You listening to song explode her where musicians take apart their songs and piece by piece, tell the story of how they were made. My name his reputation or way saw me exploiter is brought you by progressive tried the name, your price tool yet works just the way it sounds. You tell progressive how much you want to pay for car insurance and they'll, show Your coverage options that fit your budget. It's easy! or to quote and you'll, be able to find a rate that works for you just one of the many ways you can save with progressive get your quote today. grass dot com and see why, for but a five new, auto customers recommend progressive for since casualty, insurance, company and affiliates pricing, bridge, match limited by state law. This episode is sponsored by indeed, indeed Is it easy to hire great talent and you can, It all in one place, which is why more than three million businesses worldwide using D to hire great talent, fast,

start hiring now with a seventy five dollars, sponsor job credit to upgrade your job post at indeed dot com slash. Song exploder her offer is valid through March thirty, first good, indeed dot slash song exploder, to claim your seventy five dollar credit before March thirty. First indeed, dot, com, slash song, exploder terms and conditions apply, need to hire. You need indeed,. TIM Burton's, the nightmare before Christmas came out: one. Ninety three hits our motion- animated musical with by legendary composer, Danny Elfman he's one. He's a Grammy and he's been nominated for four oscars from nineteen, seventy nine to nineteen. Ninety five. He was also the singer and songwriter in the band lingo Boingo nightmare before Christmas takes place in a world where different holidays all have their own realm. And the story is about Jack Skellington, the leader, Hello, wind him, the play: it's always Halloween and Halloween is all they know and Jack.

A little tired of it, but then Jack covers a portal to Christmas town with snow. Santa at all things Christmas and it the song. What's this takes place in that moment of discovery, This episode, Danny Elfman, tells the story of how what came together and how writing and singing this song for Jack Skellington ended up finally connecting to his own life, We welcome all round the seventy place inside the building up myself. I want my money, I am Elfman. Tim Burton just called me one day and he said Disney came. cross. This story idea I had years and years and years ago, when I was working there and it never got made Nick got stuck

the away, somebody found it and said: oh, hey! Look. We've got this TIM Burton thing by the time too. called me about nightmare before Christmas. We'd already done five movies. Together, we done that. Batman movies. We did up here it's big adventure, beetle juice and Edward Scissorhands, so We already knew each other fairly well, he would present meet with these universes that he was creating and they all just seem completely normal to me. You know we and it came from similar backgrounds. I grew up on monsters in science fiction fantasy, as TIM did in the same era. So his work didn't ever seem that, weird to me, guess that's why it worked out. So it's not, like I'd ever go. Oh my god! This is weird. What am I going to do is like what I don't get it is for me it was just like yeah. I totally get it.

So TIM came over the house, and it was really as simple as this- he sat down and he pulled out these wonderful drawings that he did. and soon, as I saw with Jack, look like right. This makes perfect to me. Let's just do it and then he would start telling me the story, the we did the whole musical was, I would say, just tell me, the story is if you are to like you know: some nephew are niece around the firers. You know at night and just tell me albeit at a time- and he said, ok, Jack wanders into the forest, and its three doors and he's me justify it and picturing this and he said and he's going to open the door and he gets sucked in pops out he's in this snowy world as snowflakes falling and he says, things he's never seen before everything's new to him, and I would

write down little notes, I'd, say: okay, I got it, I got it go, go go. kind of a shoe, I'm out the door. The first thing we here are strings and shall last and sin I'm doing kind of a classic arrangement here. Harp seemed like a natural and it's Jack arriving in Christmas town and see the first time so before the song starts. It's really score. Right for collecting sinner, often right for voices- and I think probably just goes back to check how ski the use of Celestina Tchaikovsky's ballets, Oh, So I talked with him give me some ideas. I grab the a patent. Let's start writing down barracks

and as a money down lyrics, I'm hearing a cadence and going okay. starting to feel this as it you know, kind of a quick temper, always all excited so I, start with just going up up up up up up up up up at that time. I didn't even have a studio. I was live my girlfriend's house in Burbank- and I set up a makeshift studio in her garage I'd have like a four. I was sick samplers and one would be low but with string samples, one with woodwind samples, brass samples, percussion samples now that many years ago, the archives draw. Demos were pretty cheesy sounding the so we got our french horns played their little fanfare. Again, that's fucked, Kafkaesque and now it's score.

and it's just the kind of creating an energetic vibe for all the things, Jack missing, the. I really wanted it to sound, timeless, but not self consciously timeless, like I'm not trying to recreate an old style that somebody would go. Oh that's an old style song of such and such, but to feel, it could be any time or place. I mean anything consciously, they thought about a little bit when I was doing what's. This was Gilbert. Sullivan. I M the very model that the modern, better gender related to deliver did the mineral that very kind of you Tongue, twister type of thing, so but I would be fun if Jack was the like, what's this? What's this, this color epic well what's this does why things in the air? What's this that's okay, in the cadence of it and

am blocking it out with some basic chords and, by the end of it couple of days. I'd have a demo too much come by. And he listen and go yeah, okay, cool. What is this? What is waiting? What's this training and so I did my vocals for the demo and that those this really funky. Does he I was just using a The shack microphone, and in my garage when I first laid them down and what I did is I took all the instrumental tracks and we went into a studio TIM and I late at night and I got in front of a real microphone and did all of fax locals in all the other vocals, and we were all the songs for the whole movie in one night. What's this what's this color everywhere. What's this there's white things

the air. What's this, I can't believe my eyes. I must be dreaming, wake up jack. This isn't fair. What's this job, his voice is kind of theatrical it's more theatrical than my voice is going to be, if I'm just singing one of my own songs, his voice like dips down oh and into this part and then back up again. It is a little bit of talk singing. What's this? What's this the something very wrong. What's this, this people singing songs? What's this, the streets are lined with little creatures laughing. Everybody seems so happy about possibly gone daddy. What is this but the tunnel? did those demos I hadn't written them for myself, but I in the process of writing. Those ten songs became so attached to Jack that I didn't know how to bring it up afterwards, I was kind of hemming and hawing about it. That's going to TIM about Jack.

Don't worry, you'll you'll sing Jack, because if not, thought if he said no, no, no. We have to hire professional singer, I would have gone. Okay, all right, but you know all kinds of mysterious accidents would have happened and they finally come back Let me go to any I mean just said most incredible: Bab locker three singers. killed in the most mysterious ways, it would you mind doing without, if you really want, I suppose I could The demos sounds cheesy, but all this is going to get replaced with the orchestra, your going to sound, wonderful, but what a detail that goes between my finished demo and getting it on paper when I

P was big adventure. I've never done a score before and I was like. I don't know what I'm doing. I need a orchestrator to work with me and I didn't know any orchestrator, so I turned to Steve my guitarist in the band Oingo Boingo and I go be a orchestrated. I took a class at U C, L A and that's good enough, so it was Burton's first feature my first time, composing, an orchestral film scorn and my guitarist first time. The orchestrator working with me now by the way. So, we've done. I think one hundred and five films together But what I learned working with Steve is that he doesn't reinterpret the music he just six gets it took. breast itself as best it could be on paper per the orchestra to play so If I have a bunch of woodwinds going like that, you know the time to write down? Ok, okay, sport, it's actually three different instruments and they actually are a bit that other guy better get that they did it.

works was amazing, does not I can write that the orchestra can't play. blows my mind even after thirty seven years I write some really big long pieces for films and the first rehearsal that they do never having seen it before already insanely good and their sight reading cause. They don't take this music home and study it. They just walk in there and play it. Twenty. I really

the strong kinship to the character of Jack, because I was at a place right at that point. In my life with my, and doing a Boingo where starting around one thousand nine hundred and ninety I wanted to leave the band and every year I kept saying you know, I think this is our last year. I think this is our last year and they're you know it can't happen, can't happen and I felt really bad and so that feeling of guilt He kept me going for at least another five, if you girls, which in I don't regret, but I felt for Jack who's, this character, It was really the king of his own world, but wanted out you wanted something else because that's exactly how I felt at that moment, you know when you're, a songwriter singer in a band. You know it's your universe. You've create in that universe and you're kind of the center of universe and that's a we. What Jack was in Halloween Land and like Jack, I was looking

for a door, I was really looking for a door. take me into another world the monsters of the missing and the nightmares can be found and in their place there seems to be good feeling all around. Instead of screams, I swear I can hear music in the air. The smell of cakes and pies are absolutely I poured a lot of myself into nightmare before Christmas and When it came out, it was really really misunderstood. No, We got. It I was really kind of heartbroken it wasn't a flop, but it was far from a hit. I mean do you like a hundred short interviews and every one of them ass? The same thing? So this issue, scary for kids right. I know it's not scary for kids, it was just this thing that was the exception of it. It's not for kids, kids hate it, but my daughter, Molly. She was around ten cause. I remember she listened to all the song says. I was writing them and so, when people kept saying-

Well, kids are going to hate these. I said no, my ten year old daughters heard them all and and really loves them, and it was one of these incredibly lucky things of a movie that took on a life after it came out. Which is so rare, I think if I was, I have any one piece if they have a second life on its own. What's it going to be an outsider nightmare before Christmas, because every other film. I done at only worked on it for three months, and here it worked on this phone for close to two years, and so I thought really really lucky years afterwards. I saw that it hasn't gone away. In fact, it's kind of growing I mean the idea that I created any kind of iconic Christmas. Sound is ironic. in the extreme for me, because I am a creature of Halloween in every way shape or form

you know Halloween is I look forward to, and Christmas was just like this put my head The pillow and cry you know was just like: I want this to be over grew up as a lonely. Jewish kid growing up in a neighborhood that there were, I dont, know, friends so Christmas I every year I was by myself and lonely, and just wishing, it would be over, so I can get back to my life again, and so my appreciation of Christmas, I'm a latecomer to it cause. Then I had my two daughters and I started into it for the first time in my life through them, and so I developed this kind of real excitement about making a perfect Christmas having a Christmas Party, getting the presents just write all for the pleasure seeing their faces in the morning so

At the point when I did nightmare before Christmas, I was the transition of like starting with positive, instead of like a dark cloud of depression, rolling my way, the pure anticipation, having this night before Christmas and the supervision of what's going to happen, and then the presence in the morning is it's really wonderful. And now from the nightmare before Christmas, here's what's this by Danny Elfman in its entirety,

the

what's this? What's this is everywhere? What's this is wiping? What's this, I can't believe my eyes. I must be dreaming. Wake up. Jack was what what's. This is something very what's this is people singing songs? What's this surrounded by doing snob, instead of doing heads the busy building toys, absolutely no one's dead, disposed to the window in my bones or look what's this is why the gathering about those didn't just what's this year where and why covering a tiny little things, the electric lights on strange, another smile and everyone, my wife, my what now the children are asleep, but look. There's nothing unto me: no goose, witches, screamin, scare them or its own security side.

What must be seen in the nightmares can be found in the place. They seem to be good news. I swear, I can use it in the respective taking labs everywhere around I've. Never done this empty place inside a man standing up myself. I want my daughter I miss that hm. to learn more visit song exploder dot net. Your final, to stream or download this track. Anyone. it's a trailer for the movie Exploiter is sponsored by Dave's killer, bread, actually love, Dave's killer, bread, but,

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dot com, slash exploder, to save ten percent off your first just have a website or domain, and that wraps up this year, the eighth year of song exploder thanks so much to all the artists who shared their stories and music with me this year and thanks so much to you for listening, we'll be back in January, episode and the shows the music were made by me, editing help from Craig Ellie and Casey deal artwork by Carlos Lemme music clearance by Kathleen Smith and production assistance from Chloe Parker Song Exploder proud member of Radio Tokyo from Pierre Racks and network of independent listener, supported artist, don't upon cast, you can learn more about all our shows at Radio Tokyo, DOT Fm Follow me on Twitter and Instagram at receive your way, and you could follow the show at song exploiter. You can also get a song export or t shirt at song experts water. Dot, slash shirt. Irish

case. Your way, thanks for listening and have a happy new year. Radio, to. there's. A brand new show joining Radio, Toby called Oprah predominates every week. History when Leah Wright, Rigueur and Kelly Carter Jackson are going to dive deep into the cultural significance of the Oprah Winfrey Show- and you might know, Kelly Carter Jackson because she's the host of another radio to be a show this day in esoteric political history, on Oprah fix. The two friends are going to talk about why Oprah matters to culture and how Open made so much of the culture from diet. but clubs to slumber Interviews to make overs and all spin offs, if you love Oprah, you just want to learn more about her. You have to check out o predominates. The study of meaning of talk Wednesday starting March. Thirtieth, listen at radio Toby DOT Fm wherever you listen to podcasts