Crystal Wise
The daughter of musician Frank Zappa, Moon Zappa, once declared, “I’m totally convinced I can write the perfect pop song.”
To some, this proclamation might not seem far-fetched. After all, as Moon’s father often lamented, pop music is formulaic. The songs typically follow a verse/chorus/verse/throw-in-a-bridge-somewhere structure and have a couple clever, easily repeatable lines — maybe even a double-entendre. Hey, learn a few chords, sing about love, and you have a hit, right? I’ll follow this query with a note that the 55-year-old Moon has never recorded any music, ever.
In June 2017, Vulture asked Jack Antonoff, the Bleachers’ frontman who regularly collaborates with Taylor Swift, Lorde, and Lana Del Rey to construct the current soundtrack for everyone in their 20s, to write a how-to article on creating the perfect pop song. In “Jack Antonoff on How to Write a Perfect Pop Song,” the singer/songwriter/producer delivers a rhapsody about the perfect pop song requiring emotional connectivity. “The big question is this: What is a pop song? The easiest way I can describe what makes a pop song a pop song is that it’s a song you want to hear over and over. Some people will instantly think, 'Well, that means it’s simple and stupid.' The truth is that it’s the opposite. What song have you played 10,000 times? It’s probably not something basic. It’s probably a song that validates your experience on earth.”
While any attempt to make a perfect anything is futile, a great pop song is something relatable, stirs emotion, and never ever outstays its welcome. To the contrary, once a great pop song is over, you want to hear it again. Countering Moon’s songwriting confidence, John Lydon of Sex Pistols fame once said, “It’s not easy to write a good pop song.”
I have no idea when I first heard Dayglow’s “Can I Call You Tonight?” It could’ve been while scrolling through social media, flipping through low-end-of-the-dial radio stations, or hearing it in the background at a get-together with a random playlist on shuffle. But I know I’d heard it, and I’d heard it a lot. It’s one of those songs that’s just out there, rightly taking up a breadth of space in the world. Put it this way: If you don’t know Dayglow, I would still wager your ears have, at some point, been introduced to this song.
It wasn’t until I was a passenger in a car, an Uber ride, and the song came on that I’d truly listen to it, my brain isolating it from any background noise. I was finally listening with intent. The slightly jagged rhythm of the electric guitar combined with the upbeat melodic lines that steadily progressed into one of the best hooks these ears had heard in some time had my complete attention. It was all at once dreamy and strained. I loved it. While I couldn’t make out all of the lyrics, the refrain “Can I call you tonight?” followed a line or two later by “Just how I feel” and “Tell me what’s real” were enough to trigger a sense of teen angst and young, unrequited love. All terrible feelings, but nostalgic feelings, nonetheless.
A bashful Shazamming of the song showed the artist, Dayglow, and it would subsequently enter my normal listening rotation — on occasion seeking it out and playing it multiple times in a row. I liked what it made me think about and how it made me feel. And I’m clearly not the only one who might’ve gotten a little spellbound by the tune; the song has over 500 million streams on Spotify.
Is it a perfect pop song? According to Antonoff, yes.
Crystal Wise
Sloan Struble of Dayglow peruses the bins at Record Town located in the Near Southside of Fort Worth.
“Can I Call You Tonight?” appeared on Dayglow’s 2018 debut album, Fuzzybrain, itself a collection of 10 similarly melodic, catchy tunes that ironically combine a wide-eyed sense of wonderment with paralyzing self-awareness. Something one might call indie pop.
And the band is, well, not really a band at all. Dayglow’s vocalist, rhythm and lead guitarist, drummer, and keyboardist are all a guy named Sloan Struble, who recorded the entirety of his debut album in his bedroom at his parents' home in Aledo when he was 18 years old.
That’s right, the craftsman of a perfect pop song was, at that time, attending All Saints’ Episcopal School. In between his solo band practice and creating clever guitar hooks, he was taking standardized aptitude tests, applying for college, ducking normal high school embarrassments, and thinking about girls. But, as he tells us, he really was “just making music.”
In the words of Mark Twain, “I have never let my schooling interfere with my education.”
Sloan now lives in Austin, but with his wife also hailing from North Texas, the pair often find themselves in the area. On one of their excursions up north, we met up with Sloan at local venue Tulips for a chat.
“I don’t know if I’m shy,” Sloan says, “but I am pretty reserved. Like, I never thought I was gonna get interviewed for any reason in my life.”
When I ask him about his upbringing, which I had read includes growing up on a farm-like plot of land with fainting goats, he simply drills through his primary and secondary education, “I went to Stuard Elementary, and from there I went to Aledo Middle School.” But, yes, he did in fact grow up on a farm with goats.
He describes his parents as chill, his dad an endodontist — “Shout out John Struble, DDS, if any of your readers need a root canal” — and his mom stayed at home. “Typical childhood for a kid in Fort Worth, I would assume,” he says. He also had a couple older brothers whom he says are nothing like him. In fact, he clarified, no one in his family is like him. “But we’re all close.”
Music came early to Sloan, starting out by making what he calls beats at the age of 10, when he also first picked up guitar.
“My mom got me guitar lessons at our church, and then I quickly quit 'cause it was nothing like Guitar Hero, which made more sense to me,” Sloan says unironically. “It was the buttons, which translated pretty quickly to music production. I wound up just teaching myself guitar after I knew how to play and make a beat.
“Very slowly have I learned guitar. I’m still learning.”
At All Saints’, he clearly had his priorities in order. And, by that, we mean his creative endeavors came first.
“I wasn't necessarily too involved with things [in school],” Sloan says. “I wasn't concerned with climbing the social ladder because I could see that it ended when people moved to college. Out of high school, you just move on, and I knew that was coming.
“So, all of that time during high school, I just wasn't concerned with making friends.”
In 2016, while a sophomore at the private high school, Sloan had fashioned a studio out of his bedroom and released his first proper album along with three singles under the name Kindred. Abandoning that moniker the following year, Sloan started recording as Dayglow and released four new singles, including “Can I Call You Tonight?” before walking the stage at his high school graduation.
He had also recorded an entire album’s-worth of songs, which would eventually become Fuzzybrain, released his first semester while at the University of Texas.
“In high school, I was just making music. I had a studio. I mean, it was just in my bedroom. But I basically worked on [songs for Fuzzybrain] all day long.”
While he certainly didn’t dislike Fort Worth, one can sense he was likely itching for a change of scenery. “I thought really highly of [Fort Worth], but I was in high school, so my judgment in all things is probably off.”
So, like any 18-year-old Texan seeking to better understand their place in the world while jumping at the bit to call a new city home, he high-tailed it to Austin. This time in his life is what ultimately inspired his new album’s name.
“I knew what I wanted to call the record before it was done. I felt like [Fuzzybrain] just encapsulated how I felt. You’re a senior in high school, and you’re waiting for this change to happen. At the time, I didn’t feel fully understood where I was. That’s a testament to growing up where I did, but at the same time, just being at that age. So much self-discovery. A lot of the record is fueled by that.”
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Following the independent, self-release of Fuzzybrain in September 2018, it was clear it had legs. Fast ones. And they were running at a speed with which Sloan could hardly keep up.
“Can I Call You Tonight?” became a phenomenon. Sloan managed to eschew the normal get-your-song-on-the-radio marketing plan for something far more organic. It was simply out there, and one day, it was everywhere. First becoming popular on the TikTok social media platform, the tune took on a life of its own, getting shared incessantly from TikTok user to TikTok user and racking up millions upon millions of streams. Sloan quickly went from small-time bedroom recording artist to dropping out of college and selling out large concert venues on tour. It all happened in the blink of an eye. Sloan was an international pop star.
“I didn’t think it’d happen,” Sloan says. “I knew it could, and I kind of learned how rare it was because, for marketing and relatability, people might make it seem like it organically happened. I found out it rarely does. There’s usually a label involved or someone that they knew or had connections, and I really didn’t. It just happened.”
Sloan, again in his humble ways, doesn’t take a lot of credit, at one point telling me, “I don’t know what I’m doing to make it grow ’cause I didn’t have anything to do with it [growing] in the first place."
That is, with the notable exception of actually writing the song.
And the song’s shelf life seems almost everlasting. “Can I Call You Tonight?” has had what Sloan describes as five different waves, having gone viral multiple times and continuing to reemerge. Today, Fuzzybrain, as an album, has nearly 1 billion streams on Spotify.
All of this, of course, is a testament to the power of the song. Sure, one could have a difficult time defining "Can I Call You Tonight's" enduring and endearing quality. But even an abstract reason makes the song all the more charming.
Sloan still records in a bedroom, only that bedroom is now in Austin and it has some gold records hanging on the walls. Since the release of Fuzzybrain, he’s released two more albums, played at ACL, and recently had a sold-out show at the nearby Southside Ballroom. Concerning new tunes coming down the pike, he’s putting music making on hold for a minute.
“I’m trying to get back to making music for fun,” Sloan says. “I'm still producing all myself and still haven’t signed to a major label. I haven't, in my opinion, sold out by any means.”
Regardless of when a new record gets released, Fuzzybrain and “Can I Call you Tonight?” will always sound fresh. After all, it’s a perfect pop song.
