Benny Blanco, Emily Warren and Tricky Stewart Talk Songwriting on ‘Deep Hidden Meaning Radio with Nile Rodgers’

Singer/songwriter Nile Rodgers is going behind the songs with Benny Blanco, Emily Warren and Tricky Stewart on the latest episode of Deep Hidden Meaning Radio with Nile Rodgers, airing April 3 on Apple Music 1.

“Another incredible episode! You will get to hear the backstories of hits like Ed Sheeran’s ‘Castle On The Hill,’ Dua Lipa’s ‘Don’t Start Now’ and Rihanna’s ‘Umbrella,’ Rodgers tells American Songwriter. “And, it’s always fun to hear how most of these iconic hit songs reflect how the unexpected usually generates the greatest songs…”

American Songwriter is sharing a sneak peek at the latest episode in which Blanco shares the story behind his collaborations with Ed Sheeran on Justin Bieber’s “Love Yourself.”

“Ed [Sheeran] is one of those dudes where music just literally falls out of him and you’ve got to be there to catch it. My biggest role in Ed is playing Air Traffic Control and also being like, ‘That’s too much, let’s strip this back.’ We were writing a song called ‘Love Yourself’ for Justin Bieber, it’s actually on film, us writing this song,” Blanco shares. “I was like, ‘What’s going on with your life?’ and he was like, ‘Oh you know, I don’t want to write about that stuff. I don’t want to give these girls the pleasure of knowing that the song’s about them.’ And I’d just broken up with someone too and I was like, ‘Yeah, I know what you’re saying,’ and then I was like, ‘Well, what if we write a song about not wanting to write a song about being in love,’ so then the first line he just goes, [sings] I don’t wanna write a song…” 

Emily Warren reveals how label execs wanted her and her co-writer to rewrite Dua Lipa’s hit “New Rules.”

“My friend Caroline who I was just talking about, who I’ve done a lot of the Dua stuff with, it was the first time we ever met and she was basically in this really bad relationship but she couldn’t resist, she couldn’t find it in herself to actually end it, they’d broken up a million times and gotten back together a million times,” reveals Warren. “And we had just met for the first time in this session and she was telling me all this and we were like, ‘Why don’t we write this song that will make you not do it again, so that if you’re ever tempted or ever in a moment of weakness you can put this song on and you’ll do the right thing’ And we wrote ‘New Rules’ that day. But the extra layer of this story that’s crazy is basically we had written it at a camp and the A&R’s came in and are like, ‘There’s not really a chorus here. If you guys want to take another crack at it, cool but as it is, it’s not really doing it.’ And we were all fried, it was the end of the night and we were like, ‘Forget it, let’s just leave it.’ And it’s how the song is right now. [laughs] We were like. ‘Let’s just call it,’ we went home. Every song has a story like that, right?

And Tricky Stewart shares with Nile how he nearly threw out Beyoncé’s “Single Ladies.”

I’m thinking to myself, ‘This beat’s a little awkward, I don’t know.’ I take the MPC [drum machine] and I’m about to go to the next track and Dream’s like, ‘Yo, what are you doing?’ I was like, ‘I’m just going to go to another one.’ He was like, ‘Man, if you don’t start playing with me, I’ve got the whole song in my head. Turn on the mic, Trick.’ He was like, ‘Turn on the mic, you don’t know what you’re doing today.’ And then he goes in behind the mic, and once again, like, that magic, he wrote that song in 10, 15 minutes. I would say he’s the genius behind making sure I didn’t throw that beat in the trash.“

Tune in and listen to the full episode for free on Saturday (April 3) at 8am LA / 11am NY / 4pm London at apple.co/_DHMRadio