Benny Blanco on Making Music, Marriage to Selena Gomez and his New Book on Embracing Failure

After our sit-down conversation, Benny and I hopped up, staying in that studio at Electric Lady, and stood behind a pair of, I have to tell you, giant, massive xylophones.

Why are we doing this? Well, in keeping with his book and the themes there, he wanted to face his fear of failing at this instrument he knows nothing about.

He can play all the other instruments, doesn't really know how to do this one.

So we brought in an expert, a Juilliard-trained musician in this instrument.

His name is Brandon Grubb.

Great guy, smart guy, funny guy.

And he, let's just say he kind of got us down the road a little bit.

I'm not going to pretend we were great at it, but we had a lot of fun.

Here's me and Benny learning the xylophone from Brandon of the Juilliard School.

Just getting a little head start.

Yeah, I see that.

Of all the instruments in this room, there's one that you really don't have a lot of experience with.

So we're fighting fear.

We're tackling potential failure here.

We may fail as we try this.

Does xylophone ever come up in any of your songs?

It actually does.

But when I do it, I'll record like one and then like bring it in, pitch it the right way.

Or I'll, the same way as I play other instruments, like

I'll hear a thing and I'll be like, okay, well, how can I make a chord? And I'll be like,

and I'll be like.

And I'll just be like, until I find the right notes for this song.

Right.

Okay, well, I think we may desecrate this beautiful instrument.

So maybe we bring in an expert.