Wild Heart - The Album

Well folks, today’s the day. “Wild Heart”, the new album from The New Hippies is out today. It’s been five years since the “Variety Pack EP”, the last project from the band was released, and the world looks a whole lot different now, to say the least. This album was made under completely different circumstances than the first, since it was mostly myself and Understanding working in a vacuum under the time constraints of An American Saga’s schedule to try to get as many songs featured in the show as possible, but I think the spirit of The New Hippies is still in it, and hopefully it opens the door to more opportunities for everyone to do something similar in the future.

The style of the album was out of necessity - the music had to fit the parameters of a single episode of the show this season, and considering that I think we did well. I don’t think the album is particularly indicative of the future sound of The New Hippies but I could be wrong. “Wild Heart” was specific to Wu-Tang: An American Saga, and I like to think of it as proof of our versatility. For instance, if another show came calling asking for original songs for a TV show and they had a particular style in mind, we could do that. Just sayin. Anyway, we’ll see where it goes in the future, but I genuinely had a lot of fun making these songs and hope you have a similar experience listening. Here’s a quick note on each of the tracks.

Malfunktion

Malfunktion was one of a few tracks that Understanding made almost completely on his own, which was a bit of a new experience for me. I walked in the studio and he had tracked drums, bass, keys and one of the guitars. I added one guitar part, and Understanding, Erica, and I layered the vocals. It wasn’t until after the show that we decided the track would be the intro, and I added the Spaceman monologue, welcoming the passengers aboard.

Wild Heart

I wrote at length about this song last Friday when it released as a single, but the idea here was to create an anthem for Dirt McGirt, the alter-ego that ODB personifies in the allegorical episode that tells the story of the making of his solo album “Return to the 36 Chambers”. Luckily, we found a lot of success with this song - it was placed multiple times throughout episode 2 and episode 3 of season three of the Wu show, for which us Beautiful Idiots are extremely grateful.

Tip Toe

Tip Toe was a fun song to write because it marked one of the first songs where Understanding and I collaborated on lyrics. The song was born out of me messing around on bass, adding keys, guitar, and strings, Understanding playing the drums, and me asking Un for a title. He said “tip toe” and we both got to writing. About an hour later we both tried all our ideas, and ended up mixing it all together. I think Rick Rubin says something like “best idea wins”, which is generally a good philosophy when you’re writing a song. We put Understanding’s verse first, went into his chorus, put my verse next, added my idea for that floating “inner voice” you hear towards the end, brought back his hook and reprised my verse for the outro. It felt like a very natural back and forth. Then we had Erica sing it, which always makes everything better, so it became Tip Toe featuring Roe’s Garden, allowing this song to be the first official link between tow of the artists on the Beautiful Idiots LLC roster. It’s also one of my personal favorites.

Pressure

This is actually the first song we wrote out of the whole bunch, back in January 2022. We hadn’t even seen any of season three of the Wu show yet, but as soon as we finished the instrumental I turned to Un and told him it was going in season 3. Sometimes you just have a feeling. This was a shower idea. I literally hummed the bass part into my phone as a voice memo, got out of the shower and tracked it with Understanding on drums. I had the hook pretty soon after, but we tried rapping on it at first, and it was thematically very different. We rewrote it eventually after we saw the first episode and it turned out much better the second time around. It plays for the end credits in episode 1 of season 3, which is one of my favorite placements we got in the show. It really feels like a song for a movie.

Baby Be Mine

This one is for Bryana. I wrote what I felt and it’s a very special song to me. There’s a scene in season 3 episode 1 where two characters, Dennis and Shurrie are in their apartment in the morning and it felt right that they would have the radio on, listening to something smooth. Our initial goal was to take inspiration from Curtis Mayfield, but it might have turned out a little more Temptations or The Manhattans than Curtis. Either way, I love this song.

My Dance

This is another track that Understanding made almost completely on his own. I’m pretty sure I got back from walking my dog and he had done everything again, save one or two guitar lines he wanted me to add. For a long time it was a very short instrumental, because I wasn’t really sold on the “do my dance my dance and lose control…” refrain, so we kind of let it sit for a little while. Once it was decided that we were going to put all these songs together as an album, we revisited the session. We stretched the track out a little bit and I asked Understanding to lead us through his dance as Cletus Fox, as if Cletus was hosting a party. I never could’ve predicted any of what he said, but I love it. I dare you to listen to that track and not get up and groove.

Dog Days

Everything about this song stems from that first descending line you hear. I was just noodling around on a keyboard and happened to play it, then Un and I kinda just caught a vibe and ran with it. The lyrics were tag-teamed again and I had fun singing it. We tried to place the instrumental during the second set of opening credits in the comedy club in season 3 episode 3, but the show opted for Wild Heart there instead. It works, but we do think it’s a shame Dog Days doesn’t appear in the episode. It’s another favorite for sure.

Stop Playin

Stop Playin is more of a bonus track, honestly. It’s like a button at the end. We wrote it on an off day at RZA’s studio when we were working on season 1 of the Wu show, sometime in 2019. the drum track was originally called “Peanut butter pretzels” in my MPC, and it was the first time Understanding took on that new character with his vocal. His brother Mel was there that day too, so he added some extra bass, and we filled it out with a bunch of RZA’s keyboards and machines that he would let us experiment with. Then the song just sat on our hard drive for years, until it became obvious to us that it was the perfect finale for this funky experiment. It’s one of my favorite performances Understanding has turned in to date.

That’s the track list, and a little bit about each song. I hope you have fun with it - I hope it makes you dance, smile, feel warm in your heart, and takes you on a wild ride. The New Hippies will continue to release new singles for the rest of the year, so if this is the first you’re hearing of them, buckle up, it’s about to get crazy.

-J.P.