Featured Image Photo Credit: Owen Ela

George Lewis Jr., better known as Twin Shadow, celebrated 15 years of music in 2025 and, with that, released two albums. Georgie is a record full of stripped-down melodies, while Cadet sees the former’s songs reimagined in a creative and sonically blissful way. The album is perfectly executed, which is no surprise since he’s a talented producer who has worked and played with a plethora of artists.

His novel way of hearing and creating music gives all his work a creative edge, and even after all this time, he is still able to explore uncharted territories in his music. His lyrics are profound and attuned, and he was not shy about sharing his inspirations behind them with mxdwn.

mxdwn: Hi, my name is Eve Pierpont and I’m the editor for mxdwn’s music features section. I’m here today with George Lewis Jr., also known as Twin Shadow. How are you?

Twin Shadow: I’m very good, thank you.

mxdwn: Of course.

TS: How are you?

mxdwn: I’m good.

TS: Good.

mxdwn: Earlier this year you released Georgie, an album you started creating before you knew your father was sick and finished when he passed. What was it like emotionally making that album, and how did it affect your coping process and how you think about your relationship with your father?

TS: Well, I think, because I was making it when he had just started getting sick, and, if anything, I think, him passing sort of unexpectedly, it caused the album, after the fact, it became sort of medicine for me in a way. There was this great need for me to share it with him, and I couldn’t, so that created a very interesting introspective kind of cycle that made me, I think, I don’t know, understand how important it is to continue to make art and to share it as soon as possible, as much as possible.

mxdwn: Yeah, I get that. My mom passed away unexpectedly from cancer in 2021, so I get that feeling.

TS: Yeah. I’m sorry. Yeah, same. Cancer.

mxdwn: I know, it’s crazy. And I’m sorry that you lost your dad too. I know, it’s crazy. It’s crazy how quick it, you know.

TS: Yep.

mxdwn: Yeah. So, Cadet is a reimagined version of Georgie, turning its stripped-down songs into a more energetic record. Where did the idea come from to do this?

TS: I sort of had the idea all along. When I made Georgie, I had sort of this rule where I just was like, okay, I’m gonna not have drums on this record, and I want to see what happens because of it. I always imagined, sort of reimagining the production of the songs. I’m a producer, I produce other people’s music as well as being an artist, and so it was the perfect opportunity, really for me as a producer to say like, okay, well, the lyrics are written, the melodies are written, what else can happen when I attach other sounds to it? And it’s always interesting, and it’s just like a painting, like choosing a different color, all of a sudden changes the relationships inside of the music, and you get something that you didn’t have before, and, honestly, they’re almost unrecognizable from each other. So that excited me, the fact that just changing one little thing changes the song completely.

Photo Credit: Raymond Flotat

mxdwn: Yeah, definitely. It’s so true. That’s very interesting. I know, it was very interesting to listen to the juxtaposition of the songs and it was really well done.

TS: Thank you.

mxdwn: So, it makes sense that you’re a producer. I can totally see that. I totally get that. Over the years, you have made albums that span numerous genres. Where have those decisions come from, and do you think it has helped you grow as an artist?

TS: Yeah. I mean, I sort of think of music in a sort of, no borders way. When I listen to music, I genuinely almost don’t hear the difference between genre. I can go from metal to indie to dance pop to EDM, and I just hear it as like composition. I hear it as colors and notes and tone, tonality, and I just have never really seen genre as these hard lines. So, as an artist, I think it’s made me really curious and it’s made me sort of hungry to experience all types of music, and to express, or to attach those styles of music to what I think and what I feel. It’s been exciting. It means that I have to learn a lot all the time, but I really like that.

mxdwn: Yeah. No, that’s awesome. I love learning, and so I could see how that could push you to have to learn different things and do different things to create those different sounds, so that’s awesome. How did you decide what creative direction you were going to go with each song on Georgie to create Cadet?

TS: What I did literally is I just turned off all the music and just listened to the vocals. I always have like a synth or a piano and I know the chords from the other songs, so sometimes the chords were the same, sometimes I change the chords, and I just sit, and usually I’m a very impulsive musician, so almost always the first thing I think of is the thing that it’s going to be and I can’t really say how I even decide that. I just go after it and it becomes the first thing that I think of. I don’t like over editing. I don’t like overthinking music because mostly I’m just trying to have fun with it and feel through exactly what I’m feeling in that moment. So, I don’t feel this need to like, okay, this was a reggaeton beat I put on it, maybe I should try an indie beat or a this beat. I don’t think about it in that way. The first thing that pops in my head is the thing that seems to be right for it, and then I just make it. There’s not a lot of thought that goes into it, to be honest. It’s kind of anti-thought.

mxdwn: Interesting. I like that. I saw in something that I was sent that you treated your former self as a collaborator, which I thought was a very interesting way of putting it, and your present self as a guide or sort of architect, builder or wrecking ball. How did you go about doing this? I know you kind of maybe answered it in the last question, but more so thinking of yourself as a collaborator. I just thought that was very interesting.

TS: Well, I think all musicians go through this thing where you make something and then you detach from it. Once it becomes the audience’s music, it’s sort of no longer yours anymore. In a lot of ways, I’ve noticed an audience has more of an understanding of your own music than you do because, you made it, but it’s kind of like we’re always so self-conscious in a mirror, right? But like, people around us know what we look like more than we know ourselves. We can never actually look at the back of our heads. We’ve never actually seen the back of our heads accurately, right? Or as accurately as everyone else does. So the perception of the music for them is actually way more accurate, way more powerful in a way than for ourselves. When I think about that, I think, oh, it’s actually really easy to detach from your own music. And then when I listen to Georgie, I could be like, oh, that’s not me. I can experience myself as that’s an artist I’m working with who’s like emailing me tracks or something, and I’m adding production. To me, it’s actually really easy to detach and become two people to do that.

mxdwn: That’s interesting. Yeah. I can see that. Like you said, I always think about how you never see yourself like having, I don’t know, raw expressions, you know? Because you’re not looking in a mirror when you’re get surprised by something, or like [when] something instantly makes you sad or happy. So, yeah, it’s interesting that you say the perception of other people, who have a better perception of you than you do of yourself. Totally.

TS: And they have three-dimensional perception of, I mean, eventually we are gonna have like projectors in our house where we can put on a outfit and see ourselves in 3D, that is a definite going to happen very soon, so we’ll have a perception, but we’re always gonna have a reflective view of ourselves, but we can never have an instantaneous view of ourselves. Which is probably a good thing,

Photo Credit: Raymond Flotat

mxdwn: Yeah, I agree.

TS: And we should probably not have too much relationship with our two-dimensional reflection either.

mxdwn: I know. I feel like that could get very, I don’t know.

TS: I think it’s part of the reason why we’re all so fucked up, to be honest.

mxdwn: Exactly. You could really go down a deep hole with that. So, I also read that you pulled in people close to you, such as Ray Brady and Little Coyote for the album. How was it working with the people that you collaborated on with it?

TS: Yeah, those are my friends and, my talented friends, and I don’t collaborate a lot with other people, so it’s nice when I do that. It’s like people who I’m close with. So Kayla, who is Little Coyote, I just had this impulse, I work on her music and she lives right down the street from me, and I was just like, come over. I have this idea really quick. And she came over literally for 45 minutes and recorded her parts. My friend Ray is someone who, we play together with Miguel sometimes, so I’m always calling him when I have an idea and he’s sort of a Swiss army knife of music. My dear friend Blackpaw, he also helped me on “Dominoes,” and that was just like years of knowing each other, years of coming up, listening to music, experiencing music. So, yeah, it’s always nice. I collaborate with a lot of people on their music, but rarely on mine, so it was nice having some people involved this time.

mxdwn: Nice. That’s awesome. I’m very drawn to “You’re the Reason” off Cadet and “Permanent Feeling” on Georgie. Can you tell me about that song and it’s creative process?

TS: I mean, that was probably my favorite song on Georgie. The lyrics are just sort of like, sometimes you are in a relationship where someone is doubting themselves or doubting the relationship or whatever, and I think it sort of takes one side in order to make things work. Sometimes it takes a person to say, to kind of like grab someone by the shoulders and say, I’m committed to this. I’m into this. I am. I’m down if you’re down. And that’s kind of what the song is about, I guess. That and this idea that when you get to know someone enough, eventually you have like a permanent place for them in your heart, no matter whether it goes bad or good or whatever. So that’s sort of the inspiration for the song. I would say the musical inspiration for the version on Cadet was more like a challenge, that I gave to myself. I wanted to make a weird time signature feel not weird. It splits itself between 5/4 and 6/8 time, for the music nerds in the room. I don’t even know if that’s accurate, but there is an odd meter they call it. I like the way that five, the cycle of five feels really circular, more so than four and eight feel like they reset all the time, whereas five really feels like a circle, and conceptually, I thought about “Permanent Feeling” and cyclical, going forever and ever. So, I sort of applied that to the production, this idea of like a permanent rhythm that never ends and you can’t find the beginning or end.

mxdwn: That’s beautiful. Both parts of that answer. I love that. Can you tell me where “The Seam” from Cadet and “As Soon as You Can” from Georgie came from?

TS: “As Soon as You Can,” I mean, it’s a sad song and a sad concept.

mxdwn: Yeah.

TS: So, “As Soon as You Can” is sort of, I think that in relationships, I think people are more aware of everything all the time than they will admit to, and there’s a lot of denial when it comes to really powerful feelings between two people in some sort of relationship, whether that’s best friends or lovers or anybody you’re really close to, a parent and a child, I think there’s a lot more awareness than people will admit, or even admit to themselves. And this song is just the character who’s singing, I guess me, saying I know, you know that this version that we had of our relationship is over, and I need you to tell me as soon as you can too, so that I can be released from it. It’s sort of, not make it sound too pretentious or intellectual, it’s almost like, you know you’re gonna get dumped and you need somebody to just break the news because you don’t have the strength. You are too in your denial. That song is that kind of heaviness and that heavy feeling of, I think one of the lyrics is, I talk in my sleep now and tell you my dreams, everything is about I’m admitting something where I, from some place that is like I’m talking in code, and I’m seeping out these truths to you. We’re both seeping out these truths to each other, and now we need to actually just talk about the truth. That’s sort of the lyrical theme in that song.

mxdwn: That’s awesome. Well, not awesome, but that’s beautiful again. I mean, it’s just so deep. I love it. So, just raw, what’s the word?

TS: Yeah, raw, vulnerable.

mxdwn: Vulnerable. That’s what I’m looking for.

TS: Music’s good for vulnerability.

mxdwn: It is. It really is. It makes it better. The lyrics, again, of “Love Gently” off Cadet and “Funny Games” off Georgie, they really hit on a deeply emotional level for me too. What does that song mean to you?

TS: I mean, that song I actually wrote “Funny Games” almost eight years ago, and I kind of revived it for Georgie, and it’s also one of my favorite Cadet reimaginings, which we just released. That was really the first time I ever gave someone advice in a song. I had a friend who was going through it with this guy, and I could see that she really badly wanted to be in the relationship, or really wanted to get it started, but she was sort of in this constant holding pattern, which I think happens a lot at the beginning of a relationship, and I could see that she was sort of trying a lot of different angles to try to get this person’s attention, to try to take control of the situation. I’ve always loved the movie “Funny Games,” which is a really terrifying horror film, and I always loved that. I always loved the name of that movie. The movie has nothing to do with the lyrics, but I took the name from that and thinking like, funny games is just all the things we do to manipulate a fresh relationship so that we don’t feel out of control or so we don’t feel vulnerable, you know? Too vulnerable. It was just sort of my advice, not to overthink things and not to play games, especially at the beginning of something, because if you play games at the beginning, then the whole relationship becomes about games. It was kind of me, trying to give some advice, which I don’t ever really like to do in a song, but it felt like a country song to me. There’s a couple of songs that I really love. There’s a song, I think it’s called “Johnny Johnny” by Prefab Sprout, the lead singer’s giving advice to a young, like a 21-year-old guy who’s obsessing over a girl, and he’s like, he is just overdoing it, he’s smothering her with his attention and the singer’s just giving him advice the whole song. There’s one line where he says, what are you, 21? Like, relax, you know? It’s kind of the same type of song I guess, just like telling someone to chill out.

Photo Credit: Owen Ela

mxdwn: Yeah. That’s interesting, but I like that and it’s a very good way of giving advice. I also thought it was just like very vivid storytelling, if that makes sense to you. I could just almost see the song.

TS: Yeah, there’s a lot of imagery in that song probably because, I don’t even remember their specific situation, but that probably came from stories that she told me about, moments where she was reading signs that maybe existed, maybe didn’t exist, maybe were exaggerated, maybe weren’t, you know? And I always like to put a listener in a physical place with songs, you know?

mxdwn: Well, you definitely did that. I also found it very interesting when you’re talking about the album, not using the word remix, and I totally get that with the whole club vibe or whatever, but you really remastered and remade each song beautifully. It was so fascinating to me to listen to both of them and to see what you did with each one, and I really loved it. It came out beautifully. What does the future look like musically for you?

TS: I really don’t know. I made a lot of music this year.

mxdwn: Yeah. You did.

TS: I just produced this sort of goth metal, new wave band called Patriarchy. I just produced a bunch of their record and I produced some other records that aren’t out yet that I guess I won’t talk about, so I’ve been making just a ton of music, so I’m pretty tired.

mxdwn: Yeah, I’m sure. It sounds like you need a little rest.

TS: A little, yeah. Basically what I’m working on next is, I have a 15 year anniversary party show for Twin Shadow coming on December 3, where we’re doing 15 years since my first album, so we’re celebrating that. Then after that, I’m not sure really. I’m definitely going to just keep making more records, hopefully. I always tell myself in December to not go do holiday things and just to stay and home and make music because that’s like the quietest time of the year. We’ll see if I can get away with it.

mxdwn: That’s funny. You previously mentioned working with Miguel, that’s cool. What was that like?

TS: He is amazing. I play bass in his live band sometimes, it’s a friendship thing. It’s Ray, who’s his music director and I have been friends for so many years I don’t even remember, and we’re just sort of a crew of friends and it’s sort of family vibes in a way. Miguel lives close to me and it’s always incredible. He’s one of those artists who’s just the real deal. There’s not actually a lot of people who, when you go to see them live, you’re like, well, he’s not singing with any auto tune, he just actually is that good all the time.

mxdwn: His voice is, I mean, stellar, and I know it’s not like I’ve ever met him or know him personally, but I feel like he would just be so down to earth, you know? Like the real deal kind of thing.

TS: He really is. He really is for a person who’s done all that he’s done, what he’s been through and he’s a father now. He’s humble, but he’s confident and he knows what he wants and his new record, CAOS, is amazing and it’s just great to have that community with them.

mxdwn: That’s beautiful. That’s awesome.

Photo Credit: Owen Ela