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ukuleles2012-02-08 09:22 am
newredshoes) wrote in ukuleles2012-02-08 09:22 am
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Daily Ukulele: Sharon Van Etten is "Singled Out" on NPR
This interview (and streaming track) popped up on my Google News yesterday. (Yes, I have an alert for "ukulele." It's kind of delightful, I won't lie.) Sharon Van Etten has a very Cat Power-esque voice, though with a stronger delivery, to my ear. She talks about collaborating with Zach Condon, the wunderkind behind Beirut, and learning the ukulele for a song she wrote about dealing with social anxiety, "We Are Fine." (Her path to learning a new instrument sounds like Amanda Palmer's to me.) Relevant excerpts below!
Where were you when you initially wrote "We Are Fine?"
I was crashing at my friend Taylor's place and a friend of mine had loaned me a ukulele while I was there. It was the first song I ever wrote on ukulele at [Taylor's] place, he lives in Brooklyn. He's an old friend of mine from Tennessee.
What was writing your first song on the ukulele like?
It's not a normal thing. It's very much like inventing chords ... well, not inventing but playing something where I didn't know what chord it was. When it sounded good, I went with it.
After ukulele, how did the rest of the song become constructed? A lot of people are featured on the track.
It just kind of took on its own thing after a while. It started with just ukulele and my vocals and we just built it. We didn't know what direction the album was taking yet. We didn't want it to be a full-on rocking song. It didn't ask for that at all.
We just slowly built it up, and it got to the point where it was almost like a song, but I felt like something was missing. I realized it's supposed to be more of a duet because it's more of a conversation between two people.
What was Zach's reaction when you asked him to contribute to this song?
He just had a general reaction that he liked the song, and that he wanted to sing on it after he heard it. I don't know — my ukulele skills are very minimal, so [I think] he bit his tongue on my skills there. He was glad I asked him to sing on it because of the anxiety thing, because that was one of our first bonds, but we didn't really go into depth about it. He wanted to sing on it right away, so I take that as he liked it and responded well to it.
When you first started writing this song on ukulele, did you have a sense that the subject matter was the right fit with that instrumentation?
I wrote the song while learning how to play ukulele, and had the lyrics, melody and everything all worked out. It wasn't until I got to the studio with Aaron [Dessner] and started mapping things out that I realized it needed to have that kind of a twist.
I've never done anything like that before. I get really territorial with vocal stuff, but that was the only song I thought that anyone could sing on. For that song in particular, Zach was the only person that I thought could do it.
Where were you when you initially wrote "We Are Fine?"
I was crashing at my friend Taylor's place and a friend of mine had loaned me a ukulele while I was there. It was the first song I ever wrote on ukulele at [Taylor's] place, he lives in Brooklyn. He's an old friend of mine from Tennessee.
What was writing your first song on the ukulele like?
It's not a normal thing. It's very much like inventing chords ... well, not inventing but playing something where I didn't know what chord it was. When it sounded good, I went with it.
After ukulele, how did the rest of the song become constructed? A lot of people are featured on the track.
It just kind of took on its own thing after a while. It started with just ukulele and my vocals and we just built it. We didn't know what direction the album was taking yet. We didn't want it to be a full-on rocking song. It didn't ask for that at all.
We just slowly built it up, and it got to the point where it was almost like a song, but I felt like something was missing. I realized it's supposed to be more of a duet because it's more of a conversation between two people.
What was Zach's reaction when you asked him to contribute to this song?
He just had a general reaction that he liked the song, and that he wanted to sing on it after he heard it. I don't know — my ukulele skills are very minimal, so [I think] he bit his tongue on my skills there. He was glad I asked him to sing on it because of the anxiety thing, because that was one of our first bonds, but we didn't really go into depth about it. He wanted to sing on it right away, so I take that as he liked it and responded well to it.
When you first started writing this song on ukulele, did you have a sense that the subject matter was the right fit with that instrumentation?
I wrote the song while learning how to play ukulele, and had the lyrics, melody and everything all worked out. It wasn't until I got to the studio with Aaron [Dessner] and started mapping things out that I realized it needed to have that kind of a twist.
I've never done anything like that before. I get really territorial with vocal stuff, but that was the only song I thought that anyone could sing on. For that song in particular, Zach was the only person that I thought could do it.