Johan Lenox’s Beautiful, Dark, Straightened Reality: a TOTIEK interview

Johan Lenox talks about string arrangements, contemporary classical music, and working with Kanye West

Welcome to my Substack! I’m Hannah Jocelyn, also known as Fell From The Tree, also known as “the writer who can’t sustain this gimmick.” I’m calling this The Only Times I’ve Ever Known as a reference to Billy Joel’s “Summer Highland Falls” - the full line is “they say that these are not the best of times, but they’re the only times I’ve ever known.” And I’m trying to make the best of these times. Follow me for interviews, reviews, and other antics.

I first encountered Johan Lenox when I heard an unexpectedly luxurious string arrangement on a song by Spotifycore star Alec Benjamin. “Oh My God” is typical sadboi pop, but Lenox’s live strings gave the music real weight. When I mentioned it to him on Twitter, Lenox asked me how I knew — he didn’t even know the song got released, much less his contributions. I’ll disclose here that we’d messaged before, but my ultimate goal was interviewing him because I find his approach and story fascinating. He heard My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy in 2010 while on an acid trip, and that gave him a drive to reach beyond classical music. His friend Ellis Ludwig-Leone, from the indie pop group San Fermin, gave him Logic, and he began learning as soon as he graduated from Yale.

His show Yeethoven drew parallels between West and Beethoven. To make ends meet, he’s providing strings for Travis Scott, Selena Gomez, and others. He also worked as Bryce Dessner’s assistant, fixing scores for the National’s I Am Easy To Find (but, as he clarified upon release, not Folklore, though Bryce did string arrangements for most of that record.) Unusually for people I’ve interviewed, Lenox is more interested in professional connections than emotional ones. He has two feature-stacked albums in the works, a full-length pop record (What Do You Want To Be When You Grow Up) and a quarantine passion project (Isomonstrosity). The latter, a half-hour series of vignettes, fulfills a longtime goal; to be the kind of person that bridges the worlds between Danny Brown and Bryce Dessner, both of whom contribute.  

Can you give us a general background?

The inciting event in this part of my journey was hearing My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, the Kanye album at a friend's party when I was in grad school. And I was really struck by “Runaway,” which starts with a minute of whole notes on piano, some really unusual musical choices on that album. And so I think just seeing  this party full of random normal non-classical music fans or whatever who are enjoying these genuinely challenging musical decisions was a cue to me that, Oh,  I can do a lot of the stuff that I wanted to do with classical music. If I had a platform, they trust someone to do these really crazy things and they're willing to go on that journey with [me]. So that was sort of the shift. And then from there I got a copy of producing software and just, you know, when I finished school, I just thought, I’ll try to be a pop star. 

So I've been using Sibelius all my life, basically. It's  second nature to me. And then Logic was  the one that I didn't study. I mean, there were classes at school to learn how to  produce, but I was just so rigidly in my  composing chamber music and stuff that I'm just , and I think I was also  doing enough. I was kind of successful in that world,  for high school or when I got there. I think she would have maybe encouraged other students to give music tech a try, but I basically taught myself Logic on YouTube and after I graduated. I had a group at Yale with Ellis Ludwig-Leone [of San Fermin] that was doing classical music with light shows. And so, and so I think seeing him, cause he got signed off of  one song to  downtown records or whatever with that album, but I was still in grad school cause he went straight to New York after undergrad. That gave me a lot of inspiration. I didn't know anyone in the pop music industry. So I think seeing someone just leave and get a record deal, which wasn't something anyone was doing at the time was, Oh cool, this is actually a fairly attainable thing. 

Bryce Dessner also went to Yale - how did you meet him? The National is very different from the music you’re making right now.

The world of pop music and hip hop and stuff that I work in is completely separate and unrelated to the world that he's in — I just don't work with Brooklyn indie bands.  it's just not a thing that has any mark on what I'm doing, my awareness of him was entirely from the contemporary classical world — I think Ellis had worked for him too. And he was friendly with this guy, Nico Muhly that we all sort of, well, yeah. So that's a whole world of people that we already knew. Ellis had done some work for Bryce and he put me in touch with Bryce when San Fermin got too busy. I’m actually credited on The Revenant, because I prepped string parts for it. He had also come to my grad school seminar at one point and played us some music. I ended up working for him just as a job, random hours here and there for three or four years.

I didn't know their music at all until I started working for him. He had me do a lead sheet of “About Today” - I had never heard that song before. I learned that song because I was transcribing it. 

When I got to Yale, I was also expecting people to be into classical music because I was an idiot. I just thought oh these are all very erudite, academically inclined people, they’re going to be into erudite, academically inclined music. In high school, I was the only kid in my public high school really into contemporary classical music, so I thought I'd have to look at Yale. But still, nobody cared about [classical] music, people listened to the National. So I was thinking, if they’re not the audience for music, who is?

My entryway into classical music was Bryce’s work with the Kronos Quartet.

I’m trying to do a similar thing. There was this whole group of people that was in between indie rock and contemporary classical, 10 years ago. And I don’t know that i’m a part of a group of people doing this, but I’m interested in a similar [blend], coming from hip-hop instead of indie rock.

When you get contacted by Sir Nolan or Take a Daytrip or  all these very big pop and R&B producers, what are the kinds of directions they give?

There is a wide range, I think, Fallen, who's the guy who produces all the SAINt JHN songs. He was one of my favorite artists and is highly particular,  everything I do, we ended up going through four revisions. I think SAINt JHN is just really picky and he knows him better than anyone. So he's going over to the piano and being, what if we voiced it this way? Or what about this? And well, you can do this. He'll usually go back a couple of times to me, yeah, this is great. Can I get something  this though? I don't even demo the strings out.  I don't put money down and send them that, I just write the parts and record it. The money is spent and it's done. I know what they’re going to want, rarely do I have to go back if the money’s been spent - I feel like I’m being really negative, but people don’t want arrangements that are that interesting. [With] the strings that I’m doing, it’s easy for me to guess what they want. Everyone basically wants the same thing - the [presence] of strings are interesting. I'm not being that creative with it. It really is a job for me. It was just, I know what they basically want. I can do it faster than anyone else and cheaper.

You’ve done one-offs for Alec Benjamin and whole albums for Lewis Del Mar and some other projects too - it's interesting you mentioned it as a way to make connections and make ends meet because that requires a lot of emotional investment.

For the first couple of years I was doing some sessions where I just didn't enjoy them. Cause I thought, you know, it's just smart to do a lot of sessions and meet a lot of people. But now, I only work on stuff [I want to], and what's fun about it is that I only get hired to do things that I'm already good at and the strings and the choir stuff that I do, additional production.  There was a period where people would put me in sessions and it was, here's this new artist on Atlantic, then she comes in and she says “I want to do a track that sounds funk-inspired.”

So you go on Splice and try to find some electric bass loops or it's just, why am I the one doing this? I have no interest in it. I'm not going to do a good job. It's only networking in that case - I only do stuff where I think I'm doing a good job, I rarely work on music where I’m like, this song kind of sucks.  I like the Alec Benjamin one for what it is. I like the Lewis Del Mar thing for what that is. Neither of those are really the type of music I'm trying to make. 

People think I talk about bringing classical music into a contemporary environment - the assumption is, you did strings on a Big Sean record, that's you bringing contemporary classical music into a, you know, contemporary pop environment, right? I don't see it that way at all. I don't see any connection whatsoever to the strings that I'm doing on these records and contemporary classical music. The values are so completely different - I see it closer to just  other additional production.

Do you have any influences as an arranger? I was thinking of David Campbell, who did the strings for “Iris” by the Goo Goo Dolls.
I love that song, but I literally never heard that name before. I just, haven't done my homework on this topic, which maybe tells you something, but it's yeah. It's just purely a job, you know?

Let's see if I have this right. Saying that a song has some contemporary classical influence because there are strings in it, would be like saying that “Iris” is prog rock because of the shifting time signatures.

Probably. I mean, I think that, I mean, it's also... What do you consider to be  fundamental to music? To me the changing time signatures are more interesting than having strings on the song, you know? It's not bringing contemporary classical music into the pop environment, but I do really enjoy [answering] what's the weirdest thing you can get on the radio, you know?  That's just something that I'm interested in anyway. I found Twenty One Pilots’ music to be pretty weird and that was massive. I'm glad to see that happening just for its own sake, you know? 

Let’s talk about your own music. You have What Do You Want To Be When You Grow Up and Isomonstrosity.

I re-recorded my entire debut album and re-sang all the vocals with a darker tone to get away from this kind of bright, lighter, full tone. “Throwback Thursday” or “Cancel The Party” I’m singing a little brighter, a little closer to a pop delivery. On this new project, I was trying to sing a little closer to the artists I really listen to, like SAINt JHN, Khalid, and Post Malone have this darker weirder tone. Some people who would be into the type of music I'm doing were kind of turned off by the vocal a little bit, read it as being more pop than they're comfortable with if they came from me through Travis Scott.

There are definitely going to be  probably at least three other features from pretty significant artists that I've worked with. And that only happened [because] I worked for them and they just fucked with me on the basis of  the stuff I did for them, and they’re like “oh, you’ve got this project too, let me know if you ever need a feature, you know?” And Island might pay them, but it's  the fact that they're down to do it. It's probably more just cause they've yeah, no, that's, that's entirely why I'm working for these artists, or  if I could open for them on tour, but yeah, it's always back back towards my artist project but it definitely more on the rap side though. I'm not going to get Selena Gomez. That'd be too expensive probably, but, I don't know that that's what people want to hear from me, you know?

Touring isn’t a thing right now - have you found it more difficult to keep making those connections and just kind of keep that momentum going?

I mean, it does feel sometimes you're, especially with these bigger artists, it's - did they stop responding to your texts? They don't need something from you, but you know, and I think I could maybe be better about  turning a session into  a friendship sometimes. I think I look at this stuff, I'm very  obsessed with efficiency and I feel  I'm always just trying to  get the music done and get on more records. But it's  that isn't sometimes the most conducive way to building a long-term relationship with an artist as a friend, which is probably what you want, if you want them to bring you out on tour... on Isomonstrosity, no one's getting paid for that. Cause it's just too much of a weird passion project. But , except for two or maybe three, all of those features were people I had previously worked for and I was able to call them a favor, you know? Right.  that, that those features wouldn't exist had I not been producing for Channel Tres in that setting or Kacy Hill.

What is the ultimate goal for you? What would you do if you didn’t have to make a billion connections to get anywhere? 

I wanted to make contemporary classical music into a big cultural phenomenon in America. That is the fixed point that hasn't changed since like 11th grade probably. For awhile I had ideas about how to do that when I was in college and it was a lot and a lot of those are still ideas I have, but I concluded that a lot of them wouldn't be fully doable without having a bigger platform - I got into Kanye’s music realized that someone like that has the type of platform I'm looking for and this sort of trust from their fans to do the kind of experimental I want to do. And so I concluded I got to become a pop star and then I can do this other thing.

I want to spend the next five or 10 years being like the biggest artist I can be in a very commercial realm. And then as I'm already starting to a little bit dipping back into the, you know, with Isomonstrosity with some of the stuff I was doing at Lincoln Center with Yuga Cohler but like much more deeply just spending the rest of my life doing that stuff - by the end of my life, I would love to see a big movement of contemporary classical music as like a thing in America. And then I wrote musicals in college, and I’m trying to turn one into a movie, I’ve always loved that too. I want an EGOT, you know, these are the goals. 

Can you tell me more about the musical? 

Independents is about a bunch of kids who live on a boat and pretend to be on a reenactment tour, but basically, they just like to sell weed and they're all like misfits.They eventually have to come to terms with facing the reality back on shore and go their separate ways. But for a while it’s about how they love each other and how the escape from the real world. And that eventually it's unsustainable. The idea for it to be folk rock was not mine, but the people, this is like in school, the people that were doing it and wanted me to do music and that's what they wanted to do. So I sort of figured out my version of that. And we did it at Yale, and then we did it in the Fringe Festival in New York, and then it won all the awards at the Fringe Festival. And the prize for that is that they put it off-Broadway for like a few weeks in the Soho Playhouse. That's the one we're trying to turn into a movie.

Then I’ve done a bunch of others, like I did one called Caius Marcius that’s a prequel to Shakespeare’s Coriolanus, I did one based on Wise Blood by Flannery O’Connor that’s very Sondheim-esque.

We’ve mostly talked about rap - Sondheim is the last name I expected!

I think the contemporary classical world also has nothing in common with either of those two. And I have like lots of opinions that I occasionally get into on Facebook about the differences between these worlds. Cause I don't think I really know anyone who's traveled all three of them as well as I have, even two of them, you know - I don't know anyone who's deeply in Broadway and deeply in contemporary classical. I certainly don't know anyone who's deeply academic classical and pop music, except for maybe like Bryce or something, but, you know, I'm in a different, pretty, pretty different part of pop music than what he was doing. I like being sort of a stranger in all three of these worlds, I guess. And I think I've learned a lot. I mean, I feel like working in pop music has really informed how I think about contemporary classical music. It's certainly informed how I think about Broadway and like how that stuff could be better. 

I did also notice just looking at the description for Independents, some similarities between that and just kind of the themes on both the debut album and Cancel the Party. Growing up and taking adult responsibilities.

It's a total coincidence, but it's like, it works out like, cause now that we're trying to turn into a movie, it was just like, wow. Yeah, this really is just exactly the same, but I didn't even write the story - our friend Marina wrote the story. So it was just like, that was what she was interested in, but I love that about it. The fact that they're clearly exactly the same topics that I'm writing about. I'm obsessed with that topic, but yeah, it's a total coincidence.

What are you most proud of? 

Isomonstrosity, in terms of just my actual interests and goals, I feel like that's the most interesting. I was going to have a series at Lincoln Center before COVID happened. We were going to make this a repeating idea, but like every year a concert where we basically just commissioned people like James Blake and Grimes and to write classical music and just like help them do it. And then just, it's an orchestra concert of contemporary classical music, including by people in the classical world, but also these artists with like big fan bases that, that like we think are receptive to interesting and challenging music and might actually just go to a normal concert, even though James Blake isn't performing in it or even singing it's just orchestra music.

That was the thing I was most excited for. Hopefully it'll, we'll do it when things open up eventually, but those things mean the most to me, because they're the closest to  the goal that I'm actually after, it's like in terms of what I care most about those things that are the closest, but in the pop music world, I mean, definitely like Astroworld, as I said, that's the most legendary thing. I've been a part of like, you know, in terms of that, like, I don't think there's any other product that's as widely, just completely revered.And working with Kanye. I mean, yeah, like that, the thing with Kanye too is like, it's like a real, it's like a three point journey. Because listening to his music is what got me into this idea in the first place of doing contemporary pop music, then Yeethoven was a show about Kanye. All the big connections I have now can be stemmed from relationships I built right after that show and the reception to it. And then finally like working with them. 

Not to be that interviewer, but what was it even like working with Kanye? 

It was during his five albums and five weeks for, you know, so I worked on the Teyana Taylor and Nas albums. I mean, you know, like I met him, he gave me his direction for the album and what he wanted the strings to do basically. And then I was working from home mostly those two weeks and sending ideas to Mike Dean. And a couple of times he like put Kanye on the phone and just gave me an update that was pretty much it.

So it's basically like any other thing that you've been doing then?

Yeah, except, I mean, I was dumbfounded and couldn't even speak.. I don't feel like I've gotten like the full, full experience of being in the studio with him for days on end or something. I mean he said this himself, so I don't feel bad saying it, but it's not Kanye Season anymore. You know what I mean? The best case scenario would have been working with him like 10 years ago, you know? And I feel like I kind of caught the tail of his arc as a musician, you know? He's still making music, but it's, he's obviously moved on to other interests. I'm not trying to like build and grow and like get close. I would love to work with him more, but it's like we're going in the opposite direction. I kind of have to look at it as my brief crossing of paths with him - I have to now go off in my own direction with it.