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Lisa Loeb has the mind of a student — a straight-A, Grammy-winning student. As we talk, she moves between earnest curiosity and a dogged determination to succeed, and it’s clear to me that Lisa’s robust musical career (extending way beyond her hit song “Stay (I Missed You)”) has a lot to do with how hard she fought to open the doors that were closed on her. From less than ideal musical collaborations to the iffy vicissitudes of press, Lisa knows conflict when she sees it. And while she doesn’t necessarily embrace these challenges, she knows she learns a hell of a lot once she reaches the other side.

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Transcript

SPEAKERS

David Duchovny, Lisa Loeb

David Duchovny  00:00

Speaking with Lisa Loeb today. I met Lisa in the mid 90s at a Lilith fair concert, and Lisa was represented by the same business manager as me, so I introduced myself. Carrie Malcolm is the woman’s name, and we are both still with her. Carrie, that is, and I was having a cover article written about me for GQ magazine. And it was, it was a weekend long conversation I was having with a journalist. First of all, I can’t believe that I ever spent three days talking to somebody for an article. And I remember we went bike riding, you know, we had, we had meals. She came to Lilith with me, and then I invited Lisa out to dinner that night, just in a friendly way, and with the journalist who was still interviewing me. And then the article came out, and it implied that either Lisa liked me or I liked Lisa in a way that was deeper than was true at that moment. And the slant was that, in some ways, I get what I want. It was like David Duchovny gets what he wants. I really should reread it to get it right, but I don’t want to, because it was hurtful. And my first response was, oh, I’ve got to apologize to Lisa, because I’ve exposed, you know her in an untrue fashion here, and she should know that I don’t condone the way this has been portrayed. And it was embarrassing to me, because for some reason I was so innocent as to feel like, well, if I’m just myself in front of this journalist, she’ll get it, and she’s not going to try and make it into a story. And it’s, it’s interesting to go into the discussion with Lisa, because we do get to it at some point in the conversation where she has, I don’t know if you call them regrets, but she has misgivings about the way she was first a thing, a public thing from her big single stay. And that’s something that we talk about, you know, being beholden to as some kind of public or public consumption, being an image you want to separate from the image of yourself because you want to keep your privacy. You know you have to be apprehended and known in a way that feels real to you, but also not so real that it’s an invasion of your entire life. And I don’t know if that that distinction even exists anymore. So this is from 30 years ago, and this was a struggle that I was having, and a struggle that Lisa had, which I didn’t know until we got to talk about it today.

 

David Duchovny  02:55

I’m David Duchovny, and this is Fail Better, a show where failure, not success, shapes who we are. Lisa Loeb is a singer songwriter, musician, author and actress. You probably remember her iconic number one hit single stay I missed you from the 90s. You might also recognize her from her signature eyeglasses. Though she’s had a complicated relationship with her appearance being the focus. Lisa notably became the first pop artist to top the US charts before being signed to any record label. Her song even went gold just a few months after its release. Her new album, that’s what it’s all about with the hollow trees is out now. Lisa continues to make art and music her life, and I was very excited to reconnect with her all these years later. So here’s that conversation with Lisa Loeb.

 

David Duchovny  03:48

Have you been playing?

 

Lisa Loeb  03:49

Yes, where was I the other day someplace. I was on the road someplace.

 

David Duchovny  03:54

Yeah, I’m so happy that someone else in the world doesn’t know where they were.

 

Lisa Loeb  03:58

I don’t,

 

David Duchovny  04:00

Yeah.

 

Lisa Loeb  04:01

Oh, I know I was in Ohio. Okay, when we got to Ohio, we realized that my guitar wasn’t with us. The tour manager inadvertently left it leaning up against a hotel in Indianapolis downtown, and so they called the hotel, they got the security camera. They saw a guy look at the guitar, opening up the case and be like, oh, it’s a guitar. And he just put it on and walked off with it. And we posted on social media a picture of the guitar and the case, which is a very unusual guitar case, and randomly, like a guy, a businessman, who had a bar downtown, a bar restaurant called O’Reilly’s, happened to see a guy walking down the street carrying my guitar. It was a restaurant nearby, near the hotel. And then he went out and he talked to the guy, and he said, Hey, you know, do you mind giving me the guitar? And he got the guitar back, and he said, Yeah, I think he posted just generally on, I still call it Twitter, saying, I think I’ve got the guitar. And so I found his restaurant, and I called and we connected, and he had the guitar.

 

David Duchovny  04:59

Is that? The guitar in the background there, that’s the guitar.

 

Lisa Loeb  05:02

It’s a guitar I got in like, 1989 and it actually means a lot to me. On one hand, I’m like, it’s just a guitar. Nobody died. I’ve got closets full of guitars. But on the other hand, this is a really special guitar to me. And I had a weird, like, anthropomorphication, sure, sure, of the guitar all of a sudden when I was just like, it’s fine. It’s a guitar. I’ve had it forever, you know, I’ve got a backup guitar. I’ve got so many guitars, maybe it’ll force me to play other guitars, I don’t know. And, and then all of a sudden, I was like, oh, it’s like a sad guitar sitting in a case like, you know, like a dusty old guitar sitting on the streets of Indianapolis, sad and lonely, wondering where [..]

 

David Duchovny  05:41

Story, it’s like Toy Story now.

 

Lisa Loeb  05:44

Totally and so I was like, Oh my God, that’s sad. And I was like, You know what? The guitar does mean a lot to me. I do. I do like items. I’m a I like stuff.

 

David Duchovny  05:52

But and I believe it’s real. I believe that you impart a certain kind of humanity to the wood over time. And even if it’s not true, it should be true, and it’s true for us, you know? So I think, there is you on that guitar, in that guitar, and there is the guitar too. I don’t want to get too poetic about it, but I get it. I get the loss, yeah, and.

 

Lisa Loeb  06:13

It has meaning. I mean, I think less about my own impact on the guitar and more just my memories associated with the guitar, it’s funny, my whole desk in front of me is just covered with all this, all these memories, and I’m just kind of obsessed with trying to figure out a way to have them in a place where I can actually look at them and interact with them instead of just knowing they’re there.

 

David Duchovny  06:32

Do you think they they feed you in some way, or is it just, is it just an exercise in memory? Or where was I last week? You know?

 

Lisa Loeb  06:39

Yeah, well, there’s that too, like this. I’ve got, I’ve got this toy from the 70s. I just took a couple pieces. But a I love it’s, it’s these two little interlocking discs. They’re like plexiglass or not. What does that call like a four plastic? Yeah, and one’s red. I love looking through red clear plastic. It’s one of my favorite things. And then the other one’s green, and they’re interlocking toys. And I just immediately transported to a feeling of being in the early 70s, and, like, I don’t know, the safety and imagination and like, being in a zone when you’re playing when you’re a kid, you know. Anyway, this cassette tape.

 

David Duchovny  07:18

Yeah, oh, it’s very given. Barbra Streisand.

 

Lisa Loeb  07:21

Yeah, I am a woman in love, but like, you are wearing sunscreen for the first time when it was created in that late 70s, and you are listening to some somebody’s mom’s radio, and everything is beige, and everything’s going to be okay.

 

David Duchovny  07:38

So these things, they kind of, they open up doors for you, into your past and into some kind of creative spaces. I think what I’m hearing, when you write songs, do you feel like you like you want to employ the other senses, you know,  do you want to you want to smell something?

 

Lisa Loeb  07:55

Oh, for sure. I mean, I’m a, I’m a product of the of school, you know, studying really hard in school and them pounding that concept into my brain of make sure you use all your senses, or like, be aware of all your senses to the point where it’s a distraction, you know.

 

David Duchovny  08:12

Wait, who said that? Nobody told me that I went to school too. Nobody told me to use all my senses. They told me to use my intellect. You know, I wish they’d said, be physical.

 

Lisa Loeb  08:21

I think they told us to find the right answer. Is what they told us, like there was some right answer out there that you’re always trying to find.

 

David Duchovny  08:28

Right, well, I think, as a creator, you know, the sense is kind of short circuit the rational brain, you know, so they can be kind of ways that you can get into a place that you want to write from, rather than, Oh, I’m gonna write what’s in the headlines, or whatever, this very rational thought I had this morning.

 

Lisa Loeb  08:46

Oh, yeah, you have to get there, though. Like I when I write. I, God, I hated writing growing up so much. There was so much pressure on it to do it right. Writing, what? Writing, anything, writing papers, writing, whatever we had to do in school. It just was the worst. It was like.

 

David Duchovny  09:03

Were you a good student?

 

Lisa Loeb  09:03

You know, I was a very good student, but I was also very stressed out and always trying to find the right answer, because that’s what I thought you were supposed to do. And I see some people, like my daughter’s at a school where it’s and it’s also generational, I think. And also, we live in California, yeah, it’s not about always finding it’s good to find the right answers and some things, but it’s about the process of thinking and coming up with your own ideas and being able to communicate those and respect other people’s ideas. But the idea that you would just write whatever you think, that didn’t seem like the goal when I was growing up. What did you get to do when you were writing when you were growing up, did was there it?

 

David Duchovny  09:43

Was like that, you know, I had two different Well, let me, let me just my response to what you were saying. Like, yes, when we’re raising kids, when I was raising my kids, I had to be schooled myself, like, when they’d come home with, you know, the the drawing or the, you know, the the watercolor thing, whatever. They did, and my response would be to go, Oh, that’s fantastic. I love it, you know. So let’s put in a frame or whatever, you know, this kind of overboard business. And the schooling that I got was like, no engage in the actual thing, like, say, hey, you know, I love that orange there. Why you know what? Why did you use that? Or I love that brown, or whatever. It’s not like, it’s not that the not to celebrate the end product, but to actually engage in the process. And I was like, shit, yeah, that’s that does not come naturally to me, because the way I was taught, you know, I’m like.

 

Lisa Loeb  10:32

You just say, oh, that’s great. I’m the same. Kids need that though. They say, don’t do that. Well, at least our any parenting and schooling, they’re like, definitely praise them when they do something that they tried to do it like, Wow. You, you, you, it’s, it’s, it’s praising the part that you can control. Like, you tried really hard, you, or you. I mean, if it’s really good, you can say, Wow, that’s a great painting. But you don’t say that for everything. You say, Wow. I really like how dark that red is. How did you do that? You asked about the process like you said, that’s what we were supposed to do, at least in this California Land.

 

David Duchovny  11:06

Do you have somebody like that in your life now for your music? Do you have somebody that have you had collaborators that you can trust, where they where they say, I like it, but I’m you know, can you be steered? Can you be gentle? Yeah, gently collaborated with?

 

Lisa Loeb  11:23

I can do it when I’m actually collaborating with someone. Like I started collaborating. I like doing everything myself. Mostly I had a singing partner in college, but I and she wrote a few songs, and there’s a couple we wrote together, but mostly I just wrote the songs by myself. And I mean, part of that is great because you don’t, nobody’s, nobody’s making any suggestions. You know you’re doing it. You’re not going to get a lot of critiques. I would hate when producers would say, Well, I’m not sure about this or that. It would just devastate me, and it would that’s happened to me in some situations where somebody’s made a comment, a critique, and it just stopped me in my tracks. I couldn’t finish the thing, or it just stopped me in my tracks. That being said.

 

David Duchovny  12:06

Why do you think it stopped you in your tracks?

 

Lisa Loeb  12:08

Because I couldn’t find the right answer. I didn’t find the right answer, and I didn’t know how.

 

David Duchovny  12:13

It’s hard to defend music. It’s hard to exactly because it really is just gut instinct and taste after all, right, it’s just what you’re hearing. So how do you, how do you defend that?

 

Lisa Loeb  12:26

That being said, you know, when somebody’s editing your book, yeah, or something that you’re like, oh, yeah, I see they’ve got a point there. I can see that. Or you could say, No, I actually meant to use seven words in a row with commas. Like, I that was my like, you can stand behind it. There is that inspiration and that pure artistry, and then there is, and it’s such a fine line, because it’s, it’s a push and a pull. I can go different directions with it. When it’s a, you know, something for somebody, like, if I’m writing a song for a TV show and they need, they needed to be 30 seconds shorter, or they didn’t like a particular word or, or the feeling that a chord made them feel, you know, it was too sad. I totally get it because there’s a goal, there’s a specific, you know, there’s a specific thing. But when it’s just from your heart, and somebody makes a comment, and you did it the best way you could the first time, so, like, what? What other ways there to do that like you can’t it’s funny. I have that lyric in a song. I have a song called how that I wrote for the movie Twister. It was supposed to be from the perspective of the main character, a woman. It’s supposed to be from her perspective, trying to deal with balancing life and her career, and there’s just people challenging her on it. And the first line is, I didn’t come this far for you to make this hard for me. And that’s how it feels sometimes, when you’re like, you get to someplace and you’re like, Okay, I’m going to share this. And then somebody says, Oh, I don’t, I don’t know about that second verse. And it’s that youth that feel when you’re younger and less experienced, things are so precious. You know, it’s so embarrassing that someone might comment on that.

 

David Duchovny  14:08

which part of your songwriting or performing Are you more sensitive to? In that case, is lyrics or the melodies? Because for me, I mean, I make some music now too, and and I’m really, I get really pissed off if somebody changes my lyrics, you know. And I just went, I just went through this thing where this guy said, you know, I don’t like lyrics rhyming so much. And I was like, you know, I fucking do for you. When you’re in the booth or whatever, and you’re, you’re being produced and you’re collaborating with somebody, is it the lyrics that you’re gonna fight to the death on, or is it the melody, or is it the chord progression?

 

Lisa Loeb  14:45

Uh, it depends. It depends on who’s saying it and what I think they are bringing to the situation. And I mean, I would probably say lyrics, but that being said, I also would do I’m thinking like if somebody made a suggestion on music, I. I could get really annoyed. I remember once I was working with a producer. This was just when I had started collaborating with other people. I along the way, I had a couple of songwriting opportunities. One was to go to Cuba. Before Cuba was open, they brought a bunch of musicians to work with Cuban musicians, and we got to collaborate. And it was, it was kind of hard. I didn’t know about sitting in a room and making a song that was really unusual for me. One of the people I got to work with was Burt Bachrach, which is crazy, but there was a bunch of other songwriters in the room also working together, some who had had a lot of collaboration and a lot of success doing that. So I was, I felt a little bit more in that process like a fly on the wall than like a true collaborator. But another place I went was Stuart Copeland’s brother, miles Copeland used to manage sting and the police, and he has a castle in France. And all these musicians get together, and every day, three songwriters. You write a song a day, and you record it, which to me, is mind blowing too, because I could take weeks year. I could take years and years and years to write a song, not a day. I mean, every once in a while I’ll write a song in a day, but that’s very rare.

 

David Duchovny  16:08

Do you if you have to, won’t you write those songs? That’s what I’ve found about songwriting, is I won’t write a song unless I try to write a song. It’s not going to happen.

 

Lisa Loeb  16:19

Finish this I will say I won’t finish a song unless I have to finish a song. I used to when I had less on my plate, when I was a teenager, when I was in high school, or when I had a lot on my plate, and I thought it was really fun and cool, and I could procrastinate homework to write songs, but as a grown up, I have so much on my plate I forget sometimes to take that. I call it doing my homework, because I have so many bits and pieces of ideas everywhere, but to sit and to, like, take that time to do that.

 

David Duchovny  16:46

What’s the longest you’ve ever taken to finish a song? And do you find these? Sometimes it was like, Oh, that bridge from that song that I never, I never used, you know, I’m going to take that bridge and pull over here, or this that cool.

 

Lisa Loeb  17:02

I have a song I’m working on now that I think is a current song, and it’s been at 20 years. I’m working on it.

 

David Duchovny  17:07

20 years.

 

Lisa Loeb  17:08

20 years, and it’s not done yet. I haven’t my daughter heard that piece, and she’s like, Mom, why didn’t you finish that song? Like, she’s, she just started praising some of my songs. She’s 14 and a half, and she’s, she’s like, that’s a better song than a lot of the other songs. Why don’t you finish that one? I’m like, oh, shoot, I got it. But I have done that every once in a while realize, oh, this kind of works, this bridge, literally, like this bridge, or this, you know, verse actually works really well with this other thing. And that’s one of the reasons I started collaborating, because I will not write songs, you know, you’re, you know this is we talk about failure, and that’s one of my biggest failures, is not getting stuff done. There’s a lot of other great things happening, usually when those things are not getting done, or important things happening in life, or other work stuff. But I just feel terrible that I’ve dragged my feet on so many ideas.

 

David Duchovny  17:59

That’s the horrifying thing to me is, is about not executing stuff as I’m feeling them. It’s like, because I won’t be invited back in. It’s almost like this sense of the Muses, as, you know, they can get pissed off, like, here I’m opening this door for you, and you’re gonna not do it, you fucker. Okay, well, you know, yeah, good luck next time.

 

Lisa Loeb  18:19

But that I’m I, just am, like, I I also like to look at life the way it is. I had a record called the way it really is, and a rabbi used to say, like, that’s, that’s what, you know, look at life the way it is, and then you can figure out what you want to do about it. But yeah, it the way it is for me is I’m just, I also have a mom with two young children, and I manage my household, and have lots of things that I do that I enjoy, but I do take a minute to say, You know what? I talked to David, to Coveney, and I need to make that space like I need to make some changes. I need to to make more of an effort for that, because I agree with you, even if you like, I can get back into that idea. It takes so much longer than if I had just sat there. But the reality is, I do have, I mean, now the kids are a little bit older. They’re 12 and 14, so it’s not like when they were five and one or something. They can DoorDash some crumble cookies or something, but, but like, actually, literally having to pick up a kid at school or literally needing to go to sleep because I I have to prioritize sleep over creativity, but yeah, finishing things and to be able to Get back into that place, it’s really hard.

 

David Duchovny  19:31

It seems to me, and this is present day, you know, your kind of interest in, for lack of a better term, kids music, children’s music, yeah, I see that as kind of a really, you know, speaking to you now, I’m realizing it’s a really smart and loving kind of conjunction of parenting at the same time you’re making your music. Because, I wonder if, well, that seems to be like an unconscious, more conscious.

 

Lisa Loeb  20:32

I started making kids music, like way before I started making kids music 21 years ago, or 20 years ago. So where did that come my oldest daughter is I have an older daughter and a younger son, my daughter is 14 and a half, I started making kids music because I like growing up and because I liked entertainment from the 70s, you know, like all that stuff that you couldn’t tell if it was for grown ups or for kids like Steve Martin or early Sesame Street or, I always think of Fernwood tonight, you know, Martin Mall, and there was a lot of music that was popular, like disc, like rock the boat, or, everyone knows it’s windy, Raindrops Keep falling in your head or there was so much out there that was whimsical.

 

David Duchovny  21:19

Back rack.

 

Lisa Loeb  21:20

Yeah, it had a lot of heart and storytelling. And I a business decision at Barnes and Noble bookstore said, Do you want to make a record that’s not your regular records and my friend Liz from college, he had started making children’s records, and somebody suggested that I do that. And I thought, You know what? That’s a good idea. I’d like to try that, because I I wanted to recapture my childhood being at summer camp, and all the songs we used to sing, and the silliness and the humor and the heart, and it’s just it was a really mind blowing genre to be in. It’s just so open. It wasn’t like, oh, somebody broke my heart. Let me write a song about that or.

 

David Duchovny  21:59

And it’s also not what we’re trying to get, not we, but it’s also not what kids are exposed to to buy for themselves. At this point, kids are kind of steered towards pop at this point.

 

Lisa Loeb  22:12

Right, which is also, you know, that’s what our kids, you know, my daughter, when she was really little, she loved Foo Fighters, my son loved September by Earth, Wind and Fire, like they like just regular music. I like Beatles and all kinds of stuff, but it, but it’s kind of a selfish genre for me as a songwriter, because it’s a genre in which I get to write things that I don’t know, that tap into my own memories, things that are important to me. It’s that puzzle we’re talking about where you like rhyming, like, it’s such a puzzle to figure out, like, how do I write a song where I’m going to have, I’m going to have definitions of words in a song? So the kids, when you hear the song, you’re going to find out what curious means, or you’re going to find out, but it’s going to be cool. It’s going to be a lyric that really sounds like a lyric, and it’s going to be a song about going to school for the first time, and it’s going to be funny, but kind of acknowledging the nervousness that you feel, even as a grown up, the anxiety you might feel about certain things, like, how are you going to get all that into a song, and then you write it, and it’s such a fun puzzle, and I’ve taken that and it’s really helped my grown up writing, because I’ve started to really understand more about not having as many limits, accidentally. I accidentally have limits. I think that happens when you’re growing up and you think you think of songs as, I don’t know what they you think of songs as a certain I don’t know. It changed my notion of what songs are.

 

David Duchovny  23:35

Well, I think also what you’re removing is kind of the prospect or the need to write a hit or something.

 

Lisa Loeb  23:43

Yeah, that’s funny. We had a mind meld that was like, you know, I also think it has to do with, once you get past thinking of any part of the success of a song as being a hit, not even which is separate from playing a song at a concert, and people really connect to it, because that’s in your brain. You’re like, well, this could be a hit. Everybody seems to like this song every time I play it, but that’s different from having an actual hit on the radio or something. But yeah, when you take that away and you just realize I want to write songs that I enjoy playing, that I know it’s fun to play in front of an audience, there’s that fun connection when they hear the lyrics and the music. And maybe not fun necessarily, but there’s a an engagement.

 

David Duchovny  24:20

Well, there’s a lack of pretension, for sure. You know, there’s a lack of like, okay, this is life and death right up here. This is about this relationship, or this about love or whatever.

 

Lisa Loeb  24:31

And it could be a little folky, and also a little Canadian, you know, kind funny you said […]

 

David Duchovny  24:37

Little Canadian.

 

Lisa Loeb  24:38

Yeah, think about it, it’s like all, it’s like fun and but, or it’s like earnest, it has intention.

 

David Duchovny  24:45

Right yeah. I mean, when you were taught, when you first speaking about writing kid songs, it really resonated with me, because when I set out to write my first novel, I had a few different ideas, and I decided to write an animal parable, which is one of the ideas that I had. And I think it was because it’s not necessarily a kid’s book. It’s called Holy cow, but it it was because I thought I wouldn’t be judged quite so harshly. You know, I knew I was a well known actor trying to write a novel, and that that was going to get shot down in many ways. And I thought, you know, maybe I shouldn’t try the great American novel The first time out. Maybe I should just just kind of shyly, put out this animal parable that doesn’t seem to take itself so seriously, when, in fact, I was taking it very seriously, and I was very serious about the writing and about the message and about what I was doing. But there was something about using the idea in my head of an audience of kids that was going to loosen me up in a certain way, having come out of, you know, a career in which, you know, I’m, I’m making things that are consumed by a lot of people, you know, a lot of adults. And it was kind of this anti consumption, feeling like, okay, this is just, this is just a free form, kind of a thing that’s not taking something, yeah, and I felt like to do that in the kids world was going to, like, give me some cover, you know.

 

Lisa Loeb  26:26

I also have to say, like, for you, you’re to be primarily known as an actor first, it’s not you, you’re an actor. You’re, you’re playing the parts of things. So here’s something that you’ve written, that you’re, it’s coming from you, that’s exposing yourself in this big way.

 

David Duchovny  26:44

But I would say to you as a songwriter, you know, and your and your lyrics are very person.

 

Lisa Loeb  26:51

Many of them are very they sound personal. Some of them have become, they become way more personal. But they used to sound or I thought that I was being, thought that I was being mysterious.

 

David Duchovny  26:59

Well, at the time, you know and you were, you know, you have to do that dance of you know I know you let you know you’re an actor as well. And so I wonder if you think of songs or certain performances of songs as characters or as you know I’m writing, because I felt that way. I feel like any song that I write is its own character. Yes, it’s coming from me, but it’s not like this is a manifesto from David. No, this is just a mood. And a mood is a person, a mood is a character. And I wonder if you feel that way about you say my songs sound personal, which is really interesting to me, really fucking interesting, because they sound personal, and that’s the way they can become universal. That’s the way other people can share them. And I wonder what that process is for you. You’ve dropped Barbra Streisand and […]

 

Lisa Loeb  27:53

Still, okay, they’re still hugging. But wait so it sounds it can be universal. I will say that I started writing songs when I was a little kid, like, I don’t know, six or seven years old, on piano. And I started adding lyrics to songs when I really when I picked up a guitar and started learning guitar when I was a young teenager, and I thought my lyrics were really mysterious. Nobody was going to know what I was talking about. It was a way for me to express myself, but I always wanted to hide. I was so embarrassed about showing it’s funny in school, trying to find the right answer, I thought was the thing to do. So in a way, I didn’t even want to share my own I’m very shy at heart, in some ways, and I didn’t want to share, like what I thought, like who I am. But as I’ve had more experience, and also my first huge hit stay I missed you, that was a song where I literally wrote down, and I was in an argument with my boyfriend, and I was like, and I was working with them, and I just, I think it was like journaly. It was really journaly, but not in, like, a really crafted way. It was like journaly, and I started working with that. And I used to, I used to really look down upon people who wrote things that were too journaly Or too personal. I was just like, ah, that’s so not crafted. That’s so not cool, you know. But the song stay became very convoluted. The lyrics go all over the place, but it started at its heart. Was like the initial idea was very personal, the words and the connection to it, and that’s the song that’s connected the most to people, is the thing that was the most personal. So for me at, you know, later in my life, here 30 years later, and I wrote that song probably what, 33 years ago, to really continue to try to tap into what’s most personal, because that’s the and this is what I tell songwriters when they’re like, what’s your songwriting? You know, people always want to know like, what’s your advice? I’m like, be the most you that you can be like the army. Be you can be like, be the most you that you can be. That’s the only thing that sets you apart. Art, you can write the same song as everybody else. We all go through this lots of the same things, in a way, but as much as you can be yourself as possible, like, like and you can still craft things and also be intentional. So I do think it’s really important to craft and to you can decide to write something that’s outside of yourself or that has nothing to do with you, but it’s through your brain channel and your heart and your brain.

 

David Duchovny  30:25

It’s an authenticity, yeah, yeah, yeah, that you need to pursue an,  I guess. I don’t know. And I think if you were to think back, if I were to think back on times when I have failed, it’s because I haven’t, you know, pursued that voice. I’ve kind of whether it’s collaborating on purpose with somebody, or being forced into a collaboration, you know, or doing a job for the wrong reasons, you know. And then no matter how successful that is, it’s still, there’s still an icky kind of failure feeling about it for me.

 

Lisa Loeb  30:55

Yeah, and then, of course, like, it’s funny, I don’t know if it’s because I took, I took cognitive behavioral therapy. I had it at some point, or somebody worked with it in that way, or because it’s just my nature, but I would look at that situation and I would quickly try to get back afloat, like, if you’re sinking, that sinking feeling of like I didn’t write a song that was as good because I collaborated and I was trying to do the thing that I was supposed to do, or I said yes to a job that I didn’t really feel strongly about because I was going to make money, and the money was more important than the thing, but actually the money wasn’t that great. And you have this feeling, and then I’m like, but I learned from that that I should pay more attention to those feelings, or, oh, I learned that it’s okay if you write a song that’s not your favorite song, or something that didn’t represent you, that’s okay, because that’s part of the process, is just trying those different things and then continuing to focus on doing it the way that feels more comfortable, that’s more authentic, like it immediately, I have this thing with failure and mistakes that a I try to avoid it at all costs. You do again, oh yeah, I want, I want to fill in the blanks perfectly.

 

David Duchovny  32:01

You want to get the right answer.

 

Lisa Loeb  32:03

I want to get the right answer. I want to fill in the little answer bubbles on the ooh, the Scantron sheets perfectly.

 

David Duchovny  32:10

There’s a lot of pain down that road, but.

 

Lisa Loeb  32:12

It’s also, it’s so satisfying, filling in those circles perfectly, perfectly with that pencil. Oh, it’s the most exciting thing. But, yeah, I recently was in Japan on a family vacation, and we hired a friend, somebody I’d worked with on a music video, who also does tour guiding, and he hired a van for us, like a nice little van, to take us around, because it was a really busy time in Japan, and we didn’t want to have to try to look for cabs. And he said to be downstairs at this certain time, and we said, okay, because we had a day we were going to go do this, and that there was no like, specific time we had to be anywhere. It was just we wanted to get an earlier start. We wanted to leave at a certain time the driver would be there. We’re paying the driver by the hour later that day or the next day. He says to me, well, it’s really important that you’re down on down there on time, because in Japan, being 15 minutes early is actually being on time. Yeah, I wanted to punch him in the face. I wanted to cry. I was like, I just failed at doing something that I didn’t even know what the rules were. Like, nobody told me the rules, and I just failed. And that was this double failure. I was like, this is our vacation, and if there are rules that we need to know whether it’s how to appropriately interact with people, because culturally, you’re not supposed to be walking on the street, eating or but we just, like, got a C on a test that I didn’t even know. That’s how you were supposed to answer the question like nobody told me the rules.

 

Lisa Loeb  32:20

I was just filling out the form. You already got to see.

 

Lisa Loeb  33:45

I know I was, what?

 

David Duchovny  33:47

Date and my name, but I would say, like for me and I, I am like you I, I’m a good student. I that was my kind of identity, you know, as a kid, that was, that’s what made me a successful little guy, you know, like it made me what I thought loved by my mom, you know, that’s what she wanted, you know. So that was, it was very important for me to be perfect. And I have found, I found my way to creative life where I sometimes feel like my mistakes are the best part of me. You know, my mistakes are actually artistic.

 

Lisa Loeb  34:29

Like, what?

 

David Duchovny  34:31

Oh, shit. I wish I could give you an example.

 

Lisa Loeb  34:33

I know, I know that’s a really tough question.

 

David Duchovny  34:35

Yeah.

 

Lisa Loeb  34:37

I know. I’m trying to think of mistakes that I really love my I love what I’ve learned. I think it’s that cognitive behavioral therapy type of thing, like where you learn from the process, that’s fantastic, but I don’t like having them. I don’t like having them.

 

David Duchovny  34:50

And I don’t want them, even though, you know they’re kind of necessary.

 

Lisa Loeb  34:54

Exactly they end up being. I had a relationship that I don’t know if I would say, failed, but it. It wasn’t the right relationship, but I learned so much about myself through that. I learned so much about myself through that. And also the book called if the Buddha dated by Charlotte castle, but it’s a gentle way to look at things that might be looked at as failures or mistakes or Yeah, but like to learn about myself, to learn about myself in you’re right. I learned so much from them, but I still avoid, I don’t want mistakes.

 

David Duchovny  35:30

Yeah, yes, and I and, like I said, I do relate to that as a good student, but for me, it’s kind of like it’s okay to let the let the door to instinct and chaos and, or God, whatever your conception is. So God, instinct and chaos doesn’t really exist in in the filling out of the form completely and and getting 100% and then it’s like, yes, prepare your ass off, and then throw it away and let something else come in the door.

 

Lisa Loeb  35:59

I think it’s everything. That’s the thing. I think it’s everything. And it was weird that it took me till at least after college. There was another book I loved called writing down the bones by Natalie Goldberg. And Natalie Goldberg wrote a lot of books about writing, and she’s actually, I’ve gotten to work with her in person, and she was the first person who said, Write the worst thing. Just write the worst things, you know, and I didn’t hear a lot of that growing up. I didn’t know what it was like behind the curtain to hear other people say, you know, how much work goes into the behind the scenes, like I’m working with this writing coach, and the amount of free writing I’m writing to write 1011, words, you know, writing and writing and writing and then throwing that away, and writing and writing and writing and paring that down, and then throwing that away. And that it’s both it’s having this really high standard and intention of what you want to get at. And you’ll know when you’ve got it. But at the same time, to look behind the scenes, like even with music. You know, I listen to a lot of best of records growing up, so I’m listening to, like, what’s considered maybe they are, maybe they’re not the best, well, they’re the best records. You’re not even listening to full albums of other songs he tried really hard to make, or all the songs that didn’t end up on the records, or all the different versions of the songs that you’re listening to. Like, there’s this whole process that’s the thing to me, those feel like, sometimes they can feel like mistakes, and it’s the monkey it’s that monkey mind. It’s that person sitting on your shoulder saying, well, that’s not a good idea. Well, that’s not very good well, that’s but that’s part of the beautiful process. And it’s funny how you get amnesia. Like, I get amnesia. I’m like, Oh, this is so hard. I’m not doing very well on this. I’m like, oh, right, this is the process that you do every time to get to the place, and every once in a while, all the years of it, make it quicker to write a song, or quick quicker to write a speech, or to come up with an idea. But it’s a lot behind the scenes, its a lot.

 

David Duchovny  37:56

I came up with a few examples that you asked, and I don’t know if I’ll tell you that, because this is not about me, even.

 

Lisa Loeb  38:03

No, tell me them. I want to know.

 

David Duchovny  38:04

I mean, there’s, there’s two, one, just a quick one on Californication, where I was, I was supposed to be high and I was getting kicked out of a hotel room. And I started to speak to this, to Evan handlers character, and I realized that I was saying Evan’s line and so, but I stopped myself before I said the words. So I just go like zero. And I remember being in the editing room and saying, I love that fucking moment. I know exactly. It’s a mistake. I almost said the other actor’s lines. I say some kind of gibberish with supreme intention and almost anger, and it makes no sense for the scene. And I kept it in, you know. And it was always like, it just tickled me to see me being a bad actor and making a bad actor mistake, and then kind of leaving the window open, you know, right? And then there was another example. When I was, shooting house of D, and I had, like, my, I was directing, and I had my biggest shot, biggest shot of the whole show. Was going to be the beautiful kid, Anton Yelchin.

 

Lisa Loeb  39:16

Oh yeah.

 

David Duchovny  39:17

he was going to walk in. He was going to leave New York in 74 whatever it was. He’s, he’s he’s in the airport, he’s going to walk into a crowd of people, and I was going to crane him in. I bought a crane. I couldn’t afford a crane. I brought it. I brought a crane to JFK, you know. And I was going to shoot in the fucking crane. And then I was going to make everybody freeze as I lose Anton into the crowd. And then all the extras were going to change into modern day clothes. They were going to be in 70s clothes, but they were going to try and remain on the same spot. And then I grown up, Anton was going to come out of that crowd just as we walked, and I was going to reverse the shot. So my DP was this great old guy, Michael Chapman. He was like, well, you know, I don’t know. Yeah, we can try it. And then I was shooting. Earlier in the day, I’m shooting just a scene with Anton and Robin Williams on this like part of the old TWA terminal that Spielberg shot in. It’s kind of humped. So if you, if you walk away, you disappear, you just kind of slowly disappear, right? Yes, yes. And the script supervisor said to me, Hey, wouldn’t it be great if Anton just walks away and disappears, and then you kind of just walk and reappear. And I was like, Oh, my I’ve spent like half my budget on a crane and all these extras, and that’s a much more elegant and and simple. Yes, I never shot. I never shot my crane shot. I just shot that simple little thing. And so you had the crane, I had the crane. I sent it home. I sent the crane home. I sent the crane home. That would be the name of the story.

 

Lisa Loeb  40:48

Yeah, you know, in Judaism, we have Yom Kippur, I guess Catholicism, they have confession or something. But you once a year, you look at your life, how you’ve lived, how you’ve treated others, what you’ve done, all the mistakes you’ve made, all the sins in quotation marks that you’ve done or whatever, and how can you repair that? And just like that, habit of looking at your mistakes, sometimes you don’t learn from them, like you couldn’t have learned from the crane mistake, because that was just somebody had a better idea on the on the spot. Like that was a great idea. The crane shot is a beautiful that would have been a beautiful you would have either way would have been great. Thank God you caught it. See, here’s my like, possible cognitive behavioral therapy for the way my brain works. Like, give it to me. Caught it before you shot the thing.

 

David Duchovny  41:33

Right.

 

Lisa Loeb  41:34

Amazing.

 

David Duchovny  42:02

I do want to talk about lilifair and stuff like that, but I do want to just acknowledge.

 

Lisa Loeb  42:06

Where we met.

 

David Duchovny  42:07

I know exactly. I don’t know if I can’t remember how it all.

 

Lisa Loeb  42:12

I remember.

 

David Duchovny  42:12

Shook down, no, I was getting an article written about me.

 

Lisa Loeb  42:17

From GQ.

 

David Duchovny  42:18

Yeah, GQ, and I know you through Carrie mall, or I didn’t know you, but I knew that you knew Carrie Malcolm, and I came to meet you at Lilith fair, and then I invited you to dinner with this woman who was writing.

 

Lisa Loeb  42:30

It was like a pre Lilith fair. Lilith fair, it was like the tryout where Sarah McLachlan was like, here’s another mistake I almost made. Sarah McLachlan was like, oh, you know, we’re doing this women’s festival, you know, women’s concert. And I was like, in my brain, I’m like, I don’t want to do a woman’s concert. I don’t like separating myself as a woman guitar player. I went to girls school. I don’t like being good for a girl. I don’t like that. I listened to mostly men musicians. I don’t and then I found out, I don’t remember exactly who was on that bill, but it was a couple of concerts. It was like, Patti Smith.

 

David Duchovny  42:59

Paula Cole, Emmylou Harris, was.

 

Lisa Loeb  43:02

Amy Mann, who Emmy Lou Harris? Yeah. And then I was like, Oh, wait, I want to be on that concert. I want to play concert with all those people. That’s, those are amazing musicians. I almost shot myself in the foot by saying, like, I don’t know if I want to be in a women’s thing.

 

David Duchovny  43:15

Yeah, and how do you see it now?

 

Lisa Loeb  43:18

Oh, it was an amazing experience. I met so many musicians. The audiences were listening audiences.

 

David Duchovny  43:25

How do you see a woman’s thing now? Do you see it as, as as that was like a necessary corrective at that time, ahead of its time?

 

Lisa Loeb  43:32

Yeah, it turned out it made a huge impact. And it was a kind of like a double Fu, because it was, like, it made a huge impact in the industry where, literally, radio stations who would say, I can’t play your song, or at least it was the excuse, I can’t play your song, I’m already playing Sheryl Crow. It was like, that was the, you know, they already had that limit.

 

David Duchovny  43:50

To how many women we can listen to. I’m sorry,

 

Lisa Loeb  43:52

Exactly, so it literally broke down boundaries in the music industry.

 

David Duchovny  43:57

Yeah, I just remember that day really clearly, you know? And I remember that time, and.

 

Lisa Loeb  44:04

Oh, also one other thing, yeah. Well, this is a multi layered things could this is a lot of tangents once. I’m sorry, but I’m here as a musician. In the 90s, journalists were especially really rude and really snarky and really, in fact, I’ve had journalists over the last 510, years apologizing to me about the way they wrote about me in the 90s. But and it would stick with you, somebody would quote that article where they said something numerous or snarky about your record. So to not put that first foot forward saying I am actually a musician. I take my music really seriously, and my guitar playing? Am I singing? And I have a band. I’m not a alive little which later I was called like an Interview magazine because of a photo that was taken of me that I thought was such a great photo shoot. And the picture they used and the way they described it, I became a waif. I became this little person who was lightweight, nothing. Who was an overnight pop singer, and I’m like, that’s so frustrating to have to it’s not necessary to fight against it.

 

David Duchovny  45:10

Well, it’s hard.

 

Lisa Loeb  45:11

Really hard, to fight against it.

 

David Duchovny  45:13

It’s so hard to put that genie back in the bottle, you know.

 

Lisa Loeb  45:16

It is, and on one hand, who cares? You do what you do, and you do it the best you can. But on the other hand, your ability to connect with people for that to be shut down in a way because somebody’s review or somebody’s rude words or somebody categorizing you in a in a weird way. You know, I was like, Why is that guy a genius? And I’m a waif, and I’m like, Oh, they put it in their press release. They made sure that when they had their picture taken, they were holding their guitar. They made sure that when a radio interviewer asked them a question that was fluffy and weird, instead of answering that question, they quickly pivoted to the way they wrote their song or something, you know.

 

David Duchovny  45:52

So it sounds like when you were in Japan, nobody even told you how the game was played.

 

Lisa Loeb  45:56

Yeah, we forgot to talk about the Lilith meeting.

 

David Duchovny  45:59

Oh, we can talk about that, you know, off, off of, because, because, because I felt bad about that whole thing, but that.

 

Lisa Loeb  46:07

bBut like, you didn’t, but that was another good example of, like, yes, exactly we I was there. I was like, oh, I get to meet you. You Friends with Carrie? We got to hang out and meet and then it was like, yeah. But then the journalist was so, like, casual and nice, like, she’s one of us.

 

David Duchovny  46:23

Yeah, and, you know, I was so innocent as to think, oh, it’s probably a good idea to invite somebody I respect, and don’t know, to have dinner, you know, while I’m getting interviewed. Like, I would not think in a million years to do that now. And I remember when the article came out and there was kind of this insinuation damage control. Well, it wasn’t just damage control. It was, I didn’t, it wasn’t. There was no damage control for me. It was just like, geez, I hope Lisa, you know that’s none of that is true, that this woman is insinuating. And I tried to reach out through Carrie and say, I have, I don’t know why she would have written that, and I’m so sorry if it causes you any kind of problems in your life. It wasn’t like I just thought damage control, like I invited this person into my life. You not just that, you know, I invited a stranger to into my life for a moment, and then I exposed them to this person’s kind of.

 

Lisa Loeb  47:18

90s journalistic flair.

 

David Duchovny  47:21

Thank you for using that as yeah. So I apologize again all these years later. And I hope the apology got to you.

 

Lisa Loeb  47:29

And it was one of those things where you’re like, right? Anytime there’s a journalist around, anything you say, anything you do, and again, like, you can only do your you can only, like, do your best. You don’t know how things will be interpreted.

 

David Duchovny  47:41

Yeah, and I guess I would end just by saying, you know, I do know that your band was called Lisa lobe in the nine stories. And I, and you know, Salinger, to me, is such a great kind of touchstone when I think of your work too, because, especially now, because I, you know, Salinger is, like, maybe the prime example of somebody that is able to write for children and adults at the same time, you know, and that and that you to have come full circle in a way, like even, even back then calling your band nine stories. It’s fascinating to me that whether or not you were trying to fill in the right boxes. It seems to me that your soul or your spirit or your instinct knew that there was going to be a piece of you that was going to try and work in this world of Salinger, where it’s a wise and again, not to beat a dead horse here. But you know that those stories are about kids who got the answers right. You know, on the game show, on the quiz show. It’s a wise child remember.

 

Lisa Loeb  48:43

Right, yeah.

 

David Duchovny  48:44

And how horrible that kind of experience was for them, and fame and fame was so horrible for them. So there’s just so much.

 

Lisa Loeb  48:52

And the magic of the mundane. There’s something about the magic of the mundane, all those details on his and his stories.

 

David Duchovny  48:59

Which is all kids sandwich, it’s all kids have, you know, they’re.

 

Lisa Loeb  49:02

And it’s, and I write about that a lot, like the the small things, yeah, you know, it’s both like, don’t let small things get in the way. But also, at the same time, the small things are the things that that can make life really special.

 

David Duchovny  49:13

And look, look at your your your desk, of memories there, it’s filled with small things. You know, it’s not filled with, yeah, so thank you for taking a lot of time. This was long, and I appreciate you hanging in there with me.

 

Lisa Loeb  49:26

Thank you well, I look forward to seeing you, hearing you and reading you.

 

David Duchovny  49:31

Likewise, and I will never invite you along on a on an interview, and I hope you never invite me along on interview. What is stupid? What a stupid fucking thing to do on my part.

 

Lisa Loeb  49:43

It’s hilarious.

 

David Duchovny  49:44

It is hilarious now.

 

David Duchovny  49:58

Hey, here we are or post, Lisa Loeb, talk time. What I’m finding interesting about doing the podcast now is, you know, I always knew I was never going to find out, you know, what’s the right approach to failure, what’s the right processing of failure, whatever you know, it’s kind of like there’s as many different types of response to failure as there are people in the world, right? Maybe not quite that many, but a lot. And you know at least talking about her approach to writing. You know, it was certainly kind of a perfectionist. Is the word that gets thrown around that’s in a negative connotation. But I’m not seeing it that way. I’m seeing it as a control that someone has on a vision. You know, in the past, I would have thought perfectionist come makes things tight, and I got the sense with Lisa that it’s not that way. When she’s writing, when she’s recording, she’s still having fun. You know, Lisa really flipped my mind around a little bit on the joyfulness of her quest for perfection. It wasn’t like this tight, unsmiling notion of getting a test completely, right? There was something else there was a joy in there too, and I was struggling recently with the amount of podcasts that I had to do to fulfill my obligation, which was 20, and I ended up doing three in a week. And I was thinking, this feels like homework. This feels like school that I no longer want to be in in life. And my question to myself was, how do I make this fun? How do I continue to make this a journey of discovery and not just oh my god, I’ve got to research this person, or I’ve got to read this or listen to that podcast where they were interviewed. So I don’t seem like an idiot when I walk in, but maybe I can be an idiot when I walk in. Maybe that’ll lead somewhere else that’s one side or maybe I can take joy in the research, in the work, in the quest to be a perfect podcast host, or whatever, a quest to make the perfect podcast on failure. Saying out loud makes me laugh, right? All right.

 

CREDITS  52:49

There’s more Fail Better with Lemonada Premium. Subscribers get exclusive access to bonus content like more of my behind the scenes thoughts on this episode. Subscribe now and Apple podcasts. Fail Better as a production of Lemonada media in coordination with King Baby. It is produced by Kegan Zema, Aria Bracci, and Dani Matias, Paula Kaplan. Our engineer is Brian Castillo. Our SVP of weekly is Steve Nelson. Our VP of new content is Rachel Neil. Special thanks to Carl Ackerman, Tom Karpinski and Brad Davidson, the show’s executive produced by Stephanie Wittels Wachs, Jessica Cordova, Kramer and me, David Duchovny. The music is also by me and my band. Lovely Colin Lee. Pat McCusker, Mitch Stewart, Davis Rowan and Sebastian […]. You can find us online at @LemonadaMedia and you can find me @DavidDuchovny. Follow Fail Better wherever you get your podcasts or listen ad free on Amazon music with your Prime membership.