{"id":68762,"date":"2026-07-17T16:05:33","date_gmt":"2026-07-17T16:05:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/musicianvoice.com\/index.php\/2026\/07\/17\/steve-lacy-on-the-making-of-oh-yeah-love-faith-and-more\/"},"modified":"2026-07-17T16:05:33","modified_gmt":"2026-07-17T16:05:33","slug":"steve-lacy-on-the-making-of-oh-yeah-love-faith-and-more","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/musicianvoice.com\/index.php\/2026\/07\/17\/steve-lacy-on-the-making-of-oh-yeah-love-faith-and-more\/","title":{"rendered":"Steve Lacy on the Making of ‘Oh Yeah?,’ Love, Faith, and More"},"content":{"rendered":"


\n<\/p>\n

\n

\n\tWhen Steve Lacy<\/a> first started letting people hear Oh Yeah?<\/em><\/a>, the album was much sadder.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThey were sad,\u201d he told me<\/a> last summer, recalling an early listening session with his label. \u201cThey were like, \u2018All right, now play some happier ones.\u2019 And I was like, \u2018Fuck.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAt the time, Lacy was still working through the aftermath of a breakup. The songs circled mistrust, self-sabotage, longing, and the feeling of discovering that you had been carrying sadness without fully recognizing it. But Oh Yeah?<\/em> was being made in real time, and before he could finish it, his life began moving somewhere else.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThe story writes itself,\u201d Lacy said then in a conversation for his Rolling Stone<\/em> cover story. \u201cI feel like my job is really just, it\u2019s such an abstract mindset when you\u2019re in album mode. It\u2019s hard to explain to anybody because technically I\u2019m free, but I feel very busy waiting for that moment that might come to me.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tBy the time we met in Paris last June, that moment was beginning to arrive. Lacy had recently met someone new and described himself as \u201ccrushing again,\u201d \u201cfeeling romantic again,\u201d and \u201cfeeling open again.\u201d The change was already finding its way into the music.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIt\u2019s all together,\u201d he said. \u201cSo it\u2019s like a story that starts and gets completed, but it happens in real time. I\u2019m not making it up.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tLacy had begun working almost immediately after Gemini Rights<\/em><\/a>, his Grammy-winning 2022 breakthrough album, but for much of the next few years, he couldn\u2019t find the finished record inside everything he was making. He thought he had found it more than once.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThere\u2019s moments of fake ease,\u201d he said. \u201cThought it was coming, but it was like, \u2018This is not it,\u2019 like three times\u2026 I thought I had it. And God was like, \u2018Nope.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tEach attempt to force the album into shape sent him back to the songs. \u201cI think when you try to seek what\u2019s too early, you get humbled,\u201d he said. \u201cI got humbled a couple times.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n

\n

\t\tEditor\u2019s picks<\/p>\n<\/h2>\n<\/section>\n

\n\tEventually, he stopped trying to determine the structure of the album before the writing was complete.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cStop trying to sequence the fucking music,\u201d he remembered telling himself. \u201cJust write the songs. So now I\u2019m just writing. And then once that\u2019s happening, I sort out the story.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThat process lasted nearly three years. Lacy continued making music on the road, at home in Los Angeles, at the Village studio, and during extended stays in Paris. He described the experience as learning his craft all over again.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThis has been a two-, three-year process, man, of just fucking practicing, waking up, just making sounds,\u201d he said. \u201cIt feels like I\u2019ve taught myself how to make songs again. Because I think every album cycle, I feel like a different person by the end, and what I want out of songs changes.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThis was also, he said, \u201cone of the hardest albums to make.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWhat I want out of new music changes every week,\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019m like, \u2018I want to make what I want out of music.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tFor most of his career, Lacy considered himself a producer and musician before a lyricist. As part of the band the Internet<\/a>, he would build an instrumental, come up with a hook, and hand the song off. \u201cWords were always just kind of secondary,\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019m like, \u2018If my beat hard, this bassline hard, the chords hard, what else do we need?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\n

\n

\t\tRelated Content<\/p>\n<\/h2>\n<\/section>\n

\n\tOn Oh Yeah?<\/em>, he began approaching language with the same obsessive attention he once reserved for drums, chords, and bass.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThis is kind of my first album where I\u2019m consciously thinking about writing every day,\u201d he said. \u201cIt feels like fully designing a new language for myself, as far as how I\u2019m speaking about things and how open I am to speaking about things.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tHe rewrote verses, recorded different versions, and considered how individual words landed against the production.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI\u2019m really sitting with it and being like, \u2018This is a cool sentence conceptually, but it\u2019s not hitting a good snare,\u2019\u201d he said. \u201cSo I\u2019m kind of mixing how to say something that I want to say, but also sound selection like a producer. So these words sound really good.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tHe described the songwriting as \u201cpatient, thorough, direct, funny.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI think I\u2019m even funnier on this one,\u201d he said. \u201cFunny but also introspective. I\u2019ll have a joke and then a line that makes you want to cry after.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n

\n