How It Works

Any young person who has been in the music industry for a few years has had someone try to explain to them "how it works." That's what happened to Old Sea Brigade (the performing moniker of Ben Cramer), who decided to write a song about it. "I had received an email from someone within the industry basically telling me how something works," he said on the Songfacts Podcast. "I thought huh, ok... and we wrote this song mocking that person's email. It's funny because now that we have written the song, I just hear that phrase all the time."

Old Sea Brigade wrote this with his friend Henry Brill, who worked with Birdy, Rhys Lewis, and Anderson East. "Sometimes when we are stuck on a song, Henry is the type of person who you have to give him two minutes to pace around the room and his eyes light up and he gets it," Old Sea Brigade said.

Old Sea Brigade released this song in November 2020 but didn't issue the album it was part of, Motivational Speaking, until six months later. The delay was induced by the lockdown: With lots of time off the road and in the studio, he decided to keep tweaking the album to make it a bit "weirder."