Imagine having a childhood fear of the supernatural
so completely paralyzing that you are like actually
an intensive ongoing therapy just to cope with
your daily life. Oh, wow. Yeah, that is heavy
for a kid. Right. Or, uh, imagine living in a
childhood home that your parents are so utterly
convinced is haunted that they literally pack
up your entire family, abandon the house, and
just never look back. That is legitimately terrifying.
Like, the adults in the room are validating the
monster under the bed. Exactly. Now, imagine
you grow up. You meet someone with that exact
same deep -seated trauma. and you decide the
only way to heal from it is to form a band. Which
is an interesting coping mechanism. It gets weirder.
Oh, and you happen to be A -list Hollywood actor
Ryan Gosling. I mean, it completely shatters
the mechanical expectation we usually have when
a major Hollywood actor decides to dabble in
a music career. Yeah, you usually expect something
totally different. Right, because we have been
conditioned to expect something polished to within
an inch of its life. You anticipate the top -tier
producers, the flawlessly curated press photos,
and a very safe focus -grouped sound. The standard
vanity project. Exactly. It's almost always a
vanity project designed to be universally palatable.
Just extending a celebrity's brand without taking
any real creative risks. OK, let's unpack this
because to truly understand the late 2000s rock
duo Dead Man's Bones, you have to understand
that this isn't a standard celebrity side hustle.
Not even close. Today we are welcoming you to
our deep dive where we are looking at a single
fascinating Wikipedia article detailing the history
of this incredibly unique band. It is such a
wild ride. It really is. We are exploring how
an unlikely pair of friends took their deepest
most visceral childhood fears and channeled them
into a boundary pushing, rule breaking musical
experiment that left a massive surprising footprint
on pop culture. And the foundation of that experiment
starts way back in 2005. Ryan Gosling, who, by
the way, actually chose to perform in this musical
project under the slightly ridiculous alias Baby
Goose. Wait, Baby Goose, that is amazing. Yeah,
Baby Goose. So he met Zach Shields. And what
brings these two together isn't a shared desire
to become famous rock stars, or even like...
A mutual love for a specific genre of music?
No, it's much more niche than that. Very. They
bonded over a mutual, intense, and highly specific
obsession with Disneyland's Haunted Mansion ride.
And if you were listening to this thinking, oh,
they just like the fun theme park attraction,
let me stop you right there. It goes so much
deeper than a casual appreciation for animatronic
ghosts. Yeah, it wasn't just a hobby. Right.
Zach Shields' childhood preoccupation with ghosts
was so severe and so overwhelming that it disrupted
his daily life. The fear was so intense he required
professional psychological intervention. Which
is so wild to think about. Think about the psychological
weight of that for a young child. I mean, a kid
dressing up as a vampire for Halloween or enjoying
a scary movie is one thing. Sure, that's normal
kid stuff. But requiring therapy because you
were actually paralyzed by the concept of mortality
and the supernatural is entirely different. When
you are a child facing that kind of phobia, you
are completely powerless. You have zero control.
Exactly. You are at the absolute mercy of the
dark and of those unseen spaces between the living
and the dead. And Gosling wasn't exactly having
a standard picket fence childhood either. His
parents were so terrified by what they believed
was genuine paranoia. activity in their home
that they just abandoned it. They just packed
up and left. Yeah. Imagine what that does to
a child's psyche. The adults in the room, the
people who are supposed to keep you safe, are
essentially validating your worst fears by packing
the station wagon and fleeing. It really is like
discovering two adults who bonded over a mutual
paralyzing fear of the monster under the bed.
But instead of laughing it off over a few drinks
and move it on, they used it as their ultimate
creative muse. Which brings up a big question.
How exactly does profound childhood trauma, abandoning
homes and undergoing therapy translate into a
desire to write supernatural love stories? Because
that was their ultimate decision here. What's
fascinating here is the psychological mechanism
of reclamation. Oh, reclamation. I like that.
Yeah, because as children, Gosling and Shields
were victims of their own imaginations and their
environments. They were fleeing houses and sitting
in therapist offices just trying to cope with
it all. Right. But as adults, by choosing to
write love stories about these exact same ghosts,
monsters, and ghouls, they were actively taking
control of the narrative. They synthesized those
extreme, isolating experiences into a very unique
psychological bond. They took the lingering dread
that had haunted them for decades and transformed
it into a shared artistic language. Finding romance
in the macabre, you know, it allows you to process
the fear on your own terms. They essentially
decided that they weren't going to run from the
haunted house anymore. Yeah, they moved in. Exactly.
Instead, they were going to move back in, decorate
the parlor, and write the soundtrack for it.
By romanticizing the very things that terrified
them, they stripped those fears of their power.
But deciding to make a deeply personal album
about monsters, built entirely on raw, unresolved
childhood emotions, it kind of dictates your
next move. You can't exactly walk into a pristine,
multi -million dollar Hollywood recording studio
and start tracking flawlessly auto -tuned vocals.
Oh, absolutely not. A sterile, hyper -controlled
environment would instantly kill the vulnerability
they needed to capture. It would sound too fake.
Right. If the subject matter is raw, unpolished
and a little unsettling, the methodology has
to mirror that perfectly. So to achieve that,
they essentially shattered the established rules
of music production when they went to record
their self -titled debut album. Which was released
in October 2009 through NTI Records, right? Yes,
produced by Tim Anderson. And the parameters
they set for themselves alongside Anderson are
completely wild. First, they instituted a strict
no -click tracks rule. Which is huge. It is.
And for anyone who hasn't spent time in a modern
recording studio, a click track is essentially
a digital metronome playing continuously in the
musician's headphones. Beep, beep, beep. Exactly.
It keeps every single drum hit and guitar strum
in perfect, flawless grid -like time. And refusing
to use one strips away the guarantee of precision.
But more importantly, it strips away the mechanical
stiffness that a lot of modern pop music suffers
from. It lets the song breathe. Yes. Without
a click track, the music is forced to breathe.
The tempo organically speeds up with excitement
during a chaotic chorus, or it bogs down and
slows with melancholy during a quiet verse. It
mimics a human heartbeat. Which is so fitting
for this project. But they didn't stop at the
tempo either. They also capped themselves at
a maximum of three takes per song. Or I'll go
pressure. Right. Three chances to get it right.
And whatever happens on that third try is what
goes on the record. And then, here... Here's
where it gets really interesting. Oh, yeah, the
instruments. They made the decision to play all
the instruments themselves, even the instruments
they had never touched before in their entire
lives. Which sounds insane. It does. Now, wait,
I have to push back on this a little bit. Insisting
on playing instruments you've never touched before,
refusing to keep perfect time, and capping the
recording at three takes, isn't that just a recipe
for an unlistenable amateurish disaster? That
is what you would think, yeah. I mean, if I...
pick up a cello, having never played one, it's
not going to sound like a haunting gothic melody.
It's going to sound like I'm injuring a small
animal. How does that actually serve the music?
Well, it's a completely valid question, and it
goes against every instinct of the music industry.
But their artistic philosophy was built on the
idea that letting those glaring imperfections
remain in the recording actually highlights the
emotional core of the music. So the mistakes
are a feature, not a bug. Precisely. When you
attempt to play an instrument you've never played
before, say like a tack piano or an upright bass,
you lack the muscle memory and the technical
proficiency to fall back on. You can't go on
autopilot. No, you can't hide behind skill at
all. You can only rely on raw emotion and instinct.
So the lack of muscle memory actually forces
them to be hyper -present in the moment. The
imperfection isn't a mistake, it's the entire
point of the exercise. You are quite literally
a beginner fumbling in the dark to find the right
note. And what could possibly be more fitting
for an album about childhood fears than the sonic
equivalent of someone fumbling in the dark? That
is a great way to put it. Avoiding a polished
artificial sound creates a raw, vulnerable authenticity.
The audible squeak of fingers sliding down a
guitar string, an offbeat drum hit, a slightly
missed, dissonant note on a piano. These are
proof of life. They are proof of human frailty.
And if you've ever tried to learn an instrument,
you know how terrible and chaotic those first
few days sound. Imagine committing that exact
vulnerable phase to a professional record being
distributed globally. It takes a lot of guts.
It really does. And to amplify that incredible
vulnerability, they didn't just sing the soaring
choruses themselves. The core collaboration on
this entire record was with the Silver Lake Conservatory
Children's Choir. Bringing in a choir of local
kids completely elevated the project. It took
it from an indie rock experiment into something
much, much more profound. And the Silver Lake
Conservatory was actually founded by Flea. Right?
The legendary bassist for the Red Hot Chili Peppers.
Yeah, he founded it to provide music education.
And Gosling and Shields utilized these pure,
unadulterated voices to directly contrast with
their own rough, untrained instrumentation. Looking
at the track titles, songs like, My Body's a
Zombie for You, Werewolf Heart, and Flowers Grow
Out of My Grave. This is pure gothic folk territory.
Oh, absolutely. And by gothic folk, we're talking
about a genre that relies on heavy, eerie atmospheres.
It sounds like clattering bones, stomping feet,
haunting sea shanties, and dark 19th century
parlor music. It's acoustic but aggressive. Right.
Then right in the middle of that darkness you
add a chorus of children singing these macabre
lyrics. It creates a magnificent cognitive dissonance.
Combining slightly chaotic amateur instrumentation
with the bright enthusiastic voices of a children's
choir perfectly mirrors the core theme of the
band. It's spooky but sweet. Yes, it is the ultimate
blend of childlike innocence and haunting subject
matter. Hearing a child sing passionately about
flowers growing out of a grave is simultaneously
beautiful and deeply unsettling. But capturing
that lightning in a bottle vulnerability in a
studio creates a massive hurdle. That second
the album is finished though. Head the logistics.
Yeah, you can't just hire a standard five keys
backing band of seasoned session musicians to
replicate a 30 piece local children's choir on
the road. The commitment to raw, unpredictable
authenticity dictated exactly how they had to
share this music with the world. The live translation
of this album required a completely different,
almost community theater approach to touring.
Community theater is the perfect vibe. When they
finally took this show on the road for a fall
and Halloween U .S. tour in 2009, they fully
embraced the logistical nightmare of their own
creation. At every single stop on the tour, they
didn't just bring a standard opening act in a
tour van. They incorporated a local children's
choir from that specific city, similar to the
Sova Lake Conservatory kids they recorded with
in Los Angeles. Think about the daily logistics
of that tour. Arriving in a new city every morning,
locating a local choir, rehearsing with a completely
new group of children in a single afternoon.
And teaching them these complex arrangements.
Right, teaching them these gothic folk vocal
arrangements on the fly before the theater doors
open that evening. It guarantees that no two
shows will ever sound exactly the same. The energy
on stage is inherently nervous. electric, and
on the verge of falling apart at any second.
And they didn't stop at the local choir. They
also hosted a local talent show at every single
tour stop instead of having a traditional opener.
So what does this all mean? It means chaos. Picture
being in the audience for this. You might see
a local amateur magician pulling fake bats out
of a hat, or a tap dancer in a cheap skeleton
costume, followed immediately by a Hollywood
A -lister and his best friend playing out of
tune cellos while 30 local kids sing about zombies.
It's like a traveling circus collided with a
middle school recital in a graveyard. It completely
broke down the barrier between the performer
and the audience. By bringing local kids and
eccentric local talent onto the stage, Dead Man's
Bones basically invited the audience into their
haunted house. You aren't just watching a show.
No, it wasn't a concert where you just stand
there with a drink and passively watch a celebrity
perform. It was a communal ritual. They were
actively celebrating the weird, the spooky, and
the amateurish in the best possible sense of
the word. And that level of sincerity leaves
a mark. The legacy of this album is just wild
to trace it rippled out across so many different
media over the years like in 2013 their song
lose your soul was featured in the closing credits
of the French film age of panic a great film
Yeah, and that same year the track in the room
where you sleep landed in the soundtrack for
the mass of Hollywood horror hit the conjuring
And the cinematic placement in The Conjuring
makes perfect thematic sense. That film is entirely
about a family dealing with an intense, terrifying,
supernatural threat invading their home, which
essentially mirrors the very origins of Gosling's
own childhood fears and his family abandoning
their house. The music sits the dread perfectly.
But the musical ripple effect gets even stranger
than movie soundtracks. They influence the punk
band Our Time Down Here. Which makes sense. Punk
is raw. Right. But the most shocking connection
is how Ryan Gosling's use of Achievement's choir
directly inspired the black and death metal band
Behemoth. That is just incredible. Behemoth actually
used a kid's choir on their 2018 album I Loved
You at Your Darkest, specifically citing Dead
Man's Bones as the catalyst for the idea. Having
to pause here, how on earth does a niche indie
gothic folk project manage to directly inspire
extreme blackened death metal? It seems like
a stretch, right? It's like using a watercolor
brush to paint a heavy metal album cover. The
tools fundamentally contradict the expected output.
If we connect this to the bigger picture, it
proves that genuine, unpretentious art transcends
its genre. Okay, unpack that a bit. Well... Black
and death metal is a genre defined by guttural
vocals, aggressive blast beat drumming, and a
deliberately oppressive heavy atmosphere. It
thrives on darkness and evoking a visceral reaction
from the listener. So how does a choir of innocent
kids fit into blast beat drumming and heavy guitars?
That's exactly the brilliance Behemoth recognized.
When they heard what Dead Man's Bones did, they
didn't hear a Hollywood actor playing quirky
indie rock. They heard the terrifying primal
contrast between innocence and mortality. The
juxtaposition. Yes. Musically, the pure high
register unison singing of a children's choir
slices right through the dense muddy distorted
guitars of death metal. It creates a sonic contrast
that is deeply unsettling. The innocence of the
choir actually makes the heavy metal sound darker
and more sinister than if they just used a traditional
heavy metal vocalist. Precisely. By tapping into
primal themes, fear, the loss of innocence, mortality
itself, and executing them with absolute unflinching
sincerity, Gosling and Shields created a sonic
aesthetic that is universally potent. It just
works everywhere. It does. That sincerity resonates
just as strongly in the backdrop of a blockbuster
Hollywood horror film as it does in the most
abrasive, extreme subgenres of heavy metal. Art
that tells the truth about human fear will always
find its audience, regardless of the packaging
or the genre. That is just incredible. It really
brings us full circle. Two guys took the very
things that terrified them the most as children,
the ghosts that put one in therapy and forced
the other's family to literally flee their home.
And they owned it. They took that terror, threw
out every single rule of musical perfection,
refused to use a click track, fumbled through
instruments they didn't know how to play, and
created a deeply strange gothic folk choir album.
And that wildly imperfect album went on to influence
both mainstream Hollywood horror and extreme
black and death metal. Which nobody could have
predicted. Definitely not. It's a testament to
the power of embracing your flaws and leaning
into the things that scare you, rather than trying
to polish them away or hide them behind studio
magic. They bypass the glossy Hollywood machine
entirely, but just being raw and vulnerable.
And in doing so, they achieve something that
money, PR teams, and top -tier producers can
never actually buy, which is genuine cultural
permanence. Which leaves us with something really
fascinating for you to mull over as you go about
the rest of your day Yeah, we started this whole
deep dive talking about the expectation of precision
The polished Hollywood image and how this project
was the exact opposite. It was a plunge into
the muddy chaotic and terrifying waters of childhood
fear So think about this. If you were to take
your own deepest, most irrational childhood fear
and completely strip away all the adult pressure
to be perfect or professional, what kind of wild,
raw and impactful art could you create? The things
that haunt us often hold the most immense creative
potential. You know, if we just stop trying to
control them and let them speak. Such a great
thought to end on. Thank you for joining us on
this deep dive. We'll see you next time.