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Kerry: This is All Of It. I'm Kerry Nolan, in for Alison Stewart. When singer-songwriter Elliott Smith released his 1997 album, either/or, not only did it earn critical acclaim, but it proved to be a turning point for the burgeoning Indie artist and pushed him in front of a larger audience. The filmmaker Gus Van Sant used a few of its songs in the soundtrack for a little movie called Good Will Hunting. Smith even earned an Oscar nomination for best original song. Not long after, Smith signed to DreamWorks, his first major label, and got to work on new music.

On August 25th, 1998, Elliott Smith released XO, an album that introduced a world of lush orchestration to Smith's quiet Lofi guitar music without losing the songwriter at the heart of it. You can hear that transformation even within the album's opening song, Sweet Adeline.

MUSIC - Elliott Smith: Sweet Adeline

Walked me up a story, asking how you are

Told me not to worry, you were just a shooting star

Sweet Adeline

Sweet Adeline

My Clementine

Sweet Adeline

Kerry: XO was Elliott Smith's first album to chart in the United States. He released a follow-up in 2000 called Figure 8, but he died only three years later at the age of 34 at what is widely believed to be suicide. During his life and in the 20 years since his death, Elliott Smith's music has resonated with artists from Aimee Mann to Phoebe Bridgers, from Madonna to Frank Ocean. The release of XO in 1998, the same year as his performance on the Oscars brought the songwriter to a much broader audience of listeners.

For a new installment of our 25th-anniversary album series, Silver Liner Notes, I'm joined by Pitchfork contributing editor, Jayson Greene, who recently wrote a retrospective review of XO. Jayson, welcome to All Of It.

Jayson: Oh, hi. Thanks so much for inviting me on.

Kerry: It's our pleasure. Listeners, we want to hear about your connections to Elliott Smith's music. Were you a fan? Have you become a fan in the 20 years since his death? What's your favorite song rather from XO? Share your memories of listening to Elliott Smith, what his music has meant to you. Call 212-433-9692, that's 212-433-WNYC. You can also text us and you can message us on social media @allofitwnyc. Jayson, your review of this album in Pitchfork starts with a story about Elliott Smith sitting down to lunch with Lenny Waronker, the then co-chair of DreamWorks. What was the context of this lunch?

Jayson: The context was that Elliott Smith was part of a world of musicians in the Pacific Northwest that didn't usually find themselves in power lunches with guys like Lenny Waronker, who famously signed Randy Newman and Van Dyke Parks, and was just the scion of the boom, classic rock era. For someone like Elliott Smith, it would've been the guy responsible for the record's lying around his house as a kid probably.

Elliott Smith was singular in that he came from this Pacific Northwest scene that was mostly composed of punk clubs and really small venues and people, at that time, who were just profoundly averse to the suggestion that their music might lead them to something like a major label career. Here he was and he hadn't made any of the moves of a careerist musician at all. He was anti-careerist, just like all his contemporaries. He was profoundly shy. He didn't even like it when he had to do interviews with tiny--

He was nervous before performing in front of 50 people and didn't necessarily even feel comfortable speaking to someone who ran a tiny magazine who loved him. Here, he wasn't nonetheless. Cheerly on the power and strength of his music, which seemed to be catapulting him into places. His manager, at the time, basically said, "Hey, look, someone at DreamWorks," which by then was very new and co-founded by some of the most powerful people in entertainment. "There's someone at DreamWorks who really likes your music."

She coaxed him into this lunch and Elliott Smith sat down and just would not speak. He was too shy, too nervous, and Lenny Waronker couldn't get a word out of him until there was a moment when Lenny Waronker realized that Elliott Smith had brought something with him to this lunch that he was clutching to his chest, like a security blanket or like a teddy bear. It was an orchestration book, by which it was a primer on how to write for string orchestra. He asked him about it and Elliott Smith finally opened up and said, "Hey, for this next record, I want to use strings and an orchestra."

It was a tip-off to Waronker and a preview to what was about to happen to this guy who until then had entirely made music in basements, recorded it in tiny studios, and whose music was so quiet that it almost seemed to die away before it reached you. It was eavesdropping. It was a striking pivot for a guy like him.

Kerry: It's interesting that when you relate this story as someone who's hearing the story and perhaps someone else reading it, it would be like, "What do you mean he wants to use strings?" In a way, it's hard to believe that coming from where he did that that's the direction he was heading.

Jayson: I think that there was a shared incredulity among even the people he knew and his friends. He also was in a very loud punk rock band or alternative rock band is a better word for it, called Heatmiser before then and they were playing loud, raucous distortion, soaked sets that you could slot them in next to Jane's Addiction or whatever have you, the loud guitar bands at the time. It was only when he sat down and started recording music under his assumed name of Elliott Smith. I should be careful to note that Elliott Smith is not actually Elliott Smith's birth name.

When he started releasing music under "his own name" it wasn't even something he was very, very eager to share with his bandmates in Heatmiser because it was so soft. This was an era when stuff with acoustic guitars was really out of fashion and uncool and it reminded the people who were in their 20s at the time of their dad, Simon & Garfunkel records. He played one of his early soft songs and it was off of his debut record Roman Candle, where his voice was very soft and it went up to a high note. His friend just laughed because he couldn't believe it.

It was out of incredulity. I think that this was part of what made him special was that he was unafraid to take a lot of this intensity, anger, and disaffection that radiated out of the loud music of the '90s and just make it as soft as possible. Somehow, in his case, it made those emotions seem even more potent, not less so.

Kerry: If you're just joining us, my guest is Jayson Greene, he's a contributing editor to Pitchfork, and we're talking about Elliott Smith's album XO, which was released August 25th in 1998. We would love to hear from you listeners, if you have remembrances of Elliott Smith, maybe the album meant an awful lot to you. Did you just become a fan in the last few years? Give us a call. Our number is 212-433-9692. That's 212-433-WNYC. Let's take a call from Hudson who calls us from Brooklyn. Hey, Hudson, welcome to All Of It.

Hudson: Hi, it's a pleasure to be here.

Kerry: Tell us your connection with the music of Elliott Smith.

Hudson: When I was in high school, my friends kept telling me about this guy and I was like, "Oh, I don't know. Do you like Bob Dylan?" I finally started listening to it and it really resonated with me, this idea that somebody could speak with such honesty, such vulnerability in their music, not be ashamed of it, not hide from it. I don't know, it inspired me to pick up music on my own and go to college for it. Once I got accepted into the program, I realized he's a hero to a lot of people. I got to purchase a little bit upstate from New York City. At school, he's a hero to a lot of people because he's this vulnerable sweet guy who sang from the heart. It's really inspiring that somebody could pursue their artistic vision rather than pursue, I guess, success in the industry standard and still succeed without compromising their vision. To really be pursuing his emotional dreams rather than money or fame. I don't know. It's really inspiring. I'm proud to be a fan of his.

Kerry: Thank you so much for your call, Hudson. We really appreciate it. That was lovely. Let's listen to a little bit of the kind of orchestration that Elliott Smith was headed toward. There are two songs called Waltz on the album XO. We're going to play a bit of the song Waltz #1, which actually appears as the second of the two Waltz. Jayson, what is something that we could listen for in the orchestration of this song or just think about as we listen to it?

Jayson: Well, I would maybe say, in this case, that the word might be better just to say arrangement because this song doesn't have strings per se on it, but that doesn't mean that there's not multiple levels of music happening that you wouldn't have necessarily heard. This one I believe had a mellotron, which is a very hallowed in rock history music because it was widely associated with the Beatles and it gave you a trippy hazy sound that didn't seem to be coming from any one place.

It's used so beautifully on this song because it does generate this out of timeness and you can feel the song seems to be creeping out at you from a fog and that's echoed a little bit in the almost sickly way in which Elliott Smith chooses to use his voice. It's something very uncanny about this song and beautiful that I think really speaks to his mastery both as a performer and songwriter, but also his vision as an arranger. One more thing to point out is these little subtle booms of what I think is just a bass drum in the back or a kettle drum.

It's just one little boom and it happens every once in a while. It's not a drum part, but it adds so much to the atmosphere.

Kerry: Well, let's listen to a little bit of it now. This is Waltz #1 from Elliott Smith.

MUSIC - Elliott Smith: Waltz #1

What was I supposed to say?

Oh

Kerry: That's Waltz #1 from Elliott Smith's album XO, which was released on August 25th of 1998. It actually comes on the tracklist. It comes after Waltz #2. There's a little bit of quirkiness in there. For a piece in Pitchfork, singer-songwriter Aimee Mann has said that Elliott Smith was inspiring in that he reminded you that you can write a song about anything you want to. Aimee Mann was about a decade of Smith's junior, but you can hear lots of similarities in their writing. What do you think of that description, Jayson?

Jayson: People take from Elliott Smith, I think that he's an amazing rorschach blot as a songwriter because his words were so evocative and they seemed to be speaking so directly to each person. I think that's a function of there was an intense personal intimacy that you felt from his writing, a lot of first-person lyrics, and they seemed to be confessing to very deep dark feelings. I use words like seem to be because when you learn more about him as a writer, a lot of this stuff was writing and he was working with ideas, symbols, stuff, and crafting feelings.

You couldn't really necessarily say, "Oh, these words are a confession of Elliott Smith, the person," and this is a line from his journal. What's remarkable about him is that that's how it feels. That has to do both with the amazing, I mentioned this immediacy of his writing, but also the way he sings to you. I realized I'm saying to you, I could have just said things, but it really feels like he's singing to you. The level of intimacy in his vocals, I think, shows how someone like Aimee Mann, because I'm not sure what she's speaking to in the sense that it's not like he wrote songs about vacuum cleaners.

He wrote songs about some pretty standard topics in terms of self-loathing, loneliness, and unresolved anger towards your family. These are things that people tend to write songs about. The way he wrote them did have a sort of inspiring quality that meant, "Oh, the songwriting world is wide open." If he can write songs this evocative, that mean this many things to this many different people, then it's true, I suppose. There's no end to what you can do.

Kerry: Let's take a call from Josh in Astoria. Hey, Josh, welcome to the show.

Josh: Hi, thanks for having me. Elliott Smith is one of my greatest musical regrets, unfortunately. In June of 2003, I went to the Field Day Festival in Giant Stadium or the Meadowlands or whatever with some friends to see Radiohead and Beastie Boys and some other bands, and Elliott Smith was playing. I, unfortunately, did not know who Elliott Smith was at the time. I just hadn't gotten into him. I missed his set, and unfortunately, he died about three months later. A couple of months after that, I started getting into him and listening to him non-stop.

He was basically living in my CD player at the time. I learned all of his songs on the guitar. I played them at open mics at the time, and he really, really tapped into something so deep and so primal in me and other people as well, obviously. For me, it was a 24, 25, 26-year-old listening to him who was going through a lot of solitude lonely nights, all that kind of stuff. He was so helpful in constructing this personality and this persona that I wanted to tap into as a poet, as a writer, and as a musician. It's a real shame I never got to see him live.

I've seen a lot of great performances, a lot of great musicians over the last couple of decades, but he's just at the top of the musicians that I never got to see that I am just kicking myself for missing.

Kerry: Well, thank you so much for your calling, Josh. We appreciate that. We heard from another listener who texted us, "Hey, team All Of It. Elliott Smith's XO is one of my all-time favorites. His voice is so interior while describing his exterior world with such care, heart, and depth. The music itself is gorgeous and unique for its time. Can't say enough. A life cut too short." I thought that was lovely in that we should all hear that. We got one more phone call to take right now.

If you want to give us a call and give us your thoughts on Elliott Smith and the album XO, when did you discover Elliott Smith? What's the song on the album that speaks to you the loudest? Give us a call. 212-433-9692, 212-433-WNYC. Len, somewhere in upstate New York. Hey, Len. Welcome to the show.

Len: Hey. Oh, glad to be here. A quick story. I was a young photographer in Manhattan and I got an assignment to photograph somebody named Elliott Smith. I didn't know who Elliott Smith was. He came to my studio, I had a little studio. He showed up reasonably on time. He was so light and just simple and easy and no ego of any kind. We hung out for a couple of hours shooting in the studio. We headed out on the street and we took pictures out in the street. We'd been together maybe three, four hours and I felt like I had the portraits that I wanted and didn't seem like he was going to leave.

You just kept hanging around and I didn't-- Finally, it was, "I'm going to head out. What's going on? Where are you going?" Didn't seem to have anywhere to go. He said, "You know, I'm hungry." I'm like, "You're hungry? Okay. All right." We went into a deli and bought him some food. We went outside and sat and waited for him to finish what he was eating and we said goodbye. The portraits from that day remain very, very top-tier special in my career. He was a very, I'd say he was petite. His personality is no ego. Just everything you might expect in person from his music.

Kerry: Thank you so much for your call, Len. Thank you for holding. We wanted to make sure we got to your story. We're talking with Jayson Greene. He is the Pitchfork contributing editor who is talking with us this afternoon about Elliott Smith's album XO, which was released 1998, more than 25 years ago. I want to play Waltz #2. That was the album's first single. It's become its most famous and most listened-to track. Jayson, what is this song about?

Jayson: It's funny, I didn't know this story for quite a long time because I don't think it's such an incredibly catchy song and it takes some effort to listen and realize that the words are telling a very specific scene and story. It's basically a tale of a family that is out to dinner or out for drinks, out somewhere where there's karaoke night. The verses depict a woman first whose eyes are staring into space like a dead China doll, which is the lyric and she sings Cathy's Clown, which is a song about being treated badly.

Then the husband gets up after that, and the line in the song that points this moment out is here it is the revenge to the tune which means that he chooses to sing you're no good. Then in the song, just like in the actual song, he repeats the words, you're no good, you're no good, you're no good. Basically, it's this sort of song about two people singing these very subtext-loaded songs at one another. The song itself is, of course, full of subtext as well because it's been-- in the final verse of the song, he sings XO, mom.

This spells out very clearly that the characters in the song are his mother Bunny and his stepfather Charlie. He had a very fraught relationship with his stepfather, Charlie. It's unclear as to what exactly happened, but he would later in his life allege that there was abuse, and we do know that Charlie wrote several pained letters of apology for the way he behaved when Elliot lived in their house. This song becomes this slightly dark piece of really un-reconstituted childhood memory.

It goes against what I was saying earlier where his songs were written as metaphor or allegory. This song is neither metaphor nor allegory, and he even changed the lyrics live from XO, mom to just I love you, mom. It was almost like you sent this telegram out into the world at his mother. The famous chorus, of course, is, "I'm never going to know you now, but I'm going to love you anyhow." That's a message from a grown son to his mother helpless, but still affectionate.

Kerry: Let's take a listen to a little bit of this. This is Waltz #2 from Elliott Smith.

MUSIC - Elliott Smith: Waltz #2

First the mic, then a half cigarette

Singing, "Cathy's Clown"

That's the man she's married to now

That's the girl that he takes around town

She appears composed, so she is, I suppose

Who can really tell?

She shows no emotion at all

Stares into space like a dead China doll

I'm never going to know you now

Kerry: Waltz #2 has 42 million streams on Spotify, and the writer William Todd Schultz, who wrote a biography about Smith called it His Certain Masterpiece. Why do you think this in particular became the album hit?

Jayson: I don't really know why it became the album hit as opposed to some other incredibly catchy songs on the record that if you listen to it, you could also imagine a scenario where they went with it instead. This is a very uptempo Beatles song called Baby Britain that I could easily hear someone at the label saying, "Ooh, this is the one that they're going to love." I think that there's something-- Someone had vision in picking this song is probably what it boils down to. This song belongs as the first single. I think it really is unusual.

It's in Waltz's rhythm. It's called Waltz. That sounds like a dumb observation, but the reason I pointed out is that not only is it in three, four times, but the drum beats out this hmft pop pop, very anti-rock and roll, very quaint, and almost from an earlier era. It helped, I think people get their minds around who this guy was, here he was, and he was singing an incredibly catchy song, and the melody sticks to your head immediately. He was bringing it to places like Saturday Night Live. It was a guy who was used to singing secretive small things on small stages, and he was bringing it to a new stage.

But something about the fact that it was this rickety three-legged Waltz made it feel a little bit more home-spun and made it feel more him. I think that's part of what made people identify so hard with it. The lyric, how many people could see themselves or their relationship with their mother or their whoever in a line as beautifully written and turned as, "I'm never going to know you now, but I'm going to love you anyhow." I think that is a resonant and beautiful thing that people will always identify with.

Kerry: Let's take another call, Jasmine in Summit. Welcome to All Of It.

Jasmine: Hi. I'm just shocked. I got in the car right when you guys were talking about this because Elliott Smith is one of my favorite artists. XO is just such a beautiful album, and I think my favorite song from the album is Pitseleh. Someone had said earlier about how he's able to speak so lovingly about other people, about the world, and not about himself. That song is just, I feel a really great encapsulation of that idea. I named my pet snake Pitseleh after it because it means little one, and he was a little one, but Elliot Smith, that album is just a really beautiful outlook on the world but also just a sad outlook.

Kerry: Thank you so much, Jasmine. We appreciate the call. We only have a couple of seconds left, actually, Jayson, how can we hear this album's influence on later generations of singers and songwriters? Can you give me two or three people that have taken him on?

Jayson: You mentioned Phoebe Bridgers and I feel like she's patient zero or whatever the metaphor. She's such a disciple of Elliott Smith's style of songwriting and of performing. It's hard not to listen to her music and hear XO and either or his previous record just living on, and I think it's remarkable that out of all those musicians and all that whole time, whether it's Indie or alternative rock, there are more 20-year-olds and 18-year-olds who are obsessed with Elliott Smith now than there are with anybody else from that era.

I think that this album's influence, you can hear it in almost, there is a band called Girlpool that sadly disbanded, but that was active from 2015 or 2022, roughly, whose music just felt, in some ways, it sprung from the side of the head of Elliott Smith's XO. It was just--

Kerry: I hate to do this, but we are out of time.

Jayson: I got you.

Kerry: Jayson Greene contributing editor at Pitchfork, thank you for coming in and talking with-

Jayson: Thanks for having me.

Kerry: -us about Elliott Smith's album, XO. The time has come for our second installment of our summer school series where we take the month to read a classic New York novel and invite you to join us. We read Edith Wharton's The Age of Innocence. We'll talk about it and take your calls on the other side of the news.

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