Boyish’s Acoustic Version of Smithereens with Rachel Chinouriri Is the Collab You Didn’t Know You Needed
Photo by Eli Edwards
[UNPUBLISHED:] I wanted to talk to you guys about “Smithereens (with Rachel Chinouriri)” as it is your latest release and just eclipsed 100k streams on Spotify. How are you guys feeling about it?
[CLAIRE:] I didn't have huge expectations for it because it was already released. In creating an acoustic version of a song we've already released, I had no idea if it was going to be streamed at all so my bar was really on the floor and it surprised me a lot.
[INDIA:] I was excited for it to come out! And not that you weren't excited just that I actually thought it was gonna do pretty well because that was like the first version of the song that we ever did. Also Rachel is on it and Rachel is amazing. I was like, okay, I feel like people are really gonna like this!
Photo by Eli Edwards
[UNPUBLISHED:] Why did you both decide to have this song be the first song released after your EP?
[INDIA:] We wrestled with how to produce this song when we first did it. We really struggled to decide whether we wanted it be a sort of softer acoustic song or the harder version that we ended up doing. And we have always felt torn between the two. So I thought it seemed like a nice, natural next step to be like, you know what, while we're writing songs still, we have something that we could experiment with and put out. And ever since we posted it on TikTok I feel like people have been asking about when the acoustic version is coming out. one of the main motivations was like for many, many months, almost a year, I was still getting messages being like, when are you gonna release the acoustic version of this song? And also it's pretty.
Photo by Eli Edwards
[UNPUBLISHED:] Do you guys have a favorite version of Smithereens? The acoustic or original?
[CLAIRE:] They're so different. I feel like the acoustic really brings out like the sadness of the song, but the fully recorded version is like, it's so fun to do live.
[INDIA:] I think it's like when it's with fun drums {on the recoded version}, you're not listening to how sad the words actually are and are like this feels good. And then on the acoustic version, you have no choice, but to listen to it and you're like, Damn, this is not {as happy}.
[UNPUBLISHED:] This is the first feature on one of your songs, did you know at the beginning of this release process you wanted one?
[CLAIRE:] We wanted the feature after we heard other people covering it on TikTok. it's weird, we've never had TikTok have so much influence on our music before. I think hearing the duets was kind of what led us to be like, why don't we feature someone on this? And it's something we had toyed around with for a while, but we just didn't really have a song. This felt right.
[INDIA:] I've been like a huge fan of Rachel Chinouriri and her EP and so when we were kind of toying with the idea of adding someone else to the song we were thinking about like, okay, how do we make this really special? She just seemed like the perfect person. Like she has the voice of an angel and she is the sweetest person ever.
Photo by Eli Edwards
[UNPUBLISHED:] How was working with Rachel?
[INDIA:] Amazing. When she recorded vocals, she sent over all the stems of them and she had recorded like 50, 60 padded vocal backing tracks. It was far and above any expectations we had. I really thought she was just gonna record a verse. And then she sent over this massive session of the most beautiful angelic vocals. Wow.
[CLAIRE:] We did not expect her to go that hard and it was amazing. I feel like that really inspired the rest of the song because we just had a scratch vocal on it and then she sent over her shit and we're like, Ooh, we gotta step up our game.
Photo by Eli Edwards
[UNPUBLISHED:] Any fun facts about what went into the process of making this song?
[CLAIRE:] We used the exact same guitar that India used in that first TikTok. We tried to recreate that as much as possible.
[INDIA:] I'm playing one of the guitar tracks in this version too.
[CLAIRE:] Oh yeah, you do, right
[INDIA:] It's really quiet, but I am playing.
[CLAIRE:] Basically the way India played it in the TikTok version was like barely touching the strings and so every time we'd mic it up and like play it, India's like ‘that's too loud.’
[INDIA:] That's true, I did this guitar part over like a million times. Just like basically hovering my hand over it and like lightly touching it every now and then.
Photo by Eli Edwards