The Tame Impala masterpiece recorded in just 15 minutes
If you’re a songwriter or musician, having writer’s block must be the worst feeling in the world. There’s so much pressure from fans, label executives, and even friends and family for you to produce gold, and you just have… nothing. It’s a heavy load to bear. For Tame Impala’s Kevin Parker, this is an all too familiar problem as he often isolates himself completely from the world during the writing process in order to be totally alone with his creativity – so you’d assume that a lot of thought, as well as a good dose of the old writer’s block, might have been at play while producing their biggest hit, ‘The Less I Know the Better’. Diamonds form under pressure, right?
Well, in this case, not exactly. Contrary to Parker’s usual protracted and laborious writing process, the bones of the smash hit were formed in a little over 15 minutes. A flash of inspiration indeed. Parker explained: “It all just came from this demo that I recorded. I don’t know if I thought of the vocal melody or the bass riff first – you know, the bass rift that starts the song, but I just recorded in about 15 minutes.”
But he knew he had to strike while the iron was hot. “I just had the idea – I was like, ‘I got to record this before I forget it’. [It was only] a minute long or something, [but] that ended up being just the final version.”
A musician’s intuition must just sense when something’s already good because, unlike Parker’s normal handling of material, he knew not to touch the skeleton of the track anymore. But he was right because that bass line became arguably the most recognisable part of the song and what Mark Ronson describes as “one of the most iconic bass lines of the past 20 years”.
You might be wondering why Ronson suddenly appears in the fray, but it was because Parker had initially sold him ‘The Less I Know the Better’ as, although he loved it, he deemed it too much of a pop sound against Tame Impala’s typical psychedelic rock taste. It was all set to feature on Ronson’s next album – that was, however, until Parker realised he had made a mistake in giving the song away and asked his DJ friend for it back. Thankfully, Ronson said yes.
With ‘The Less I Know the Better’ now safely back in the hands of its creator, Parker set about developing its vocal. That, admittedly, took a bit longer than just 15 minutes, with over 1000 fragments of recordings being stitched together to produce the final song in the end. However, having indulged himself in the pop track, Palmer conceded that the lyrics were easier to write than normal, which was at least one benefit.
But no one could have predicted the heights that the Tame Impala masterpiece would then reach. It has now surpassed over one billion global streams and is by far and away the collective’s greatest hit, introducing them to a new army of adoring worldwide fans and massive sellout gigs. Thank God Kevin Parker never let Mark Ronson go through with the deal – you can bet all that you have that he’s thanked his lucky stars on every night since for that one as well.
