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.
You're listening to Song Exploder.
My name is Rishikesh Hirway.
MGMT was formed by Ben Goldwasser and Andrew Van Weingarten in 2001.
The song Time to Pretend was one they wrote early in their career.
It first came out on their debut, the Time to Pretend EP, in 2005.
And three years after that, they put out a new version of the song on their first full-length album,
Iracular Spectacular,
which was named Album of the Year by NME and was one of Rolling Stone's top 20 albums of the decade.
It went on to sell over a million copies worldwide.
In this episode, Ben and Andrew trace how the song Time to Pretend was made.
from its dorm room origins to its first recording to re-envisioning it with Grammy-winning producer Dave Fridman.
They also uncover the hidden sounds and Easter eggs within the recording.
Here's MGMT on Song Explorer.
This is Ben from MGMT.
Most of the...
Sounds in both the recording on the EP and on the album version have been around