(upbeat music) – Welcome to Ear Biscuits, I’m Rhett. – And I’m Link. This week at the round table of dim lighting, we’re gon’ take you back to an analysis of our songwriting process in order to explore the question: Where do songs come from for us? – Yes, and again this is the… – And then where do they go? – This is the last of our throwback episodes in our little break. Next week we will be back with another fresh, freshly baked biscuit for your ears. – I’m excited for you to hear this one, though. Again, this is from season one. We would occasionally do some Rhett and Link only conversations. I brought to the table much audio evidence; some weird demos. So it’s kind of like there’s a case study of a number of songs and how we wrote those. There were some weird moments. I was a bit vulnerable in sharing our, well, and vulnerable on your behalf, I think, in sharing some of the demos that I had. – Yeah, ’cause a few of them were very embarrassing when the songs were in their infancy stages. – Yeah, so listen to that. – It’s entertaining, I think. Also, speaking of entertainment, if you’re listening to this, and you’re not watching the video version, you may have a chance to get into a show in Australia, the Tour of Mythicality. We don’t know if they’ve sold by now or not, tourofmythicality.com, but we really wanna let you know about the North American dates. We are gonna be in Toronto on November 8th. We’re gonna be in Atlantic City on November 9th, and then we’re gonna be in Connecticut at Foxwoods Resort Casino on November 10th. – If you know somebody in that area, and it’s not you, or you already have your tickets, be sure to let them know. Tourofmythicality.com – Yes. – And now, enjoy the journey into our songwriting process. We’re opening the curtain, and I just did a motion as if it was me opening a robe which I shouldn’t have done. – We’re opening our robes. (upbeat music) – [Rhett] Welcome to Ear Biscuits, I’m Rhett. – [Link] And I’m Link. This week at the round table of dim lighting, we have us. The two of us and you. – [Rhett] Hope you’re not disappointed. – [Link] I picture you in some sort of seat, listening to this. It could be a moving vehicle seat. – [Rhett] What if they’re jogging? I mean, some people aren’t sitting down, some people are jogging. – [Link] You could be jogging, but I don’t picture you jogging. – [Rhett] Maybe on a skateboard. – [Link] Not that you’re not in shape. – [Rhett] Somebody’s on rollerblades. Someone is on rollerblades right now. Think about that, Link. Somebody’s on rollerblades. They look cool, they look really cool. When they go by, everybody’s thinking, “That guy must be listening to Ear Biscuits.” That’s what they’re thinking. – That’s an Ear Biscuits man. – [Link] See, he’s got those big headphones on and the rollerblades. That only means one thing: Ear Biscuits. That’s happening. – [Rhett] Well here’s what’s gonna happen on this Ear Biscuit. As you know, if you’ve been listening for any time, we’ve started doing this thing on a semi-regular basis, where we just talk to one another. It’s been fun. We’ve learned some things about one another. We’ve taken questions from you, the Ear Biscuits listeners, and asked them to one another. We’re gonna continue in that tradition tonight. What we’re gonna talk about is the creative process as it specifically relates to our music. – [Link] Songs, yeah. – [Rhett] Well, not because, but one of the things that’s gonna happen, to illustrate this, is we’re going to play a lot of music tonight, and that includes a lot of tracks/demos/maybe even not quite demos that have never seen the light of day, that I don’t think anyone other than just the two of us has ever heard. – [Link] Never hit anyone’s ears. I mean, there’s some things that I found on my phone that you had never heard. – [Rhett] Right, voice memos. We’re going into voice memo demo level tonight. Not because we think we’re like The Beatles or something and we’re open up the archives and you’re gonna be blown away, but because… – [Link] It’s kinda ridiculous. – [Rhett] It’s embarrassing, and hopefully entertaining. And hopefully informative to those of you who are trying to do something creative out there. – [Link] Yeah, if you’re an aspiring songwriter, then maybe this’ll give you confidence that you can certainly do better than we can. – [Rhett] And if you’re just a rollerblader, hopefully this will just be entertaining. – [Link] Yeah, I think that you don’t even have to like music to get a kick out of some of the things that we have tried. So we have some questions that we’ve gotten off Twitter that we’re gonna go through. But first, I think a good place to start, Rhett, is with the first comedy song that we wrote together. Now, we were in a band together in high school, The Wax Paper Dogs, but… – [Rhett] It was comical, but it was not intentionally comical. There were no comedy songs written. – [Link] Right, so the first intentionally comedic song we wrote, I guess it was 2001. This was our third roommate in college, Gregg… – [Rhett] It was 2000. – [Link] With three Gs. – [Rhett] It was the year 2000 because… – [Link] You got married in 2001. – [Rhett] You guys got married in 2000. You, and then Gregg in December of 2000. – [Link] So we decided to write a funny song, making fun of Gregg at his rehearsal dinner. We were gonna perform it live at his rehearsal dinner in order to embarrass him in front of not only his family, but his fiancee, Jen’s family. So we wrote a song, which I somehow have the demo recording of us practicing the song before we performed it. I guess we should go ahead and tell them that this song was then adapted… Well, here’s what we realized. We realized a song about a guy who you lived with for three years and making fun of him before he gets married, is not something that has a wide audience. – [Rhett] Yeah, not a lot of broad appeal. – [Link] So we decided to change the words and keep the tune and the guitar part, and that became The Unibrow Song, which I’ll play a little bit of that right now. ♪ How did I get here in this awkward position ♪ ♪ My two eyebrows have formed a coalition ♪ – [Link] So The Unibrow Song actually ended up being one of our first music videos on our Youtube channel that went big. – [Rhett] It was featured on the home page of Youtube back in the day. – [Link] And you can still watch that music video, which features Rhett’s father as one of the guys in the barber chair that we shave his unibrow. – [Rhett] Yeah, the good-looking one. – [Link] So to go back to this rehearsal dinner with Gregg, we wrote this song, and the bridge was, well I’ll just play it and see if you can hear what we said. ♪ We’ve seen Gregg naked, soon you will too ♪ ♪ Hope you enjoy it more than we do ♪ ♪ Didn’t we know that you were meant for each other ♪ ♪ The best of friends, soon to be the best of lovers ♪ ♪ Didn’t we know that you were meant to be together ♪ ♪ Two peas in a pod, two birds of a feather ♪ – [Rhett] Okay, so that’s a little embarrassing, I gotta say. Couple of things to note is… we sounded like absolute rednecks. We were, still are rednecks, just kind of reformed a little bit. We could not sing well at all. – [Link] The harmonies are so flat. – [Rhett] I think a dog actually barked as a result of one of your harmonies. – [Link] He’s in torture, yeah. (laughs) – [Rhett] But the interesting thing was… – [Link] We’ve seen Gregg naked, soon you will too. – [Both] Hope you enjoy it more than we do. – [Rhett] But it was a hit. The thing I would like to stress… – [Link] At the rehearsal dinner. – [Rhett] Not a nationwide hit. – Link – [Rhett] As bad as that sounds, as embarrassing as it is to play it for you, it was an absolute hit at the rehearsal dinner. So much so, that one of the most formative conversations that we have had about our careers, took place right after that. You remember this? – [Link] Yeah, sitting in the car with our wives. – [Rhett] With our wives, well, my fiancee, at the time, your wife of six months, and I was gonna get married to my wife in six months, and it went over so well, they said, “You guys need to do something with this. “You can’t just get up there and sing this song “and have everybody respond like that “and just move on to the next thing. “You’ve got to keep doing this. “You’ve got to pursue this.” And I think that was the beginning of us thinking… First of all, I’m so thankful they said that, because based on that recording, no one should’ve ever thought there was any promise, there was any reason to keep pursuing it. – [Link] Yeah, I’m very thankful for our wives for seeing the potential. They were like our Simon Cowell. But in fairness, the live performance was much more dynamic and much more practiced. The whole reason of recording that was so that we could not forget it when we started to practice it later. – [Rhett] Yeah, that was right as we were writing it. We can give us the benefit of the doubt. – [Link] So we started writing intentionally funny songs after that, and it wasn’t immediate success. Well, we wrote The Unibrow Song pretty much right after that, but we also wrote Fartin’ Girl, which, I don’t know why I’m playing some of this, just because it’s so embarrassing. – [Rhett] Okay, and this is, there’s a lot of voices in this one. Many of our friends joined in. Many who could sing, and many who could not sing, as you’ll be able to tell as you hear the chorus of voices. (guitar strumming) ♪ Tina ♪ ♪ Tina gets the laughs when she farts in a group ♪ ♪ Tina gets the laughs when she farts ♪ ♪ If she farts too much then she might have to go and poop ♪ ♪ If she farts too much, then poop ♪ ♪ Oh fartin’ fartin’ fartin’ fartin’ girl ♪ ♪ Fartin’ fartin’ fartin’ fartin’ girl ♪ ♪ Oh fartin’ fartin’ fartin’ fartin’ girl ♪ ♪ Fartin’ fartin’ fartin’ fartin’ girl ♪ – [Rhett] Okay, so that, ladies and gentlemen, was Fartin’ Girl, an international hit from Rhett and Link. – [Link] Now that actually went on an album that was sold at some point. – [Rhett] Just mail us the Grammy. – [Link] Out of a trunk. – [Rhett] And I don’t think that is available to be bought anywhere, thank goodness. But one of the things that was very much a part of the process at that point in our comedy and especially in our music was, as soon as we wrote it, as soon as we came up with it, a line, we wrote it. – [Link] And moved on. – [Rhett] There was never an evaluation of, hold on, what just happened, what did we just write? Did we just really write a song that says, “Tina gets the laughs when she farts in a group.” – [Link] Have you ever been at a party where a girl named Tina farted? – [Rhett] And gets the laughs? – [Link] And gets the laughs? – [Rhett] It was all a setup. That’s another thing, it was all a setup for poop. (laughs) Which is ’cause poop and group rhyme, see Link, and so as soon as we figured out, oh, listen, it’ll be great if we can just say, “If she farts too much, she’ll poop.” – Link – [Rhett] So, hey, let’s just start it with something about group. Oh, Tina gets the laughs if she farts in a group. – [Link] We just established that we are married men at this point, writing this song. We’re not in like, third grade. – [Rhett] And we put it on an album! – [Link] I mean, my eight and nine year old sons would have more decency now, to not write a song like this. – [Rhett] My kids don’t even know about this song. My kids would be singing this song left and right, all throughout the house if I were to play this for them. The reason we wanted to play that is not just because we thought you’d laugh at how horrible it was. It was because, the process, I will give us some credit. Over the past 14 years, the process has changed significantly. I think, for me, one of the things that I’ve noticed is that it’s so much more iterative than it used to be, because, where it was, oh poop rhymes with group, boom, let’s sit down, let’s record this. Invite some friends over, let’s record this with them. It’s so much more iterative where it starts with an idea and that idea, whether it’s the chorus, or whether it’s the melody, or whether it’s the music itself, takes a lot of different forms before it takes its final form. – [Link] Well, okay, so I’ve got a Twitter question here, and then I think we can get into that. Junus… Poopah Poopo… – [Rhett] That’s appropriate. – [Link] Yeah, he asks, when we start a project, do we already clearly know what the finished product will be like, or does the idea evolve? I think he may be talking about, like a concept for… for a particular song. But I think what you’re saying is that the song does evolve as you go on. Perfect example, I think we can walk through, It’s My Belly Button, one of our most recent songs, just to kinda take it to the other extreme. ♪ I can’t believe we’ve lived to be this old ♪ ♪ And somehow we have never seen this hole ♪ ♪ A little dent with a little bit of lint inside it ♪ ♪ Underneath this cotton tee, you’ve been hidin’ ♪ ♪ It’s time that we unwrap this gift ♪ ♪ Let’s bring back the male midriff ♪ ♪ It’s my belly button, my belly belly button ♪ ♪ I won’t pretend like it’s nothin’ ♪ ♪ ‘Cause my belly belly button’s really really something ♪ ♪ Something I wanna show to you ♪ – [Rhett] That’s what The Belly Button Song, or It’s My Belly Button became. But the song started in a much different place than that. We actually have the first, the demo version that we did. Right when we came up with this idea, we sat down, we wrote some music for it, and then Link recorded a melody of some of the lyrics that we had written. See if this is in anyway similar to the final version. ♪ This morning, while taking a shower ♪ ♪ I noticed something amiss in my midriff ♪ ♪ A little spot like I had been shot ♪ ♪ Can you remember me ever being shot ♪ ♪ Can you explain this spot that I got got got got ♪ ♪ I don’t recall you ever getting a gunshot, whoa ♪ ♪ Oh snap, I’ve got one too ♪ ♪ What are the chances we were both shot in the stomach ♪ ♪ In the same place, then recovered ♪ ♪ And we both have no memory of it ♪ ♪ Improbable, highly improbable ♪ – [Link] What was that? I was working on something else and you sat down at the computer and the keyboard and kinda developed that backing track, which was just playing in the room. And then I took it and tried to come up with some sort of melody. – [Rhett] And we had talked about the concept. – [Link] And a few of the lyrics. – [Rhett] Right, but the thing that we had talked about was, we wanted to do a song about grown men who discovered their belly buttons. They think that maybe they’ve been shot and they both healed in the same spot, they’ve got a scar in the same spot. What are the chances, oh highly improbable, that’s highly improbable. We wanted that to be what the song was. Then months later, ’cause that was… – [Link] And a very weird sounding song. – [Rhett] Oh yeah yeah, that was in 2013 actually, that was in October of last year that we conceptualized that. Lots of time passed, and then we revisited it this year. And I remember saying, “You know what, “I wanna take a day and I’m gonna…” You were working on something and I was like, “I’m gonna take a day and I wanna revisit “this belly button song and see if I can move it along.” And I sat down and listened to exactly what we just listened to, and I was like, “This is horrible, we can’t do this!” – [Link] Right, and it’s funny because I pulled it up in order to email it to you so that you’d have it. And when I pulled it up and listened to it, I was like, “This is horrible, we can’t do this.” But I sent it to you anyway. I was like, “This is his problem today.” And then you came back and said, “I didn’t use that,” and I thought, okay, totally agree. – [Rhett] Well, the funny thing is that I listened to it and I was like, “You know what? “We should handle this whole discovery “of the belly button and the conjecture “as to what it might be. “Let’s handle that in a sketch “at the beginning of this thing, “and then let’s just let the song “be about celebrating the belly button.” – [Link] Right, like post-realization. – [Rhett] And so then, I updated it with this version, which is a little bit more like the final version, but still, a little different. ♪ I can’t believe we’ve lived to be this old ♪ ♪ And never noticed this little extra hole ♪ ♪ So much potential right under my shirt ♪ ♪ Thinking of the lost years makes my stomach hurt ♪ ♪ I’m not about to hide this gift ♪ ♪ It’s time for us to bring back the male midriff ♪ ♪ I’m gonna decorate my dimple with jewels ♪ ♪ I’m gonna do it, do it for you ♪ ♪ It’s my belly, it’s my button ♪ ♪ I won’t pretend like it’s nothin’ ♪ ♪ ‘Cause it really is somethin’ ♪ ♪ Somethin’ I wanna show to you, baby ♪ – [Link] You added a baby at the end. You were really reaching. – [Rhett] I was singing it to a woman. – [Link] Oh you were? Yeah, I mean it was very emotional. It was very dramatic. – [Rhett] It was supposed to be overdramatic, like these guys, they discovered their belly button and then they sing this really dramatic song. But then, you know, I never played that for you. – [Link] Yeah this is the first time I’m hearing it. And I’m like, oh gosh, maybe we should do that one too. – [Rhett] So I never played you that version because I listened back to that and I knew that that wasn’t good enough. Another couple of weeks passed, and then when I revisited it again, I said, “This has got to be happier, more ridiculous. “This should be a pop song.” And then that ended up, you can see that the chorus was almost there, right. But lots of things changed. There ended up being the, “belly belly button, “really really something.” – [Link] The hook, really. – [Rhett] But it’s just, that’s how the song got to the sound that it ended up having, but let’s talk about how the concept changed. – [Link] Did you have another version, though? I thought you had one more demo to play. – [Rhett] I have basically what is the very last version before we changed the concept. (upbeat music) ♪ I can’t believe we’ve lived to be this old ♪ ♪ And somehow we have never seen this hole ♪ ♪ I can’t believe we’ve lived to be this old ♪ ♪ And somehow we have never seen this hole ♪ – [Link] Okay, so that, it was kinda repetitive at this point, the demo. – [Rhett] That was just, “Okay, it’s gonna have more of a pop beat, it’s gonna have…” – Link Gonna be a beat in (riffing). – [Rhett] Right, more poppy, that piano, and that kinda thing. So then, at that point is when I brought it back to you. We were in our office and I was like, “Okay, here’s the updated version. “I think we’re on to something here in terms of the sound.” – [Link] And you had the chorus too, ’cause that was the best part. (singing) It’s my belly button. (speaking) You also had that. – [Rhett] Right, the chorus was there. – [Link] And then we kinda just added some jokes and added the rap and all of that, and started to structure it. But we had to figure out where the song was going to go. I think that’s always the second question. The first question is, what’s this song about? What the comedic angle? Two guys discover their belly button, but then it has to go somewhere because I don’t think that concept is enough to support a song. We decided, we didn’t have the trees yet, right? But we had telescopes going into the belly buttons. – [Rhett] The thing that we said was, this song has got to go crazier, right? It’s gotta go more into left field. So the first idea we came up with, well let’s get to the point where these guys start selling, basically charging… – [Link] Tickets to look in their belly buttons… – [Rhett] With telescopes. And somehow, I can’t remember exactly how we came up with this, but we were also going to give away… – [Link] Magazines about horse manes. – [Rhett] Horse manes. – [Link] Horse Mane Magazine, Miniature Horse Mane Magazine. – [Rhett] It was crazy. If you came and looked at the belly button, you got a free subscription to Miniature Horse Mane Magazine. – [Link] And then we said, okay, but before we get to crazy town with Miniature Horse Mane Magazine, let’s try some things like, we didn’t have the nugget yet, ’cause I made that up later, but we had a couple of the other things including bedazzling it and putting a seed in there and a tree growing out of the belly button. But then when we revisited it, we said, “Hold on, if we keep running with the trees, “it could actually be logical and we don’t have to go “to Horse Mane Magazines, which doesn’t make any sense. “So we can carbon offset ourselves.” And the song kinda, it just went from there. So you can see what we’re saying, this is kinda the iterative process of writing a song, since last October. – [Rhett] Yeah, it gets to the point where it’s not just a song about belly buttons, it’s a song about somehow about, it’s almost an Earth Day (laughs), an Earth Day song, kind of an anti-Earth Day song almost in an ironic way. But it took five steps to get to that point. – [Link] Couple of other questions. SortofSam asks, “Is one of you more “of an idea-centered person whereas the other “acts as a filter for the ideas?” – [Rhett] I think that this belly button song is the perfect example of how we work a lot of times. And that is… I don’t know if we’ve ever talked about this specifically. First of all, both of us come up with all kinds of ideas and both of us help finish and filter lots of ideas. Our process is incredibly collaborative, and I’m not just making this up. It is truly the case that a lot of the time, we do not remember who came up with the idea. When we think back on a specific idea, it’s like, “I think maybe you said something in a conversation “and then I immediately had another idea that built on it,” and then we’re off to the races and we build ideas. That’s how we always work. But I do think that I’m more forward thinking than you, and you’re more detail-oriented than I am. We established that when we talked about our personality differences on an episode of Good Mythical Morning. And what that lends itself to a lot of times, is I’ll come up with 15 different ideas for songs, you’ll help establish what the best idea is, and then if we move forward with an idea, and I kinda get it off the ground, like this belly button song. I probably would’ve just been fine finishing the song and making it sort of an ode to belly buttons, but we were sitting there and you’re like, “We gotta take it, it’s gotta go somewhere else. “It’s gotta go to a new level.” And that’s when the whole left field conversation started happening, and it became the song about belly button trees and carbon offsets. I think that’s the answer to the question. A lot of times there’s this, I might have an idea, but it never becomes what it’s going to be until you marinate on it and turn it into what it is. – [Link] Because that’s how our brains work as a default. But certainly, it works the other way as well. I have ideas and you make them better. SmithBrent518 tweeted, “Who makes the witty comebacks “or do you create your own parts, like in Epic Rap Battle, “Nerd Geek, or Manliness, or just the original “Epic Rap Battle.” I guess what he’s asking is, do we each separately write our own parts of the rap battle, so we’re legitimately rap battling. – [Rhett] The answer is no. – [Link] I hate to crush your hopes there, SmithBrent518. Yeah, I mean, still it is very collaborative. I think until the very last, when we’re dividing it up, we kinda divorce the lyrics and the whole writing of the rap from who’s gonna be delivering it, because that wouldn’t be fair, and it doesn’t matter, at least at that point. Once the song is written, then we have to determine who’s gonna say what, but as we’re writing the lines, we don’t know who’s saying what, or how we’re gonna divide it up. We’re just trying to make the best song ever, ’cause we both win if it’s a great song. – [Rhett] Right, and I’d say that you’re more of a student of rap than I am. You listen to more rap, and so typically, what we do, and I think this is because… – [Link] And it’s also a detail-oriented thing for me to kinda craft a rap. – [Rhett] Right, so with something like The Textpert, I’m a textpert rap, one of our most recent raps, what I’ll do, is I’ll sit down and I’ll just write a lot of concepts, like, this would be funny. It would be funny if there was a joke about texting with your feet. It’d be funny if there was a joke about a masseuse, a Swedish masseuse giving you thumb shiatsu, and I could have a yogi. But I don’t think about the rhyme scheme. I don’t think about the flow, just come up with different ideas and then kinda, you take it all, I move on to something else. We’re always working on something. I move on to something else and you’ll kinda sit there in the office and kinda toy with the lyrics until you kinda land at something. Then bring it back to me as a demo, and then I’ll kinda say, “Well, I think I’d rather say it like this,” or, “Maybe it would be funny if we did it like this.” And then the final version is collaborative again. So the typical process, and I think this is probably typical of lots of people who work together. Which I would say that, one lesson learned, or I don’t even know what it would be like to create things apart from you, apart from Link. It’s such a collaborative process of handing things back and forth like two guys working on the same project and like, “Alright, you take this for a while, “I’m gonna go work on something else. “Give it back to me when you’ve moved it along.” I would say that’s an encouragement, if you’re having trouble creatively, you’ve come to a creative roadblocks, find somebody to work with because I think so many of the creative breakthroughs that we’ve had have been related to the fact that we hand things back and forth until it becomes what it’s gonna become. – [Link] And only recently I think in the past year, have we determined that we should spend more time on writing jokes and coming up with funny concepts and the beginning, middle, and end of a song before we start crafting the song itself. Especially for a rap, there’s so many more jokes crammed into a rap. We learned to write as many jokes as we could and then you kinda have things to choose from to kinda make your rhymes in the second half. Whereas before, we would just start at the beginning and start writing and rhyming as we went, and you would end up with filler and things that didn’t work. – [Rhett] Well, related question to that, this is EllieBrashX asks, “Do you write lyrics first or compose the music first?” – [Link] By the way, love you guys. You weren’t gonna read that part? – [Rhett] I wasn’t even gonna say that, but it’s in the tweet. – [Link] Two hearts. – [Rhett] Yeah two actual icon hearts there. – [Link] For me, two hearts for me. You didn’t get a heart, I don’t know why. – [Rhett] Well I think one of them is for me. It says, “You guys.” I’m gonna take one of those hearts. I don’t even know this girl, maybe I’m not gonna take any hearts. You can have all the hearts. I mean, I gotta a wife. – [Link] Well they were both for me anyways, so I’ve got ’em. – [Rhett] I think, when it’s a rap, like Link was saying, a lot of times, it’s very much jokes, even lyrics first, and then… – [Link] I can’t write the lyrics without the music. I actually tried that, ’cause I tried to change the music on Textpert halfway through, and I was like, whoa, I can’t change the tempo, it’s not working. – [Rhett] So usually, we do have the beat that we’ve gotten someone to make for us. That’s another thing, with raps, a lot of times we have a producer create something and then we kinda help guide that process. With our songs, we always write the music for those. We’re writing the music for the songs, and then trying to come up with the melody/lyrics. And a really funny example, something that we found when we were going through all these old demo levels… – [Link] Yeah, this was on my phone, it was another voice memo when we were working on the My Hair Song. Which, I remember how that one worked. I don’t remember whose idea it was, but I know that you came up with the hook, like the piano hook. I think it goes from the verse, in through the chorus. ♪ My hair goes up, my hair goes down ♪ ♪ My hair goes up, my hair goes down ♪ ♪ My hair goes up, my hair goes down, down, down, down, down ♪ – [Rhett] The beginning of the idea, I was like, “I gotta an idea about a song “for hair going up and hair going down “because my hair goes up and your hair goes down. “All I’ve got is this,” and it was just the chorus. And then we played a little bit, well the verse can be something like this, but I have no idea what the lyrics are gonna be, I have no idea what the melody should be, but we had this little, we had a beat and we had a chord progression. That was all we had, and you had that on your computer. – [Link] Yeah, and then you started working on the second caption fail, and I said, “Alright, I’m gonna work on this melody,” and then I kinda had something. I kinda worked on a melody and recorded as I went so I wouldn’t forget it. What you learn when you’re writing songs is, you get something great, and then you’re like, “I’m never gonna forget that.” You go to lunch and you come back and you do not remember it. So that’s why we have so many voice memos on our phone, was because we forgot things that we thought were genius. Actually, you’re just documenting proof that what you came up with really wasn’t genius, as you’ll see. So this is The My Hair Goes verse melody. I was just making up words off the top of my head, and trying to come up with the melody, something that was catchy. Check, one, two, testing, testing… This is My Hair Goes Up. ♪ Oh I wonder if you would (mumbling) know ♪ ♪ And if I wrote this song and you sang it with me ♪ ♪ Would the people (mumbling) ♪ ♪ And if we went down like this and up like this ♪ ♪ And then if all around the world ♪ ♪ Then everybody would be singing this song ♪ ♪ And passing it on to girls ♪ ♪ Yeah I’m trying to remember this way to sing ♪ ♪ So I can sing it with these new words ♪ ♪ And when I add in the words and you sing along ♪ ♪ It’ll be like two floatin’ turds ♪ ♪ And if floatin’ turds are cool, and we are cool ♪ ♪ Then we can float along with them ♪ ♪ And you can (mumbling) ♪ – [Rhett] Oh my goodness. – [Link] Oh gosh, that’s embarrassing, man. I didn’t know that existed. – [Rhett] And again, I’m hoping, first of all, if you know us, you know that we resort to bathroom humor. It’s a natural. That was a perfect example of it, just in your brain naturally. – [Link] Stream of consciousness. – [Rhett] It’s the turds are gonna come out, brain turds are gonna come out. You can’t help it, but I’m hoping that, you know… – [Link] Something about girls, I said something about girls in there? – [Rhett] The girls will share it, people will share it with girls, I think is what you said, which is, I mean, that’s great. We want people to share our music with girls and guys. I remember when we were first getting started. I started playing the guitar when I was 17, in the band we had already started. We were two lead singers, and I was like, “Well one of us needs to play an instrument.” And at that point… – [Link] You know what, PatriciaJoyce94 asked you, “How long did it take you to learn to play guitar? “What was your favorite song to play?” – [Rhett] I don’t know what my favorite song to play was, but I do know that I learned in a matter of weeks. I remember I got the guitar. – [Link] You bought a fake book, that’s what they’re called right, where they tell you how to play guitar. It’s called a fake book. I don’t know why, but I think… – [Rhett] You mean where it just has the chords? – [Link] It’s got the fakes in it. You got the Eagles one, and you got – [Both] Lynyrd Skynyrd. – [Rhett] Yeah, the Eagles one was great because The Eagles have so many just, chords that make up… – [Link] Acoustic strumming. – [Rhett] Yeah, but the Lynyrd Skynyrd was just, I had all these electric guitar riffs for like… – [Link] Give me back my bullets. – [Rhett] Yeah, that kinda thing. The point I am making though, is that, I think about that process of trying to learn how to write songs and we kinda felt our way through it. We didn’t have a whole lot of people telling us what to do, but these little tips like, if you come up with a melody, sing it immediately so you won’t forget it. If you don’t have what the song’s gonna be about, go ahead and record yourself singing about turds or whatever because you’re going to help establish what the song is going to become. Obviously, we didn’t write a song about turds. Not that we’re above it, we started this thing off talking about a girl that farts in a group and then ends up pooping. So we’re not above it, but I think for anybody out there who’s aspiring to be a songwriter, those are some tips that we would throw your way. Just get something out there. Open it up and don’t wait ’til you’ve got it completely formulated in your mind. – [Link] Adane09 asked us, “How do you come up with “a premise or concept for your songs?” I think we’ve got three or four different ways that we come up with a concept. As we’ve already established, obviously, just an idea will pop in our brains. I don’t know how you came up with the idea of writing a song about two guys discovering their belly buttons in their 30s. – [Rhett] It was a sketch. I thought it would be a funny sketch first. – [Link] Okay, but how did you come up with the idea for that, period? – [Rhett] I have no idea. – [Link] You were like, looking at your belly button. – [Rhett] I think I may have seen something about… I know what it was, I saw something on television about self-awareness and how at a certain age babies realize that their bodies are… They have some sort of part of them. Part of them? – [Link] Right, like they look at their hands and stuff. – [Rhett] What if grown men realized that? Oh, they might find their belly button… and then it just from there. – [Link] Okay, yeah, I remember coming up with I’m a Thoughtful Guy. I was driving into the Fatburger parking lot. I was gonna get me a Fatburger and there was an ad on the radio, it was a dating ad on the radio, and it said something about, I’m a thoughtful… If you wanna meet a thoughtful guy, and I was like, “Well I’m a thoughtful guy.” But I’m like, “Well I don’t need a date, “but that’s kinda funny.” It could also just mean that you – [Both] think a lot. – [Link] And then I just jotted that down and then two weeks later I was looking through a list when we were talking about song ideas and it came up. I’m not gonna say it’s the sad fact, a lot of the way we come up with our songs, Adane09, is through sponsorship. All of our rap battles started with a sponsor. Dentyne wanted to, they wanted to do something that tied gum together with… – [Rhett] Confidence. – [Link] Confidence to start a relationship. And that led to Epic Rap Battle. And then when we pitched Epic Rap Battle and Manliness to a sponsor, and then same thing with Tiger Direct and Nerd vs. Geek. – [Rhett] Right, so a lot of it has to do with somebody just saying, we want something that speaks to a certain thing. – [Link] And we approach that kinda like a math problem. And I don’t wanna talk about it too much, because it’s, it could be boring. – [Rhett] Well, I think that it’s nice to have a constraint. We’re reactive sometimes, and I think that’s a good thing. Having somebody request that you write something for them can help you come up with ideas that you would not have come up with if it was just you riding along, listening to the radio, and hearing a commercial about a dating website. – [Link] Well that’s why we came up with the five word song title idea. The Indie Machine guys, our friends, they came up with the idea for films and they gave us permission to use it for songs too. Really, when we first started making Youtube videos, we were already doing that. Not five word song titles, but just submit a song title. The Fear of Frogs song, one of the first songs on our channel after Unibrow. – [Rhett] And that was part of the viral boom, right? – [Link] No, it was after that, but it was a submit a song idea… within our fan base. Someone submitted that idea. – [Rhett] And then, when we came back with the idea to do five word song titles and we made a video. We said “Hey, we wanna write a song “based on your suggestions.” The first one that we wrote was Nilla Wafer Top Hat Time. We saw that, we said, “Okay, surely there’s a song “in Nilla Wafer Top Hat Time.” Wrote a very quick and easy song and did a live performance of it for our music video. But then, a number of months passed and surprisingly, we asked people to submit five word song ideas and there might be, I remember going through and looking at the suggestions for those five word songs. Looking at like 1,000 in one sitting, and not being able to find one that I thought we could make into a good song. I don’t know what it was, it was just like, I thought there would be so many of these that would work. But so many of the people’s suggestions were things like, “Purple Dinosaur Kitten Donut Hole,” or something like that. You know what I mean? I was like, well there’s not really a concept there. And then all of a sudden, I wish I knew who suggested this. We gave them the credit in the video. – [Link] Yeah, it’s there. – [Rhett] We saw Rub Some Bacon On It. – [Link] Like that is funny. – [Rhett] And that’s actually Serge_BT’s question, was, “How did you come up with the Rub Some Bacon On It idea?” Well, it was a suggestion. That was one of the five word songs. – [Link] Now, you have a demo of that. We had a really hard time writing Rub Some Bacon On It. I definitely remember that. – [Rhett] So two things about that. First thing is, we wrote the chorus for Rub Some Bacon On It at least four times. So that Beach Boy style Rub Some Bacon On It chorus… – Link Rub Some Bacon On It. – [Rhett] Yeah, that was after we had visited many different choruses that we didn’t like over several weeks. Then, we finally land on that chorus and then we’ve got this Rub Some Bacon On It chorus additional line in the chorus that we wanted. And this is originally what it sounded like, just me singing it as a demo. ♪ Rub some bacon on it ♪ ♪ Rub some bacon on it ♪ ♪ Rub some bacon on it ♪ ♪ Rub some bacon on it ♪ – [Link] Now I remember as we were writing that and recording that. Listening to it back, I’m like, “Man, we just sound like dumb as dirt… “knuckleheads singing.” Either that or some type of frat guy that you don’t wanna hang out with. We were like, I don’t know what to do, we couldn’t come up with anything better. The idea was, “What if a robot sang it?” What if it was a robot voice? And we kinda knew we could do that using Logic. So we changed it to a robot sound effect and it sounded cool. It didn’t sound like a couple of numb-nuts singing (goofy voice) Rub Some Bacon On It. – [Rhett] But then we thought, we’ve got this robot singing in the song…” – [Link] What are we gonna do in the music video? – [Rhett] We’ve gotta have a robot in the music video. So this is just an example of how it isn’t totally ever determined from the beginning. The Bacon Bot, which is the focal point of the entire music video, and ultimately the point, the application point at the end. It was only created because we didn’t like the way we sounded in the chorus and added a robot voice, and then needed a robot to sing it. And then decided, well let’s just build this. Jason ended up building that robot in my backyard over a number of days because we were like, “We gotta have a robot. “How do you build a robot?” Well, we can use a trashcan and we can get an old phone and then we could put Nick Bishop in it. – [Link] And the robot has to be able to fry bacon, so therefore let’s make the head out of a functioning George Foreman grill. It ended up not being functional. – [Rhett] It wasn’t plugged in to anything. – [Link] And now he’s dead. He fell off the top of the refrigerator and his whole head busted. – [Rhett] But he’s still there, I think he could be repaired. – [Link] Yeah, if need be, he could be salvaged. But those are kind of the ways that we come up with ideas. From our brains, from sponsors, from fans, but there are some times, and we don’t have the luxury of a lot of time just to do this anymore. Maybe we never did, but I know there were certain points that we would just say, “You know what, today, “let’s write a song with no constraints. “Let’s just sit down, with a guitar and a notepad, “and just open our brains and just vomit out “whatever comes out.” Hopefully it just won’t be like more poop humor. We found a demo that we recorded. – [Rhett] Right, so this is one we recorded. We were down at the beach. – [Link] North Carolina. – [Rhett] Number of years ago, this is before we moved to California, so this is probably like four years ago. We were sitting there, just what Link said, we wanna write something that has no constraints, and it was a song about a dream that we had. This is a very early demo. This is kind of catching us in the middle of a writing session and trying to kind of capture what we had. – [Link] This song would be conversational, and so you would be telling me about a dream that you had last night, and I would be responding to it. And then, there would be a second verse where I would have a dream and you would respond to it. We never wrote the second verse about my dream, but we kinda ran with your dream just because, and tried to draw a conclusion on the end of it. I think I was really far back from your iPhone, which was recording this. – [Rhett] It’s not a great recording. Link sounds like he’s across the room because he was, but I actually still like this song. – [Link] You’ll get the idea. ♪ Let me tell you ’bout a dream I had last night ♪ ♪ Okay, why don’t you tell it ♪ ♪ I was sellin’ colored pencils on a roadside ♪ ♪ In a world of black and white ♪ ♪ And then I noticed I was wearing ♪ ♪ Nothing but my drawers ♪ ♪ Unbecoming ♪ ♪ And then a big panda bear came out of nowhere ♪ ♪ Holdin’ a key ♪ ♪ He said is this yours ♪ ♪ I opened my mouth to scream ♪ ♪ But nothing came out but (wooshing) ♪ ♪ (whispering) Also, I thought ♪ ♪ (whispering) You’d be saying something funny ♪ ♪ And then the bear became a woman ♪ ♪ Oh now you’re onto something ♪ ♪ But she looked like Bruce Springsteen ♪ ♪ This is not my kinda dream ♪ ♪ Then she lit a purple flare ♪ ♪ And it burst in the air ♪ ♪ Summoning a committee ♪ ♪ For the de-organization of cities ♪ ♪ She was givin’ a presentation ♪ ♪ The woman was, or the bear ♪ ♪ She had invented a two-seated scooter ♪ ♪ That was fueled by facial hair ♪ ♪ I shaved my whole face ♪ ♪ And then I took my trimmer ♪ ♪ And shaved both my legs ♪ ♪ Like an Olympic swimmer ♪ ♪ And once she had all my hair ♪ ♪ Let me guess, she turned back into a bear ♪ ♪ (talking) Hold on, were you there ♪ ♪ (whispering) I don’t know, that’s up to you ♪ ♪ And then she ate it all ♪ ♪ (whispering) Ate what ♪ ♪ My hair ♪ ♪ And then she went ♪ ♪ Nom-Nom-Nom-Nom-Nom ♪ ♪ Nom-Nom-Nom-Nom-Nom ♪ ♪ Nom-Nom-Nom ♪ ♪ Are you sure she didn’t go ♪ ♪ Nom-Nom-Nom-Nom-Nom ♪ ♪ Nom-Nom-Nom-Nom-Nom ♪ ♪ Nom-Nom-Nom ♪ ♪ (talking) No, it’s more of a mix of the two, more like ♪ ♪ Nom-Nom-Nom-Nom-Nom ♪ ♪ Nom-Nom-Nom-Nom-Nom ♪ ♪ Nom-Nom-Nom ♪ ♪ (talking) No, do the longer one now ♪ ♪ Nom-Nom-Nom-Nom-Nom ♪ ♪ Nom-Nom-Nom-Nom-Nom ♪ ♪ Nom-Nom-Nom-Nom-Nom ♪ ♪ Nom-Nom-Nom-Nom ♪ ♪ (talking) And then she exploded ♪ ♪ (talking) My hair went everywhere ♪ ♪ (talking) And the world became color ♪ ♪ (talking) I think it means something ♪ ♪ (talking) Of course it means something ♪ ♪ (talking) You know what it means ♪ ♪ Don’t trust a woman ♪ ♪ Who makes you shave your facial hair ♪ ♪ Especially if moments ago ♪ ♪ She was a panda bear ♪ ♪ Don’t trust a panda that just ate your body hair ♪ ♪ Especially if it’s got a key ♪ ♪ And you’re in your underwear ♪ ♪ Don’t buy a scooter that runs on facial hair ♪ ♪ Especially if you don’t want ♪ ♪ To end up hairless and alone ♪ ♪ Cleaning up a dead panda bear ♪ – [Link] Don’t ride a scooter that runs on facial hair. We had a lot of facial hair humor in there. – [Rhett] We did, and… – [Link] We could salvage that song. There’s something in there. It’s kinda nuts, but it could work. It reminds me of that song we wrote a long time ago, A Tribute To Friends, which it was kind of a story and it was based on nonsense. – [Rhett] Yes, well there’s a lot of nonsense there. I think it’s a good answer to this question from MirandaRenee3. She says, “Can you tell us some of the ideas “that you haven’t followed through with?” Well there’s one right there, Miranda. We’ve got a lot of these. There’s a lot that we won’t play for ya’, but things that we had an idea and we kinda ran with it, and then we got to a point where we’re like, well this probably doesn’t need to go public. Usually the ideas that we develop do find their way onto the internet, right. But occasionally, especially in the past, we would try a lot of different things that might not make it, like this dream song. I don’t remember exactly why we just decided, “You know what…” – [Link] We just open up our brains. Why did we decide not to do it? – [Rhett] Not to follow through. – [Link] Just ’cause we got back from the beach and we had other stuff to do and we never got back to it. That’s how it happens a lot of times. Okay, I found another one that we will never go back to. – [Rhett] Well, we’re going to it right now though. This is what you get when you listen to Ear Biscuits. – [Link] And we are, no one’s ever heard this thing. Now when I played this for you earlier, did you remember that we had done this? – [Rhett] Vaguely. – [Link] This song’s got it all, people. It has bathroom humor, it has potty humor, literally. – [Rhett] It’s all about the bathroom. – [Link] It is about that awkward situation when you’re in a public restroom that’s like a one person at a time, but somebody knocks on the door, and you have to figure out what you’re going to say before they try to shimmy the door open as if no one’s in there. – [Rhett] But the genres that we combined for this are… – [Link] I was just messin’ around, like, I don’t know why you made the voice that you made. – [Rhett] It’s so horrible. – [Link] It was just crazy, we were like, let’s just do the craziest thing. Let’s throw these drums on there, you can sing in a nasal voice, I’m gonna try out all these things in Garage Band I’ve never used before. It’s many years ago. It’s called Public Place. ♪ I’m in a public place ♪ ♪ Tryin’ to do a private thing ♪ ♪ This bathroom is made for one ♪ ♪ But someone is knocking ♪ ♪ I was taking a walk ♪ ♪ Justa mindin’ my own ♪ ♪ Enjoying nature, when all of a sudden ♪ ♪ Nature called me on a biological phone ♪ ♪ And said son, find the nearest restroom ♪ ♪ Just the back way was the grocery store ♪ ♪ With a Chinese restaurant next door ♪ ♪ The restroom was only for customers though ♪ ♪ I’ll be in the back, get me an egg roll to go ♪ ♪ I’m in a public place ♪ ♪ Tryin’ to do a private thing ♪ ♪ This bathroom is made for one ♪ ♪ But someone is knocking ♪ ♪ Knock, knock, knock, knock ♪ ♪ Oh, man, I never know what to say when this happens ♪ ♪ Knock, knock, knock, knock ♪ ♪ Oh, man, should I trust the lock and say nothing ♪ ♪ Turn, turn, turn, turn ♪ ♪ Oh snap, uh, I’m in here ♪ (jazzy music) – [Link] That’s crazy, I love the ending. I really like where that song goes (vocalizing). That is possibly… – [Rhett] (singing in silly voice) I’m in a public place, tryin’ to do a private thing. – [Link] Oh man, that is quite possibly the stupidest thing we’ve ever done. – [Rhett] I’m sorta liking it, now, the third or fourth time I’ve heard it today as we’ve prepared for this. – [Link] Maybe we should make it into a music video. – [Rhett] Yeah, so again, things have changed a lot. – [Link] And the more things change, the more they stay the same. – [Rhett] And the interesting thing is, you know, we work in a different way today. One of the things that’s changed about the way we work is we have a team of people, we have things scheduled out more in advance. So there’s not just time, necessarily, for us to sit around and write that, but back when that was written, it was just the two of us. – [Link] It was just for the fun of it. – [Rhett] We’d just come in to the office and we’d say, “Alright, well I got an idea for this public place, private thing.” And then it’s like, “Well, alright, I’m gonna do this weird drum beat.” This country thing that you’ve come up with. We would never let ourselves do that now, but hopefully, I’m hoping there can be a time. I do wanna do this thing where we rent a cabin and go up there for an extended period of time. – [Link] And write a whole album. – [Rhett] Just a whole album, and (silly voice) I might end up singing like this again on every song. And you can do the (beatboxing) percussion thing. That’d be great. Who knows what’ll happen? It could be a whole new genre. – [Link] Whether people will listen to it is another story, or question. Okay listen, I found one more song, and this is a complete demo that I found and based on what the song is written about, I’m kinda deciphering that it was written maybe still while we were engineers. But the quality of the demo is so good that I think it’s later, but we’re certainly pulling on principles from the engineering days. – [Rhett] It’s called Don’t Block My Youtube. So it had to be after 2005. – [Link] That’s true, that’s true. – [Rhett] So this was… – [Link] All the humor was based on… – [Rhett] Being in the workplace. – [Link] Yeah, here’s the angle, the song that no one has ever heard, is called Don’t Block My Youtube, and it’s written from the perspective of someone, like an engineer, who works in a cubicle job and he’s just getting started. His biggest fear is that the boss will block Youtube at his place of work, which happens. They won’t let you look at Youtube because you’ll waste your time and not get your job done. We would never write a song like this today, because it’s too geared towards the workplace, and that’s not where a lot of our fans are at, or care about that type of thing. So we’re not gonna write cubical humor. But I did think it was interesting that this was like a complete, almost produced demo. I only start singing at the end. I remember you wrote most of the song, and I wrote the thing at the end and started singing it. – [Rhett] Yeah, so there’s like two and a half minutes and all of a sudden Link comes in and is like… (laughs) It’s good, he’s a surprise, I like it. – [Link] Well we just spoiled the surprise. Ladies and gentlemen, the world premiere of Don’t Block My Youtube. ♪ (humming) ♪ ♪ The first thing you’ll notice ♪ ♪ Is that you’re beginning to gain some weight ♪ ♪ Face it, dude ♪ ♪ Because you don’t reach your target heart rate ♪ ♪ On your commute ♪ ♪ Before you know it, you’ll be partin’ your hair ♪ ♪ And tuckin’ in your business casual shirt ♪ ♪ Because your faux-hawk and Miller Genuine Draft t-shirt ♪ ♪ Just don’t work at work ♪ ♪ At first, you will be adverse ♪ ♪ To doing number two in the restroom ♪ ♪ You think, what if my boss comes in ♪ ♪ He would know me by my shoes ♪ ♪ But just give it two months ♪ ♪ You’ll be relishing your precious time in the john ♪ ♪ ‘Cause it’s the only time you can have ♪ ♪ Conversations with anyone from second level management ♪ ♪ Whoo, you’ll go crazy ♪ ♪ Trapped there in that cube ♪ ♪ If your boss ever makes that dreadful decision ♪ ♪ To put a block up on Youtube ♪ ♪ There will be a certain girl at work ♪ ♪ You would’ve never noticed back in school ♪ ♪ But here in the office setting, she seems hot ♪ ♪ In her pinstripe pants suit ♪ ♪ You’re thinkin’ ’bout asking her out ♪ ♪ But let me set your perspective right ♪ ♪ What you think is a 10 on a Monday morning ♪ ♪ Is a five on Friday night ♪ ♪ Whoo, you’ll go crazy ♪ ♪ Cooped up in that cube ♪ ♪ Backhand your boss if that sucker decides ♪ ♪ To put a block up on Youtube ♪ ♪ And don’t forget those meetings, meetings ♪ ♪ What’s with all these stinking meetings ♪ ♪ Leading up to you leading your own freaking meeting ♪ ♪ About meetings, meetings, meetings ♪ ♪ Just to make more meetings ♪ ♪ Let’s call a meeting so we can minimize our meetings, ah ♪ ♪ Don’t block my Youtube ♪ ♪ It’s the only thing I’ve got ♪ ♪ Boss man, boss man don’t block my Youtube. ♪ ♪ Don’t take it from me ♪ ♪ Youtube, Youtube, Youtube ♪ – [Rhett] It took you a while to come in there, but you really came in strong, and you really finished strong. – [Link] I like that song, man. It’s like a Nickelback ripoff or something. – [Rhett] Well I sound very Weird Al, very nasally. – [Link] You’re very high singing. (singing) There will be a certain girl at work, you would’ve never noticed back at school. – [Rhett] That was harsh, that whole logic there that I came up with. – [Link] Yeah, we would never say that publicly now, it’s kind of sexist. – [Rhett] A little bit. – [Link] But still, a completely formed song that no one’s ever heard until right now, on this Ear Biscuit, because you decided to stick around and hang out with us for this amount of time. So we’re truly grateful. – [Rhett] I think that hopefully one of the things that’s been demonstrated here is that if you think that some of our music is actually good, which hopefully you do, you see that the only way that that even has a chance of happening is a whole lot of bad to happen. You have to churn out so much stuff creatively in order to get to the things that you actually want to share with people. But you’ve got to get that engine going, you’ve got to get the machine working so something will come out of it. So you can say, “Okay, I got this out of the way “so I can get to the next thing, and maybe the next thing “or the thing after that will be the thing “that I actually wanna share.” Sitting and listening to this stuff, and kinda being reminded of, we’ve been doing this a long time. That’s the thing I’m struck with. Some of these songs are from, I mean, the first one’s from the year 2000. – [Link] Yeah, that’s about 14 years ago. It’s kinda depressing. Actually, the thing that struck me, going back through this is the amount of fun that we had developing this… I don’t know if I would call it a skill, but developing this practice of collaboratively writing a song. I’ve seen footage of comedy writing duos who can just sit down and they can write a script and we do very little of that. But we do very much of that when it comes to a song. It’s funny how a song kinda brings out the best in both of us in terms of being able to contribute to something and create something, because our brains do work differently. We care about the same things, but then we also have the capacity to care about different things at the same time. But mostly I’m saying, it’s fun to write a song. The best part about high school was being in a band writing crappy music. And then, whenever we would sit down in college, and ever since then, when you sit down, we have to divide things up a lot. There’s a lot of fun, and there’s a magical thing that happens when you can sit down and kinda craft a song that comes together and it’s this cohesive thing that you can listen to a whole bunch. – [Rhett] And there’s just something about, this is why I really hope, and I think that this will be the case, that music will continue to be a cornerstone of what we create. There have been times where we’ve gotten a little bit slack with the amount of songs that we’re putting out, right? We’ve gone for long periods of time where we’re not putting out songs, not writing new music, not putting out music videos. But there’s just something when you go back and listen to things like this, it’s this totally different experience to go back and listen to an old song. To hear the iterative process of those five different stages of a song as it was being written. It’s something that doesn’t happen when you go back and watch a video. Because that’s not how you make videos. You don’t make the video five times. – [Link] Hopefully not. – [Rhett] You talk about it and plan it and script it and then you go shoot it and you edit it. Maybe there’s a couple of different edits, but there’s just something about music. Just from a creative standpoint, that is different, is better. Talking about these, listening to this, listening to these old songs that we haven’t listened to, some we’re hearing for the first time as we play them for each other, makes me wanna write more. – [Link] Yeah, I feel energized. Let’s go write a song. Are we gonna give them the scoop on the next song we’re gonna write? – [Rhett] Well I can tell you the voice I’m gonna sing it in. (nasal voice) It’s gonna be up in here. (singing in nasal voice) I’m singing our next song in a nasal voice. – [Link] I hope that’s okay with you. Let us know #earbiscuits. Well, not what you think of that, I know what you think of that. What you thought of this episode. Again, there’s an experimental nature to the two of us having a conversation guest-less. We’re certainly not gonna give up our guests, and you can count on that next week, but give us some #earbiscuits feedback. – [Rhett] I will say one thing, though, as you’re putting together your tweets, #earbiscuits, or leaving your comment or review and rating on iTunes, which again, as we’ve established, helps a whole lot. Please do that, a great way to support the show. I don’t think I want to do much more unintentionally country music. I think that’s one of the things that I hear in a lot of what we’ve done, is that we would write a country song, not realizing it was a country song. Just because we come from such a country background, and so much of what we listen to is just naturally country, and when we start singing, the chords that will play and the melodies that we will sing naturally fall into that country thing. We’ve gotten to this place where we have to be like, “No no, guys, this is a rock song, “or this is a pop song, or this is a rap song. “It cannot be a country song.” Not because country is bad, but because when you write a song that you want to be a pop song and then somebody listens to it and they’re like, “Hold on, is that a country song?” It doesn’t work, it ruins the comedy because the clarity of the comedic angle that we’re trying to get across is ruined. So, (nasal voice) I don’t think I’m gonna be singing like this and having you do some weird percussion. (normal voice) Unless we decided to just do a, no this is a legitimate country song, which I do have an idea for a country song about grilled cheese. Remember that one? I think that’s half written already. But you know, maybe we shouldn’t go there. – [Link] I need to dig up that demo, that’s a good one. Okay, thanks for hanging out with us. Like I said, you can count on us to speak into your ears via a biscuit next week and every Friday. Thanks for leaving that iTunes review and for supporting our musical endeavors. – [Rhett] Yes, great way to do that is by listening to it. – [Link] What else do you wanna say, Rhett? – [Rhett] Nothing. – [Link] Me neither. – [Rhett] I’m done. – [Link] Bye. – [Rhett] To hear this Ear Biscuit in its entirety and make sure you don’t miss an episode, follow the links in the description to subscribe on Apple Podcasts or anywhere else podcasts are available. – [Link] To watch more Ear Biscuits, click on the playlist on the right. To watch more of our daily show, Good Mythical Morning, click the playlist on the left. And don’t forget to click the circular icon to subscribe. – [Rhett] Thanks for being your mythical best.