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.

Lord is a Grammy award-winning singer, songwriter, and producer.

My full name is Ella Maria Lani-Yellit-Shokona.

So it's a whole thing.

Her second album, Melodrama, debuted at number one on the charts in June 2017,

five months before 21st birthday.

In this episode, Ella breaks down her song, Sober.

You'll hear how it started with the original demos she made with her co-producer, Jack Antonov,

and how the song changed over the course of working on it for months and months.

My name is Lord.

I'm breaking down my song, Sober.

I remember I had spent the summer in New Zealand, and I was reeling from this summer,

which was very much like Wild and Florescent, that first summer on the cusp of being an adult.

I'd just come out of a relationship and was just like drinking all the time.

I was just like either like sleeping or getting ready for what we were going to do that night.

When you come out of a relationship, you just want to fill the quiet as best you can.

You're like, I just don't want to deal with this quite yet.

So I'm going to make every moment full and social and busy and loud,

and then I won't have to think about it.

So this song in particular was set at a party by Sir.

...