[music]

David Furst: This is All Of It. I'm David Furst filling in for Alison Stewart. Here are some new music that you might not be able to get out of your head.

[MUSIC - Juliana Hatfield: Can't Get It Out of My Head]

Midnight on the water

I saw the ocean's daughter

Walking on a wave, she came

Staring as she called my name

And I can't get it out of my head

No, I can't get it out of my head

Now my old world is gone for dead

'Cause I can't get it out of my head

David Furst: That's our next guest, singer-songwriter, Juliana Hatfield, performing Can't Get It Out of My Head, originally by the Electric Light Orchestra, way better known as ELO. The song comes from Hatfield's latest album accurately titled Juliana Hatfield Sings ELO. It's Hatfield's third covers album, a practice that she started in 2018 with Juliana Hatfield Sings Olivia Newton-John and followed up with Juliana Hatfield Sings The Police. She's going to be performing at City Winery coming up in late January, but she joins us right now for an All Of It Listening Party. Welcome to All Of It, Juliana Hatfield.

Juliana Hatfield: Hi, how are you? How is everyone?

David Furst: Great, and it's a treat to have you with us. This is your third covers album after, as I mentioned, Olivia Newton-John in 2018, The Police in 2019. You've also been recording lots of your own material during all of that time, but what got you into this covers career, almost 30 years into your recording career?

Juliana Hatfield: I think like a lot of artists who write, I've always been-- once in a while I'll play a cover live or I would record a cover live, and I think it's just fun and interesting to explore other people's music. When I decided to make the whole first album of covers, which was Olivia Newton-John, I think I was just thinking about her a lot because I'd loved her all of my life and she had been on this journey of cancer coming back, and then going away and coming back, and her cancer came back. I was thinking about her a lot.

I saw that she was coming to play on tour, and a friend of mine went to go see her. It was the first time I'd ever seen her on tour, and that was wonderful. Then I was just listening to all her music again, and at that moment, I thought that it would be a great project for me to pay tribute to my lifelong love for her at that moment. It was the first and possibly last concert that I might ever get to see of hers. I just had Olivia on the brain, and that's how the first one happened. It ended up being very fulfilling for me.

David Furst: That's really interesting. Did you always picture it turning into a series, or it really didn't start that way?

Juliana Hatfield: No, I never thought of it. The first album, the Olivia album, I wasn't thinking past that at all. I just wanted to do that as well as I could. Then, like I said, it was so fulfilling, very challenging, and yet, fulfilling, and it seemed not to piss anyone off. I think a lot of her fans were cool with it and even maybe liked it, and I think that some people who were not fans of hers liked my versions, so it's just all around. It was a great experience for me. Then after that, I made another album of originals of mine. Then I wanted to do covers again and then I decided The Police would be good.

Then it just became something, I want to keep doing it. I'll make an album of originals in between, and that seems to be the pattern now, covers, originals, covers, originals.

David Furst: Why ELO this time? You've crossed that Xanadu bridge from Olivia Newton-John to ELO, they both appear on that soundtrack, of course.

Juliana Hatfield: Yes, and I recorded the song Xanadu for the Olivia Newton-John record. As you know, ELO is backing Olivia Newton-John on that particular song, Xanadu. At the time I was recording it, I wasn't really thinking ahead to recording any ELO proper. I was just thinking, "This is such a great song, and ELO is amazing, and this song is amazing." Then I did The Police album. Then I was planning on doing REM. I keep talking about this publicly, so I don't know if I should because I ended up not doing the REM album.

I was thinking of it, and I was researching, and I was planning and choosing songs, and then I decided REM is a little bit too daunting at this moment for me.

There's such a deep, wide breadth, width of material that I was not familiar with. I'm very familiar with the first half of their discography, and then there's a lot of blank spots later, so I was going to have to do a lot of listening. Anyway, the long story shorter is that when I became overwhelmed with the idea of REM at that moment, I thought, "ELO, why not ELO?" It really was a whim. It's just the idea popped into my head.

David Furst: I love it. I'm interested to hear what you wanted to do with the ELO's music, the chief singer-songwriter, guitarist, architect of ELO is Jeff Lynne, and his sound is so identifiable. This layered mix of vocal harmonies, synthesizers, and strings just filled with pop hooks. Can you talk about what you wanted to do with these songs?

Juliana Hatfield: I'm not very conceptual. I tend to just dive into things without thinking too much. I'm very intuitive in that way. I think that's the only way I would really have the guts to take on projects like this because if I really thought about-- in the beginning, if I thought about the genius of Jeff Lynne's production techniques and all of the instrumentation, if I was thinking about that initially, I think it would be too scary and overwhelming to dive in. I'm thinking about the hooks that you mentioned. I think about all the wonderful hooks and all the wonderful harmonies.

The material is so strong, and that gives me the confidence that I will be able to make something of my own out of it. If the songwriting weren't there underneath all the production, jazz, I wouldn't have anything to work with. I just take the hooks and the melodies, that's what I start with. Then I break it down. I play a song on acoustic guitar, and I sing it a bunch of times, just me and an acoustic guitar, and I come up with my own feel a little bit, and the melodies may change a little bit as I sing them over and over again. It's just about trying to become comfortable and until the songs start to feel like my own in a way, and then I go from there.

David Furst: Let's listen to a little bit of another song. This is an absolute ELO classic. This is a Telephone Line.

[MUSIC - Juliana Hatfield: Telephone Line]

Hello, how are you?

Have you been alright

Through all those lonely, lonely, lonely, lonely

Lonely nights?

That's what I'd say

I'd tell you everything

If you'd pick up that telephone

Yeah, yeah, yeah

Hey, how ya feelin'?

David Furst: Oh, I just want to play the whole thing. [laughs] Just talking about the choice at the very beginning, I love how you synced up the old phone is off the hook sound perfectly with the rhythm of the song at the top. That's a detail not even Jeff Lynne took advantage of in the original.

Juliana Hatfield: I have to give credit to the guy who mixed the songs, Pat DiCenso. I recorded that. I have a landline still. That is the sound of my childhood with this music. I was kind of going back to my childhood. I didn't know how to sync it up, so I told Pat to sync it up and he did that for me.

David Furst: That's a great detail. We'll hear more of it as we're playing more music, but you absolutely nail all of these layered, airtight, Jeff Lynne harmonies and it just sounds like pure fun, but how challenging was that to sort out and to sing and perform?

Juliana Hatfield: I have to say, I don't think I'm copying exactly all of his particular vocal harmony lines. I'm taking and choosing, I'm using some of his. I did this on all his songs, I take some of his harmonies, but then I change them around a little bit to suit my own vocal range and just my whims again. Sorry, I forget the rest of your question.

David Furst: That's perfectly okay, the harmonies are so great throughout this collection.

Juliana Hatfield: Oh yes, and it was fun, it's so much fun.

David Furst: Oh, that's good to hear.

Juliana Hatfield: I feel like that's my specialty is vocal harmonies. My dream job would be providing vocal harmonies for people. I would love to travel around and just stack vocal harmonies on top of their lead vocals. It's fun, but it's also challenging in the way that a puzzle or a math problem is challenging because once you have two or three vocal harmonies, adding more after that, it becomes a real puzzle. Like, "How do I find notes that aren't there yet, and how do I fit them in with what's already there?"

David Furst: We're speaking with Juliana Hatfield here on All Of It on WNYC. You mentioned the back-and-forth that you have going on, right? Between albums of original material and these covers albums. Is there something therapeutic about playing and singing these songs like the covers? Is this on some level a way to recharge between your albums of original material? You've been tackling some tough topics since the election of Donald Trump in 2016, your albums Pussycat, Weird, and Blood. Each one was followed by one of these covers projects.

Juliana Hatfield: Yes, and all three of those albums they're pretty dark. Yes, doing the covers albums in between my own dark albums, it's dark thematically. It is a kind of escapism for me to go into these songs from my youth that gave me so much joy and pleasure when I was growing up and listening to the AM radio. All that stuff still thrills me. Whenever I listen to Olivia Newton-John or ELO, it has the same spark for me like nothing is lost for me. It's all still so wonderful. It's escaping from the realities of life, I think.

Whenever I make a covers album, it's also very much a big challenge for me. It's not easy. One wants to respect the original, I don't want to make a mockery of anything. Then you also want to make something new out of it, but you want to be trying so hard that it sounds inauthentic. I want it to feel like my own. It's definitely challenging, but it's also a wonderful escape from the realities of adult life.

David Furst: Then you have to pick which songs you're going to cover. There's only a limited number. There are 10 songs on this album. You've got some of the big hits from ELO's heyday, like Don't Bring Me Down, Can't Get It Out of My Head, Telephone Line. You've also got some deeper cuts like Blue Bird is Dead, songs from lesser-known albums like Time and Secret Messages. I want to play a little bit of this one. This is one of the deeper cuts, Ordinary Dream from the fantastic 2001 album, Zoom. This is your take.

[MUSIC - Juliana Hatfield: Ordinary Dream]

I couldn't really understand at all

The writing on the wall

From you to me

A jigsaw puzzle of a twisted tale

That set its lonely sail

From you to me

'Cause I tried to get the message

But it's not understood

Wide apart and so far away

It mattered at the start until I realized instead

I'm flying in a troubled sky

Watching you as you go by

In an ordinary dream

I'm sailing on a troubled sea

Watching you as you watch me

In an ordinary dreaming

David Furst: That's just a little bit of Ordinary Dream, Juliana Hatfield's take. Is that one of the real pleasures of getting to do an album like this, that you could introduce people to a song like that that perhaps slipped through the cracks?

Juliana Hatfield: Yes, and I really hope that people will check out the ELO version of that song in that album, Zoom, because it's such a wonderful song. I was completely unaware of this album, Zoom, until I started working on my album of ELO songs. I discovered all these albums that I didn't know, like albums from this millennium, and from the '80s, the stuff that I never listen to. It's so great to know that Jeff Lynne hasn't lost any of his musical power. He's still totally on top of his game.

David Furst Oh, man. Zoom is just packed.

Juliana Hatfield: Yes, it's great.

David Furst: Juliana, I have to read you this. We just got a text. This is from Helen in New Jersey saying, "Just wanted you to know that the name of that off-the-hook sound--" Helen says, "I worked for the telephone company for years it's called the howler tone," so there you go.

Juliana Hatfield: Howler tone?

David Furst: [laughs] I can't verify.

Juliana Hatfield: Okay.

David Furst: Helen says it's called the howler tone, so now we know. That sounds like a potential future song name for you.

Juliana Hatfield: Yes, howler tone, that's great to know. I'm glad. Thank you.

David Furst: Thank you for that, Helen. Let's play a little back and forth right now, very quickly, I think we have time for this. Let's listen to a little bit of one of ELO's really big signature hits. This is their take, the original version of Don't Bring Me Down.

[MUSIC - ELO: Don't Bring Me Down]

You got me runnin', goin' out of my mind

You got me thinkin' that I'm wastin' my time

Don't bring me down

No, no, no, no, no

Ooh, ooh-hoo

David Furst: Let's hear a Juliana Hatfield's version from Juliana Hatfield Sings ELO.

[MUSIC - Juliana Hatfield: Don't Bring Me Down]

You got me running, going out of my mind

You got me thinking that I'm wasting my time

Don't bring me down

No, no, no, no, no

Ooh, ooh-hoo

I'll tell you what's wrong before I get off the floor

Don't bring me down

David Furst: Jul, I'd love to hear some of your thoughts about how you wanted to tackle this song. Just to talk a little bit about Jeff Lynne, the songwriter. We talked about how his sounds are so recognizable. There's a certain sound. He's been a big producer as well for Tom Petty, George Harrison, Regina Spektor, Dave Edmunds, Traveling Wilburys. There's a certain Jeff Lynne signature sound. What do you think the magic is of Jeff Lynne as a songwriter?

Juliana Hatfield: Part of it, for me, is just the sound of his voice. It's such iconic. It's more simple than that. It's really just like something in his voice really goes to some spot in me that makes so much sense. It's like a drug or something, a voice that hits me like the best drug in the world. Not that I've ever taken many drugs. It's something you can really put your finger on why it feels so good, but his voice has that effect on me like, "God, I love that voice." When he stacks them in harmony, it's just that much more of the drug. It's so great. He's just like, he has a knack. He has a knack for writing these songs that are so well-constructed and yet they seem so simple and they're not overworked.

I know people think of him as this genius in the studio, but I think that there's a lightness to a breeziness to the feel of a lot of his stuff that I think it's deceptively-- I think it seems like maybe it's more complicated than it really is. I think that he doesn't do a billion takes of everything. I feel like a lot of it has a lightness that maybe means there were not a ton of takes and it's fresh-sounding.

David Furst: I have so many more questions I want to ask you, but just as we wrap up, what's next for you? An album of new material then? What do you think? Another covers album? What might we get? Maybe that REM collection?

Juliana Hatfield: It's possible. I am working on an album of originals right now, so that's what I'm focusing on. When that's done, I will get to work on another covers album. I keep talking about REM. I probably shouldn't because if I end up not doing it, I'll just be--

David Furst: You're setting yourself up here.

Juliana Hatfield: I'll be the girl who cried REM. Cried wolf. I don't know.

David Furst: The girl who cried REM. Luckily, we have the brand new album, Juliana Hatfield Sings ELO. This is real, and you're going to be coming to City Winery here in New York in January. You're going to be there on January 28th. As we wrap up today, let's hear some more music from your new album, Juliana Hatfield Sings ELO. Thank you so much for joining us today on All Of It.

Juliana Hatfield: It was great to be here. Thank you.

[MUSIC - Juliana Hatfield: Strange Magic]

You're sailin' softly through the sun

In a broken Stone Age dawn

 

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