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.

Dave Longstreet started making music under the name Dirty Projectors in 2002, while he

was in college.

Since then, he's released seven albums and collaborated with Bjork, Solange, Kanye West,

Paul McCartney, and Rihanna.

And Dirty Projectors went from a solo project to a full band, performing on TV and at Carnegie

Hall.

Dave and one of his bandmates were in a relationship for much of that time, but then

the relationship and the band broke up.

In February 2017, with Dirty Projectors as a solo project once more, Dave released a

self-titled album, a breakup album looking back at those years.

In this episode, Dave takes apart the song Up in Hudson, and the winding road he went

down to create it.

The story starts in 2013, after the last Dirty Projectors album with a full band came out.

My name is Dave from Dirty Projectors.

Sometimes when I finish an album, I'm like, all right, well, whatever that was, I want

to try to do the exact opposite of that.

I definitely felt that way after Swinglow Magellan.

For Swinglow Magellan, I had like, hold up and written, sitting with a guitar and like,

hammering out, like, what's the second verse lyric, you know, Three Verses of lyrics and

...