BØRNS Reveals The Meaning Behind Each Song On 'Dopamine'

After releasing his EP Candy earlier this year, BØRNS has finally released his first full-length album Dopamine. The album showcases 11 songs, including singles "Electric Love" and "10,000 Emerald Pools," and is now being supported with the singer/songwriter's headlining tour.  

BØRNS tells iHeartRadio that Dopamine took a little less than a year to create, and work began on the record right after he released his EP. Through his travels and touring, any chance he was back in Los Angeles, he would work on it. And while he's thrilled for fans to hear all of the songs on Dopamine, he's particularly excited for fans to hear the title track, and a song called "Overnight Sensation." The Michigan native says of the song, "[It] was the last song that we recorded, and I really like that one. It has a really good groove to it."

BØRNS also revealed the meaning behind each track on Dopamine. He explained what each song is about, what inspired them, and how they came to be. Read on below.

Track 1: "10,000 Emerald Pools"

"'10,000 Emerald Pools' is one of the first songs I wrote when I moved to California with a good friend of mine named Kennedy. We met through a mutual songwriter friend. The song was written really quickly, and I kinda had these chords that I was playing, and we programmed this syncopated beat thing. And he was like, 'My mom's address in Vegas is 10,000 Emerald Pools, I've always wanted to use it for a song title.' I was like, 'That's totally the song title.' Because the vibe of it was this underwater kind of love song. We were joking about having the music video being these two people on this scuba diving trip and falling in love underwater. The first time they see each other, going through this coral reef. And anyway, the title is an address, which is kinda cool, in Vegas. But it just sparks this imagery of this song."

Track 2: "Dug My Heart" 

"I kinda go through phases with music, and I was in this Smiths phase for a bit. And I really wanted to write a Smiths-style song. Just the way Morrissey phrases things, just so conversationally. The verse on 'Dug My Heart' is very kind of conversational. And it's strange, it's not really a melodic verse. It is, but it's almost like you're speaking to someone."

Track 3: "Electric Love"

"'Electric Love' started with that guitar riff, the na-na-na-na-na-na. I wanted to do kind of a glam, rocky, shuffle beat. Just [an] anthemic love song about this fantasy of this lover."

Track 4: "American Money"

"That started as an acoustic song. I wrote the verses on guitar and it was almost like a happy, all major chord acoustic sound. Then I went in the studio with Tommy, who I did my album with, he's a good friend of mine. Tommy English. And I played it for him, and he always cuts up drum samples and stuff, so he made this down tempo kinda hip hop beat. And we turned it a little darker. It turned out just being darker because of the beat, and we wrote countless choruses to it, and just couldn't get it right. Then, [we] finally wrote this last chorus, which was 'American Money,' and I think it was kind of a joke at the time because it's like a hip hop song or whatever. Like, [a] 'B*tch Better Have My Money' kind of thing. But I wanted to take the 'American Money' concept that's very hip right now, and turn it to something different. The chorus is 'Take me to the paradise in your eyes, green like American money.' So it's almost like being [saying], 'You look like a million bucks.'" 

Track 5: "The Emotion"

"That was one of those songs where it's the end of the night, we were both spent, I think we were working on a few songs that weren't going anywhere. And Tommy started playing this guitar at this arpeggio guitar thing, this really dreamy thing. And I had the sample on my iPhone. I was living up in the Hills and there were these coyotes the night before that were going crazy, and making these ravenous, kind of satanic laughs in the canyons. I think they were like attacking something. It was really scary. But we put the sample in the song. In the very beginning of it, you hear the guitar, and then you hear [the animal noises]. And it's cool [and] creepy and that kinda, I inspired that song."

Track 6: "Holy Ghost"

"We were trying to write a Jackson 5 song. Because we had this bass line ... something really kinda old school R&B kinda thing. And that was another song that I rewrote the lyrics over and over and over and over, until we got it. And 'Holy Ghost' just happened to be the title of that. But that's basically praising a lover, [and] putting her up on the pedestal."

Track 7: "Past Lives"

"'Past Lives' is one of the first songs that Tommy and I wrote together. Tommy and I did the whole album, and we did my EP together, too. That song was just about basically having the love of your life throughout other lives, and seeing them in these different life forms. And then finally once it made sense, you guys were both at the same place at the same, or the right place at the right time. And then in this life you were together."

Track 8: "Clouds"

"'Clouds' is basically about being completely unaware of everything in your surroundings; like names and people, and everything else, but all you're thinking about is just this girl. Your head is in the clouds. The lyrics are, 'I forget all my dreams, I forget everybody's name I meet, I forget about time and space, but I can't stop thinking about your face.'"

Track 9: "Dopamine" 

"'Dopamine' started as just a chorus that I kinda put on the back burner for a long time. And it didn't have any verses. I almost forgot about it, and then dug it up, and Tommy and I just wrote the choruses. I actually did the chorus with this guy John Hill, who's a really cool dude; he did all the Santigold stuff. It was just this lonely chorus, and then we kind of brought it back to life and wrote the rest of the instrumentation with it. That song is the all encompassing idea of the record, because it's this longing for like a chemical reaction with someone else."

Track 10: "Overnight Sensation"

"'Overnight Sensation' was inspired by a 1969 Playboy ad. There were all these old Playboys laying around the studio, and I flipped through them when I was writing lyrics and stuff, because there are so many amazing articles and stuff in old Playboys, really poetic and sexy titles and phrases. And everything was just so well written back then. Back then, it was so well thought out. And there was this one article, there's this page with this girl, it's a black and white film photograph of this girl laying on a couch, and you can see the light peeking through the blinds. And you can tell it's the morning after kinda thing, but she's looking really sexy on this couch, and then at the bottom it says, 'Overnight Sensation.' And I was like, 'Oh, that's a great concept for a song.' So, I wrote this song about, basically the 'Overnight Sensation.'"

Track 11: "Fool" 

"'Fool' is a song that started as just an acoustic song. It was just, it was just a vocal and guitar song, and trying to figure out the arrangement of it. I went up to this studio in Stinson, which is kind of near San Francisco. It's this beautiful old, kind of ... [it] looks like a castle up on a hill, it's like overlooking the ocean. It's beautiful up there. It's this old studio that this guy doesn't really rent out. It's not a public studio, but he rents it out to friends. And there are these tympanies and all of these old compressors, like really old like Fairchild stuff that the Beatles used. Just stuff you can get amazing sounds from. And I went up with my band, and this is the only song on the record that my band actually played on. Because everything else is just me and Tommy. We live tracked it. So it has that feeling of an old Motown kinda song. It's just kind of a classic, got me acting like a fool song."

Photos: Rachel Kaplan