Ben Naddaff-Hafrey
Appearances
Revisionist History
Malcolm Breaks Down the Perfect Break Up Song
And then when she came to New York, we would hang out. And... I noticed that as Julia and I had been talking more and started seeing each other in Nashville and also in New York, that slowly I had begun to set up my room. I got shades for the window. They didn't actually fit, but I got handkerchiefs that extended them to the bottom. I got rid of the tarp.
Revisionist History
Malcolm Breaks Down the Perfect Break Up Song
I did, in fact, leave the saw on the wall because that was by then a crucial part of the decor and my identity and remains so. I don't remember what I did with the change corner. There's a good chance the change corner sort of remained.
Revisionist History
Malcolm Breaks Down the Perfect Break Up Song
The growing up process is a slow one, but it began with fixing up that first room. There was a moment I remember where she came and visited. It was early spring and we had this really wonderful weekend together exploring the city and she'd grown up in New York and I was kind of new there and she was showing me around and
Revisionist History
Malcolm Breaks Down the Perfect Break Up Song
went to like a lebanese church and i'm lebanese and it was kind of like a they just wandered in because they were having like a food festival kind of thing like there were a lot of wonderful serendipitous things yeah um and i remember it was after that visit i think on the day that she had left that i was hanging out in my room and i was playing guitar and i started writing this song
Revisionist History
Malcolm Breaks Down the Perfect Break Up Song
Like a lot of hack guitar players, I use a lot of open tunings. And around that time, I had been playing The Rain Song by Led Zeppelin, which is a version of open C tuning. And so I just would like keep my guitar in that. And I remember figuring out the sort of main guitar line and then messing around with the words over it.
Revisionist History
Malcolm Breaks Down the Perfect Break Up Song
If I didn't know you by now Complaining.
Revisionist History
Malcolm Breaks Down the Perfect Break Up Song
You know, I'm not a professional songwriter. This was a song that like definitely did not come easily to me, but it felt sort of like inspired by that moment and that feeling. It was kind of like a reflection of the fact that I was noticing that my life was changing and an expression of gratitude to her for bringing me to the place where I wanted to do that.
Revisionist History
Malcolm Breaks Down the Perfect Break Up Song
I think that that is just what it was. I think it's just because that was sort of where it came from. So I don't think it was a realization ever. It was just kind of, that was the feeling it started from. I'd have backed it up and turned around
Revisionist History
Malcolm Breaks Down the Perfect Break Up Song
So yeah, I was in a long distance relationship, both then with Julia, because she was living in Nashville, but then also with the lead singer of my band, Adam, who he was in like the UK getting a master's in medieval literature or something. And we were always working on an album in the background, usually as like an escape hatch from like one or another job that we didn't want to do.
Revisionist History
Malcolm Breaks Down the Perfect Break Up Song
So we were always like kind of trading versions of things. We spent a lot of time basically on every song, just like trying to get it right, recording and re-recording, that kind of thing. And I would always share those things with Julia. And she, like a joke evolved where she sort of teasingly would be like, is this song about me?
Revisionist History
Malcolm Breaks Down the Perfect Break Up Song
A thing that I would always like flatly deny, she'd come to shows and she would like, we would always have these long introductions to our songs, but often we wrote historical songs. It's like Mark Twain's brother died in a steamship accident and like there would be a long preamble to the song about Samuel Clemens' brother who dies in this horrible way.
Revisionist History
Malcolm Breaks Down the Perfect Break Up Song
But there would notably be no preamble or introduction to this song. And so this was the thing I was often mocked about. It reached ahead when we were crowdfunding an album that we were doing, which is a fancy way of saying asking our friends for money. There was a thing that we offered that was a handwritten lyric sheet with a story behind the song.
Revisionist History
Malcolm Breaks Down the Perfect Break Up Song
And so Julia bought that, requested a lyric sheet with the story behind the song for this song. Oh, wow. Which, as a way of, like, cornering me into having to admit the provenance of the song. And I did not fulfill that lyric sheet for, like...
Revisionist History
Malcolm Breaks Down the Perfect Break Up Song
quite a while um and it wasn't until again sort of as like a joke in return but it wasn't until we got engaged that i then did actually deliver the lyric sheet with the story as a kind of like you know obviously this is a song about you and the way i feel about you so if i go tomorrow i go green flush with all the places i have seen
Revisionist History
Malcolm Breaks Down the Perfect Break Up Song
I always love everything Adam writes. He, like, wrote the last verse. That, I think, kind of, like, takes it to a totally different place. It gets, like, a lot darker right at the end in a way that I wouldn't have done, but think it gives it a lot of heft.
Revisionist History
Malcolm Breaks Down the Perfect Break Up Song
So put that record on Atlantic City And we'll drive there in the dark while there's still time. We haven't closed all of the doors to the night. It still feels good to lean my head into your side. Cause if I didn't know the way you'd come to me. Through the first snow you find me there falling in. Well, thank you so much, Ben.
Revisionist History
Malcolm Breaks Down the Perfect Break Up Song
Thanks for having me. This was fun. Happy Valentine's Day. Happy Valentine's Day.
Revisionist History
Malcolm Breaks Down the Perfect Break Up Song
Folk or country, either one would be my leading contender for the genre that is best at love songs. And I think it's because on some level, like I think like a breakup song or a lost love song is superior to a straight up love song.
Revisionist History
Malcolm Breaks Down the Perfect Break Up Song
I think that folk music does love songs the best.
Revisionist History
Malcolm Breaks Down the Perfect Break Up Song
Because I think, like, if you're in love, you don't really need a song. Like, you feel this kind of symphonic... happiness, like there's something specific that you're experiencing with another person.
Revisionist History
Malcolm Breaks Down the Perfect Break Up Song
Like if you are experiencing lost love or unrequited love, there's something about a particular breakup story or sad romance song that like creates a community with you when you maybe feel otherwise alone or bereft. But I think that there's like wistful folk music, wistful country music kind of toes the line between these two things. Yeah.
Revisionist History
Malcolm Breaks Down the Perfect Break Up Song
Yes, and this is part of my long con to get interviewed on Broken Record for my music. Well, you're close. Yeah, exactly.
Revisionist History
Malcolm Breaks Down the Perfect Break Up Song
Well, I wrote this song about like a year after I first moved to Brooklyn. So I was like just out of college and I had moved to Brooklyn and I was living with a bunch of friends in what was, you know, actually quite a nice apartment. I had not made my corner of the apartment particularly nice. I was not having the best time that year. And I had, I think as an expression of...
Revisionist History
Malcolm Breaks Down the Perfect Break Up Song
uh vague despair just like not really done anything to set it up i don't remember why this is but i remember i had like a tarp in the corner of the room i had a tarp in the corner of the room like a mattress and then a saw on the wall oh my god i thought it would be like fun to put on my wall but it looked terrifying um and that was like pretty much it and i remember distinctly walking into the apartment one time
Revisionist History
Malcolm Breaks Down the Perfect Break Up Song
with a good friend of mine from high school. And I had like change in my pocket and I like took the change out of my pocket and I threw it in the corner. And she was like, why did you just throw your change in the corner? I was like, that is the corner of the apartment where I keep my change. And it was like, it was indeed like next to the tarp, like a pile of change.
Revisionist History
Malcolm Breaks Down the Perfect Break Up Song
So there were no shades on the window. This was like a crucial thing. I just was like, Not super taking care of myself. Like, everything was totally fine. But my life was not in order. And then I started dating a friend of mine from college. Her name was Julia. And she was living in Nashville at the time. And we sort of, like, picked back up, talking to each other at a distance.