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 Hirwe.
Jack Johnson is a Grammy-nominated singer-songwriter from Hawaii.
He's had four number one albums on the Billboard charts.
In September 2017, he released his seventh album, All the Light Above It Too.
And in this episode, Jack Johnson breaks down one of the songs from that album.
It's about parenting, politics, and the ocean.
It's called You Can't Control It.
I'm Jack Johnson, and happy to be here.
It started from a little jam that my good friend Zach Gill, that Zach and I had made.
He's got this little space in his garage.
We'd go in there sometimes and just jam around, make noises and stuff.
And this one day, I jumped on the drums, and he started playing on the keys.
And then I added a little bass part to it.
Zach, we're like brothers.
He was born on the same day, same year, everything.
We've been friends since we were 18.
We would get together and stay up all night and get a four-track out,
write down ideas, and then try to sing them.