Electric Callboy’s Nico Sallach and Kevin Ratajczak reflect on bringing RATATATA to life with BABYMETAL, revealing that they whittled down “20 different versions” of the single.
While we’re still digesting every awesome collab from METAL FORTH, Nico Sallach and Kevin Ratajczak of Electric Callboy look back at working with BABYMETAL on the unforgettable RATATATA…
How did you first interact with BABYMETAL?
Kevin: “We were in Boston and we got an email from the agent, and they were touring the United States at the same time. They asked if they could come over to meet us and watch a bit of our show. We were like, ‘Crazy! BABYMETAL want to get in touch!’ To be honest, when you see them in public, you cannot get close. They seem to be untouchable. When they entered our backstage area, I didn’t even dare to come close, but they were so friendly, so nice.”
Nico: “They actually just wanted to watch a couple of songs, and then they had to leave. They were standing on a balcony right above the stage, watching the whole show, dancing with us, having fun with us. That was actually the start of talking about that collaboration.”
So how did you ending up landing on the idea for RATATATA?
Nico: “We had, like, 20 different versions of that song, because it was not that easy to find a common ground. They had ideas that we didn’t like, and we had ideas that they didn’t like, so it was not that easy to make it 50/50. But in the end, I can tell you, it was one of the best decisions and one of the best experiences, because it made us grow as musicians to write a song like that.”
Kevin: “They are so structured in their working life, and it opened our minds, as well. If you’ve been a songwriter for years, you can sometimes stick to the same old things. It can be very, very, very frustrating sometimes, because you can’t escape from your own creativity.”
How long did the song end up taking?
Nico: “I would say two or three months.”
Kevin: “Sometimes, when it’s hard work, it takes a month. But of course, we had some deadlines, and so it was frequent work, and it was emailing back and forth. Since we had a time difference we had to work fast on that song, but we felt like being high on some drugs because we were so into that one track.”
Nico: “The funny thing is, there was actually no space for anything else. We’d been working on that song for weeks and months straight without doing anything. We started with a totally different song. We didn’t know what to do – like, ‘Is it more serious? Is it a fun song?’ When we wrote the first version of a potential collaboration, it took us two, three, four days, and neither side liked it anymore, so we got rid of it and rethought it all over again. We then became pretty sure that we wanted to have something a little bit like [2022’s] We Got The Moves, but in a more BABYMETAL style.”
Kevin: “Sometimes you have ideas, and it’s about your part, and you interpret that idea. But in this situation, they had ideas that we performed, and we had ideas that they performed. For example, the ‘RATATATA’ before the breakdown was our idea, and we thought it would be funny if there was a girly voice doing this. They did it, and it was on point, you know? It was in our heads. We told them what it should be doing exactly and they did it perfectly.”
This interview originally appeared in the special-edition Kerrang! Presents BABYMETAL magazine.
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