We caught up DJWS to dive into the creative climate that birthed 'Born This Way,' the influences and emotions that drove the record's sound and ultimately, its musical legacy as a part of pop culture history.
Born This Way
For me, the way they kind of kicked off was, and I'll try to be brief with this part of the story, but I met Matthew Williams when I was deejaying at a really small club in LA on Sunday night. But I was being really weird because it was during the open format time [at clubs] when it was really popular among everybody in LA and I was playing open format everywhere else.
and she had just started to work with him on coagulating ideas and producing some records. That was happening maybe two weeks before she was coming to Chicago, which was where I was at the time and then she came and we worked on three songs:"Americano,""Bad Kids" and I want to say"Electric Chapel." Those were the first three to be kind of kicked off in Chicago as ideas. And then she was like,"Oh, these are really cool.
"Born This Way" as a track, I think it spent the most time working on. I probably have 125 different versions and I'm not even exaggerating. So, she had the ability to go and say"Listen, this is what I think is going to change people. I did this song. I'm not going to give you another one of those songs like that, I'm going to create something that's going to change the trajectory of culture." To have the people that are sitting with their green visors and their little typewriter say,"all right, cool" is a big deal, like a monster, monster, monster, big deal for them to agree to that.
First of all, I feel fucking old. When somebody says something is 10 years old, it's like,"What the fuck are you talking about? Didn't I finish that like three weeks ago?" The second thing is that a couple of things stick out to me.