Arooj Aftab stopped by Genius to discuss her song “Whiskey.” Produced by the Grammy Award-winning artist herself, the track is the second single from her double Grammy-nominated 'Night Reign' album. On today’s episode of Verified, Arooj delves into the inspiration behind the song’s title, her decision to switch over to English, and the creative process that brought the track to life.
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MusicTranscript
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.