You're listening to Song Exploder, where musicians take apart their songs and piece by piece, tell the story of how they were made.

I'm Rishikesh Herway.

This episode contains explicit language.

Andrew Bird is a singer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist.

Maybe best known for his violin playing and his whistling.

In this episode, Andrew breaks down his song, Roma Fade, from the 2016 album, Are You Serious?

This interview was recorded on a rainy Friday in Los Angeles.

I'm Andrew Bird.

Okay, so it started off like you hear in the intro, a loop that I made in my living room.

It's just me playing the loop and whistling.

It's supposed to be two different instruments creating this composite melody.

The first couple lines came as I was driving down I-5 from San Francisco with my family.

And I was flowing drives like that. You got to entertain yourself.

So, to figure out where I'm going to song.

I was looking out over the sort of barren stretch of the Central Valley.

And there were some rainstorms in the distance and light passing through the clouds.

There was this patch of light coming down and I said, light rains.

It sounds like a weather report, like, light rains today. Like it is at the moment.

But I was also thinking light rains is in rules.

And that sort of began a song about how seeing something can change it.

How it being observed changes it. And vice versa.

And the field of electricity between two people is there regarding each other or pretending not to see them.

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