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.

Iggy Pop is a pioneer of punk rock whose legendary career began over 50 years ago.

In 2015, he began collaborating on music with Joshua Hammy of Queens of the Stone Age.

The result was Iggy Pop's 23rd album, Post-Pop Depression.

In this episode, Iggy and Josh break down the song, American Valhalla, and tell the story of how it was shaped by reverb, opera, and the military.

My name is Rishikesh Herway. You're listening to Song Exploder.

Hello, I'm Iggy Pop.

Hello, my name is Joshua Hammy.

The gestation of American Valhalla was as follows.

Josh sent me a shitty demo, labeled shitty demo, that began with the steel drum and vibraphone motif.

And the vibraphone is an instrument that's plugged in so it goes, woo, woo, woo, woo, but I didn't turn it on.

It's just played off.

That's steel drum. That's really, really unusual melody.

The kind of primitive, transcee underbelly of this song, and he sent me a text.

And I was like, oh, I'm a real genius.

I'm a real genius. I'm a real genius.

I'm a real genius. I'm a real genius.

The kind of primitive, transcee underbelly of this song.

And he sent me a text afterwards, positing that Valhalla was the most valid and superior paradise for warriors compared to the ones from other cultures.

And it was, you had to actually do something really brave and to get in there.

...