Astronautalis – “Black & Yellow”

Astronautalis covers Wiz Khalifa.

A little over a year ago, the folks at RadioLab contacted me about an episode they were working on about “colors”. Now, if you are not familiar with RadioLab, it is an astounding radio show/podcast about the marvelous of area where science, art, and magic all mix. Understandably, it is one of my favorite things ever, and when they asked to be apart of this episode, I was over the moon! The episode was going to be focusing on colors, what color is, how we relate to color, etc, and they wanted to get various musicians they liked to cover songs about color to soundtrack the entire episode.

I wanted to do something that would stand out, not only in song choice, but in style, and all of the things that came to mind, like “Paint It Black”, “Yellow Submarine”, “Blue”…they all just seemed too easy, too obvious. So I set out to cover “Black & Yellow” by Wiz Khalifa…and make it the prettiest damn version of a Wiz Khalifa song ever. Of all time.

So I enlisted the help of my dear friend Rickolus to shape the backbone of the song with pianos and synths, then I brought in the talented Erica Burton to add layers and layers of strings to really doll up this ditty. The whole thing was recorded for free, in bedrooms, in a day or two, and mixed by yours truly all in a pinch. RadioLab never used the song, and I am too damn proud of the way this turned out to let it sit on the shelf any longer. — Astronautalis