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 Rishi Kesh Hirwe.

Michael Kuanuka is a singer-songwriter from London.

His second album, Love and Hate, came out in 2016, and was named one of the best albums of the year from the BBC, NME, The Guardian, GQ, and more.

One of the songs on the album was used as the theme for the hit HBO series, Big Little Lies.

And in this episode, Michael breaks down the song Black Man in a White World.

He talks about how the song began, where it came from, and what the title means to him.

My name's Michael Coonuka, and I'm a single songwriter from London.

The song started in the studio around November time 2014.

I've only done two albums, this is on the second album that's come out, Love and Hate. I'd done the first album and I was struggling to make the second album. I'd written

all these songs, made what I thought was an album, listened to it back, and decided it wasn't

good enough. It was missing that excitement that you want to hear off an album. So I was really dejected and stopped making music really. I just thought, maybe the first album was just luck. It was the first few songs I wrote and they worked, but now it's come down to it. I just don't have the ability. Everything doesn't sound good. I kept sending things into the label. They were like, yeah, it's all right, but it's not really happening.

And I knew it deep down. And I was just kind of sitting around. So my manager was like, why don't you work with Inflo? I was like, who's Info? It's like, she's good. And I hadn't collaborated very much with other producers or co-written really that much. So I said, well, I'm not doing anything and nothing's happening. and it's not like I've got any options.

So we met in central London and we just talked for like, So I said, well, I'm not doing anything and nothing's happening and it's not like I've got any options.

So we met in central London and we just talked for like a couple of hours and I was like,

this guy's really cool and seemed like a nice person.

So let's go in the studio.

But I was really, really down and I sometimes Flo would call and be like, let's go to the studio and I just wouldn't turn up. I just couldn't face being in the studio and listening to music that wasn't good enough all the time. It's like, this is just depressing because it was like, I haven't been a good song in years. It feels like years, but then on like the fourth day of being in the studio every day. I just had my acoustic and I started playing some chords, like country style bluesy chords, and just started singing.

I'm a black man in a white will.

I'm a black man in a white will.

I'm a black man in a white will.

And Flo was in the other room and was like, what's that?

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