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Song Exploder

PJ Morton - Say So (feat. JoJo)

Song Exploder

Hrishikesh Hirway

Music

4.86.4K Ratings

🗓️ 10 February 2021

⏱️ 20 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

PJ Morton is a singer, songwriter, and producer. He’s the first artist ever to be nominated for a Grammy for the Best R&B album three years in a row. In 2020, he won the Grammy for Best R&B song for his track, "Say So," which is a duet with the singer JoJo, a platinum-selling artist in her own right. But that version of "Say So" almost didn’t come to exist. In this episode, PJ takes us through his original voice memos, the demos, and the isolated pieces of the final studio recording, as he tells the story of how the track was created, then disappeared, and then got re-created—and ended up becoming one of his biggest songs.

For more, visit songexploder.net/pj-morton.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

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, your way.

0:11.2

PJ Morton is a singer, songwriter and producer. He's been nominated for 10 Grammys including Best R&B album three years in a row.

0:19.2

In 2020, he won the Grammy for the Best R&B song for his track, Seiso, which is a duet with the singer JoJo, a platinum-selling artist in her own right.

0:28.1

But that version of Seiso almost didn't come to exist. In this episode PJ takes us through his original voice memos, the demos and the isolated pieces of the final studio recording.

0:39.1

As he tells the story of how Seiso was created and then disappeared and then got recreated and ended up becoming one of his biggest songs.

1:03.1

PJ Morton Seiso came out in 2019, but PJ had his first idea for it on February 14th, 2015.

1:11.1

Valentine's Day. I had a really bad writer's block, maybe one of the worst of my life. Well, I should say usually my form of writer's block is I can't write a song for myself.

1:25.1

Sometimes I can still as a songwriter write for other artists, but when I say writers block, I mean I can't get my own thoughts out, but I would get these melodies and everything I heard, I would like, we get it down because I'm like maybe this could break it.

1:42.1

I hear myself playing the bass notes and stuff because sometimes I need to give myself context with the melody with the, so funny listening back to that.

2:13.1

To be totally honest, I didn't want to be an artist in the beginning. I wanted to be a, just a musician. I wanted to play for people on tour. That was my biggest dream initially and then I started to write and produce and that's what I wanted to be.

2:26.1

I wanted to be Quincy Jones. I wanted to write songs for other people and what happened was I would write these songs and they didn't fit anybody and it was just coming from me and I was like, all right, well, if a melody is so much me that it can't fit someone else.

2:41.1

And maybe, you know, it's just meant for me.

2:48.1

Because I had that idea for the song, I brought the band into the studio. Let me see if this inspires me to actually write it.

3:06.1

So we went in there and I just tried to start to build the songs, still without any lyrics or words.

3:13.1

I'm playing that lead. Yeah, some type of mug.

3:24.1

For me as a keyboard player first sounds and inspire me. The sounds telling me how to sing it.

3:39.1

Those melodies determine what I say.

3:56.1

I had to say so. I knew I wanted to say that. That was such a simple concept to me. If you love me, you know, just say so. I usually started the chorus, you know, just because that is the grand idea for me.

4:11.1

So once I had the chorus, then I started to say, okay, well, why am I asking her to just say so, you know, so I started doing those verse voice notes.

4:21.1

And I wanted to say that.

4:31.1

I wanted somebody to just say it to me where it's like, I know we're here, but you're not really communicating. Are you feeling how I'm feeling?

4:39.1

And it's something that I naturally felt connected to because I know how that feels to want somebody to just express their feelings.

...

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