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.
PJ Morton is a singer, songwriter, and producer.
He's been nominated for 10 Grammys, including Best R&B Album three years in a row.
In 2020, he won the Grammy for the Best R&B Song for his track Say So,
which is a duet with the singer JoJo, a platinum-selling artist in her own right.
But that version of Say So almost didn't come to exist.
In this episode, PJ takes us through his original voice memos, the demos,
and the isolated pieces of the final studio recording
as he tells the story of how Say So was created and then disappeared and then got recreated and ended up becoming one of his biggest songs.
So if you love me, just say so.
I need to know from you right now.
My name is PJ Morton.
Say So came out in 2019, but PJ had his first idea for it on February 14th, 2015.
Valentine's Day.
I had a really bad writer's block.
Maybe one of the worst of my life.
Well, I should say, usually my form of writer's block is I can't write a song for myself.
Sometimes I can still, as a songwriter, write for other artists.