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Like, wejustfinished it.
Each actress recorded her part piecemeal.
The novice songwriter looked to bring that same middle-age-man energy to Girls5evas early tunes.
We have 20 minutes.
Its why his biggest advice for Scardino was simply to be funny first and clever last.
That being said, neither of the two wanted the groups music tosoundlike a joke.
She knew that hard punch lines would only work to tear down the structure of her pop songs.
Not ina Kars4Kids way?
Scardino asks with concern, referencing the torturous Kidz-Bop-on-steroids commercial jingle.
No, more like in a Lays potato chips way.
What this season proved to Scardino was thatGirls5evacould incorporate even more music into its fabric going forward.
Its never going to be a musical, she says.
Here, in the words of Scardino and Richmond, are the stories behind the unabashedly whimsical music ofGirls5eva.
I wanted to play with that.
People sayGirls5evareminds them a little of 2gether, she says.
Ive never even heard of that band.
I dont know how it snuck by me, but Iwillbe looking it up.
Nobody had time to replace them, he says.
Scardino wanted the girl groups only hit to play up how idealistic the young women were back then.
And it was over as fast as it started just a rumple in time.
This is a radio bop, he says.
Its also why hes so flattered to hear that some are declaring Famous 5eva thesong of the post-pandemic summer.
I take that as a super-high compliment, he says.
There is nothing Id like more than to think that people are really listening to the song.
That would be fantastic.
Like the idea that men would find them more attractive if their dads were dead.
That was part of the genesis of the song, she says proudly.
How fun is this?
One of Scardinos favorite verses was actually written by her formerUnbreakable Kimmy Schmidtboss Fey.
I was trying to work on something about their assholes being just purely aesthetic, nonfunctioning, she says.
But it was just too dirty.
Luckily, Fey came up with the far more family-friendly line: Runnin in pumps/Never taking dumps.
And it rhymes, too.
And I would go, No, its fine.
Hes just a New York Lonely Boy, theyre all over the city.
You see them everywhere, she says.
Her personal favorite example?
Its nice that his name is so easy to rhyme, she says.
Its the most personal song Scardino wrote, thanks to its real-life references to her son.
I always think, This is so great.
This is what I want my son to be like.
Bareilles was able to turn it into something that is both moving and hilarious.
Her voice is the most beautiful I think I ever heard, Scardino says.
Some might say the same of the lyrics, which include references to Scardinos very real fears.
Richmond believes that Im Afraid is Merediths triumph, and was one of his favorites to work on.
It just tickles me, he says.
I love taking these trivial fears and making them huge and sweeping and symphonic.
Its really not that far off from being the Hokey Pokey.
To her, it was the kind of song the women would record in hopes of getting noticed.
He admits when he saw the lyrics, which is just a list of jokes, he was worried.
It couldnt sound like a novelty song from the 50s and 60s.
The Splingee has this kind of cool soul vibe to it, he says.
Its such a silly thing, but it also feels kind of cool at the same time.
Unfortunately, the dance is almost impossible to master.
I tried to do it with Sara and Busy and our choreographer, Scardino says.
I mean, I wrote it specifically to be hard, but its really hard.
Watching the women perform the big finale song brought Scardino to tears.
It was just fun to see people you root for succeed.
There was just joy in it, thats the bottom line.
