Kygo on Tropical House, Firestone, and Palm Tree Crew

Transcript

Kygo: What inspired me to get into music? My mom wanted me to start playing the piano. Then electronic music, that was Avicii, his music and sound and his melodies, that was kind of what inspired me.

Bobby: Did you expect it to get that big?

Kygo: No, not at all. I was just kind of experimenting. What I love about SoundCloud is they could comment on a specific timestamp, "Oh, I love this part." They wrote this demo, and I remember I produced that same night.

Bobby: And you are listening to Bobby on BPM, straight from the SiriusXM Miami studio. It's Friday today, and I'm joined by a very special guest, Kygo. Hey man, what's up, brother? How are you?

Kygo: I'm good, I'm good. How are you?

Bobby: I'm very good. Like we were talking about earlier, beautiful weather here today.

Kygo: Nice, yeah.

Bobby: And you flew in from where?

Kygo: Flew in from Norway, and it was pretty cold compared to this, so this is definitely a nice little change.

Bobby: No, you're rocking a t-shirt out in February right now, it's good stuff.

Kygo: It's not bad.

Bobby: Don't be scared to rip the tarp off, dude, the sun's outside, don't be scared. So you flew in from Norway and now you're here in Miami, you're traveling all the time. Is it tough to adjust to the time changes? Is your sleep schedule okay, dude?

Kygo: I think it's okay now, but during the busiest times when you travel a lot, it can definitely get pretty exhausting, because you're kind of jet-lagged all the time.

Bobby: No, I hear you, bro.

Kygo: I like to go back to Norway, because I play a lot of shows over here in the US, so every time I go back I have two weeks back home. You're jet-lagged for a week, and then you get into that time zone, and you fly back to the US and jet lag for another week. Going back and forth between the time zones can be pretty exhausting.

Bobby: It's crazy, man, I travel around the US a lot for work, and that's only like a three or four hour difference, dude, you're on the other side of the world.

Kygo: Yeah, but that three hour difference, people kind of underestimate that sometimes. You go to Vegas, dude, you get a little cooked from that. The nine hour difference from LA to Norway is pretty rough, that one kind of tests you.

Bobby: But hey man, this is the life you signed up for.

Kygo: Not a bad life, dude, not a bad life.

Norway, Miami, and Learning Piano

Bobby: Not a bad life. So I want to bring it back a little bit, what inspired you to get into music?

Kygo: Well, music in general, I started playing the piano when I was five years old. That was because my mom wanted me to start playing the piano. We had a piano back home, I have two older sisters, and they took piano lessons for two months each and then quit. My mom really wanted someone to play that piano, so I started taking lessons, and I kind of liked it. Also my dad plays the piano, so I was a little bit inspired by him. I just liked playing the piano, and every time I got back from school I could sit for two hours and just play by myself.

Bobby: Wow.

Kygo: So that's kind of how I got into music. And then electronic music, that was Avicii, his music and sound and his melodies, that was kind of what inspired me to take the step from making melodies on the piano to producing music.

Bobby: Well, I'm glad you didn't quit the piano like your sisters.

Kygo: Yeah, no, I'm definitely glad myself.

Bobby: Dude, shout out Avicii, by the way, his Wake Me Up track just broke three billion streams yesterday.

Kygo: Oh, did it? Wow, shout out, dude, shout out legend.

Bobby: That's a banger, I always play it in my shows.

Kygo: I played it last year, I've always played at least one of his songs, it's either Levels or Wake Me Up, it just works every time.

Bobby: Every time, bro, it's like a cheat code, right?

Kygo: Yeah, it's kind of a cheat code. It's almost like a song everybody knows, they just go crazy every time.

Bobby: No, for real, dude, it's a banger honestly, Avicii never fails, man.

Kygo: Yeah, shout out to the goat.

Tropical House and the SoundCloud Era

Bobby: Yo, so I consider you for sure one of the pioneers of tropical house music, and it became a global movement. Did you expect it to get that big? Because when you started making it, it was kind of a new sound.

Kygo: Yeah, no, not at all. I was just kind of experimenting. At the time there was a producer named Thomas Jack, an Australian producer, doing this sound. The first couple years I was producing music I was, as I said, very inspired by Avicii and Swedish House Mafia and all that more upbeat stuff. Then at one point I was like, I've got to try to make something different, because I'll never be able to make Avicii sound better than Avicii did, or Swedish House Mafia, they did it way better. So I was just trying to make a copy of their sound at first. But a lot of the music I listened to at the time was a little slower in BPM, so I started experimenting, and that felt natural, still having the melodicness of Avicii's music but just slower and fitting a different setting. I was envisioning people on the beach chilling, or at a festival sitting down having a beer. That was my vision, if I was going to play a festival I wanted to play for people sitting down chilling, which is probably a pretty boring crowd to play for.

Bobby: Nah, dude, no, it's a good vibe.

Kygo: It's a good vibe. And I never expected that sound to become as big as it got.

Bobby: Huge. Would you consider yourself part of the SoundCloud era, when it was blowing up a lot of artists?

Kygo: Yeah, definitely, that was when I started. What I loved about SoundCloud, one of the main things, was you got instant feedback on your songs through comments, not just general feedback on the track, they could comment on a specific timestamp, "Oh, I love this part," or "I don't like this part, but I like the drop." It was real connection with the fans, what exactly drew them to that song, because they could comment on a specific part of the song they liked, not just put a comment on Instagram. There was something really nice about that as an artist, to get that kind of feedback.

Bobby: I've never heard that response from an artist before, it's almost like your Instagram but for music, people comment in real time.

Kygo: I really missed that, I wish, because I know they say it's making a comeback, low key.

Bobby: Yeah, let's hope so.

Kygo: And it wouldn't be that hard for Spotify or Apple Music to have something similar, where people could comment on the tracks, which was just really nice for me as a producer, starting out figuring out my own sound, to get that kind of feedback, it was very valuable.

Bobby: No, that's what's up. And speaking of around that time period, me and my boys actually discovered you, you released the track Firestone, and we were rinsing that probably like ten times a day, I'm going to be honest.

Kygo: Nice, nice, great track, dude.

Bobby: How did the inspiration come about for that?

Kygo: Oh my god, I've got to remember, going back in time. I got the demo for Firestone from Conrad Sewell, who was the vocalist, that was through, actually it wasn't through the label, it was through management. I just had that demo, I loved that vocal, I loved his voice, and I produced it kind of in a similar sound to some of my remixes from SoundCloud, but maybe a little more upbeat. His vocal was amazing, and I felt that melody I ended up having in the drop just really fit the whole song. It's been probably twelve years since I produced that song, it's kind of, yeah, 2014, I probably produced it during that year, I can almost not remember it, but I do remember listening to the first versions of the song, me and my manager were listening to it and we both loved that song.

Bobby: Yeah, no, it's a great track, still one of my favorites, bro.

Kygo: Thank you.

Bobby: Speaking of other tracks that are my favorites, you have a collaboration with Selena Gomez, love that song. How did you end up collaborating with her on that track?

Kygo: That was one of the songwriters, Andrew Watt, who was friends with her. He and I wrote that demo, and I remember I produced it that same night, because we were in the studio together. I produced almost the whole song, it was almost done after one day, which is sometimes how it goes when a song clicks, it just kind of happens really fast. Then he sent it to Selena, and she loved it, and I remember I went back home to Norway and they recorded the vocal in the studio maybe the week after. It was a very fast, quick process.

Bobby: That is a quick turnaround, I've heard other stories where it takes a year or two for people to release stuff.

Kygo: Yeah, that happens often too, so that's a very different instance.

Vocalists, OneRepublic, and Live Visuals

Bobby: Well, dude, you've worked with a ton of amazing vocalists across dance music, pop, whatever, like Ellie Goulding, and Justin Jesso is one of my favorite guys, I love that guy, shout out by the way. But who have been your favorite vocalists to work with and produce songs with?

Kygo: It's impossible, there's so many, I've been so lucky to work with so many talented vocalists. Parson James, Justin Jesso, Zak Abel, I've had them join me for my whole tour last year, and Jesso has been almost with me for every show the last six, seven years. So I've got to give a little extra shout out to Jesso and Parson and Zak Abel. But I've been very lucky to collaborate with so many talented vocalists.

Bobby: Yeah, no, I know him pretty well, I've seen him at Palm Tree Crew Hamptons like two or three years ago, he jumped on top of the gate and had the bodyguard holding him up, it was a pretty funny scene, I'm going to be honest here.

Kygo: That's what I like, he's just always bringing this energy on stage, it doesn't matter if it's ten people in a crowd or fifty thousand, he has the same energy, it doesn't matter who's in the crowd. He could come in here, if we were going to play Stargazing right now, he'd jump up on this table and run around.

Bobby: You should have brought him in.

Kygo: Yeah, that would be funny. I just love that he always brings that energy.

Bobby: Yeah, no, one hundred percent, shout out dude, love that guy. So another artist that's honestly one of my favorites outside of dance music, but they've had some crossovers, is OneRepublic, and you have two tracks with them, right?

Kygo: I have three.

Bobby: Three?

Kygo: Yeah, I have a song, that one's a little bit lesser known, Stranger Things. And then we have Lose Somebody, and Paradise, that released last year.

Bobby: All right, I was down one, my bad.

Kygo: Yeah, we made a lot of music together in the studio, me and Ryan Tedder, he's always, he's a genius, so it's always fun.

Bobby: No, he's so talented, man, he's really so talented.

Kygo: Yeah.

Bobby: Yo, so how do you come up with the visuals for your shows? Because I remember seeing this clip go viral of a panda playing the piano, was it Sexual Healing?

Kygo: Yeah, yeah. Well, I have ideas for the visuals, but it's mostly my team, I have a visual team, they come up with ideas, and the panda was an idea from Sean, who works with me and helps put together the live show and my DJ sets. He came up with the idea of the panda, I think it was him, playing, and then triggering the lasers every time the panda played a note. I remember the first time I heard that idea I was like, this could look really corny, it could almost look like... but then I saw it and I was like, this is actually pretty cool, and pretty funny.

Bobby: Yeah, dude, that panda.

Kygo: And that became a thing on the tour, every time I played Sexual Healing I saw so many phones come up, because that was almost like the Instagram moment, they wanted it on video. That was cool, that was really cool.

Bobby: Yeah, I know, it's dope. So you obviously do your live piano arena shows, and then you do DJ sets, which one do you prefer more?

Kygo: I've got to say the live stuff, because I love to play the piano, and that's what I've been doing since I was little, that's kind of how I started. So I really love to play the piano, and every time I have the chance to play some of these melodies and the acoustic versions of the songs, that's definitely my favorite. But the fun thing about DJ sets is you have more freedom, you can add a lot of remixes, add a lot of energy, do mashups, you have a lot more freedom in DJ sets than my live shows, which kind of have to stay, I can mix it up a little, but there are a lot of songs that have to stay the way they are, with some small edits from time to time. But yeah, I think my favorite would be the live.

Trends, Palm Tree Crew, and Top Five Songs

Bobby: Nice, all right, I could kind of get that vibe, because you stuck with the piano your whole life, you and that piano, dude, you're committed. Beautiful though, dude, it's beautiful. Yo, so what do you kind of see, because you've been making bangers for over a decade now, so you've seen the different trends in dance music and where it goes. What do you think is really trending and what's really dope right now within the dance music scene?

Kygo: I guess right now you obviously have the Afro house stuff that's pretty big, you have the more tech house, deeper stuff, that's obviously what's really popping right now. But it goes in waves, it's hard to predict where it's going from here, are we bringing in more disco, are we bringing it more upbeat, bringing the BPM up or down, it kind of just depends on what people release. I never really try to follow the trends, I try to just make whatever I feel like making, and whether that's going to work or not, I don't know, but we'll see.

Bobby: So we'll never get a Kygo tech house set, that's what you're saying?

Kygo: Probably not. I could definitely play some of those songs, it just has to fit in with some of my original stuff, which is slow, going from a slower song, like Higher Love or whatever, into full tech house, it might be too much of a mixup. So I try to have some kind of balance in my sets.

Bobby: Yeah, no, that makes sense. Are there any really cool new rising artists that you like?

Kygo: We have a Norwegian producer who's really talented, he's been releasing a couple bangers lately. Who else do we have, I'd have to look through my Spotify, but I'd say definitely give him a shout out, because his sound is really cool.

Bobby: Yeah, no, that's what's up. Yo, so you have a whole ecosystem behind you that you created called Palm Tree Crew, right, it's management, a label, you do festivals, what's the whole vision for Palm Tree Crew, and what is it exactly, to tell you the truth?

Kygo: Yeah, it's kind of, the story with the palm tree is, obviously tropical house, and the palm tree was kind of representative of tropical house and my music. And I have this palm tree tattoo, and half my crew has a palm tree tattoo, so it was kind of, and also we love palm trees.

Bobby: Clearly, bro.

Kygo: And then we started giving out these necklaces, it kind of became this idea of giving out necklaces to make people feel like they're part of the crew. So that was kind of how it started, and then me and my manager talked about having our own festival for a long time before it happened, and it's just kind of been about seeing how big it can get. I think some of the inspiration behind Palm Tree Crew was Margaritaville, by Jimmy Buffett.

Bobby: No way.

Kygo: Just to see his vision, he's obviously released so many songs, but Margaritaville turned into something huge, he had hotels, I think he had an airline, Margaritaville, he has all these bars and restaurants. So that was something that inspired me, and at least my manager Miles, he's always had the bigger vision. I've always been focused on making music and wanting to release the best music possible, and he's always been a very, very creative person.

Bobby: Yes he is.

Kygo: So he wants to always figure out what more we can do here. So a lot of the Palm Tree Crew stuff, and how big it's gotten right now, is a lot of the hard work from Miles and the team. I think if you asked him that question he'd say Palm Tree Crew is going to be the biggest thing in the world, I've heard him say that actually, he doesn't see it stopping ever, he just wants to see how big we can take it.

Bobby: No doubt. Speaking of palm trees, by the way, I keep seeing disco palm trees all around Miami and other places, what's going on with that?

Kygo: Well, it's kind of, I haven't released music for a while, I released two songs the whole year last year, but I've been making a lot of music, so I have a new song coming out, and a bunch of new music coming out. It was kind of just to start fresh, cleared my Instagram.

Bobby: Bunch of new music, huh?

Kygo: Bunch of new music, so I just have a lot of new songs that I'm really excited about, and hopefully people are going to like them. So that was kind of the idea behind it.

Bobby: Dope. All right, this is my last question, it might be a little hard, what are your top five songs you've ever released?

Kygo: Oh, top five. I think number one would be Freeze, that's an eight minute long song, it's not really streaming friendly, I knew streaming-wise it's not going to be the biggest, it's not going to get hundreds of millions of streams or whatever, but I just felt that song had something really special. So that's got to be my favorite. Number two, obviously, Firestone is always going to have a special place in my heart, that was the first song I ever released. And then Stole the Show, that was my second song I ever released, and those two kind of go hand in hand. Number four, I'd say Higher Love, I really like that one. That one, or the first version of it, sounds pretty similar to the one that released, it was produced in one day, that was just one of those ones where it clicks, I was sitting there twelve hours straight, definitely very flow state, very in the zone. So that was number four.

Bobby: Number five.

Kygo: Number five, my own songs, that's a tough one. I guess Stargazing, we talked about Jesso, and that's always a fun one to play live. I've had Jesso with me for so many shows the last seven, eight years, it's just always a fun song to play.

Bobby: Nope, facts. Thanks for coming in, Kygo, I appreciate you, bro.

Kygo: All right, all right.

Bobby: And that was Kygo, and you were listening to Bobby on BPM, straight from the SiriusXM Miami studio. Peace.