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Sometimes I don't make music.
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Sometimes we Sometimes you hang out with someone.
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Take Finneas for example.
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When we did uh you know we did lonely, okay?
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Me and Finneas worked very early on in him and Billie's career.
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I worked with him and Billie when Billie was probably like 13, 14, maybe 14.
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Uh you must be one of only two or three other people she's ever worked with. It's really weird.
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Yeah, I don't think she's been in the studio with a lot of people. Yeah.
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No, it's like two or three. She told me, yeah. Really?
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Yeah, it was like Tyler the Creator, I guess me and then like maybe Yeah, I don't Yeah, I guess she does Yeah, but she came in the studio right here.
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Uh worked for like four or five days. Um we made some music.
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I went to all her like I I I've been a Billie fan since the beginning.
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I went to all her first shows, everything.
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I was at every I was at the one where there was like a 100 people or less. Wait, wait, wait. So you Hang on.
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So you made some music and this is something that I know everyone who's watching this will want to know.
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And I don't want you to look for it, but you have that music.
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That music has to go somewhere.
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It has to live somewhere. I have a lot of music. But that's what I mean.
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From I have a lot of my point.
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But that's that's my point. That's the thing. Who knows?
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Maybe in 6 years I'll do something. It wasn't time. It's not time. Do you listen to it?
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Do you sometimes sit here and No, my recall is like this.
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I know all I have all the songs in my head. Thousands. Wow.
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They come up when it's time.
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And I just let it I let life take me on this ride.
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And it's like But what I was saying about Finneas and Billie is like we worked that first time.
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Then me and Finneas became good friends, you know.
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Look, Billie's a lot younger. She has her own friends.
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I'm some old dude in the room. We're cool.
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It's like But me and Fin became like good friends, okay?
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And we would get in the studio and not do anything.
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We'd get in, we'd talk for 4 hours.
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He would ask me a bunch of questions about old songs I did.
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I talked to him about stuff.
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Uh this was right when like Billie starting to blow up and I'm like, "Hey, how you feeling? What's going on?"
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And it's like then it's like then his whole life changes. Her whole life changes. They be it's massive. It's crazy. Yeah. Over like 2 years. It's insane.
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So we keep getting in the studio, never make a song. But I don't press it. It's not how it is.
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Then we finally get in the studio one day.
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We're like, "Let's make some for Justin." We're right here. He's right there.
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I'm actually I'm right here, he's right there at the time.
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And then we like finish the song and I'm like Finn, I want that ballad. We need to do that.
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I want that I want that ballad.
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I want to get the feeling He's the best in the world at writing about I want that when the party's on. I want I want to cry.
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So he's like, "You want the ballad?" And I'm like, "Yeah."
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And I And so he sits down at that piano right there, Wurlitzer, and he's sitting there, I'm right there. We're talking.
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We're saying like, "Ah, what should we do it about?"
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And then 30 minutes later, we got the song. So it's like Lonely. Yeah.
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So it's like I'm just sitting here waiting for that magic to hit, whenever it is.
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And I'm sitting here in life waiting for it to hit.
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And I'm not going to press it cuz when you press it, you make dog Hm.
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You don't make good music.
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Whenever there's too much pressure in the studio and it's like, "Oh, we got to make a hit today. We got to do that."
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It's like I've never said that the word.
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I've never been like, "Yo, we got to make a hit today."
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Like what Why would you do that?
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I want to I want to I want to be like, "We got to eat some good food today, fart and smoke some pot and like maybe we'll make a mediocre song."
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Like I want to I want to I want to I want to over-deliver. There's method to this.
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Like all the farting and the pot and the good food, which is all facts, aside, there's method to this, right?
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There's two words that ultimately I think matter at the end of everyone's journey which is let go.
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We have to try to figure out how to do that in life more because at the end that's what you'll be forced to do is to let go, right?
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You can't hold on anymore.
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That's the crazy thing about it.
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That's the put That's the yin and the yang.
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Thinking about that song Lonely was an interesting time because that song came out not long after I'd had this conversation with Justin at the beginning of last year, which was kind of an impactful conversation where he was very transparent and honest and really just kind of laid it out for everyone to not just hear but see and it was really written all over him.
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Then Lonely comes out and it's like, "Okay, cool.
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I have a song that represents that experience."
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And I felt like in a weird way it was a ribbon on the end of that era because ever since then it feels like Justin's light on his feet.
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And I sort of wonder whether that song represented to you the same thing.
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Like it was like, "Oh, cool.
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Okay, now the world knows he can be really honest through music.
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Now he can go about being in his 2. 0, his 3. 0." Of course. Of course.
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And Justin was just like But again, it's all timing. He met the right girl.
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He found something that really touched him.
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Like whether whatever it is, whether you believe in it or not, he found his version.
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He found his He found God.
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He found He found his holy spirit, you know?
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And then he found his voice.
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He found it cuz he always has voice.
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You know, Justin was this artist but we were coming to him for a specific thing.
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First he was this like cute obsessed thing. It was this Beatlemania.
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And then he was like this bad boy and then but it's like but like no one got to come for Justin.
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And I feel like now you're coming for Justin.
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You you as a person Yeah.
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you know a little bit more about him. He's not the pop star.
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Somebody said something really interesting to me about Justin Bieber which really resonated when that interview came out and the album came out, they said and this may not be true to everybody so keep all the hate mail off my Don't at me.
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But they said every single super Justin Bieber fan has been obsessively in love with Justin Bieber, but also hated Justin Bieber. Is that true?
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I don't know, that's what they said.
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And I thought it was a really interesting approach, which is you know, he's experienced both even from the people that are his fans.
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Like, we've all gone, "Oh, why are you behaving that way?
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Like, what the wrong with you?" Like, that's the point. We've loved his music.
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We've also hate He's also been on the receiving end of both sides.
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he's bro, he's like a he's a human being.
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Like, this is the thing that's like so crazy to me.
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It's like, okay, Zayn, if you do something stupid, like, your your your wife might be like, "You're a idiot."
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Or your friends might be like, "Man, I'm disappointed in you."
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If you do something stupid, it's not on CNN the next day, unless you murder someone, you know?
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And it's like And it's like we put all these artists like And it's like for me, like, becoming a artist, I thought I always could relate to artists. And I did pretty good.
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But once you're that artist, man, it is so different.
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Like, me becoming a artist and like knowing what goes into it and stuff, it is it's a different So, why did you do it?
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You said you wanted to have more of a opportunity to create on your own terms and not be tied into that session after session. I get that.
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But having seen what Britney went through all the way through to Justin and everyone in between, you still decided to take the blue pill.
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I'll tell you exactly why.
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I met I There's an exact point. I'm sitting backstage. I'm with Ed. Yeah. We're on a tour, okay?
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We Defiant Ones just came out. Okay? We're watching it.
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We watch all of them in one day.
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We're sitting backstage watching it.
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He stands up and he goes, "The are we doing with our lives? We're not doing enough."
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That's Ed Sheeran for you.
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That's Ed clear, we all did that after watching the Defiant Ones. yeah, yeah, yeah.
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That's Ed Sheeran though for you, too.
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And he goes, "What are we doing with ourselves?"
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And I'm like, sitting there, and then he's like, All right, literally it was like out of a movie.
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He was like, they were like, "5 minutes."
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And then he was like, "All right, I got to go."
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And he played a sold-out arena.
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Uh sorry, a sold-out stadium of 70,000 people. Okay?
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And then I'm sitting backstage, and I have this That was actually a picture from it.
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I have a giant teddy bear.
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I'm like, hugging this teddy bear, and I'm like, "What the are we doing with our lives?"
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And I'm sitting there, and I'm walking around backstage.
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I just watched it, and I'm like, and I have a label at the time.
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I'm like, you know, I have artists signed to me.
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I have ones that have become successful, ones that haven't.
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I'm learn- I'm figuring out how it works at the time.
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And that's how I'm all I'm always figuring out how it works. I don't know.
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I just step into and just pray it all works.
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So, I'm sitting there, and I'm like, you know, it's like when you write a song for someone, you write a song with someone.
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Let's say I do a song with Katy Perry, okay?
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After the song is done, we don't have any say. My It's It's over.
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So, it's like, she decides the video, she decides how she wants to do it, she decides this, which is her choice.
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That's what she's supposed to do. I have no say in that.
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And then I was sitting there, and I was like, "Okay, I think I can make a song, okay?
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I think I can make a song one.
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I think I can make a cool video.
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I think I know like what I want to see.
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And I think I could come up with some cool marketing.
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And I was like, "So, why don't I like What am I waiting for?
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Like Like, we're all going to die.
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Like, what the am I waiting for? Why don't I try?"
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I remember I came up with the idea.
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The next day, me and Ed started a demo in Philadelphia.
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We write the East Side demo.
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And I remember I'm talking to him like a day later and I'm like so scared to ask him.
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I'm like dude, I think I want to like become a artist and I think I want to use this as as one of my first songs.
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And I was like I thought he was going to like all right dude, just like shut up.
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We're putting this on my and then he was like oh, that's cool.
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He was like yeah, we we should do that.
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He was like he was like I can't believe you haven't done it already.
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You have so many friends and stuff who do songs and stuff and then I was like I was kind of hoping he said no, but he was like yeah, let's do it.
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So then I go on this journey have no idea that that I knew I'd have a big song, but I just didn't know it was like Eastside's not like the song you listen to right away and you're like oh, yeah, for sure.
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Like maybe not you which is ironic Yeah.
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cuz I think everybody else did the first time I heard it I was like well this is going to go well.
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I mean because it's a charming it's a really charming record and I charming's a word that gets kicked around and sometimes people like charming.
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But it is it's like the performance is incredibly charming, the narrative is really charming and the and and the two and the two artists that you got to to work on it just the performance is like perfect in the pocket and the narrative story is great.