Beauty In The Breakdown: Idarose - Cool Around You
Songwriter Alexis "Idarose" Kesselman breaks down her great new single "Cool Around You".
I’ve known Alexis "Idarose" Kesselman for several years, all the way back to a songwriter’s workshop in 2015. We kept in touch over the years, as she developed her idiosyncratic style of songwriting. Idarose's songwriting is like a more theatrical take on Julia Michaels' style, albeit more precise than Michaels' "throw caution to every warning sign" overwriting. She’s best known for co-writing Joji’s “Glimpse of Us”, an unusually striking ballad and massive life-changing success. She also produced the music for Smile 2, originally a one off before actress Naomi Scott (who plays fictional pop star Skye Riley) decided to work on more songs with her for the soundtrack.
Most recently, she produced an album for Lydia Night of The Regrettes, the first album where she’s the main producer. With credits for TWICE, Suki Waterhouse, and many others under her belt, she's returning to her solo music, kicking off with the Charli XCX-meets-”Untouched” single “Uppercut.”. That was mixed by Jeremie Inhaber, the assistant to ubiquitous mixer Manny Marroquin (who’s worked on almost every pop/hip-hop release you can think of, from FKA Twigs to Post Malone). This one, “Cool Around You", is all her including mixing and mastering.
How did you get into music production?
I've been producing music probably since middle school and High school. I was writing songs when I was four or five years old. Then I opened up GarageBand in middle school, started messing around, and in high school, I started getting to film scoring. So that was the beginning of using strings and using MIDI, which is why I wound up working in Logic Pro. And then I went to Frost School of Music for college. Throughout my experience of working with different producers, I always really wanted to be the ones with my hands in the production. I always felt like I was trying to get something communicated to them that I just wanted to do myself, and I just didn't see that many women in the producer chair. I just didn't understand why we were releasing this control to men. So I started the Idarose project while working with other artists and trying to help them craft their sound. Both have helped both. When I've been working with other artists, they're asking for certain things, and I'm learning from that, and then I'm also learning from creating my own songs in the world. So that's how I started, and then I just never stopped.
When I first met you at NYU you were very inspired by Sara Bareilles. Is she still an influence for you?
When I got to college, I felt like I split into two. I knew that I was a piano pop person, but I also was really interested in, like synthesizers and production. With this project, I’ve tried to bring them back together.
Can you talk about your journey to co-writing Joji’s massive hit Glimpse of Us and working on projects like Sponge on the Run?
I graduated from Frost in 2019. I shipped myself out to LA to try to really do the songwriter-producer thing. And I was in rooms working mostly on pitch songs (songs for other artists). So I was just trying to get in the room with whoever I could. And I got in the room with Riley and Connor McDonough, so we wrote this pitch song called “Glimpse of Us” and it was just this piano ballad. We knew it was special, but we didn't know if it would get made. It was just one of a bajillion pitch songs I was writing at the time.
I wrote that in December 2019, and then the pandemic happened in March 2020, so I moved home to Florida for the year, thinking, is music gonna work? I don't know. I had started having momentum in LA, but I didn't know what was going to happen, and all of a sudden, I'm in Florida. So I was doing Zoom sessions. And one of the first zoom sessions I did, was this SpongeBob song with this amazing guy named Daramola and a few other people. He was like, Do you want to try writing a song for the SpongeBob movie? I was like, “Of course I do!” Like. So we wrote “F is For Friends”, and that was my first big credit.
I then went viral for When I Don’t Have You, a song that started in a dream. At the same time, I wasn't really sure I wanted to fully do the artist thing, and I was applying to grad school for theater writing. Weeks before I graduate, Joji releases “Glimpse of Us” and completely changes my life. I was a big Joji fan before, but I had no idea he would take this song, and my expectations were super low. I remember journaling. “I hope this does something”, Ever since then, I've been producing and writing for artists and really trying to prioritize being the producer in the room or a co producer. I feel like that was a big leap, because I was a songwriter on this song, which was awesome, but trying to prove that I could be a producer in the room was an interesting journey, and one that I'm still on. That's why I really want to focus on sessions with artists who believed in me as a producer, or wanted to work with female producers.
Let’s talk about Smile 2 as well!
Smile 2 was so fun! I got a random DM on Instagram from somebody who works at Paramount, and she was like, we're looking for songs, and it's an open call. So I sent in a bunch, but that's like, always the thing. You send things in and you never hear back. But I, a few months later, heard back, and they liked some of my music. I sent in some revisions, sent in some new songs, and then finally, they were like, “we'd love to use two of the songs for the movie”. And then I met Naomi, and she was like, “I want more from you”, so we ended up co-writing two more songs for the movie!
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Cool Around You:
Idarose: I started writing this in 2021. I was doing an emoji challenge on TikTok, and was having people comment five or six emojis, and I would just write a song baked on it. Somebody commented a flamingo, a cactus, an avocado, and the Earth, and rain emojis. So I wrote this, and over the years I would go back to it. I’m putting together a project for Idarose, and while most of the songs are newer, I wanted something a little slower. I was excited to bring it back to life!
VOCAL SAMPLE:
Idarose: Initially, the vocal sample that opens the song was just a sample of me singing the title, then I chopped it up. It embodies that awkwardness of the main character in this song, of like, “I'm trying to be cool around you and I can’t.” I put that sample through Little Alter Boy, and added some Radiator to make it weirder. I put the LA-2A on all my vocals, even though I’ve seen producers say “this is not the thing to work on your vocals”, and I don’t care. I’ve found it works best on a female lead or an alto lead. Some of the lower voices I work with, it’s not my go-to as much since it really compresses hard.
GUITARS:
I’ll usually use Logic’s guitars as a texture. If I’m working with guitars or people who use guitars, I want real stuff, but this was 2021, and this is what I did at the time, and it sounded good. I finished the rest of it this year, so I had up until the first chorus done, but then I added a bunch of stuff like a bunch of Prophet sounds and vocal chops. I put the RC-20 Retro Color on there for distortion.
DRUMS:
Nothing too crazy on the drums. We’re just in sample land here, with some Splice stuff, but I layered the sample with the snare I had in the session.
SYNTHS
A lot of the Prophet synths are hardware. I have a Moog and a Prophet in my studio. When I was in LA, I was working in my friend Ryan Raines' studio, and I added a few extra things. This has some Valhalla Shimmer, and MicroShift to widen it.
I love how dense this mix is.
I’m definitely a maximalist in life and production. I definitely like to do the most, and then sometimes I have to pull back and be like, Okay, I don't need these 18 synths layered on top of each other. But having these synths created a world in the song, which was really cool. We still have the piano, you still have the guitar happening, I think I'm side chaining it a little bit, and taking out some of the meat so that the piano can still live and the vocals, but it was just fun to stack a bunch of layers and feel like they weren't taking away from the song. I used Keyscape The Wing Upright, I just love how it sounds for being a MIDI piano, it’s a really nice texture.
VOCALS
You have both a Manley and an Aston mic. How do you decide which works better for which?
I had done these initial vocals on the Aston Origin four years ago, and I actually used the same take that I had for the same take from the OG demo because I just really liked how it sounded, and so I obviously wanted to keep it consistent. The Manley has more body, and I didn’t need that in this song. There's a character that I feel like Idarose has in the Aston Origin that is a little sweeter and softer, that I think just works for this track. It's funny, I use the Manley with every artist that comes in. But then for my own stuff, I always find myself gravitating towards the origin.
I love the Waves TG12345 plugin so much. It's like, it's really underrated. It's so underrated, it's so intense. Like, it really does a lot, and you can't use it on every vocal. You can't use it on everything. It's really harsh. We have fun with this bridge. I absolutely love automating Alter Boy. It's like one of my favorite production tricks.
I heard that on the main vocal, too.
I did on verse two. On the line "how is outer space looking tonight?" the formant of the voice goes down. It's like a theatrical thing. I wanted to show another character talking, so I thought, how cool would it be if my voice lowered a little bit, and that was the other person talking to me.
BACKING VOCALS
I wanted it to sound like a party, so there are few where I'm just talking.
For Reverb we have PrimalTap and Valhalla.
Anything else?
My dad was in town, and he loves this song, and I never recorded him, so I asked him to do some backgrounds for the song. I hear them really prominently because I'm just like, so close to the song. Now when I listen to the song, I hear them. But I was like, do you hear yourself? He's like, no.
