Chromeo Discuss “Words With You”, Creative Commitment, Their Musical Accent, and Upcoming Album
We’ve been ardent Chromeo listeners since their 2004 single “Needy Girl”, and the duo has remained an indispensable inspiration for us as they’ve methodically continued to build on their exceptional body of work over the ensuing years. Authoritatively connected to their musical lineage and yet perpetually moving into new territory with each new album and EP, Chromeo deftly straddles the worlds of both history and innovation. Indeed, Chromeo occupies a space in the music landscape that feels all-too-rare these days as they persistently and seamlessly meld sophisticated songwriting with formidable musicianship, thoughtful and detailed production, historical reverence (and irreverence), irresistibly intelligent lyrics, and unabashed humor to create something entirely their own.
We had the honor of meeting Chromeo’s Dave 1 and P-Thugg in their studio during a brief recording break while they put the finishing touches on their upcoming album. To describe the tête-à-tête as a pleasure would be an understatement. The discussion, which we are thrilled to share here, was as fun as it was fascinating, and as meaningful and it is memorable for us here at WMF.
Bobby Weirdo: Our first topic is obviously “Words with You”, your first single from the upcoming album. I’d like to touch on the song itself and the video. How did you decide this would be the first single you shared from the album? Is it tone-setting and indicative of what we’re going to hear on the album?
P-Thugg: It’s not that indicative. There’s a lot more funk and disco…
Dave 1: Lots of disco on the album.
PT: Yeah, this one is more of a funky rock type of thing.
D1: Groover.
PT: Groover, yeah. The rest of the album is a little bit more up-tempo and disco.
D1: It’s a very dancey album. For us it was important to come out with [something] new, so there’s a lot of live instrumentation in that song, like the horns. [We wanted] to come out with something a little bit different than what our fan base expects from us, which is the heavy synths and drum machines.
But at the same time, [it’s] something [that is] very palatable and easy to digest. Sonically, it’s a departure from the poppier sound of our last two records, because this album doesn’t sound like that. It’s definitely a return to groove and a dirtier, more analog sound.
PT: I think we actually went for the track that sticks out the most as a different vibe, just to put it out there.
D1: Yeah, but then we knew that it was easy to stomach. It’s not a challenging song; it’s just a groove. You can’t not like a groove.
PT: We wanted it to be a Sunday afternoon groover.
D1: Yeah, and with a lot of musicality – some changes and solos. And it’s like, “let’s put two bridges and not one…and two synth solos – not one.” That was all on purpose, so it’s a song that has a lot of information in it in terms of how we’d like our fans to listen to it, and what we want them to be exposed to, but it’s a simple sing-a-long.
BW: The words “Can I have a word with you?” can be scary words to hear! Was there something in real life that led to that idea?
D1: It’s just something that came up. P had started the demo for this one and I was just walking around. It was January or February ’22 and that’s the first thing that came up.
PT: It’s a very parental expression! You’re like, ‘Uh-oh!
D1: I don’t know. It’s got to just come naturally for us –especially on this record. The last couple records were very thought out, and I think a lot of what we’ve been doing on this one is more instinctive.
BW: I love the concept of the video –it reminds me of something Kevin Godley might have done, like the Peter Gabriel and Kate Bush one with a slow, long shot.
D1: Yeah, that one Peter Gabriel video –I know what you’re talking about.
BW: I have a few technical questions, if it’s OK to pull the curtain back. First of all, are you actually standing there the whole time, P, or it a still or maybe a small video clip on loop?
PT: I’m actually standing there [the whole time]. If you look closely, you’ll see me clenching my jaw.
BW: And then Dave’s there whispering in your ear.
D1: We didn’t even see this as a video. Now everybody has to have a lyric video, so we were like, “Well, if we’ve got to do a lyric video, we might as well sing the lyrics.” And again, the album will come out a long time from now, so we just wanted a slow leak. Before we start making narrative videos, we wanted to make a couple of those.
We didn’t expect it to turn out cool, but when we looked at it, we thought it was weirdly hypnotic. My parents like it more than some of our actual videos.
PT: A lot more!
D1: Because it’s fun to look at. It’s like, “Is this real? Is it CGI? This is weird.”
P-Thuggn the studio, March 2023. Photo: WMF
BW: You’re about to play Coachella again this year, and you must be among the top contenders for the most Coachella performances ever at this point.
D1: It’s up there. I think our number –five– is the most.
PT: I’m not sure who would have done it more than five times.
D1: Yeah, it would be Run the Jewels, us…yeah, it’s up there.
BW: One thing I absolutely wanted to cover is the concept of surprise, which I think is a key ingredient in what you do. I feel you really trust the listeners to keep paying attention, even in this day and age where things are so fast. An example is “Don’t Turn the Lights Off” where the bass roots start changing at the end, to great effect.
D1: There’s so much of that on this [upcoming] album. There are so many change-ups at the end of songs.
PT: Even “Words with You”.
D1: Yeah, even “Words with You”. If you listen to the very end, I’m singing a whole other song! “I just gotta share what’s been on my mind”. If you make it that far, you get a reward.
PT: You get a dessert.
D1: A lot of streaming songs are very short. I remember six, seven years ago the length for an ideal radio song was three minutes and a half. Then it became, three minutes and twenty-five. And now it’s into two minutes. Ice Spice songs are like a minute and half. It’s cool, but we want to go the opposite [direction]. Most of our songs that we’re working on now are over four minutes.
Dave 1 in the studio, March 2023. Photo: WMF
BW: Speaking of the endings of Chromeo songs, I also want to touch on that. “Opening Up”, “Clorox Wipe”, “Bonafied Lovin”…I feel like the roots to those kind of outros could go to Burt Bacharach…
D1: Sure.
BW: Also 90s hip hop …
PT: Oh, the interludes!
BW: Right, and just the chopped outro, all of a sudden. Are those outros recorded ideas that are just lying around the studio, and the you decide to tag them on the end of complete tracks
PT: Yes.
D1: Yeah, they’re all extra demos that we’re sitting on. P has a lot of stuff that he works on that ends up not being worked on by us together, and sometimes I’ll be like, “Let’s just take that beat and put it at the end.”
PT: For us, the reference is 90s hip hop. Pete Rock & CL Smooth’s albums had those interludes.
BW: Speaking of 90s references, I know you’ve mentioned Jamiroquai as a point of entry into funk, and then getting into [earlier] funk. On the outro to “Clorox Wipe”, you’re going back not to “Virtual Insanity” Jamiroquai, but rather to Emergency on Planet Earth Jamiroquai. Early 90s. Is that a lifetime pursuit to get so deep into those references where you can really nail the sounds, or is it just in your musical DNA and unconscious?
PT: Well, we had to learn and study. None of us grew up with funk music in our houses…
D1: At all.
PT: Yeah, I’m a Lebanese immigrant. My parents played French music and Arabic music. I had no clue what funk music was. My first album ever was Michael Jackson’s Bad –not Thriller– you know?
So I had no clue. I grew up listening to hip hop, so I came in familiar with the sound, but I didn’t know what it was. All of a sudden, we grew up and went to high school, and listened to the Beastie Boys. Then we were like, “Oh, these are samples!...There’s an original track that EPMD and De La Soul used.” So we went back to [those originals] and then Jamiroquai comes out a couple years later, and he was actually playing that style of what we call funk music. So we go back, do our homework, figure out what the DNA of the music is, internalize it..
D1: It’s actually way more fun to discover 70s and 80s music after hearing the sampled version -it’s way cooler because it doesn’t feel old. I’d never heard the Michael McDonald song [“I Keep Forgettin’”] before Warren G’s “Regulate”. I don’t think you did either, right?
PT: No.
D1: So first we heard “Regulate”, which is one of the greatest songs of humanity, and then you’re sick of “Regulate” because you’ve heard it for an entire summer, and then later you discover the Michael McDonald song, and you’re like, “Wow, it’s got a solo and different parts. Some parts are a little cheesy, some parts are cool, but it feels fresh.” It doesn’t feel like an old throwback song that got recycled into something new. They both feel new.
PT: And then you say, “Well, who is this Michael McDonald guy?” and you get into The Doobie Brothers. And you’re like, “Woah –these are some funky white guys!” you know? You discover musicians, and you do your homework. We’re students, and the DNA is not natural.
D1: Students, and hopefully you then integrate your lessons until they’re second nature, and then you put your own spin on it. The fact that we’re not trained musicians and we still do things a little bit wrong…we never had…
PT: Formal training.
D1: We don’t have chops from that culture. We looked at it from [the perspective of] two French speaking outsiders in Canada, so some of the stuff we do is a little wrong, and I think that’s what makes it cool.
PT: We have a musical accent, and I think that plays a part in what makes it unique.
D1: Yeah, on all the records, there are these really dry, punchy MPC drums. We weren’t always using a LinnDrum or 80s drum machines. We were trying not to do that, because that’s too on the nose, and the idea is to not have it too on the nose.
BW: I love the layers of music references in Chromeo. Like on “Stay in bed (And Do Nothing)” from the Quarantine Casanova EP, that’s Chromeo doing G-Funk…
D1: Yeah.
BW: G-Funk in turn references music before that come before that...it’s a history book going throughout.
D1: Yeah, that’s how we see it too. And with “Words With You”, for us there’s a lot of Boz Scaggs, Bob James, Doobies, you can hear some Huey Lewis there
PT: It’s 70s funk, 80s funk, 80s pop, 90s hip hop. Our worlds collide like that.
P-Thugg in the studio, March 2023. Photo: WMF
D1: And then we try to put a post-modern spin on the lyrics and talk about stuff that they never talked about back then, or from a perspective that they would not have had.
BW: While we’re on the topic of lyrics, another record you may have set is how many Yiddish words you’ve fit into popular songs. There can’t be too many projects that have done that as often as you have.
D1: Oh really? Do we say a lot of Yiddish words?
BW: I feel like you do; there are a handful of them.
D1: I feel like we’ve said some on the new record too. I’m Jewish and it’s part of the vernacular in Montreal and especially in New York.
P1: To me it’s not even a Jewish thing, it’s…
D1: A New York thing –everybody says those words. For me, when we started, it was fun for me to have my grandparents and parents get a kick out of it.
Dave-1 in the studio, March 2023. Photo: WMF
BW: I’ve always wondered who Ozzie on “Sexy Socialite” is.
D1: She’s a Montreal friend. She’s the same girl who says “two step” on “Fancy Footwork”. We’ve known her for something like twenty-five years now – a homegirl. She had a radio show and we always l;oved her voice.
PT: Yeah, a hip hop radio show.
BW: Are there any Montreal artists who may not have been known much outside Montreal, but who you point people to? Artists you think are especially important?
D1: I’ll say yes, but not the ones that people expect. I’ll tell you why: Obviously, we’re adjacent to a lot of neo-disco producers and DJs. In fact, this album is mixed by an underground cult hero of that world –Morgan Geist. He had the groups Metro Area and Storm Queen– some of our favorites.
They love and fetishize Canadian disco, a lot of [which] came out on a Montreal label called Unidisc. There are ton of these Canadisco and Montreal disco records from the 70s and 80s. When we first met the DFA people, they said, “Oh my God—Lime! You must love Lime; they’re from Montreal.” Truth is we had no idea –we never knew these people. It’s not that we didn’t like it, we just never really knew because we were more into funk than disco.
We liked a couple Gino Soccio records, but it was never a fetish the same way a lot of connoisseur disco DJs and collectors fetishize Canadian disco, the same way they’ll fetishize Italo disco. That was never our thing; we like funk. There was a lot of Canadian disco, not a lot of Canadian funk.
PT: If it’s disco, it’s got to be soulful.
D1: Yeah. We like it, but it was just never our thing. But then there were some pop bands in the 80s from Montreal that we really loved, and actually would big them up a lot in interviews. There were two, one in particular called Les B.B., who were like the French-Canadian Hall & Oates. And then there was one called Madame, and they had the best style. Neither of them —especially the second—come up in conversations a lot [but] we kind of like those [bands] more. No one knows this shit, but Madame were fire.
BW: I wanted to ask you about Oliver. Megan Louise and Johnny Jewel at Italians Do It Better work with him, and you do as well. How would you describe Oliver’s contribution to your work as Chromeo?
D1: It started on the White Women album. At the time, Oliver was two people —a duo— and they worked with us on a lot of the songs on that album.
Now Oliver is only one person –his name is Vaughn Oliver. He has a studio down the hall. They’re just homies. They’re the same age as us, the same musical culture –hip hop kids. One of them was a turntablist, and they grew up in the 90s listening to hip hop and —like us—discovered funk. They’re cut from the exact same cloth and they’re like our brothers.
They’re incredible prolific producers, and now Vaughn is having a real moment as a pop producer and a hip hop producer. He did the Nikki Minaj song “Super Freaky Girl”, he did the Latto [“Big Energy”] song, he’s a sound designer…they were great to work with. It was like a really cool four-headed monster when we worked with them.
On this [upcoming] album we went back to doing everything ourselves because our last album was so collaborative and there were so many other producers involved that it was almost like a Chromeo version of a Gorillaz album – that was the concept. On this album, we wanted to take it back to P’s mom’s basement. We did “Needy Girl” in that basement.
BW: Is that the actual basement we see in the video?
D1: No, but that’s the reference.
BW: And who was calling you at the studio?
D1: My ex. Well, my ex ex ex ex.
BW: My apologies, because I’m sure you’ve been asked this many times, but what’s the Steve Miller “Fly Like an Eagle” sound on “Over Your Shoulder”? Is that something from a particular synth?
PT: That’s an ARP 2600 with a…
D1: Space Echo…
PT: Space Echo delay on it.
D1: Pretty obvious reference. We didn’t sample it, but we made our own version of it. We like putting in these little Easter eggs for people who know music and will pick up on that.
BW: We were talking earlier about “Sexy Socialite”, and lyrically whether it’s White Women or “Sexy Socialite”, these head toward areas that could be lyrically challenging…
D1 and PT: Yeah.
BW: Especially in this day and age where [so many people just look at what’s] on the surface, but to go into those areas, and then flip it…
D1: Yeah, so here’s more stuff below the surface. “Sexy Socialite” is a song by The Time, so we just stole the title. Morris Days and the Time, and the Minneapolis sound, is the biggest influence on us. That’s our brand of funk – if we were to put ourselves on a branch of the funk tree, we’d be an offshoot the Minneapolis branch. So it’s just a title we stole.
And then the album White Women wasn’t about white women. It’s the name of Helmut Newton’s first book. It’s here – here it is [picks up and displays White Women]. That’s the book –this is some Chromeo shit. That’s our vibe, and he’s always been the mood board. That’s all it is.
So everything we do is a reference. Nowadays I think we’d have to do more explaining around a title like that, so maybe it’s too much work. But when we put out the record, we didn’t have to. There’s always another layer for nerds –we got that from the Beastie Boys. They were the first layered music, and I think they remain [some of] the most layered music. That’s really what taught us.
Because we didn’t really even understand the lyrics all the time to a lot of the G-Funk music we were listening to. We were French. But the Beastie Boys –the samples and the interplay– we could just really wrap our heads around it, and that’s what taught us to put clues everywhere.
Chromeo in the studio, March 2023. Photo: WMF
BW: So Helmut Newton is on the [Chromeo] mood board, and you’ve mentioned ZZ Top is also on the mood board, at least visually.
D1: Big time – and [for their] humor. ZZ Top’s our biggest influence.
PT: Their presentation.
D1: Everything except the music.
PT: Just take the music out of ZZ Top!
D1: But still, the drum machines, and a lot of the discipline and restraint. The ethos of ZZ top, let’s just say.
BW: Something like “Legs” isn’t a million miles away.
D1: No, it’s ten miles away. And with ZZ Top, they never broke the façade.
PT: Until death, literally!
D1: Yeah, and with us, something that a lot of people mentioned to us recently with “Words with You” is the commitment. The way we dress, the way we look, the way we sound. The studio, the chairs, the esthetic, the cars. It’s fully committed, and ZZ Top were like that. That’s why they’re so important to us. You just keep doing your thing all the way, all the way, all the way, all the way.
BW: That makes me think of another artist in the funk realm, Dâm-Funk. This idea of staying outside of time in a sense…
D1: Yeah.
BW: I experience Chromeo like that –you dip in with timely lyrical references, but then you’re back on your own parallel track.
D1: He’s incredible. We love him; he’s the homie for sure.
BW: You’re also very busy with Juliet Records. That’s a lot of work, but you’re putting out important music through the label. How are you managing to do the label and Chromeo?
D1: Unclear. We had time during the Pando, but we [still] have time and we’ll make it happen. We have some new stuff slotted.
PT: It’s been hard these last three months. It’s a balancing act.
D1: Yeah, just these last few months have been harder –we’ll make it work.
BW: Do you think day by day, or month by month when it comes to your vision of how Juliet will continue?
D1: Month by month, but we already have a new artist we signed that we didn’t have to do production on. Their stuff was ready to go. And there are a few other people we’ll be putting out singles for. And then we’ll get back in and produce something – we’ll see.
BW: Is there anything on the horizon for Juliet you’re particularly excited about?
D1: There’s this one kid – you would like him, actually. His name is Stevedreez. We signed him and are putting out his next project. He’s from the D.C. area. It’s fire. There’s other stuff we produced for other artists, and some of it’s not coming out on Juliet, and other stuff we’re not sure where it’s going to land. But there’s a record coming out this week from a Chicago rapper-activist named Ric Wilson. The first song came out two weeks ago and the record’s coming out this week. Us and A-track produced the whole thing. We’ve got so much stuff that we produced that last couple of years that is just rolling out now.
BW: Between now and when the album comes out, there are going to be more singles, and more music videos or lyric videos?
PT and D1: Both.
BW: I’m so excited. This was an honor, and your work means a lot to us here. Let’s circle back again.
PT and D1: Yeah!
BW: Is there anything else we didn’t touch on that Chromeo is getting up to in 2023?
D1: Lots of new music that’s going to roll out at regular intervals –every six weeks another song.
