Photo by Cherokee Neas @cherokeepresley
I spoke with Z Berg about her upcoming solo record, directing the new “Time Flies” video, and getting songwriting lessons from Mark Ronson.
Catch Z play Wednesday 5/16 in LA at Highland Park Ebell (get tickets here).
I noticed that you’ve tweaked the lyrics of songs like “Killing Time,” removing some of the words to simplify the song. How do you know when you’re done making changes, especially when you’ve been rewriting a song for many years?
The funny thing is a lot of times it’s never done. You just have to decide to be done. There are so many things I could go back and tweak forever, but you just have to kind of put it to rest. And I think there’s a certain point when you know when something works and something resonates when it hasn’t before.
I think you sang the Garageband demo “Spotlight/Curtain Call” — how did that come about?
I sure did! I wish there were a good story for it. I do a little bit of work for Apple, just internal stuff and Garageband stuff, and I have for a while. And it’s an interesting process, where they just want these little pieces of music for different purposes. So I sit down and write 15 things and see if they like any of them. It’s a great exercise as a writer to be able to do that…it’s an invaluable skill.
That’s fascinating. I love how your song “Lazarus” is self-referential, like a mythological song about yourself. Will that song be on the record, and can you share what inspired it?
Both “Killing Time” and “Lazarus” aren’t on my record. You haven’t seen me play in a while, have you? [laughs]. I’ll resurrect that song at some point in the future, then we can talk about it.
I’ve learned good vocab words (callow, nimiety, tutelage) by listening to your music. Do you recall the writing process for a song like “Narcissus In A Red Dress”? It seems like it would take longer to think of the wordplay and literary allusions than it would to write a more straightforward song.
I think I wrote the lyrics to “Narcissus In A Red Dress” in one sitting … it was a slow stream of consciousness. It’s almost like a rap song – when you look at the lyrics written down it’s like two entire pages.
[Writing] that was a moment where [producer] Mark Ronson taught me a particular lesson. The lyrics were much meaner than they are now, which is hard to imagine. He said: ‘If you do not convey your pain and instead only your spite and anger, you’re the one who looks like a villain, not her.’
So I sat down and I tried to put that it was anger because I was hurt, so it conveyed the actual anger and pain of the situation.
Now, with other writers, I have given them that advice plenty of times. I think when you’re really angry at someone, you forget that the way you speak (without context for your listeners) can make you sound like the villain.
Also, that anger is not a real thing. You’re angry because you’re hurt. In my general life I don’t really get angry; I don’t like being around it. You get angry because you’re hurt. And just to realize that anger is a mask for the feelings you’re truly feeling is really important to me.
You’ve consistently made creative music videos, from the synchronized swimmers in “What I Say And What I Mean” to the filmed-in-reverse “I’m In Love With My Life.” What can you share about your latest video?
It’s the first video I have directed myself, which was pretty thrilling, and the song is called “Time Flies,” and I wrote it about a year ago:
I’d love to touch on Are You Thinking What I’m Thinking. The poetic writing, rich imagery, and dreamy sound make it a total masterpiece… and I think you wrote it when you were just 14-16. I’ve always wondered what “Mrs. Actually” is about — it seems like the track with the most fictional or figurative lyrics.
The title came from a book. There’s a Bob Dylan book called Tarantula — it’s a psychedelic poetry book — and I was sitting down reading it, and I think I just started free associating from there.
I only recently went back and listened to Are You Thinking What I’m Thinking for the first time in like five years and it kind of blew my mind. I forgot. It’s weird — I think with most of my records, after I’ve finished them and toured them there’s always a lot of strife that comes along with those things. I have to put them to bed until the memories have faded.
[But listening to it] was pretty awesome – I loved it. I was really happy. But it’s funny because it’s easy to get really down on your own records, just to know all the expectations people had for it, and the loss of Charlotte after it – it was nice to be able to listen to it as an adult with fresh ears.
Your vocal work on a song like “Bridge To Nowhere” is gorgeous. Am I mistaken or have your vocals gotten higher in pitch over the years? Have you consciously changed the way you sing?
Well it’s been a long process. For a lot of singers it takes a long time to figure out your range and where your voice should sit. So on every record, I feel like I’ve been in a different register for my voice.
On my first record, I kind of wrote everything too low, on the second Like record we overcompensated a bit and it’s all really high. On JJAMZ, it’s somewhere in between, on PHASES it’s much higher again.
My concept for the solo record is to make all my previous records make sense. I’ve finally found where my voice fits truthfully and how to bridge the gap between all the styles and time periods and genres of my music and figure out how to distill what is truly me … hopefully [laughs].
The first verse of “In The End” maybe (?) refers to the music industry limbo that can happen between albums, and the shift from JJAMZ to Phases kind of reminds me of the shift from the first to second Like record. How organic were each of those changes in sound/direction vs. how much was due to business necessity or label pressures?
I think it was a combination of things. Number one, that song started because it was around the time I had just sung on Cassadaga, the Bright Eyes record, and Conor [Oberst] sent me the email about what was going on, and the email said ‘the world is upside down and we’re walking on our hands.”
That was definitely a moment of time — between Are You Thinking What I’m Thinking and Release Me — we made an entire record that never came out. Not being allowed to tour, that is the time where everyone loses their mind.
So it was definitely a trying moment and a moment of change, and trying to figure out what our lives were going to look like, and also just watching the world change entirely. The rate of progress and technology and how quickly everything shifts is unimaginable to previous generations.
They were 100% organic both times. It may not sound like it, but you’re so right — both records and both switches happened in a similar way. We made a record then we spent years in limbo. With everything being so bad for so long that by the time we made those second records, it was such a feeling of triumph and positivity that the records reflect that in their sound.
It’s funny because they probably do sound like a business choice or pandering or like someone told us to make it more exciting. But it was a legitimate and organic feeling of absolute triumph and the phoenix rising from the ashes.
Last year you put a clip of “It’s Not Likely” on Instagram. That snippet might be the prettiest piece of music I’ve ever heard…wow! I’d love to hear that unreleased The Like album – is there any chance you’ll ever post those songs?
I’ll definitely think about it. I realized when I posted it that it was such a crazy experience to make that record. We went to England for two months and recorded the album, and went to New York and mixed it for a month.
And we mastered it and did the photo shoot … it was an emotional experience. And then the label just said ‘nope.’ So when that happened you kind of want to bury it and never think about it again.
“It’s Not Likely” has interesting lyrics about growing up, being haunted by the past, and whether you’ve hit your peak. How have your goals and definition of success evolved from being a young musician to an adult one?
In a lot of ways I think they’re very much the same. From the beginning, my goal was never word domination. I just wanted to make music that I loved and believed in and I thought made the world incrementally better.
So I think in that sense, I’ve done a pretty good job. The other goal is to survive and feed myself. So far we’re doing okay.
It’s really hard to communicate who you are and it takes being an adult to figure out what that really is and how to say it out loud. On all of my records I feel there are moments I broke through that barrier and figured out a way to communicate that was honest and real, but it’s just hard.
Now that I’ve realized what it is to make music that is fully representative of me, instead of merely a facet of myself or my personality or my taste, my goals are to delve deeper into that. To bridge that gap between what it’s like in my head and what I show to the world.
Thanks for sharing, Z! Follow Z Berg online and get tickets for Wednesday’s LA show.
