00:00A lot of people have thought that the song is literally about drinking whiskey, but it's so
00:04much more than that. I think it's about a person who everybody feels comfortable around and who
00:10feels like they can be themselves and they can have fun. People do their dry January and then,
00:15you know, they're hitting me up after being like, let's meet Arooj and let's have a good time. And
00:19I'm just like, hey, you know, maybe I am also chilling right now. Like I'm not always available
00:23to be the party person, but I am. I am the partier still. I don't know how long it'll last, but yeah,
00:29I am the fun person who allows everybody to be themselves. And I like that. I think that's
00:35really special. Whenever anybody's hanging out with me, they're having a really, really good time.
00:46Whiskey is from my latest album, Night Rain, which as of just a few weeks ago is double
00:54Grammy nominated. This album feels very original, very personal to me. I'm talking
00:59about how I feel and the things that I've experienced in my life and I'm talking about
01:02them in English. So it's also you can instantly understand what I'm saying, which is a vulnerability
01:07that I am not always a part of. And it's a great, great feeling to see that the industry and the
01:14peers and everybody are super down for it. I wrote the song in college and then I remembered it last
01:20year. And I was like, that first line was that came back to me and I was like, let me look for
01:24that song. And when I found it and I played the rest of it, I was like, oh, this is all pretty
01:28terrible except for the whiskey line. So then I wrote new lyrics.
01:32Your head gets heavy and rests on my shoulder because you drink too much whiskey when you're
01:41with me. Your head gets heavy and rests on my shoulder because you drink too much whiskey
01:52when you're with me. It felt a little more literal when I wrote that first line because
01:59maybe it had happened with someone that I was hanging out with. You could just see them kind
02:03of falling in love with me. It's just a kind of metaphor for how someone can make you feel this
02:08way and you can feel like you can rely on them when you're getting carried away a bit.
02:13Your head gets heavy and it rests on my shoulder. It's such a beautiful visual in a way. You know,
02:18it's kind of sweet. It shows that there's an intimacy happening in the midst of a chaotic,
02:22noisy establishment. I think it's really funny right now, even that like my shoulder at this
02:27current moment looks like it could be like a king-sized bed. So you can definitely rest
02:32your head on my king-sized bed shoulder right now. I think I'm ready to give in to your beauty
02:42and let you fall in love with me. I think I'm ready to give in to your beauty and let you
02:55fall in love with me. It implies that something clandestine is happening, something that shouldn't
03:01be happening is happening between us. I know that maybe I shouldn't be doing this and so I'm not
03:06letting you fall in love with me. I'm not giving in to your beauty. I'm not fully giving you the
03:12permission to like me. And then it also implies this level of confidence that the singer has.
03:17Once I'm ready to give in to your beauty, I know that you'll fall in love with me as well. I'm just
03:23holding back. And so you're not falling in love with me. But once I open up, it's done. It's over,
03:29you know, it's happening. We'll fade into the night on waves of your perfume.
03:42We'll fade into the night. It was really funny because it was like the thing that was coming
03:46to me. And then in the studio too, we were trying to get that musical break moment happen correctly.
03:51And we kept sort of messing it up a bit. And at one point I was just in the studio, like guys,
03:55like I'm saying, we'll fade into the night. So just play the chord when I say night. And they
04:00were like, well, you're also singing the most cliched and overused lyric in the entire history
04:05of music. We'll fade into the night. I was like, yeah, okay, sure. Yeah. So then I went into this
04:10great conundrum of like, I am using the most overused phrase in music. We made up for it in
04:16how we played it musically. And then like the follow-up lines, which are, we'll fade into the
04:21night on waves of your perfume. That very subtle idea that the person has turned around and you
04:26catch a wave of their perfume. It's almost like a secret. It's like a very little thing that happens
04:32that has a really bigger impact. I'm drunk and you're insane. Tell me how we will get home.
04:40To rely on someone to get home, you know, is a beautiful thing when you're out. So now at this
04:45point, this person could even be just like a friend, especially with, I think women it's like
04:50in my whole life, it's like, you call me when you get home. So I wanted to put that sort of aspect
04:55of safety and care and friendship between two women in there. Like, how are we going to get
05:00home if we're both kind of out of it? And then I was reading a book of poetry translated into
05:06English, a book of Rumi poems. And there was this line in there, I'm drunk, you're insane. And I was
05:11like, I don't really like calling somebody insane, but this is perfect. I'm going to, I'm doing it.
05:41After we're kind of trying to figure out how to get home, there's this beautiful instrumental
06:04section that tries to take you into the, the dreamy, loose, swaying element of this story.
06:14And then it kind of drops you out into the outro, almost like into the alley that we are going to
06:19use to walk home. And that alleyway is full of the repeated lines of we'll fade into the night
06:25because we're literally actually now going. And there I layered my vocals, I think three or four
06:31times saying, we'll fade into the night. I'm singing it differently so that it feels kind
06:35of like a conversation now with the night. And maybe it's just me now, you know, and the person
06:40has gone on their way to get home. And I'm just sort of stumbling and finding my way and still
06:45thinking about the evening and its beautiful parts. And I'm now in my own struggling for my
06:51life to get home, still thinking about the perfume, thinking about the person. I think those many
06:56layered vocals represent like my mind and its wavering and its thoughts because that's so much
07:01information happening sort of aesthetically. I just kept repeating the lyrics so that it would
07:05be simple to convey and not give even more information, which I love. And then to me,
07:10it feels like I'm singing a weird merger of like Billie Holiday and Sade and myself there. I can
07:18really see some of those choices and influences happening there in the way that I'm delivering
07:23the line. Everybody's drinking tequila now because it's the cleaner thing to do and we're
07:29all getting older. I don't know. I still drink whiskey. It's like, they're like, oh, there's
07:32no hangover. I just drink more expensive whiskey now and get less of a hangover. But yeah, everybody's
07:38on the mezcal tequila train. Honestly, actually, it's the opposite for me because I drank a lot
07:43of weird tequila in college. I cannot drink tequila. It feels like that is the non-adult drink. You guys
07:49drink the tequila and are acting completely insane after the third one. And I'm on my,
07:54I'm sipping my whiskey like an elegant person. OK, like somebody who has lived. So I don't know
07:59about this theory that tequila is the safer and more stable thing to drink. It's hard to
08:07restrain when people have an alluring personality and this magnetic quality to them. And they're
08:13just amazing. Your heart is literally going towards them like there's this soulful celestial
08:19connection that happens. But like physical beauty, it's like I feel like I can control that because
08:23then I just don't look at you too much. It's really easy. Just don't look because you'll look
08:27it's like, my God, you're so gorgeous, you know? And so then I just kind of look at the floor a lot
08:32so I can control the physical, not giving into your beauty, but it's very difficult to not give
08:38in to somebody's soul beauty.
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