Gryffin on Alesso, USC, and We Are Your Friends

Transcript

The Alesso B2B

Gryffin: It was this TikTok that honestly gave me and our team the inspiration. I was like, you know what, let's shoot the shot, let's see if they're into it. Interscope came back to me and said, "Do you still hate this remix?" We'd been working with the director of the movie We Are Your Friends, and he'd hand selected this remix as one of the most pivotal parts in the movie. We were in France last summer hanging out and he said, "I want to do another one. We need to do the sequel."

Bobby: He tells you that?

Gryffin: He tells me. He tells me we've got to run it back.

Bobby: What's up? I'm here with Gryffin right now. How are you, brother?

Gryffin: I'm doing great. How are you?

Bobby: Really good, really good. We're in New York, right?

Gryffin: In New York City.

Bobby: So what are you doing in the city today?

Gryffin: I flew in to do a back to back with Alesso. It's the first one we've ever done together. Pretty hyped for it.

Bobby: Sounds crazy. How did this all come together?

Gryffin: So he and I have been friends for quite a while. I'd see him at festivals over the years, and we were in the studio a couple times in LA, like five or six years ago. But we never really considered doing a back to back together, so this is actually insane.

I play a fair amount of Alesso songs, incorporating them with my vocals. After a show I did in Paris earlier this summer, someone posted a clip of three or four of the edits using Alesso's music that I'd played that night and said, "I'm convinced Gryffin and Alesso should just go back to back at this point." That literally gave me the inspiration to be like, you know what, let's ask him if he'd be down. Just on a whim our team reached out to his team, and the timing worked out. His team said, well, maybe we do a swap, I come out for an opening set at one of your shows and you come up for mine. He said, "Actually, in LA that works, because I'm flying in from a wedding and I'll be in town that night." And I had Boston and was off the next night, randomly off on a Saturday in the summer, so I could just pop over to New York and do this. That's honestly how it materialized. It's insane that it was this TikTok that gave our team the inspiration.

Bobby: Shout out to the fan.

Gryffin: Shout out to Sheru, or Cheryl. She was the inspiration and the catalyst.

Bobby: Crazy. That's what it's all about, dude. It's all about the fans.

Gryffin: Honestly, Alesso was one of the first artists that got me into EDM music, back in 2012.

Bobby: Dude, I was like fifteen or sixteen when that came out. Put me on big time. What's your favorite Alesso song?

Gryffin: That one's obviously up there, but I'd say his Pressure remix is one of my favorites. I still play an edit of it in my shows and it goes off every time. I played it last night at Breakaway in Boston and it was insane. I think the first time I saw Alesso was at EDC, and he had like a fifteen, twenty minute surprise set before Swedish House Mafia came on. I'd never heard him before.

Bobby: He played for fifteen minutes?

Gryffin: Yes, it was a quick set. You're going to have to fact check me on this, but it was an added announcement the day of the festival, and I was like, who is this Alesso guy? Then he came out and played the Pressure remix and I was blown away. I've been a fan of his basically since that moment.

Bobby: Were you at EDC a lot back then?

Gryffin: Yeah, I'd go to EDC, I'd go to Coachella, I'd go to Outside Lands because I'm from the Bay Area. That's really how I got into dance music festivals, once I started going to EDC after I moved to LA.

From Classical Piano to SoundCloud

Bobby: What was your influence to become a DJ? Because you're a musician at heart, right? You played instruments growing up.

Gryffin: Yeah, I grew up playing classical piano, then I picked up the guitar and was jamming throughout high school, doing more indie rock kind of stuff but mixing in a little electronic. I downloaded Fruity Loops back in high school and was messing around with that. People still use it, Garrix still uses it. Shout out to Fruity Loops.

It wasn't really until I got to school that I fell in love with dance music. I started hearing Skrillex put out Scary Monsters and Nice Sprites, Avicii was breaking through, deadmau5 was getting huge, Kaskade too, and all of a sudden these music festivals started happening. Hard started throwing their events, EDC was happening, and I went to a couple festivals and concerts with friends just to check out the scene and fell in love with the music. It got to the point where I said, I love music so much, I might as well try to make some on my own. That's when I downloaded Ableton in my dorm room, messing around with a keyboard I'd bought, and started trying to make music. Eventually I uploaded it to SoundCloud, once I felt like it didn't totally suck, and it just started ripping from there.

Bobby: Where'd you go to school?

Gryffin: USC.

Bobby: There's a whole pipeline, artist wise. Me and ZHU are around the same time.

Gryffin: I was just with Gary.

Bobby: A few of the guys were there too, and Robby from Louis the Child.

Gryffin: Yeah.

Bobby: There's a whole pipeline.

Gryffin: Wow, that's crazy.

Bobby: Yeah, it's insane, USC is a whole scene of its own.

Gryffin: And I don't think a lot of them studied music, which is funny. I wasn't in the music program, I studied engineering at USC, which is so far away from music.

Bobby: I feel like engineering and production can kind of go hand in hand.

Gryffin: No, actually, that's a big misconception. The way you make music has nothing to do with circuit design and all the stuff I was doing in college. I guess the work ethic maybe, and you have to be intelligent for both, but creative in a different way.

Bobby: I remember seeing you perform for the first time at Coachella at the Sahara Tent in 2019. You had your headband on, ripping the guitar on stage. Me and my homies from ASU saw you for the first time, and that was the first day I became a real fan of yours.

Gryffin: Oh, nice, I appreciate that.

Bobby: What made you want to bring the guitar and piano into your sets? You're probably one of the few artists that does that.

Gryffin: When I make music, a lot of it starts with the guitar and piano, whether I'm constructing melodies or building a world around the vocal, even starting from scratch in the studio. That's always the fundamental part of the music I'm making, so it felt natural to perform those things live, especially given how I made it in the studio. I don't love just pure DJing, the art of that, but I always wanted to bring something different to the table, a differentiator for the project, using my ability and knowledge of playing instruments and having musicality when I was younger. It's been cool to evolve it over time. When I was there in 2019, that was really the first time on the festival circuit I had the band with me, playing guitar and piano with two guys on stage. To see it evolve from just DJing, then playing a little guitar during the set, doing the one man band thing, to having that big Coachella moment, was really awesome.

The Remix Years

Bobby: That's so sick. I want to take this back a bit, because you were talking about producing in college and uploading to SoundCloud. Back in the SoundCloud days, what was the first track you uploaded?

Gryffin: The first track I ever uploaded was my remix of Ellie Goulding's "Burn." That was 2014. I literally ripped the a cappella off acapellas4u.com, it was pretty much the only studio a cappella I found that I liked at the time. I put together a remix, thought it sounded kind of cool, and published it on SoundCloud. It took a little while to get going, but after a week or two it started racking up streams, blogs started hitting me up asking to cover it, YouTube channels started messaging me about it. It grew to the point where Ellie was with Def Jam at the time, and they wanted to officially sign it. Then other labels started asking if I'd do a remix for their artist, offering like fifteen hundred bucks, and I was like, this is insane. I started being the remix guy for a while on SoundCloud.

Tove Lo's "Talking Body" was part of that too. So was "Desire." Those were the first two that got to that giant level. I did a Maroon 5 "Animals" remix that went pretty big, another one that went pretty big, and one for Banks that went pretty big. It was a really exciting time. I didn't really know what I was doing, but I was excited to make music, excited that labels wanted me to do stuff. That's actually how I started my relationship with Interscope. They really liked what I was doing and started asking if I'd made my own music. I started working with artists, writing music, listening to demos Interscope was sending me, and that's how "Heading Home" got made. They said, "We love this, we want to sign you," and that's how I started releasing original music.

Bobby: "Heading Home" was the first original you put out after the remixes. Who were your inspirations, other artists whose sound influenced yours?

Gryffin: Back in that era I was still loving a lot of what the Swedes were making, like Avicii with his melodies, and Swedish House Mafia. Kygo was honestly a big inspiration at the time too, because we were both making really melodic, non big room music, and we were kind of online friends around then. I was really into Disclosure back then as well, because I was living in New York and that Settle album was brand new, I was obsessed with it. "Latch" was all time, still is. My girlfriend at the time, now my wife, would say, "Can you play something else, I like it but you won't stop listening to this album." I was obsessed.

Fun fact, I actually bought scalped tickets trying to see Disclosure in New York, a summer concert, when "Latch" was ripping. It was the first time I ever got duped like that. I met some guy on Craigslist and bought two tickets for like a hundred fifty bucks each, and when I showed up to scan them in, they said, "These are counterfeit." Disclosure was huge back then and one of my inspirations for sure.

We Are Your Friends and the Zac Efron Connection

Bobby: You released the remixes, and then one of them got picked up for the movie We Are Your Friends. Did you make that happen, or how did that get in the movie?

Gryffin: I made the remix of "Desire" for Interscope because Years & Years was really popping and they wanted one. I sent it to Interscope and they loved it, wanted to put it out, but I didn't love it. I wasn't convinced on the production, wasn't sure I'd done the song justice. It sat in this weird purgatory for a month or so, and then Interscope came back and asked, "Do you still hate this remix?" I said I didn't know. They said they'd been working with the director of We Are Your Friends, and he'd hand selected this remix as one of the most pivotal parts in the movie, and he wanted to talk to me about it. The director, Max, called me and said there's no other song he wanted in that pivotal scene except this one, and that's what convinced me to release the remix. It just sat in an inbox where I wasn't sure I wanted to put it out, and that was the catalyst that made me feel like, okay, this is a cool opportunity, I'm down to see where things go.

He invited me to the premiere here in New York, and I got to meet the cast and watch it at the premiere. It was really cool actually experiencing that for the first time.

Bobby: That's trippy, seeing a song you didn't really love end up in a movie.

Gryffin: Oh yeah, I was cringing, clenching my jaw the whole time it was playing. But it's crazy, the song has continued to have this life that just keeps going.

Bobby: People are still spinning it all the time, I see it posted on the internet, it resurfaces on TikTok constantly.

Gryffin: I think a lot of it has to do with the movie too. I was talking with Parker in the car about the Spider-Man and Tom Holland thing, the subway scene, that's a movie sync. It can really help elevate a record and put you in a certain emotion and scene setting, you connect with the song.

Bobby: That's exactly what happens. Especially that scene with your track, Emily Ratajkowski and Zac Efron at the festival, raving. That's what everybody wants, right, they go to a festival, find that special someone, have that unreal connection. You associate that feeling with the song now.

Gryffin: And it ended up really helping elevate the record, puts people in that head space when they listen.

Bobby: No doubt. And you've got your own Ray Ban for life, Steph.

Gryffin: Steph, dude, I know. Shout out Steph.

Bobby: You developed a relationship with Zac Efron through this, right? You guys go golfing.

Gryffin: Yeah, not through the song itself, we just have mutual friends now. We've hung out, we were in France last summer together. He's funny, he comes in and out, texts you a bunch, then goes off on a movie project and disappears for months. My relationship with him is touch and go, but he's a really nice guy. It's funny, because of the success of that song he always tells me the movie was so underrated, he poured so much of his heart and soul into it and felt so good about it. He says, "We got to do another one, we need to do the sequel." He tells me we've got to run it back, make another song, hit the crew. He still thinks that movie is underappreciated, and I actually think it is too. I enjoyed it, I personally love the movie. Every movie can have its moments where it's not the coolest, edgiest thing ever, but the story was pretty good. Maybe it didn't do as well at the box office, but I feel like it's developed a cult following over the years, with us telling this story right now.

Bobby: Internet, do your thing. Bring it back.

Gryffin: I swear, Zac Efron wants a sequel to We Are Your Friends. Let's blow this up.

Bobby: This might blow up. I just saw the pictures.

Gryffin: I saw that too. He's getting all, whoa, easy, easy. That's just Zac though, he's this little flirty guy, hilarious. He's got good energy. I feel like in all his movies he's kind of not the same character, but it's kind of his vibe. The funniest one, I think, is Neighbors.

Bobby: I was in a frat in college, so that was half of my friends. That's a pretty underrated one, I like that one.

Gryffin: Neighbors 2 is a good little run of movies right there.

Bobby: Are you a movie guy in your free time?

Gryffin: We were talking about movies last night too. I still haven't seen the two biggest movies of the summer, The Odyssey and Spider-Man. I'm going to try to watch them both this week, I've been so busy.

Bobby: You should. I saw Spider-Man, it was amazing. I'm a Marvel fan.

Gryffin: So am I. I like the Tom Holland era. I'm actually going back and watching the Tobey Maguire ones too, because they're going to bring these guys out again, put him in the Avengers. So I've been rewatching all those.

Bobby: The first Tobey Maguire Spider-Man is pretty ripping.

Gryffin: Yeah, the first one has great reviews. The second one, is that the one where he's Venom, the black suit? Or is that the third?

Bobby: That's the third, and that one has the worst ratings.

Gryffin: That one's a little rough. First one's great though.

Albums and Collaborators

Bobby: You have three albums released and you're working on a fourth right now. Off each album, what's your favorite track? Gravity, what's your favorite off that one?

Gryffin: It changes, but I'd say "All You Need to Know."

Bobby: Alive, what's your favorite off that one?

Gryffin: That's tough too. I'd say "Alive," the title track, that's up there.

Bobby: And Pulse?

Gryffin: "What Took You So Long."

Bobby: Speaking of other artists, you've collabed with so many dope ones. Kaskade, ILLENIUM, Armin van Buuren, and your recent release. What's the difference collabing with all these artists, and who have you synchronized with best in terms of ideas?

Gryffin: The whole concept of the collab, I love it so much because it's an outpouring of creative ideas, there's no getting stuck. With the cloud, I'll send some stuff over, they'll send it back, you're throwing a ton of ideas at the wall and picking bits and pieces of what you like from each person, interweaving vibes. It's fun, it gets me out of a different head space too, using someone else's brain to come up with something I never thought about doing before. It's fun to engineer it in a way, you try to figure out how to make it work, because I never like it when a collab feels one sided. It's important both artists feel emotionally invested in the song, that their work is really being emphasized and highlighted in the production. It's always a challenge but really fun to do.

In terms of who I've worked best with, I haven't really done a second collab with any of these people, so it's hard to say. But the quickest one was the Armin song, that was done in a day. We wrote it on the guitar with Madison Love and Jake Torrey, insane writers in LA. We wrote an acoustic version of the song with a light kick drum, not even electronic, an acoustic drum and a guitar. I was finishing up the record with them, and Armin was on his headphones, messing around on his laptop. He unplugs his headphones and goes, "Hey, what do you think of this," and it's the beginning of the song. I was like, that's so sick, I'm throwing this project in right there, writing melodies with him over his beat from start to finish. We clocked in at noon, blank piece of paper, no song written, nothing. By six or seven, before we had to go to his show in LA that night, we bounced the song and it was ninety eight percent done. We wrote and produced the entire song in six hours. It was absolute flow state, none of us took any breaks to leave the room, it was just go, go, go.

Bobby: And what about Kaskade, since he's one of the artists that got you into dance music? What was it like collabing with someone who got you into the genre?

Gryffin: That was super cool. I've been friends with him since I did one of his first Sunsoaked festivals in Long Beach, so I've been friends with him for a long time, but it was cool to finally get one across. We both heard a demo that got sent over, it was so good. We both liked it, got wind that both of us liked it, and figured maybe this is the one we could finally do together. Eddie Jenkins also wrote that, I love Eddie, he's insane. It was cool passing it back and forth, we didn't get into the studio until the very end. He wrote some basic, very Kaskade sounding pads, sent it over to me, I reworked the drop and added new stuff, he'd say, "Yeah, that's cool, pass it back." Every couple weeks, when each of us had time, we'd work on it, and it just kept getting better every iteration, until finally we got in the studio together and finished it for real.

Bobby: That's awesome, and he's the coolest guy ever.

Gryffin: He's so chill, honestly too chill. He came by my apartment a few months ago, we got a bunch of empanadas, he hung out for like three hours on my balcony.

Bobby: He sounds like Ryan.

Gryffin: He's such a veteran, been in the game and at the top of it forever, and I have so much respect for those guys, because now I've been in this game for ten years myself, which is kind of crazy to say, we're becoming more like veterans. It's cool to talk to those guys and see how they've evolved over the years, stayed relevant, still put out good music, still have a good head on their shoulders, stayed in the mix. I've learned a lot about how they conduct their business and approach their craft to really have longevity. I think that's one of the hardest things in the music industry, to have longevity.

Bobby: Absolutely, people come and go, there are trends that come and go, you can catch a hot streak, but can you follow it up and sustain the fan base. Guys like Kaskade, like Tiësto, their careers have been about twenty something years.

Gryffin: Longer, Tiësto's been at it since 1997.

Bobby: I know, and he's still killing it.

Gryffin: It's crazy, but also crazy to think their sound has to evolve over the years, they need to pivot with the times but also stay true to who they were, you don't want to abandon your fan base. It's cool to see how they've evolved and how professional they are, how they prop up the younger kids coming up through the scene, stay relevant and stay good. I've been really admiring that as I've been in this game longer. It's fun having those guys I look up to and talk to for advice, but then also getting to work with younger guys, last year, and some other artists I'm working with now who are fresh and new to the scene. They give me that fun energy that makes me inspired again, to stay on top of my game and keep making good music.

Bobby: I love that. I know you've got to run, so we'll do the last question right here. This one's for the fans. What are your top five Gryffin songs you've ever released, five to one?

Gryffin: Five, "Feel Good." Four, "Nobody Compares to You." Three, "All You Need to Know." Two, I'm going to go "World Away." One, "Time Out."

Bobby: Nice, hell yeah. Well, bro, as always, love you, dude. We'll see you at the show. By the time you watch this, the show already happened, and if you were there, I already know he killed it.

Gryffin: Love you too, my boy. Peace.