The Song Machine: Inside the Hit Factory

by John Seabrook

The song reportedly was “Maps” by the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. “I said, ‘Ah, I love this song,’ and Max was like, ‘If they would just write a damn pop chorus on it!’ It was driving him nuts, because that indie song was sort of on six, going to seven, going to eight,” he said, describing the levels of intensity. Then, “the chorus comes—and it goes back down to five. It drove him crazy. And when Max said that about the chorus, it was like—light bulb! I said, ‘Why don’t we do that, but put a big chorus on it?’ About two minutes into “Maps” comes a great hard-edged rock guitar riff, and Luke began trying to make a chorus out of that. Slowly, as they sat shoulder to shoulder in Gottwald’s tiny West Twenty-First Street studio, “Since U Been Gone” began to take shape.