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.

In 2006, Swedish trio Peter Björn and John released their third album, Riders Block.

For months and months after that, it felt like you couldn't go anywhere without hearing the first single from that album, Young Folks.

It was on top 10 lists for Song of the Year in places like Pitchfork and NME.

It's been covered by James Blunt and remixed by Kanye West, along with countless other versions out there.

Now, 10 years later, Peter Björn and John break down the song and tell the story of how it all came together, and how it almost didn't come together at all.

I'm Björn, I play bass guitar in Peter Björn and John.

We were working at the studio in Hunstall, like space that I had at the moment.

It was pretty low budget, everything. The record before we did an appropriate studio.

And that record sort of flopped. We thought we would take over Sweden and the world with that record.

But it didn't happen, so we did this record more. Low key and low budget in Björn's own little studio space.

I'm John and I play drums.

We talked about actually splitting up during that period, and we put out the first two records on small, like one man labels and done a lot of shows in Sweden and some in Norway, but nothing much happened.

I think we were kind of tired. We talked about splitting up and then we said, OK, let's make one more record.

But if no one wants to release this, like a proper label, then whatever.

I'm Peter and I usually sing play guitar and write songs as well. We all write songs.

Björn had a piano piece, sounded a bit like a jazz.

Björn's own little bit like a jazz, Duke Ellington thing.

Yeah, I played this stuff on piano, the little sort of melody and chords.

I was working on a jazz album at the same time and I just thought it sounded too much like Duke Ellington or it just felt a bit like a ripoff.

So we took out the chords, made it more clean and made it feel more pop.

Wistling seemed like a good way of presenting a melody without making it either that way or that way.

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