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.

This episode contains explicit language.

Mike Hadrius has been making music under the name Perfume Genius since 2008.

In May 2017, he put out his fourth album, No Shape, to widespread critical acclaim.

In this episode, Mike breaks down the song, Slip Away. I also spoke with producer Blake Mills,

who also plays on the track, and recording engineer Sean Everett, about the unusual way the song

was recorded. Here's Perfume Genius on Song Exploder.

Every drum, every single beat they were born from your body, and I'm carried by the sound.

It's Mike from Perfume Genius. Before I wrote, Slip Away, I was writing very different songs for about a month.

I was writing really dark, wordless chanting over drones, and they were very kind of formless and creepy.

The last album was more of an electronic, like, exorcism, singing in tongues.

At least that was the stuff I enjoyed performing the most.

So I thought, why don't I just do that for 45 minutes?

And then suddenly one day I made this song.

It was the keyboard first.

I had a keyboard that sounded kind of like a guitar jam.

Don't look back, waiting on the screen, but you don't really love me.

I know I didn't have words yet.

It was just emoting.

But it was much poppier.

It had like a chorus. Oh, go.

...