Hot Chip - Boy From School

Introduction to Song Exploder

0:00You're listening to Song Exploder, where musicians take apart their songs and piece by piece tell the story of how they were made. I'm Rishikesh Hirwe.

0:10I'm going to be on tour for the next few weeks, and all the dates are at songexploder.net slash live. I'm going to be playing songs from my new album, In the Last Hour of Light, with a full band, and I'm going to be talking about the making of my album with a special guest moderator in each city. I get to be the interviewee instead of the interviewer. So I'm going to be joined by Jason Manzoukas, Samin Nosrat, Allison Russell, Joshua Molina, Ken Jennings and John Roderick, Min Jin Lee, and Adam Scott. It's a really personal album, and I hope you can make it out to one of the shows.

0:41You can get tickets and more info at songexploder.net slash live.

0:48This episode of Song Exploder is brought to you by Booking.com. My wife and I have been thinking about visiting some of our friends in Philadelphia this summer. And so while we've been daydreaming, I've been looking on Booking.com to check out places where we might stay in Philly. I put in our dates, and there are over 100 options listed. So I'm going to start narrowing things down. I'm going to choose places that have an 8 or higher rating and a king bed available. And then I'm going to focus on hotels in one of my favorite neighborhoods, the Rittenhouse Square neighborhood.

1:21And look, there's a hotel here with a 9.0 rating. And there's a note on the site that says, couples in particular like this hotel. They rated it a 9.5 for a two-person trip. All right, so look at that. That sounds pretty awesome. You can find exactly what you're booking for. Booking.com. Booking.ya. Book today on the site or in the app. This episode is made possible by Quince. And if you've been listening to the podcast, you've probably heard me talk about how much I love the elevated casual pieces that I've gotten from Quince.

1:56Like cashmere sweaters and my organic cotton chore jacket. But the other day, I realized I really wanted a shirt for just lounging around the house in. Something cozy, but not too warm since summer setting in. So I ordered a sweatshirt called the Super Soft Fleece Crew, and I never want to take it off. The name is completely accurate. It is super soft. It feels amazing. And everything at Quince is priced 50 to 80% less than similar brands. They work directly with ethical factories, so you're paying for quality and not markup.

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Hotchip Band Introduction

2:51Hotchip is a band from London made up of Alexis Taylor, Joe Goddard, Al Doyle, Owen Clark, and Felix Martin. Their second album, The Warning, came out in 2006. It was nominated for a Mercury Prize and named one of the best albums of the year by NME and Pitchfork. And later, NME would include it in their list of best albums of all time. For this episode, I talked to them about one of the songs from The Warning called Boy From School. You might have heard it in the second season of the show Beef on Netflix. The band's also in the show. Or you might have heard it on The Simpsons.

3:22You could have also heard the song In My Car All the Time in 2006.

Making Boy From School

3:26So, I was very excited to talk to Alexis and Joe from Hotchip about how Boy From School was made. We tried, but we didn't come along. We tried, but we don't belong.

3:50My name is Alexis Taylor. And my name is Joe Goddard. We became friends at school. We were like 11 and 12 years old, I think. We grew up playing football and talking about bands that we'd read about in the NME and went to loads of gigs together. Hundreds of gigs. We all used to congregate at Joe's house, usually on a Friday after playing football after school.

4:21And we realized that we both liked making music and we would play songs on the guitar and listen to music or watch films and stay up late and have a fun time. I lived close to where we all grew up and went to school, a place called Elliott School in Putney, which is close to this house. So, Alexis and I would go home from school and make music in this bedroom really, really very frequently. Joe was making music in a band with other people and I was making music in another band.

4:53But then at some point, Joe asked me if I wanted to record songs of mine that were like solo guitar and vocal songs, record them on his four track. So he was really acting like a producer from quite a young age. And he did that, but then also wrote his own songs and we would play songs together. And I think initially they were separate songs from one another, like a Joe song or an Alexis song. And then at some point we started to write songs together and finish each other's sentences or like write a second section for a song or something like that or just sing together.

5:31And that was kind of the beginning. We really had no training in like engineering and making records. We were really making it up as we went along. I had a very small amount of equipment and we were using a computer, but in quite a rudimentary way, doing it all in this bedroom. Boy From School was one of the first things that we made for our second album, The Warning. We were just absorbing lots of influences from dance music, from four to the floor, house music and disco and DFA and other things that we were listening to at that time.

6:06And this was the moment in time when Basement Jacks released their first album, which was for a kind of indie fan, was a good way of getting into house music. So I was going clubbing and this kind of like indie version of dance music was exciting to me. But even in the process of writing Boy From School, the first iteration of it that was recorded and written at Joe's house was more gentle and slow and was a ballad.

6:36I remember leaving the room that me and Joe were working in and going for a break into his brother's bedroom where there was like no one in the room and just using that as a place to write something. We'd been to university by this point and started working jobs. And something about like being in that room was quite evocative of many years spent hanging out with Joe. It made me think about the school days and those school days weren't that far behind us, but something about like continuing having a friendship with Joe and always making music with him.

Songwriting and Inspiration

7:14And it often being in that house connected me to the school days quite closely as if we hadn't like gone that far away from our beginnings. And I was a boy from school Helplessly helping all the rules It began as a Casio based track.

7:44So when Alexis wrote this very gentle, delicate song, I remember feeling like maybe this is a moment when we should try to be kind of embracing a different groove and trying something a bit more uptempo. Like let's try changing the context of this song entirely is such a lovely song. But to me, it felt like an exciting thing to suggest going with something that we hadn't really ever done before, like having a go at a kind of style of music that felt kind of novel for us to do at the time.

8:22And this moment of Joe suggesting, changing it from the ballad to the disco bass track was quite a big moment. And it's not an obvious link between the kind of lyrical content, slightly nostalgic words about your experiences at school, trying to summarize a relationship. That doesn't necessarily sound like the subject matter of disco music. So I think it was a bit of a leap for both of us to see, will this work?

8:54That original like sort of version, it was on this Casio, the MT-70. I think that that keyboard was particularly good at sparking ideas for Joe and for me. It's a really simple, inexpensive instrument that I guess was like mass produced by Casio in the 80s. It doesn't have a lot going for it in terms of like synthesis power, but essentially it was like the most important instrument for all of our songs at that time. And even when we decided to make this kind of up-tempo version, it's used for almost all of the sounds on the song.

9:32I remember Alexis playing the bassline with this kind of lolloping rhythm.

9:41Within like, you know, the next two or three hours, we put down like most of the major elements. I remember that riff is on the Vox electric piano that sounds a bit like a clavinet and plays all the way through. The effect you put on it, Joe, gives it a kind of auto-wah kind of sound like that's done immediately after it's recorded. So the processing is a big part of the production.

10:11Yeah, so I did a lot of experimenting with effects on each of those little parts. And so I just spent hours and hours cutting up these little bits of audio and moving them until they were perfect and kind of playing with the delays on these notes because we wanted the groove of this thing to just be super kind of tight and funky and mechanized.

10:35So it was a matter of like moving stuff around until it felt right and then looping that. And he was always and still continues to be somebody that wants to keep working hard to perfect something.

10:49Previous to this, I'd just been using drums from our Casio keyboard and cut them up. But at that time, I was learning about taking drums from other tracks. So I sampled a kick drum from this DFA remix of Decepticon by La Tigra. Really great remix.

11:13One of my favorites at the time. You know that we discussed this with James Murphy and Tim Goldsworthy from the DFA many years ago. And they told me that they had taken that kick drum from Is It All Over My Face by Loose Joints, the Arthur Russell project. We would just kind of record like some clapping in the room.

11:46We didn't have like a full drum kit in my bedroom, but we had a hi-hat because we thought it was an element of the drums. It's good to do for real, to be able to introduce your own kind of groove with your own kind of style.

12:03Alexis sang the words to the song like right then and there in that original session. And I was a boy from school helplessly helping all the rules. I was somebody who wasn't rebellious. I couldn't help but go along with things in a kind of fairly by-the-book way, which I suppose meant I'm not a rebellious teenager.

Lyrical Meaning and Nostalgia

12:43So I think something about all of the time spent at Jo's house and then being in that room made me just look back on the school days fondly and with some wistful feeling. And there was a girl at school blending all the words she'd learned from home. The next line was about a girl at school who I had a crush on and then went out on a date with and really liked.

13:19And then I was talking about her seeming quite grown up, like she had absorbed a lot of mature behaviour from like a family situation she was in. And it felt like she didn't remain young for very long, but had quite a lot of growing up very quickly. That was my sort of perception of her. You know, those school days in general and the girl that I was singing about and all of that love.

13:59It's a nice place to go back to. More with Hotship after this.

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15:03Song Exploder is sponsored by the game Mixtape. And to learn more, I talked to one of the creators. My name is Johnny Galvatron. I'm the writer and director of Mixtape. It's about three teenagers on their last day of high school going to their final party together, listening to the greatest mixtape of all time. And where did the idea for this game originally come from? Just wanting to make a game based around That's Good by Devo, which is the greatest song of all time. There's just something alive in that song that speaks to me. And it's very much a game about being a music lover and someone who appreciates music and knows where to place it in their life.

15:38And then game-wise, there are different kinds of mechanics. There's different kinds of music. There's different kinds of art style. So the game as a whole should be viewed as a mixtape and kind of this artistry of arrangement. And so how is the game itself like a mixtape? So usually in a video game, you will have a standard set of mechanics, which might be fighting. But in a mixtape, there's different people saying different things with different vibes. And you want each song to be given its own experience, its own life.

16:11And you want to use the medium. That's what's kind of important about making video games. You want to use the medium to show what the music is showing. We have this song, B.J. Thomas, most of all, where a friend gets betrayed and she floats back through town and just kind of knocks everything out of her way as she floats through town and you control her. And like, what a beautiful way to kind of use that song and to use a mechanic and input to show the betrayal and the despondency and the sadness. And when you can get all those things mixed together and hit those crescendos where you hit between video game, music, narrative, that's the gold, that's the diamond that you aim for.

16:48I think you would really dig it. Mixtape comes out May 7th on console and PC. Check it out at mixtape.game.

17:07So start your business today with the industries.

17:37Best business partner, Shopify, and start seeing new sales. Sign up for your $1 per month trial today at shopify.com slash songexploder. Go to shopify.com slash songexploder. Again, shopify.com slash songexploder. For all of those years of making records together, we never had like a vocal booth. So when Alexis is singing, he's just in the room with me with headphones on.

18:10So I'm listening only to his voice without being able to hear the music. And then I learned those words and sang just in unison with him. Breaking rules hopelessly we meet. And it would be the same when I would record vocals and Alexis would just be kind of listening to me. Lives are found but loves are lost.

18:43Say goodbye to everything nothing costs. I don't think we felt super confident about singing. We weren't people who sang with great skill and expertise and confidence. You know, it's not like we harmonized in a dressing room, practicing all of these things and perfecting it. We're doing our best, but we certainly weren't these like super slick pro singers. So I can also hear that in the recording.

19:14It sounds really nice to me, but it's not super impressive like some people's vocals would be. I'm not saying that as a criticism of it. I really like it. But it feels like people who haven't had vocal training in the best possible way. Like they're naturally themselves. You know, Alexis would be singing the verse to a song and I'm listening to him recording takes. And that would spark in my mind, like ideas for the next section of the song. We tried, but we didn't have long.

19:49We tried, but we don't belong. The chorus that Alexis had written was very beautiful and there had been a kind of strong like Beach Boys reference because that was a band that both of us were really, really, really passionately kind of in love with. So it has a lot of layers of vocals that we both kind of added. We tried, but we didn't have long.

20:23We tried, but we don't belong. We tried, but we don't belong. I was thinking about the relationship with that girl at school and how even though you're very young and it's not like a proper relationship, it can still make you feel those first feelings

20:54of connection with somebody in a romantic way, being with somebody and what you can feel like when that doesn't work out. It's essentially talking about loss. And it's also talking about friendships being lost between different people as their lives develop, as they grow older. Things not fitting together as you had hoped they would and what you feel like after that.

Music Production and Instruments

21:18We had this kind of funny children's glockenspiel that we would take to the live shows from the really early days. It felt important to us to kind of bring a range of slightly unusual instruments with us. And I think that's there in a fair amount of like hot chip music. It's a kind of a childlike quality.

21:48And I remember that we had an auto harp.

22:02It's a really super cool instrument, like super annoying to tune because there are tons of strings, but like a really, really lovely sound.

22:12We had these things kind of scattered around my bedroom floor, you know. That really felt like how we made music back then. It was like, what do we have around us? Joe had a lap steel guitar.

22:30I definitely can't really play the lap steel guitar very well. So it's as good as it could be. And it's a bit fumbly, but it's something that was there in the room. And again, like if you've grown up listening to pet sounds by the Beach Boys, you're kind of fascinated with the idea that they put together different instruments that don't normally get put together. So we absorbed something from their productions and then felt like it was normal to go. And now we put lap steel.

23:02Now we put auto harp. Now we put Casio. Just put these things together because we know we like it when all these sounds blend together. And then there was more writing that Joe did for like the other section of the song. Just responding to the kind of emotion of Alexis's chorus. The track sounds quite sorrowful at the end.

23:47Like those vocals are quite exposed. The high range that we're singing in. We tried, but we didn't have long. We tried, but we don't belong.

24:08Things are sort of falling apart around that. So it sounds like the musical equivalent of something coming to an end after the words have talked about something coming to an end. We didn't have long. I feel like it works really nicely as an ending. But from my perspective now, being an older person, I would generally now like finish a track with drums and things so that a DJ can mix out of the record into something else. I feel like I'm kind of more encumbered by the constraints of genre now, now that I understand

24:40and know more about making music. So it's nice to just think back to being a person that really didn't really like know that much about those things and wasn't really thinking about those constraints. I can remember hearing it in a club in Sweden, walking through a really busy dance floor and the song was playing. And that's my only time I think I've ever heard it in a club. And it felt, A, really exciting to hear it. And B, I remember thinking we made a song that isn't exactly like most club music, but it still managed to get played.

25:16So I sometimes feel like we kind of got away with something because it doesn't sound like other dance tracks. It sounds a bit more gentle. So it's nice that it could sometimes get played in nightclubs. And it's probably the song that people have emotionally like connected with the most out of any song that we've written. Just the other day we were playing it in Sydney at the Sydney Opera House and I could see somebody really actually crying during the song and looking pretty distraught.

25:47And I don't know what it was that they'd gone through, but what the song makes you think about that's beyond the song, that's your own experiences. But there's an emotional core to it that I think is quite real. And now, here's Boy From School by Hot Chip in its entirety.

Full Song Playback

26:29Boy From School by Hot Chip in its entirety

26:59Boy From School by Hot Chip in its entirety

27:29Boy From School by Hot Chip in its entirety.

27:59We tried, but we didn't have long We tried, but we don't belong Now I beg you on the street Heartlessly breaking rules we need

28:34Lives are found and lives are lost Say goodbye to nothing, everything comes Now I find you on the street Breaking rules hopelessly we need

29:05Lives are found and lives are lost Say goodbye to everything, nothing comes We tried, but we didn't have long We tried, but we don't belong

29:35We tried, but we didn't have long We tried, but we don't belong We tried, but we don't belong

30:21I got, I got lost He said this was the way back I got, I got lost He said this was the way back I got, I got lost He said this was the way back We tried, but we didn't have long

31:04We tried, but we don't belong We tried, but we didn't have long We tried, but we don't belong

31:41Visit songexploder.net to learn more You'll find links to buy or stream Boy From School And you can watch the music video This episode was produced by me, Craig Ely, Mary Dolan, and Kathleen Smith With production assistance from Tiger Biscuit The episode artwork is by Carlos Lerma And I made the show's theme music and logo Song Exploder is a proud member of Radiotopia from PRX A network of independent, listener-supported, artist-owned podcasts

32:13You can learn more about our shows at radiotopia.fm And if you'd like to hear more from me, you can subscribe to my newsletter You can find a link to it on the Song Exploder website You can also get a Song Exploder shirt at songexploder.net slash shirt I'm Rishi Keish Hirwe Thanks for listening Radiotopia From PRX

32:46Thanks so much to Booking.com for sponsoring Song Exploder When I'm traveling, I always check Booking.com first Because they have a pet-friendly filter on the site So I can make sure that my dogs are welcome if I need to bring them with me And Booking.com also makes it super easy to find a place to stay that's right on the beach Or really close to museums Or whatever you might be looking for There are all kinds of ways to find the perfect stay So find exactly what you're booking for At Booking.com Booking.yeah Book today, on the site, or in the app

33:17I wanted to tell you about a big year-long series from this day A history podcast here at Radiotopia 2026 is America's 250th birthday And over at this day, they are in the middle of a big series called 50 Weeks That Shaped America They're doing deep dives every week on the stories from 250 years of U.S. history That brought us to this very complicated moment Some of them are new perspectives on huge moments like the Civil War or Prohibition And others are less discussed stories that still had a massive impact

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