Yeah, you're like a founding father.

Here we go.

We have our sheet music to our song Birds of a Feather from our new album Hit Me Hard and Soft and we're gonna break it down for you a little bit.

There's a lot of songs about dying for somebody and loving them till they die and I thought it was really fun to leave and be like...

To reverse it.

Literally though, till I die for real and I'm in the grave and I'm rotting away.

There's a line, I don't know if you should use this or whatever, but the first lyric we wrote was, I want you to stay and then I have some lyrics in here which are all kind of just loving.

We were like, oh we'll make our love song for the first time that doesn't have some sort of weird twist to it and then we were like...

We twisted it.

We twisted it.

We were coming up with all these rhymes and grave came up.

So it kind of was already this happy sounding thing and then we just always loved the juxtaposition of that with the lyrics.

Here's the thing.

With music, my whole thing is that it's for the listener to decide what it means and doesn't matter what I wrote it about, what Finneas wrote it about, it's like, it really doesn't matter as long as you interpret it however you need to.

That's all you need to know.

So don't take what I say to heart, but it's almost like someone slamming you into a wall and being like, you look really pretty!

And you're like, wow, that's really a lot.

That's what I wanted the verse to do.

I wanted it to feel toxic and a little bit love-bomb-y.

I have a hard time with the first lyrics, or the first time I am heard in a song because it's the most important part to me.

So I will spend days and days and days trying to get the right take of the first line.

This was probably the most challenging out of the entire album to sing.

I'm so specific about what notes I'm doing, and so even though they feel like I'm just going, I want you to stay, I'm like, da da da da da, I want you to stay, and it has to be those da da, stay.

It's not, ah, it's not like a little slide, it's like two notes, ba dum.

This was not a happy album, like literally at all.

This is how I wished that I was feeling, and I wasn't really, but I was like, I'm just gonna try to pretend.

Two notes, y'all.

Actually there's like a couple that are not there, hold on.

Birds of a feather, wow, careful!

This pre-chorus, so tough.

Such a darn disaster.

Might be a good time for me to pop this open for a second.

Birds of a feather, we should stick together, I know, I said I'd never think I wasn't better alone.

So, the thing that's really cool about that is over top of that second chord in the progression, which is the B minor, we had her do this like real jazz part where she does like a minor-

So it's my favorite part.

I said I'd never think I wasn't better alone.

When I was touring, I would, I never did a singing lesson, I would never-

Never even did a vocal warmup.

I never really did a vocal warmup, I would do like five minutes of like-

You know, your voice is truly like an instrument, and if you work on it and you train and you practice you actually can strengthen it and actually get better, and I can't even tell you how big of a difference like training has done for me.

It's been really incredible.

And this song, I wouldn't have been able to sing it how I did and sing it on stage how

I do without the training that I've been doing.

It's really awesome.

Birds of a feather, we should stick together and-

This is an awesome sentence to say, we should stick together.

We kind of played with like, we should stay together, we should play together, or fly together, flock together.

Birds of a feather, flock together.

And stick together just rolls off the tongue in a very satisfying way, so.

This was another like, whoever is right wins with me and Phineas.

What I love about the way that we work is it's not really like-

Competitive.

Yeah, we're not really competitive like that, like it's really like best idea wins.

And with this, I wanted it to be, might not be forever but if it's forever it's even better and I don't know what I'm crying.

And Phineas was like, it's better if it goes, it's even better.

I forgot all about that one.

We overthought this sort of simple song so hard.

So hard.

We kept getting lost in the maze on this song.

I've never, I don't think we've ever overthought another song more.

So glad it's popular.

Thank God.

It's such a pain.

I was, there was like a period where we were considering not putting it on the album but thank God we didn't do that.

Ooh, I see a place I want to mark up.

Might not belong.

Those are two different words.

Might not belong.

This was our big long lyrical puzzle.

We rewrote that so many times we had different rhythms.

We had this whole other part.

Yeah, it's true.

This-

We didn't get that for seven months.

Like, I'll love you till the day that I die, when we hadn't set it up right, made no sense to us.

And then it was about setting up that line right.

Right.

We kept saying, it's like, how do you make I'll love you till the day that I die a punchline?

Not just sort of like saccharine and meaningless.

I know that I'll love you till the day that I die shouldn't be meaningless, but it felt a little meaningless-

It did.

Before we got might not belong.

Like, not necessarily going to live another 80 years, but I'll love you till the day that

I die, even if that's a few days.

So that was our big setup.

We had like different rhythms, different melodies.

For a while, it was, I know I should be terrified, what, of what?

We had like some like, I don't miss the way it was, and those also didn't feel truthful and they didn't feel like they were building to anything.

And we also wanted to set up the I'll love you till the day that I die, because it did feel kind of empty.

So yeah, let's do the chorus.

Let's see what happens, eh?

Oh, beautiful.

Look at that.

I love doing that.

You guys killed that.

Eh!

Fixing stuff immediately.

I just want context, because that's technically, even though it's the last line of the pre-chorus, it's the start of the chorus, so.

Okay.

Sorry.

Now we can play the chorus.

I've never thought about how the end of the pre is the beginning of the chorus.

Billie and I spend a lot of time in the studio being like, I'll go, I think you should re-sing that chorus line.

And Billie goes, okay.

And then I play it and she goes, this is what you think the chorus is?

That's a big part of art.

A big thing.

Birds of a feather is the pre-chorus.

And then I don't know what I'm, is the chorus.

And this is kind of like, this is like the post-chorus, second half of the chorus.

But it's the same deal.

But it is, it doesn't really matter, does it?

We literally hated so much when we made it, didn't we?

Also I was singing it like, I was like very, it was very guttural.

We have the demo of that version and it's really tough.

It's tough.

I listened to it recently and I was like.

It sounds like a horn.

So she did a bunch of beautiful harmonies on those dies, too.

I love me some harmonies.

So funny, we play you these things and we're like, yeah, there's a little bit of that.

Seven hours.

Are you listening to me?

You wouldn't believe it if I told you, you wouldn't get the compliments I throw you.

But you're so full of it, tell me it's a bit, so you don't see it.

Your mind's all polluted, say you wanna quit and don't be stupid.

Aww, I love that verse.

I have such a love for second verses, I feel like second verses, especially for us.

All the best lyrics we've ever written.

All the best lyrics we've ever written are in the second verse, weirdly.

I added that soundbite of you like.

Yeah, hang on, it's so awesome.

Yeah, there's a vocal trill.

It actually.

It's awesome.

Do you have the original sound?

That's the original sound.

What am I saying?

Cause.

Cause.

Cause the stranger.

Wait.

That's amazing.

That's from Getting Older.

Yeah.

Guys.

We didn't even know that.

That's awesome.

So that's the vocal from Getting Older, from Happier Than Ever, that came out, our second album came out in 2021.

But who would ever know?

Part of my year of crisis.

I was going to say, I really loved the second verse at the time because different from,

I think the rest of the song where I said it was kind of like I was writing what I wanted to feel.

This verse was really how I did feel.

You know, I want you to see how you look to me.

You wouldn't believe if I told you like you're so obsessed with the idea that you're this, you know, unaccomplished, ugly, you know, whatever somebody might talk down about themselves and think.

And it's like, you don't even know how you look to me.

Like in my mind, you are beautiful, special, talented.

It's not actually possible to see ourselves how somebody else sees us.

But if it was, you literally wouldn't believe it.

Like you, if I could give you my view of yourself, you would, you would be so shocked and so stoked because it's awesome.

You would keep the compliments I throw you instead of discarding them and just keeping this wall around.

You would take them in and agree with them.

And then tell me it's a bit.

That one's interesting to me because I feel like people kind of hear it in a different way.

For me, that's me being like, tell me you're joking.

Like, tell me that it's a bit that you don't see how amazing you are.

Say you want to quit.

Don't be stupid.

That I wasn't referring to a relationship.

I was referring to like one's, you know, career and job and someone who's just really doubtful of themselves when they have so much talent.

I think there's like a note here.

Yeah, it's super small.

I love that.

I actually love this little part.

Pretend this is here.

Probably.

Yeah.

This one goes down a half step, which is really cool.

I think it's no.

This I tried a lot of different stuff with because I didn't know if it was good enough to just hold it.

So I tried a lot of like, don't be stupid or like stupid.

And none of that.

It was kind of like, so it was kind of performative.

There's lots of new lyrics to write.

This is sister fried.

These are the lyrics that we rewrote when we rewrote the whole chorus, the entire chorus because we were freaking out, really freaking out.

So we rewrote the chorus and that was the part we heard before.

So the I don't know what I'm crying for.

And now we go to the belt.

You want to go for it right now?

Absolutely not.

You can play the isolated vocal.

Oh.

Do the thing I know.

Woo.

I remember like coming home and playing it for my parents at the time.

Both of them were like, it was so loud.

I mean, it's literally shouting.

I'm shouting.

But that second to last note was all I was aiming for.

And then as I was doing it, I was like, it would be really cool if I went one more.

And I did it.

And it was awesome.

Instrumental coda.

There were various moments of this song that felt really good the whole time.

And one of them was that outro.

That outro.

It feels very happy.

It feels like.

And sad.

It feels both.

We started the song on, I think, February 16th of 2023.

We didn't finish it until literally January of the next year.