YouSaid · the spoken record

Aloe Blacc

lines on the record: 53
first: 2023-02-17
most recent: 2023-02-17
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“2028. First of all, my company is going to be either already with a product on the shelf or very close, like phase three trials and success with lots of investment. That's one thing. In terms of music, I've expanded, I'm sharing the magic of the songwriting process, which you asked me about on television in a way that people are fascinated to see stories being told and developed before their eyes. We get to pull the curtain back on how gold mining works, how fishing works, how kitchens and chefs work. But nobody's really pulled it back on the actual songwriting production creation process. That's what I'd really love to do.”
2023-02-17 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Grammy Nominee Aloe Blacc on Working with Avicii on "Wake Me Up", The Art of Great Storytelling, Behind The Scenes on the Songwriting Process and Why Rules Are Just "Good Suggestions" · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I do have the optimism I just mentioned. It's the things that I'm concerned about is that too many people suffer before we get to the actual solutions. People are talking about AI and machine learning and robotics. And it is a concern because certainly the jobs that we can do as humans will be replaced by technology and have been over progression of industrial age. But that gives us more time to be human. I'm concerned in the short run for how we all manage that friction, but I don't worry too much about the long run.”
2023-02-17 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Grammy Nominee Aloe Blacc on Working with Avicii on "Wake Me Up", The Art of Great Storytelling, Behind The Scenes on the Songwriting Process and Why Rules Are Just "Good Suggestions" · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Really optimistic about youth. They recognize the extreme challenges that we have with our relationship with ecology, with social and political dynamics, with economic disparity. Their connection to humanity is going to help to bridge a lot of these issues and help us find solutions that will help us avoid cataclysm.”
2023-02-17 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Grammy Nominee Aloe Blacc on Working with Avicii on "Wake Me Up", The Art of Great Storytelling, Behind The Scenes on the Songwriting Process and Why Rules Are Just "Good Suggestions" · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I look up to Nelson Mandela, Mohan Deskandi, and Martin Luther King. Their dedication to humanity in the face of violence and adversity is inspiring in a way that keeps me grounded. I don't know that I have what they have, but I will strive to get close.”
2023-02-17 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Grammy Nominee Aloe Blacc on Working with Avicii on "Wake Me Up", The Art of Great Storytelling, Behind The Scenes on the Songwriting Process and Why Rules Are Just "Good Suggestions" · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh man, all done. That's not one word. Sorry, complete, sufficient, complete, complete job done. That's it. When I'm gone, I really want to be sure that my job is complete. And that job ultimately is transferring all the knowledge I have to everyone that I can. My kids paramount, but why should any of this knowledge, any of it die with me?”
2023-02-17 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Grammy Nominee Aloe Blacc on Working with Avicii on "Wake Me Up", The Art of Great Storytelling, Behind The Scenes on the Songwriting Process and Why Rules Are Just "Good Suggestions" · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I would like for everyone to be involved in music in some way. A lot of people tell me, oh, I'm not a singer. Oh, I can't play an instrument. I fundamentally believe strongly that music has a healing power and for everyone to be engaged in music is a type of healing. So you should be doing something, banging a drum, strumming a guitar poorly, and breaking glass with a terrible voice, but just doing it is cathartic.”
2023-02-17 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Grammy Nominee Aloe Blacc on Working with Avicii on "Wake Me Up", The Art of Great Storytelling, Behind The Scenes on the Songwriting Process and Why Rules Are Just "Good Suggestions" · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, it's really satisfying. It's great. I love learning. And again, I love learning processes. So every time somebody tells me something I didn't know before, it becomes a tiger lily blossom.”
2023-02-17 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Grammy Nominee Aloe Blacc on Working with Avicii on "Wake Me Up", The Art of Great Storytelling, Behind The Scenes on the Songwriting Process and Why Rules Are Just "Good Suggestions" · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Of the things I didn't know was that biotech is a specific sector, and not all VCs are amenable to biotech as an investment. I was just talking to any VC that I could get on the phone and wasting their time and my time. Now I recognize, okay, there's specific funds that I should be speaking to. And then when you talk to those funds, they're not really worried about your idea. You could have the greatest idea in the world. Who's your team? Who's going to take this from a dream to an actual product on the shelf and who's going to return my money? These are the things I was not really contemplating at first because like I said, it was a philanthropic endeavor, but now I recognized it has to be an enterprise play in order to get a buy-in. And in order to get buy-in, you need all of these T's cross and I's dotted. So the hardest part really is finding the team that's going to help me push it forward.”
2023-02-17 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Grammy Nominee Aloe Blacc on Working with Avicii on "Wake Me Up", The Art of Great Storytelling, Behind The Scenes on the Songwriting Process and Why Rules Are Just "Good Suggestions" · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Feel like my life is set up in a way where I want to add as much positive value to the world as possible through philanthropy, through art, and now hopefully through commerce. I got sick with Omicron.”
2023-02-17 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Grammy Nominee Aloe Blacc on Working with Avicii on "Wake Me Up", The Art of Great Storytelling, Behind The Scenes on the Songwriting Process and Why Rules Are Just "Good Suggestions" · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I know hers. The problem is, I always default to mine, and I'm always thinking, oh, well, service. I'm going to service. But she's gifts. She's gifts and words of affirmation, words of affection.”
2023-02-17 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Grammy Nominee Aloe Blacc on Working with Avicii on "Wake Me Up", The Art of Great Storytelling, Behind The Scenes on the Songwriting Process and Why Rules Are Just "Good Suggestions" · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I don't know if I'm using all the terms right, but I know that what I like is just service and I'm a provider. And I think that's, as you were saying before, what has been from my parents that has been most impactful is service and providing.”
2023-02-17 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Grammy Nominee Aloe Blacc on Working with Avicii on "Wake Me Up", The Art of Great Storytelling, Behind The Scenes on the Songwriting Process and Why Rules Are Just "Good Suggestions" · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We are different love languages. So I just try to be aware of what I'm doing that's not her love language and what is going to be helpful.”
2023-02-17 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Grammy Nominee Aloe Blacc on Working with Avicii on "Wake Me Up", The Art of Great Storytelling, Behind The Scenes on the Songwriting Process and Why Rules Are Just "Good Suggestions" · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, that's also very hard. That's the thing about the average and a little bit above average husband answer. You have to be intentional and I'm not constantly doing the romantic things that I think I should for my wife. But we talk every day all the time. We're always communicating. I make time for her. She was like, no, I don't want you to schedule me into the calendar because she didn't want it to be clinical that way. But I was like, but it has to be when the evening time, it's the kids. Like we both are present for the kids. And then after the kids go to sleep, then we're present for each other. But how do you do that during the day?”
2023-02-17 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Grammy Nominee Aloe Blacc on Working with Avicii on "Wake Me Up", The Art of Great Storytelling, Behind The Scenes on the Songwriting Process and Why Rules Are Just "Good Suggestions" · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I did that. I took the cue that she was saying. Don't be away all the time. And I'm not away all the time. And we made a rule that two weeks at the most, one week is cool. And whenever possible, bring the fam. That's what we do”
2023-02-17 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Grammy Nominee Aloe Blacc on Working with Avicii on "Wake Me Up", The Art of Great Storytelling, Behind The Scenes on the Songwriting Process and Why Rules Are Just "Good Suggestions" · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You said great twice, and I'm going to say that I'm certainly not a great husband, slightly above average, probably. But, and if you ask my wife, she should probably like, yeah, I'm trying very average. But then again, she's never had any of their husbands, Joy. Okay, it's a great husband, great marriage. I would say, so one of the things that my wife told me early in the marriage was if you're always on the road, what kind of relationship do we have? That was a clear climate setting conversation.”
2023-02-17 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Grammy Nominee Aloe Blacc on Working with Avicii on "Wake Me Up", The Art of Great Storytelling, Behind The Scenes on the Songwriting Process and Why Rules Are Just "Good Suggestions" · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Sounds insightful. I agree just off of without analyzing it too much. It sounds true. And then the other way is do what the Dalai Lama did. He grew up because he meditated. He had to. He was chosen. But there are other monks who do the same. They make a conscious decision and choice to steadfastly adhere to ideals and concepts about how they relate to humanity and how humanity relates to them. Rather than just making your principles a matter of convenience, find some principles that really mean something to you. Stick to them. That's I think just as helpful as having kids really make you stick to the principles because your job now is to help them survive and there's not a whole lot of wiggle room around that. But if you can figure it out without kids, that's a really strong principle in person.”
2023-02-17 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Grammy Nominee Aloe Blacc on Working with Avicii on "Wake Me Up", The Art of Great Storytelling, Behind The Scenes on the Songwriting Process and Why Rules Are Just "Good Suggestions" · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Music industries for all intents and purposes young person sport and arena. We don't get a plethora of songs that are about maturation. We don't get songs from our best songwriters as they're growing older into the years talking about those dynamic changes because the industry favors youth and wants to keep churning songs that'll get a 13 year old to listen for eight hours a day. But I want to be able to share the fact that, yes, I was that and I have those songs and you can hear them, but now I'm here. And this is my present state and I want to make songs that will relate to people that are growing with me at the same stage, but also could be instructive for people who just behind me who are about to step into parenthood and adulthood or buying their first house or marriage.”
2023-02-17 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Grammy Nominee Aloe Blacc on Working with Avicii on "Wake Me Up", The Art of Great Storytelling, Behind The Scenes on the Songwriting Process and Why Rules Are Just "Good Suggestions" · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'm sorry to say, I never have that self doubt. And what I advise you is that your destiny is whatever you choose it to be. It's already set, but also what you choose it to be. I know where I'm going tomorrow. This person has no clue. They're only judging me on my past, but I'm all about my future. I can't change the past. I'm all about my future. I hope that helps.”
2023-02-17 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Grammy Nominee Aloe Blacc on Working with Avicii on "Wake Me Up", The Art of Great Storytelling, Behind The Scenes on the Songwriting Process and Why Rules Are Just "Good Suggestions" · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Still read them. I still read them. I just Still make me feel bad, but I also understand that it's not the truth, it's just an opinion. The internet is a place where people don't go to lose. People go to the internet to win. They go to win their argument. It's not my job to chime in and try to convert anyone to my music is supposed to do that. And if it doesn't, then that's okay. Sauerkraut's not for everyone.”
2023-02-17 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Grammy Nominee Aloe Blacc on Working with Avicii on "Wake Me Up", The Art of Great Storytelling, Behind The Scenes on the Songwriting Process and Why Rules Are Just "Good Suggestions" · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think because of the controversy, again, this is where I wasn't paying attention to algorithms, but because of the controversy, there was a lot of talk and that talk begins top and that talk then begins listening and more people were listening and then more people got to hear it. And we know the law of attraction. It's about familiarity. And after three listens, you're no longer opposed to it. You're more leaning toward it. And it ended up becoming the most streamed song in Spotify history for that time”
2023-02-17 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Grammy Nominee Aloe Blacc on Working with Avicii on "Wake Me Up", The Art of Great Storytelling, Behind The Scenes on the Songwriting Process and Why Rules Are Just "Good Suggestions" · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It feels amazing. It feels really good that it was a massive hit, but it wasn't at first. I performed at the Ultra Music Fest 2013, I believe, with Tim and with Mike Einziger, and we were on stage presenting this song, and Tim made a huge decision in his career to not do what everyone else did with lasers and confetti cannons and smoke and half-naked girls dancing on the stage. He brought real musicians and real vocalists on stage with him. Nobody else was doing that at these festivals. He took a risk. As I was singing, I could hear through my microphone from the audience. I could hear booze. And I just thought, okay, I'm going to hurry up and get through this song and get off the stage. And then I went online and looked at what people were saying because they were watching it live around the world. And people were like, oh, this is career suicide. And what is he doing? This is terrible. But then there were people like, whoa, this is really big. Took a risk. Just to let you know.”
2023-02-17 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Grammy Nominee Aloe Blacc on Working with Avicii on "Wake Me Up", The Art of Great Storytelling, Behind The Scenes on the Songwriting Process and Why Rules Are Just "Good Suggestions" · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Like I said, a four hour session. It got in at about 8 p.m. and I sat down in the Mike's home studio. He and Tim had already been working on chord progressions and he just starts playing the guitar and he says, what do you think of this? And I was like, that sounds great. I have a couple of lyrical ideas. I just want to tell them to you real quick. And I just mentioned, wake me up when it's all over, when I'm wiser and I'm older. All this time, I was finding myself didn't know I was lost. And they're like, that sounds great. Can you sing it? Can sing it over this? And he starts playing guitar and I just made up a melody and it's pretty much the melody that we hear in the final recording. They're like, this is perfect. We're going to record this right now. So they laid down the guitar track and I went into the booth. As he was laying down the guitar track, I'm quickly riding as many other lyrics as I can. So it's not a story, so to speak. I don't want to say disparate. I think they're related, but they're couplets. They all are just thoughts that I put down to create these verses. By the time he was done recording the guitar, I went into the booth and I had to make up a melody now for the verse. And so I just made up the first melody that came.”
2023-02-17 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Grammy Nominee Aloe Blacc on Working with Avicii on "Wake Me Up", The Art of Great Storytelling, Behind The Scenes on the Songwriting Process and Why Rules Are Just "Good Suggestions" · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Vici because he's already got hits, but incubus got hits too. There's no reason for me to come in with anything less. I'm not going to waste this opportunity. There's no way to know where a song is going to go in the marketplace, but I felt strongly about what I had done from an acoustic standpoint. Mike had played the guitar and it was just my voice and his guitar. And then Tim took that and mixed phenomenal smash of a dance track.”
2023-02-17 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Grammy Nominee Aloe Blacc on Working with Avicii on "Wake Me Up", The Art of Great Storytelling, Behind The Scenes on the Songwriting Process and Why Rules Are Just "Good Suggestions" · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh man. Rest in peace to Tim. He was a great artist who was very passionate about music. It was the only thing seemed that he really loved and cared about. And as he was developing as a man, finding his spirituality through other sources, not just music. But that particular song was culmination of a couple of sessions that I had done with Tim in the studio. He'd reached out to me because he heard I need a dollar. He wanted to work with a soul artist and he was a fan of some of the songs of Marvin Gay and he was like, I want to do something sort of like Marvin Gay. We didn't end up doing any soul together. We did mainly songs that felt like kind of countriesque, but that particular session, he double booked. He booked a session with Mike Einsiger from Incubus, and I was also supposed to meet with Tim to work with him on the songs that we didn't finish, but he was double booked. And Mike Einsiger was welcoming. He said, just come over. Let's all work together on something. That's when I thought, I'm going to bring best lyrics that I have because now not only am I working with.”
2023-02-17 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Grammy Nominee Aloe Blacc on Working with Avicii on "Wake Me Up", The Art of Great Storytelling, Behind The Scenes on the Songwriting Process and Why Rules Are Just "Good Suggestions" · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It depends on the type of song. What I found that I do mostly is what I call aim. It stands for affirmation, inspiration, and motivation. These are songs that will hopefully be the soundtrack to you living your best life or motivating you to achieve the impossible goal. So songs like The Man or My Wing. Those kinds of themes I want to be recognized as themes that were my artist profile. Alo Black Sings inspiring music. I'm inspired when I listen to Alo Black. And then there are other songs that are touching stories. I just feel like there's another part of me that wants to be known as a great storytelling. On my latest album, there's a song called Harvard where I basically compare my life to the life of a hardworking blue collar mother. We have completely different experiences in terms of what we do for a living, but we both have kids at home that we want to feed and we want to educate. And we have that in common. I want people to feel like, yeah, Alo is also a great storyteller that makes me feel more connected to humanity.”
2023-02-17 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Grammy Nominee Aloe Blacc on Working with Avicii on "Wake Me Up", The Art of Great Storytelling, Behind The Scenes on the Songwriting Process and Why Rules Are Just "Good Suggestions" · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I don't put that pressure on myself. I've shed myself of the infrastructure that can campaign for that, so I don't even expect it. If it happens, I'm happy for it. But if it doesn't happen, I figured out where it is in the business that I'm going to support myself and my family. I just want to create a catalog that will stand the test of time, like a time capsule. People will find it and be like, whoa, where did this come from? This artist was great. I love the lyric and it still works for today.”
2023-02-17 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Grammy Nominee Aloe Blacc on Working with Avicii on "Wake Me Up", The Art of Great Storytelling, Behind The Scenes on the Songwriting Process and Why Rules Are Just "Good Suggestions" · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I was in Paris with my band. We were at a restaurant. I had a burger at my lips, and some woman came up behind me and said, oh, Aloie, can I take a picture? Can I take a photo? And my band is looking at me like, this is crazy. Because it was right at the beginning of everything when fame really started to hit. And I just thought this is not the way I want to live. I don't want to miss out on my burgers. I don't want to be interrupted everywhere I go all the time. I need to figure out how to make my songs precede me. I need to figure out how to make sure that people know my voice and not my face. And that's what I've been doing since.”
2023-02-17 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Grammy Nominee Aloe Blacc on Working with Avicii on "Wake Me Up", The Art of Great Storytelling, Behind The Scenes on the Songwriting Process and Why Rules Are Just "Good Suggestions" · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Difficult to trust people if you don't know people. At some point, you have to understand human nature. You have to know what your gut says. You have to have a real trust in your gut about who you are so that you know how far to trust certain people. For me, it's all about an impression that I get at the moment I meet someone. It could be for good or bad. It could be wrong, but I need to go with my gut because it served me well all the way till here. No, it's not harder for me to trust people. And I guess I can see it or smell somebody trying to use me a mile away. and I know exactly how far to let that relationship go.”
2023-02-17 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Grammy Nominee Aloe Blacc on Working with Avicii on "Wake Me Up", The Art of Great Storytelling, Behind The Scenes on the Songwriting Process and Why Rules Are Just "Good Suggestions" · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh, your anonymity, your peace, and quiet. Sometimes in some cases, your safety, the more famous you are, the more you have to make to insulate yourself from the world that is always vying for your attention.”
2023-02-17 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Grammy Nominee Aloe Blacc on Working with Avicii on "Wake Me Up", The Art of Great Storytelling, Behind The Scenes on the Songwriting Process and Why Rules Are Just "Good Suggestions" · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Like they want to put a wrapper on it, or they need to have a producer put a drop in it or remix it somehow. Do whatever you need to do to sell it because once people get it, they'll eventually make their way to my original version and they'll probably like it better. But we got to package it and sell it somehow. And you guys are the experts on how to sell things. So do your job. I did mine.”
2023-02-17 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Grammy Nominee Aloe Blacc on Working with Avicii on "Wake Me Up", The Art of Great Storytelling, Behind The Scenes on the Songwriting Process and Why Rules Are Just "Good Suggestions" · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It doesn't affect me in the creative process. The creative process really truly is genuine. It literally is the creative process with no commerce, enterprise, business crowding that space. When the song is finished, however, that's when I detach myself from it and I tell the business people, okay, what do you need to do to make this work? We need to Frankenstein it. Go ahead. Just make sure that I have my original version available somewhere.”
2023-02-17 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Grammy Nominee Aloe Blacc on Working with Avicii on "Wake Me Up", The Art of Great Storytelling, Behind The Scenes on the Songwriting Process and Why Rules Are Just "Good Suggestions" · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Know that it's any different. I think we're more present to it. So technology is an aid of commerce, capitalism. The music industry is certainly a child of capitalism. Music isn't. Music is the oldest form of communication. But what is new is that when enterprising isn't a semisarios in the music, industry recognized that you could fit 12 songs on the same piece of vinyl and the manufacturing costs are the same, they thought, well, we can sell it for 12 times more because the buyer is getting 12 times the value. That's when albums became a product. And we all cherish the album. It's this amazing artistic expression that the artist gets to tell a full story, but it's an invention from the record industry to sell you something that cost them a fraction to charge you more for. I don't necessarily look at it like technology has changed anything. I think what will happen is we will continue to make music based on how it can be sold because there are dominating factors coming from the industry.”
2023-02-17 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Grammy Nominee Aloe Blacc on Working with Avicii on "Wake Me Up", The Art of Great Storytelling, Behind The Scenes on the Songwriting Process and Why Rules Are Just "Good Suggestions" · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I was raised and groomed in an era where less was more, and I was not ready for this transition to the digital era where more is more. I need to quickly readjust and use the algorithms to their benefit and continuously release music. For me, it feels a bit gratuitous to saturate the market in that way. But at this point, it's the flywheel. You need to be putting music out regularly so that the algorithm is favoring you so that new audiences can find your old music and learn about your new music. It just didn't work that way as I was coming up.”
2023-02-17 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Grammy Nominee Aloe Blacc on Working with Avicii on "Wake Me Up", The Art of Great Storytelling, Behind The Scenes on the Songwriting Process and Why Rules Are Just "Good Suggestions" · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I don't. I don't. I have too many songs unreleased at this point. My inventory is huge, and I need to start releasing music. I'm not compelled to create by any sort of sense of urgency. I'm compelled to create just because I can't stop it. I can't stop the flow. It's constant. I'm compelled, though, to try to release as much as I can.”
2023-02-17 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Grammy Nominee Aloe Blacc on Working with Avicii on "Wake Me Up", The Art of Great Storytelling, Behind The Scenes on the Songwriting Process and Why Rules Are Just "Good Suggestions" · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's a great one. It's possible. There is the feeling of writer's block every so often. But what I do then is I go into my bag of tricks, I scroll through thousands of ideas that have been waiting for this exact moment. I don't throw any ideas away because sometimes they meet their moment at the most unexpected time and that could be it. And I'll find something that could be the nucleus of a new song. If the conversation isn't yielding anything special or inspired, I'll go to my cheat bag.”
2023-02-17 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Grammy Nominee Aloe Blacc on Working with Avicii on "Wake Me Up", The Art of Great Storytelling, Behind The Scenes on the Songwriting Process and Why Rules Are Just "Good Suggestions" · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think the next thing I'll do is I will record very rudimentally into my system, me on piano singing the lyrics to this song. And it will be decent and I will love it. And then I'll play it in the car when I drop my kids off at school. And if they love it, they'll ask for it the next day or they'll ask for it when I pick them up. They'll say, can you play the new song again? Then I'll know I have something really special. Then I'll send it to my keyboard player who spent 20 years perfecting his skill. I've spent 20 years perfecting lyrics, so I don't claim to be a great pianist or my guitarist and he'll do the same. They'll embellish and create the entire instrumental world around my vocal. And then we've got a song.”
2023-02-17 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Grammy Nominee Aloe Blacc on Working with Avicii on "Wake Me Up", The Art of Great Storytelling, Behind The Scenes on the Songwriting Process and Why Rules Are Just "Good Suggestions" · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I'm always writing, but a song that I really love by Fleetwood Matt came on. It's a song called Songbird. And it inspired me to write something similar. And I just sat for a few minutes and let the emotion and the magic fairy dust that was sprinkled on me by Songbird inspire me to write something in that world, something very touching, sentimental, and compassionate. And instead of songbird, my thought was flower. But songbird sounds so cool. It didn't just say bird. They gave the bird more dynamic by calling it a songbird. So flower, to me, is not dynamic enough. This is a very strategic method of songwriting, but it's also, I'm inspired and I can use my left and right brain at the same time. I want to make the word flower more interesting so I can find a different kind of flower to describe than just using the word flower.”
2023-02-17 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Grammy Nominee Aloe Blacc on Working with Avicii on "Wake Me Up", The Art of Great Storytelling, Behind The Scenes on the Songwriting Process and Why Rules Are Just "Good Suggestions" · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You can't determine what's going to be a hit, and quite often it's not right, but it's okay because you can always edit before you get to final record. That's the demo in Tennessee, Nashville, they call it the work tape, but I just call it the demo. And you're going to go back into the studio. You're going to fix things. And you're probably going to change some words here and there. You're probably going to modify a melody here and there. I wrote a song this morning and the placeholder is flower, but it really could be orange blossom because that says more than the word flower. It could be blue iris. And blue iris says so much more than orange blossom because now at blue iris there's a double entange because you're talking about blue eyes or you're talking about a flower. Let the song incubate for a day to maybe a week maybe a month could be a year and by the time you come back to it it almost rewrites itself”
2023-02-17 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Grammy Nominee Aloe Blacc on Working with Avicii on "Wake Me Up", The Art of Great Storytelling, Behind The Scenes on the Songwriting Process and Why Rules Are Just "Good Suggestions" · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“They just have a facility with words and all the dynamics that come into poetry, alliteration, allusion, consonance, extended metaphor, they know when and how to employ all of these devices where you don't have to pull teeth or do all the heavy lifting. I can come up with a line that's going to be great. They'll come up with a line that's going to be great. I don't have to edit it. We're all firing at a full.”
2023-02-17 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Grammy Nominee Aloe Blacc on Working with Avicii on "Wake Me Up", The Art of Great Storytelling, Behind The Scenes on the Songwriting Process and Why Rules Are Just "Good Suggestions" · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, you know it when you're in it. Sometimes you don't, but I think mostly you know it when you're in it. And also, you just bring your best to the room. When I wrote Wake Me Up, I brought my best to the room. I brought the best lyrics I had in my phone at the time to the session. There's no reason to do any less. You only live once. Like, why would you bring 75%? That's a waste of time. That's a waste of your time. For me, it's all about taking the challenge, throwing my hat in the ring, and saying, I'm going to fight as hard as I can to get the best product that I can so that the world can ultimately experience something better”
2023-02-17 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Grammy Nominee Aloe Blacc on Working with Avicii on "Wake Me Up", The Art of Great Storytelling, Behind The Scenes on the Songwriting Process and Why Rules Are Just "Good Suggestions" · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Okay, so a good story, I feel, is something that helps the listener forget that the world exists and fall into your paradigm, whatever fantasy that you're building. In a story like Elton John's Your Salt, you hear the lyrics that Bernie Tobin wrote and you start to find yourself sitting on the rooftop kicking off the moss. You actually are there when it happens or big yellow taxi late one night she heard the screen door slam and a big yellow taxi took away her old man. You can see the taxi, you can see the man leaving and all of these things, they actually become where you are if you close your eyes. That's where you are. That's what a story will do. It draws you in and it keeps you there. And it's almost like the artist was probably in flow state when they wrote it. If they can get you into flow state where you forget about everything else, dude, that's magic. I consider songwriting a well-written song magical.”
2023-02-17 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Grammy Nominee Aloe Blacc on Working with Avicii on "Wake Me Up", The Art of Great Storytelling, Behind The Scenes on the Songwriting Process and Why Rules Are Just "Good Suggestions" · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Some people have patterns. Some people have systems that they have to engage every time they write a song. I'm available to the muses of the world at any moment, and I'm always constantly writing down ideas or recording quick ideas into my voice memos. Sometimes I'm scheduling and I'll schedule a four-hour session, no longer than four hours, for meeting with someone else to come up with an idea. We talk for the first half hour, maybe 45 minutes, from that discussion, a great idea, maybe a phrase may come about. And that phrase will be the nucleus of a brand new song. We'll take that phrase, turn it into a chorus, take that chorus, build a story around it, and write two or three verses, maybe a pre-chorus, post chorus, a bridge. We've got the form and structure of a song. That sounds really clinical, but when you get it down and you understand the format, you can spend so much more time on the beauty of the poetry. And when you're working with a professional, it happens in four hours. When you're not, you've got to come back the second day or the third day to finish things up.”
2023-02-17 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Grammy Nominee Aloe Blacc on Working with Avicii on "Wake Me Up", The Art of Great Storytelling, Behind The Scenes on the Songwriting Process and Why Rules Are Just "Good Suggestions" · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Like I said, look, for me, it's all about efficiency. So once I figured out, I had enough money for my grandkids. I'm not racing against other people at this point. At this point, I'm just making sure that the family around me is happy, that we are content, and that I can then chase after the things that make me happy every day. And every day it's not writing a song that makes me happy. There may be something different. And I want to be able to do that. But if the measure does not come from what someone else is up to, because I've seen, and we've all seen like the richest of the rich get divorced and have terrible mental health challenges and the barometer for success has to include way more than finances. And my barometer for success, I think the very small part of it at this point, because I've already had what I feel is enough on the finance side, is everything that relates to humanity and family, not measurements that are external in that way.”
2023-02-17 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Grammy Nominee Aloe Blacc on Working with Avicii on "Wake Me Up", The Art of Great Storytelling, Behind The Scenes on the Songwriting Process and Why Rules Are Just "Good Suggestions" · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So similar to yours, I would say I'm running towards longevity, that's certain, running towards really loving and comforting family and friend structure, things that sustain people. I keep hearing elderly friends and family saying that having good friends and people around you is what sustains you. So that's really important. And so that's what I'm running toward. In the meantime, throughout all the acts of my life, I want to be able to create as much joy as possible. And I try to do that with music, but I'm recognizing that I can do that in so many other ways as well. But at the end of the day, I want people to be able to say that Aloe Black was part of the fabric of my joy, whether it was from the money that he offered the organization that supported me or was it the music and the lyrics that I absorbed from his songs or the products that his company created.”
2023-02-17 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Grammy Nominee Aloe Blacc on Working with Avicii on "Wake Me Up", The Art of Great Storytelling, Behind The Scenes on the Songwriting Process and Why Rules Are Just "Good Suggestions" · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I have a pension for efficiency, and I couldn't be a contrarian just for the sake of feeding that desire. I'd certainly weigh what is faster and more rewarding and probably go with that. If the rule is that's what I'll do, but if the rule isn't that, certainly there's a better way. Hopefully nobody will notice and I don't get in trouble. I'll just do it this way.”
2023-02-17 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Grammy Nominee Aloe Blacc on Working with Avicii on "Wake Me Up", The Art of Great Storytelling, Behind The Scenes on the Songwriting Process and Why Rules Are Just "Good Suggestions" · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's not easy. It is not easy to run everything yourself, especially when in a system where there are incentives to being part of the machine. But I figured out where I fit. And I figure I could always jump back in the machine whenever I want. Another thing that I'm running from rules, I've always looked at rules like good suggestions. Is that a stop sign? It's a good suggestion. And so when it comes to rules, I always think maybe there's a better way to do all of this. And that's another thing I think I'm running from.”
2023-02-17 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Grammy Nominee Aloe Blacc on Working with Avicii on "Wake Me Up", The Art of Great Storytelling, Behind The Scenes on the Songwriting Process and Why Rules Are Just "Good Suggestions" · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Okay, to an extent, I don't know if this makes any sense. I'm riffing now, asking me what I'm running from. Yeah. Running from fame. One of the things that happens when you get into the industry is that you get a lot of folks who come into your circle and they're part of your infrastructure and they all live or die by your ability to work. And when I recognize that, I didn't want to be responsible for everybody else's livelihoods in that way. I didn't want to have to be on the road or have to be working in order for someone else to eat. I ran from that. I shed myself of all of as much of the infrastructure as possible. I brought management in-house rather than having a manager. So I'm in charge. I get to control the time, shed myself of the retainers for lawyers and other hangers on just so I could have freedom to do what I want when I want.”
2023-02-17 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Grammy Nominee Aloe Blacc on Working with Avicii on "Wake Me Up", The Art of Great Storytelling, Behind The Scenes on the Songwriting Process and Why Rules Are Just "Good Suggestions" · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Presence is very important. One of the things is that my dad was in the military, spent 30 years in the Marine Corps. He was gone most of the time. So the impact there is that when I had the opportunity to become a father, I was also at the beginning of a career traveling the world. And I recognized soon that I wanted to find places within this industry that will keep me paid having an income to be able to feed and support my family, but also will keep me home. And so rather than having to tour all the time, I have carves a niche out of the industry so I can stay home more often than not. That's one way it's impacted. Another way is just being very strict about certain things. My parents were strict about certain things. What I'm strict about is No”
2023-02-17 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Grammy Nominee Aloe Blacc on Working with Avicii on "Wake Me Up", The Art of Great Storytelling, Behind The Scenes on the Songwriting Process and Why Rules Are Just "Good Suggestions" · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, no way. If I was still at Ernst Young, if I was still business consulting, I'd continue through that pathway. I'd probably have left Ernst Young to go to work for one of the companies that maybe we were consulting for and probably would have made my way up the executive ladder and probably would have been some sort of entrepreneur on the side or maybe would have started a competitive company to the one I was working for. Because I love processes. I would recognize processes that maybe the company was reticent to change or just had slow bureaucratic ability to pivot. And I would have thought there's a better mousetrap. I'm going to go build it and see you in the finish line.”
2023-02-17 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Grammy Nominee Aloe Blacc on Working with Avicii on "Wake Me Up", The Art of Great Storytelling, Behind The Scenes on the Songwriting Process and Why Rules Are Just "Good Suggestions" · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think definitely getting laid off was a tough time. There was a lot of pressure coming from my parents being immigrants from Panama, me being first generation American, going to college, wanting to please my parents and have that kind of experience of staying in a job for 20, 30 years and retiring. There was pressure from there. There was definitely pressure from myself wanting to achieve and do something more, something greater than where I had been at this business consultant, knowing I could do more and not having any kind of crystal ball to see what music would I have to offer. I honestly was just taking a break, taking a break from the daily grind, but it was a three-year break that ended up with an opportunity to share my voice with the world in a way that I had never had access to before.”
2023-02-17 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Grammy Nominee Aloe Blacc on Working with Avicii on "Wake Me Up", The Art of Great Storytelling, Behind The Scenes on the Songwriting Process and Why Rules Are Just "Good Suggestions" · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source