Andy Samberg, Akiva Schaffer, Jorma Taccone On The Lonely Island, ‘The Wack Album’

Andy Samberg: For us, we just get a big board of celebs and put their picture up and blindfold darts, just throw it at them. Jorma Taccone: Darts. Yeah. And you’re like, "Yeah, that seems impossible to get that person, let’s go for that.” Samberg: Yeah, “Adam Levine? Kendrick Lamar? Yeah.” Taccone: Yeah, two of our faves? Yeah, definitely not gonna happen. Samberg: Hugh Jackman and Too $hort? Natural to be on the same record. And then we just put out the feelers and see what comes back.

Taccone: It depends. Samberg: It depends. I would say majority of the time we have written all of the lyrics. A lot times we’ll write out the whole singing parts that we’ll ask other people to do, and then they’ll make it much better, you know? Taccone: There’s always a version, a temp version, on any one of our songs, with Andy singing our singer’s part. And a lot of them, I would say, for me – sometimes it’s even better with Andy because he has a beautiful singing voice, and it’s not bad, and it’s really good — Akiva Schaffer: It’s easy to listen to. Taccone: It’s really good, it’s easy to listen to, and it’s not bad.
Samberg: What’s an example of a song you liked better before we got the guest on it? Taccone: God, so hard to say, because they’re all so good-sounding — Samberg: Right. Taccone: When you’re temping it.
Samberg: Just give me example of like, me temping for like— Taccone: Oh god. Oh, say like Michael Bolton, because Michael Bolton has a great voice, but Andy has a really lovely singing voice. Samberg: Oh, okay fine, I’ll do a little of it. [singing]: This is the tale— Taccone: No –
Samberg: —of Captain Jack Sparrow.
Taccone: Anyway, so it’s great. It’s really nice to hear that. We’re gonna release a compilation of those later on when we want everyone to buy it.
Samberg: Little pitchy. Little pitchy.

Taccone: Not working together, being friends together, certainly. Samberg: Hey, friendship is work. Taccone: That’s true, it is. Schaffer: Gotta work on your friendships. Even then, in seventh grade, we were like— Taccone: “This is a lot of work.” Schaffer: “This is a lot of work being friends with you—" Samberg: “It’s worth the time. Communicate.” Taccone: Because this is gonna become a minorly profitable business in the future. I think it makes the creative process and our business relationship work better, and it makes it harder for us friend-wise, ’cause all we really wanna do is hang out and play videogames and drink. Samberg: [laughs] Very candid. Taccone: I’m just being myself. Samberg: 10:30 a.m.? Yeah, can we — is it too early for a drink? Taccone: Oh, we got this business thing getting in the way. Yeah, we gotta make this album.

Taccone: I’m gonna go out on a limb and say this is our best album. And all of the tracks are some of my favorites. Samberg: I feel like someone handed you a list of talking points today, and one of them was to say that this our best album. And I like it. Taccone: It’s really good! Do you not agree? It’s really good. Samberg: I have no idea. I’m very proud of it; I have no idea if it’s our best— Taccone: Okay, that’s a weird thing to say, but it’s quite good. Schaffer: It’s probably our smartest album. Taccone: Yes. And some of the smarter songs, are—
Schaffer: I really liked the one with Hugh Jackman, ’cause he’s so surprising on it. Samberg: I don’t have a favorite, but I— Schaffer: I like how pretty Robyn sounds on the one she’s on. Samberg: Go Kindergarten. Taccone: Solange sounds amazing, and is very funny on Semicolon. Samberg: Pharrell is on a song. Called Hugs. I love that one. Taccone: Which is very funny.

Taccone: When we’re writing, I think we write very visually, like we’re kind of picturing a video, because I think ideally we’d like to make a video for almost all of our songs, ‘cause it always enhances the joke. So I think we’re always kind of writing visually. Schaffer: The song always comes first. Taccone: Yeah. And then we sort of make videos based on, one, who we can get at the time, because we have a lot of pretty well-known people on some of the songs, and then also what we find to be the funniest. And then sometimes it’s budgetary restrictions. Schaffer: That’s the boring part. Taccone: Just thought I’d get down to the real.