You're listening to Song Exploder,
where musicians take apart their songs and piece by piece tell the story of how they were made.
I'm Rishikesh Hirway.
This episode has some explicit language.
What are you listening to?
The Shins.
You know them?
No. You gotta hear this one song.
It'll change your life, I swear.
That's Natalie Portman and Zach Braff in the movie Garden State, which came out in 2004.
And this song, the song she says will change your life, is New Slang by The Shins.
Singer, songwriter,
and producer James Mercer wrote it when he was living in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
It came out as a single, and then he re-recorded it for The Shins' debut album,
O Inverted World, which came out 20 years ago, in 2001.
After Garden State came out, that album went gold, and the soundtrack to the movie won a Grammy.
Nowadays, James Mercer lives in Portland.
I spoke to him from his home studio,
and he told me how The Shins actually first started as a recording project,
a side project, while he was in another band called Flake Music.