé, and then I'm listening to it and going, This is not Beyoncé, not even remotely. It'd be a waste. So I tabled it, and I texted the guys in my band, "Hey, I think I have a potentially really big record. I'm going to finish it when I get back to Denver."

I got back the next week, started recording it, did four or five versions of the chorus, bouncing all the versions off my wife, and then eventually landed it. And when I played it for the band, they were like, "This is our favorite song."

It was my second session with Taylor. The first one was [1989's] "I Know Places," and she sent me a voice memo. I was looking for a house in Venice [California], because we were spending so much time in L.A. So that whole memory is attached to me migrating back to Los Angeles. 

But I knew what she was talking about, because I lived in New York, and I remember the feeling — endless possibilities, all the different people and races and sexes and loves. That was her New York chapter. She was so excited to be there. If you never lived there, and especially if you get there and you've got a little money in the pocket, it is so exhilarating.

It was me just kind of witnessing her brilliant, fast-paced, lyrical wizardry. [Co-producer] Max [Martin] and I had a conversation nine months later at the GRAMMYs, when we had literally just won for 1989. He kind of laughed, he pointed to all the other producers on the album, and he's like, "If she had, like, three more hours in the day, she would just figure out what we do and she would do it. And she wouldn't need any of us." 

And I still think that's true. Some people are just forces of nature in and among themselves, and she's one of them. She just blew me away. She's the most talented top liner I've ever been in a room with, bar none. If you're talking lyric and melody, I've never been in a room with anyone faster, more adept, knows more what they want to say, focused, efficient, and just talented.

I had gone through a pretty dry spell mentally, emotionally. I had just burned it at both ends and tapped out, call it end of 2016. So, really, all of 2017 for me was a blur and a wash. I did a bunch of sessions in the first three months of the year, and then I just couldn't get a song out. I kept having, song after song, artists telling me it's the first single, [then] the song was not even on the album. I had never experienced that in my career.

I went six to nine months without finishing a song, which for me is unheard of. Andrew Watt kind of roped me back into working with him. We did "Easier" for 5 Seconds of Summer, and we did some Sam Smith and some Miley Cyrus, and right in that same window, I did this song "Sucker." Two [or] three months later, Wendy Goldstein from Republic [Records] heard the record, I had sent it to her. She'd said, very quietly, "We're relaunching the Jonas Brothers. They want you to be involved in a major way. Do you have anything?" 

She calls me, she goes, "Ryan, do not play this for anybody else. This is their comeback single. It's a No. 1 record. Watch what we're gonna do." And she delivered.

My memory is, being in lockdown in COVID, and just being like, Who knows when this is going to end, working out of my Airstream at my house. I had done a lot of songs for movies over the years, and [for] that particular [song] Randy Spendlove, who runs [music at] Paramount, called me.

I end up Zooming with Tom Cruise [and Top Gun: Maverick director] Jerry Bruckheimer — everybody's in lockdown during post-production. The overarching memory was, Holy cow, I'm doing the scene, I'm doing the song for Top Gun. I can't believe this is happening. But the only way I knew how to approach it, rather than to, like, overreact and s— the bed, was, It's just another day.

I do prescription songs for movies, TV, film all the time. I love a brief. It's so antithetical to most writers. I'm either uncontrollably lazy or the most productive person you've ever met. And the dividing line between the two is, if I'm chasing some directive, some motivation, some endpoint, then I can be wildly productive.

I just thought, I'm going to do the absolute best thing I can do for this scene and serve the film. OneRepublic being the performing artist was not on the menu in my mind. I just told them, "I think you need a cool indie band sounding, like, breakbeat." I used adjectives to describe what I heard when I saw the scene, and Tom got really ramped and excited. 

You could argue [it's the biggest song] since the band started. The thing about it is, it's kind of become one of those every summer [hits]. And when it blew up, that's what Tom said. He said, "Mark my words, dude. You're gonna have a hit with this every summer for, like, the next 20 years or more." 

And that's what happened. The moment Memorial Day happened, "I Ain't Worried" got defrosted and marched itself back into the top 100.

Tate McRae — "Greedy," 'THINK LATER' (2023)

We had "10:35" [with Tiësto] the previous year that had been, like, a No. 1 in the UK and across Europe and Australia. So we were coming off the back of that, and the one thing she was clear about was, "That is not the direction of what I want to do."

If my memory serves me correct, "greedy" was the next to last session we had. Everything we had done up to that point was kind of dark, midtempo, emotional. So "greedy" was the weirdo outlier. I kept pushing her to do a dance record. I was like, "Tate, there's a lot of people that have great voices, and there's a lot of people who can write, but none of those people are professional dancers like you are. Your secret weapon is the thing you're not using. In this game and this career, you've got to use every asset that you have and exploit it."

There was a lot of cajoling. On that day, we did it, and I thought it was badass, and loved it. And she was like, "Ugh, what do we just do? What is this?"

So then it was just, like, months, months and months of me constantly bringing that song back up, and playing it for her, and annoying the s— out of her. And she came around on it. 

She has very specific taste. So much of the music with Tate, it really is her steering. I'll do what I think is like a finished version of a song, and then she will push everyone for weeks, if not months, to extract every ounce of everything out of them, to push the song harder, further, edgier — 19 versions of a song, until finally she goes, "Okay, this is the one." She's a perfectionist.

I love [our latest single] "Hurt," but my favorite song on the album is called "Last Holiday." I probably started the beginning of that lyric, I'm not joking, seven, eight years ago. But I didn't finish it 'til this past year.

The verses are little maxims and words of advice that I've been given throughout the years. It's almost cynical in a way, the song. When I wrote the chorus, I was definitely in kind of a down place. So the opening line is, "So I don't believe in the stars anymore/ They never gave me what I wished for." And it's, obviously, a very not-so-slight reference to "Counting Stars." But it's also hopeful — "We've got some problems, okay, but this isn't our last holiday." 

It's very simple sentiments. Press pause. Take some moments. Find God before it all ends. All these things with this big, soaring chorus. Musically and emotionally and sonically, that song — and "Hurt," for sure — but "Last Holiday" is extremely us-sounding. 

The biggest enemy that we've had over the course of 18 years, I'll be the first to volunteer, is, this ever-evolving, undulating sound. No one's gonna accuse me of making these super complex concept albums, because that's just not how my brain's wired. I grew up listening to the radio. I didn't grow up hanging out in the Bowery in CBGBs listening to Nick Cave. So for us, the downside to that, and for me doing all these songs for all these other people, is the constant push and pull of "What is their sound? What genre is it?" 

I couldn't put a pin in exactly what the sound is, but what I would say is, if you look at the last 18 years, a song like "Last Holiday" really encompasses, sonically, what this band is about. It's very moving, and emotional, and dynamic. It takes me to a place — that's the best way for me to put it. And hopefully the listener finds the same.