- Hi, everyone. We're Lany, and this is how it went down
with our song "Through These Tears."
During the writing process for "Malibu Nights,"
I was going in every day,
a lot of times with different writers,
and I felt like it was my artistic responsibility
at the very least to either walk in with a song title
or scenario or concept.
All I had to say.
The night before we wrote "Through These Tears,"
I went to dinner by myself,
and so at that point in the process,
cause I was going through something
I hadn't really cried because I'd been so upset.
You know when you're so upset that you just want to throw up
or you feel sick at your stomach, and you can't really cry?
So I was driving home,
and I just started crying my eyes out,
and I had to pull my car over for like 10 minutes
I just cried myself dry, and then I had this thought,
this eureka moment.
It was like, you absolutely are gonna be OK.
You just can't see it right now through your tears.
And I was like, bam, that's what I'm going to do tomorrow.
I'm going to write a song called "Through These Tears."
So then the next day, I drove...
- (whispers)
- Yeah. I was driving a Honda Element at the time
2008, with like 300,000 miles on it,
so I drove back into Hollywood the next day to Conway.
I spent a lot of time there, writing,
and I walked into the room and was like, "Hey, everybody,
today we're going to write a song
called 'Through These Tears' and here's the concept."
And I think that we wrote the chorus almost immediately
because the first words are
"In the end, I'm gonna be all right."
And that's kind of what
I was telling myself the night before,
and then the piano hook came in.
In between trying to write melodies for verse,
I started (humming).
And then I think we called it a day,
and it started in Conway, and it actually ended in Conway,
but there was a day in between at Diplo's house.
King Henry is somebody who works with Diplo,
and that's who we were writing with.
And Henry and I were kind of sitting around,
and that's where we came up with that real punchy base part
of this song during the chorus like (humming).
♪ In the end I'm gonna be all right. ♪
I sent the demo off to the boys.
- When I opened that song, and I remember, immediately,
right off the bat in that verse,
I knew it was gonna be a really special song.
It could change the course of the band.
I was like, this could be the song.
- Everyone thought that it had some potential,
but I was on the fence about the verses.
I thought they weren't ...
I didn't think they were that good.
And we spent two more days rewriting the verses
and finally got them right.
I think it's nice to start the song with
"This hurts like hell," cause it's very just matter of fact,
and pretty relatable.
I think another really nice part of the song is
"Control my thoughts, convincing myself that you're lost."
I really mean it, and I'm starting to believe it,
cause that's just the natural process of kind of
talking to yourself, and, you know, I'd be like
"Nah. I'm going to say this, and the more I say it,
the more I believe it."
"Through These Tears" is really about telling yourself
that you're going to be OK, and kind of that
inward talk that you have with yourself.
Admitting that this hurts, and that this sucks
and that this feels like it's taking forever to get better,
but I do know that ultimately time heals all wounds,
and I'm gonna be OK.
We really look up to bands like Cold Play,
and I feel like by no means is this like,
"Oh, we're getting close to Cold Play,"
but this felt like a real big band moment for us.
There's a lot of band things going on in this song.
A ton of like big wash of guitars, which ...
- A lot of elements.
- A lot of elements like Jake is playing so many drums,
and it felt really anthemic and universal.
So I didn't know if it was going to be a hit,
but I was really proud of it because I thought
we've really grown as a band here.
- And that anthemic kind of feeling he was talking about,
you get that feeling from a lot of those bands that have
done forever and played arenas.
We felt that had that element to it.
I remember too, when we brought it to our producer,
and we worked on it,
we tried so many different
kind of versions.
We tried so many different things
and scrapped so many different ideas,
but we finally landed on what we felt like
it was meant to be,
so that one took a little bit, but we got it there.
- Boom.