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.

Sophie Allison makes music under the name Sockermami. Her debut album came out in 2018 when she was 20 years old and the New York Times named it one of the best albums of the year.

This week, her second album comes out and it includes this song, Circle the Drain.

I spoke to Sophie while she was in her hometown of Nashville and in this episode, she takes Circle the Drain apart and explains how it was influenced by songs from her childhood.

I'm Sophie from Sockermami. When I started writing Circle the Drain, I was in the van actually on a West Coast tour and I was in the van.

I was in the van actually on a West Coast tour and I was in the van actually on a West Coast tour.

I'm Sophie from Sockermami. When I started writing Circle the Drain, I was in the van actually on a West Coast tour and I was in the backseat playing my guitar.

And the van is kind of the only time I had to sit and play guitar somewhere that people weren't going to be listening to me.

I like that and the fact that there's white noise that makes it kind of hard to hear me in the back.

It's the same as getting privacy at home and that's kind of some of the only downtime you find on tour.

So it's the perfect time to try to write.

Whenever I write songs, the first thing I always come up with is the guitar stuff.

With Circle the Drain, it was the chord progression.

The students I got these chords, a whole vibe of a song, came into my head.

When I was writing Circle the Drain, I was feeling pretty low, honestly, even though I was like everything in my life was going great.

Like I was doing the job I wanted to do. I had love in my life, I had friends, but I was still feeling really low.

And you know, it just kind of started coming out of me.

I had this like idea in my head for the melody. The chorus came first.

I'm going down.

Usually when I write music, I've given reasons for satis.

You know, I've been going through a breakup or I've been hurt by someone or something like that.

I feel like there's usually a reason.

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