Key Change: Samin Nosrat on Ani DiFranco

You're listening to Song Exploder, where musicians take apart their songs and piece by piece tell the story of how they were made.

I'm Rishikesh, Hirway.

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This episode is brought to you by the new film Splitsville.

It's a comedy about relationships and the messiness that comes with them.

And it stars Dakota Johnson and Adria Arhona.

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This is Key Change, where I talk to fascinating people about a piece of music that transformed their lives.

And my guest today is my friend Sameen Nasrat, the author of the best-selling award-winning cookbook, Salt Fat Acid Heat, and the host and executive producer of the HIP Netflix show that's based on it.

Her second cookbook comes out this fall and it's called Good Things, Recipes and Rituals to Share with People You Love.

Back in March 2020, Sameen and I started a podcast together called Home Cooking, where we answered people's anxious questions about cooking in the time of the pandemic and lockdown.

And we're bringing that podcast back later this year.

Same is one of my closest friends.

We've been there for each other for...

Stop making me laugh.

Sorry, Sharp.

Sameen is one of my closest friends.

We've been there for each other for all of the most important moments of our lives over the years that we've known each other.

But with a total lack of consideration to our friendship, it turns out Sameen's had important moments in her life from before we met.

But we're going to make up for lost time and she's going to talk to me about one of them today.

Hi, Rishi.

Hi, Sameen.

Do you remember how you first started telling me about the song we're going to talk about?

The question you originally asked was like, what's the most influential song in your life or, or something like that?

And I said, oh, I don't have that.

I don't have one.

And then I thought about it for a couple of seconds.

And I said, well, there is this song that kind of was part of like a turning point emotionally and really marks a moment where I was coming out of adolescence and into early adulthood.

Where were you?

And when was this that you were coming out of adolescence?

Well, I'm still coming into early adulthood, but

this was like about 1997 in San Diego, where I was born and where I grew up.

And the song is Untouchable Face by Ani DeFranco.

So what was your life like in 1997?

I was a senior in high school.

You know, to set the scene, my family, my parents came from Iran in the mid to late 70s.

I was born in San Diego.

And I very much was raised in this household.

where my mom would tell us, you know, inside this home, you're in Iran.

When you go to school, that's America.

And so inside the home, you respect your elders, you know, do everything you're told, you're good.

And so I took that really to heart.

And all I wanted was to just be a good kid and do my best for my parents.

Was there a religious component to that as well or just cultural?

It was pretty much entirely cultural and old country beliefs.

And, you know, I was the oldest kid.

I was the only daughter.

And I think there were a lot of pressures put on me for both of those reasons.

And so one of the things that I I was told was to, you know, study, do my homework, do well in school so I could get into a good college and get a scholarship because we weren't going to be able to pay for a college.

Is that what you did?

Were you a good student in high school?

I was a good student throughout.

It's funny because I think I made up for what I lacked in intelligence in a little bit of wiliness and hard work.

But I just gave everything.

And I still am that person.

I just gave everything that I had.

And so I went to a really rigorous and competitive high school.

It was a public high school.

So I was nowhere near like the most intelligent in the smartest classes, you know, the highest GPA, but I did fine.

And when it came time to apply to colleges, I applied to the colleges that interested me and a few that felt like I just should.

You know, I was in California, so I applied to a few UC schools.

But I really wanted to sort of go far, far away to a small liberal arts school on the East Coast.

Why far away?

I think it was a combination of things.

One was movies, books, and television, romanticized going away to college.

And often the ones that were pictured or like that I pictured in my mind's eye were East Coast schools.

And I really wanted that, like living in a dorm, running up and down the halls in your socks, whatever.

It's just like, there was a kind of a freedom in that that I was not allowed as a kid.

So it was part of it was like, I wanted to go away to get that experience that I'd seen that I knew I would never get at home.

And I had a friend who I really looked up to who was a year older than me.

And she went to Vassar and she loved it.

She also loved English as a subject.

And that was what I wanted to study.

And she was so happy.

And she was also a runner on the cross-country team.

And it seemed like an extension of our high school cross-country team that had been such a special and safe place for me.

So I really got it in my head that that was where I wanted to go.

Okay.

My parents, I kind of was like

just released to the winds in some ways as a student.

Like they told me to do well, but I was not given a lot of guidance at home about how to do that.

They were immigrant parents busy doing other stuff.

So I had to figure out a lot of that for myself.

So I studied, I applied, I got in, I got a full scholarship.

But then when I think my parents realized I was actually going to maybe go all the way to New York,

My dad's like, well, no, no, like we have to go visit the school.

Literally was the only school we visited.

We like got on a plane, went to whatever, Albany Airport, went to Vassar for the prospective students weekend.

And

I stayed with that friend.

And I think the first night that I was there, she was like, oh, there's a concert in the chapel.

And so I was like, okay, I guess we're all going to this concert.

And so we went and with your dad?

No, my dad didn't stay with us and he didn't go to the concert.

So we went and the concert was Ani DeFranco.

Had you heard Ani DeFranco's music before?

No, I had no idea who this this person was.

And she performed this song, Untouchable Face, which in Untouchable Face, she swears.

She says, fuck you, and you're untouchable face.

And I had no idea what the song was about.

I just heard the fuck you, you know?

Yeah.

Which to me was so scandalous.

Like, I'm just this, like, you know, good brown kid.

Like, I was like, whoo, I was sort of scandalized.

What was the reaction of the other people in the room?

I mean, everyone else knew all the words and was singing it along.

And like, they were, this was like hardly scandalous music for them people were listening to way more intense stuff and so not only are you in a room where the singer is dropping an f-bomb everybody around you is singing along with it oh yeah totally and so you know you you kind of probably by the end of the song i was also singing along yeah

i also it may have been the first time i ever saw live music it was very uncomfortable for me

and there was just this kind of like you know the show felicity with carrie Russell.

Yes.

That was on in my high school years.

Part of that fueled that vision of like what dorm life was.

Also, she had curly hair.

I'd never seen curly representation before.

And so, so I think this was sort of like my brush with that was going and staying for one night or two nights in this dorm, going to this concert.

We probably went to a party where there was alcohol, which like I had never, ever been exposed to before.

I was really sheltered, you know?

Like, yeah.

So to me, I was like, cool, ready to sign up.

I'm, you know, I ate meals in the cafeteria.

So excited.

We get on the plane, come home.

And basically, my grandfather caught wind of this trip.

And he was like, absolutely not.

He's just like, no good Iranian girl goes that far from her parents.

Like she cannot go.

And he was telling this to my father, like, you need to go home and lay down the law.

So my dad came back and he was like, you can't go.

And I was like, what?

Like, I literally, I didn't understand because I'd only ever worked so hard and done everything that they wanted and done what they had told me to do.

And now like that, that was going to, you know, pay off for me in some way.

That was being taken away from me.

And the alternative, the only alternative that my grandfather and I guess father found appropriate was that I would stay home, live at home and go to UCSD, which there was just a voice inside my belly.

that told me if that happened, if I did that, I would die in some way.

To be clear, there was not like physical violence in my home, but it was a really

tricky, tricky place emotionally and psychologically.

And I didn't have like, I had not been therapized.

I did not know.

There was just a little voice in my belly that was like, get out of here.

Yeah.

And so we were suddenly in this standoff.

And basically my dad's like, you can't go.

And if you go, you're disowned.

And I did, that kind of didn't compute for me.

I'd also been threatened for many things, mostly tiny, with being disowned throughout my whole life and continued to be.

So, but this one seemed maybe the most real, like they were actually going to make good on it if I left.

And I didn't understand what that meant.

Yeah.

I didn't understand if it meant I could never come home even on school breaks, if they would never talk to me again, if I had to leave the house and could never come back.

I was really confused and scared.

And so initially I like paid the deposit for two schools, which you're not supposed to do, just to get by myself a little extra time.

For UCSD and Vassar?

I think like my dad had sort of given me a grand compromise of I could go as far away as UC Berkeley.

Okay.

So it was UC Berkeley and Vassar, which again, I know this in some ways sounds like incredibly privileged problems, but also, you know, to me, UC Berkeley was not a school I really ever thought I would go to.

It was just where everyone in my high school checked the box on the application, but it was so huge.

And I didn't want to go to a huge school.

I was scared.

I was scared I would get lost in like a 30,000 people school.

Yeah.

And then, you know, it's that time when everyone's wearing their college sweatshirts to school and they're all so excited and everyone's figuring out who else is going.

And I was just walking around in this like haze for a few weeks.

And finally, I just realized I couldn't do it.

I didn't have it in me to disobey my parents in that way or to take whatever.

unknown risk that was.

So my heart broke and I wrote to them and I said, I am, I'm not going to come.

But it really started a moment for me.

It was the first time where I felt that fuck you to my parents and specifically my dad.

And so that song sort of became this anthem for me.

And especially that it was associated with this visit and this turning point and this moment.

Yeah.

I'm not some great scholar of music.

Like I'm not great at like reading lyrics.

And, you know, it's funny because I actually studied poetry, but like, but I'm not some lyrical scholar.

So I'm not great at like being like, oh, I know that's a breakup song or I know that's she got cheated on and she's mad.

It was just all I heard.

I'm very literal in that way where I'm like, oh, fuck you.

I'm like, yeah, fuck you.

And so that just became this thing that I still, I never said it to my dad, but it was this way I could feel a feeling and let a feeling out that I didn't really have some other way to do.

My conversation with Same continues after this.

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After that concert, did you ever end up going and listening to the recorded version of Untouchable Face?

Oh, yes.

I became an Ani DeFranco like fiend.

Oh, you did?

Yeah, yeah.

In Berkeley, where I ended up in college, there are some amazing record stores on Telegraph Avenue.

So I like would always scan for used albums and I got all of the previous ones.

And I think my freshman or sophomore year, she put out a new album.

And, you know, she would toured a lot.

And she, I think every year when I was in college, she came and played at Berkeley High School, which has a pretty big auditorium.

So we would all walk down to Berkeley High to watch Ani DeFranco.

It was a moment for me, you know?

Yeah.

It was funny too, because I remember like putting on my denim skirt.

I was just so straight edge in that way.

Like I didn't drink.

I didn't do drugs.

I had not a bone of like punkness or,

you know, not being super duper normy in my body.

I came from suburban San Diego.

Like,

so I very much felt like I didn't fit in in that audience.

And also I always wanted to go.

I want to know how you went from feeling uncomfortable in that concert and like not really even necessarily enjoying the experience to becoming an Ani DeFranco fan.

Like over what period of time did it take for you to go, like, I'm not, I'm not sure I liked that to I'm a fan of this person's music.

It took about a year, I think, because that was my senior year of high school that I went to that concert.

And I had some friends who really were big fans.

Did you tell them, do you say, oh, I went to this concert when I was at Vassar?

Yes, totally.

And I'm very absorbent in that way and porous where like if someone around me likes something and is excited i'll be like oh well i'm so curious and i want to know so i think it just started like that like through osmosis of just proximity with my friends when was the first time that you heard the recorded version of the song do you remember sitting down with the cd i don't remember but i would guess it was that summer yeah just to give you some context My mom was pretty controlling about the radio.

Like she was pretty controlling about everything.

And so she chose the music in our house and in the car, which were the main places where I heard music as a kid and as a teen.

I also was not allowed to have my own driver's license.

And so really, I was always a passenger in my mom's car where she controlled the radio.

Yeah.

And she listened to classical Persian music, but also things like Louis Armstrong, Roberta Flack, you know, Ella Fitzgerald.

Did you like the music that your mom would play?

Like, did your porousness extend to the stuff that she would expose you to?

Or did you think this is my mom's music?

This is not for me.

I didn't not like it.

I don't think I hated it.

I just think on some level I was like, there must be more out there, you know?

So I just remember, you know, we would go on caravan rides to cross-country meets and a song would come on and everyone would sing.

And I had no idea what the song was about or what the words were.

Like I was just lost.

So a couple of my friends took it upon themselves to give me a crash course in musical education and made me some mixtapes and then sort of taught me various like musical genealogies of you know like peripheral violent femmes or whatever there was another friend who was really into fish

and i asked her about ani defranco and she sort of educated me so i would guess that she probably was how i listened to the first like recorded version of untouchable face when you would listen to that song did it feel just by like listening to it that you were doing something transgressive yes absolutely just so that i had this little secret like i was like i'm listening to a song that's saying, fuck you.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Did you ever swear in front of your parents?

Never.

I wasn't, I was not allowed to, no.

Did you ever swear outside of your parents?

Like with your friends?

Maybe a little bit, but you know what's funny is the only thing I remember, I must have learned the word fuck quite early in life because I definitely in kindergarten got in trouble for saying it twice.

I'm sure it's not hard for you to imagine.

It was similar in my house where there was like no swearing.

If there was a swear, swear, like we'd be watching a you know, an American movie or something like that, and a swear would come on.

My mom would like cluck disapprovingly at it, you know, like why did they have to talk like that, you know.

And

so, just doing this episode, recording this, talking, it feels so transgressive.

And also, your mom's not alive anymore to cluck it.

And yet, I'm still, oh my gosh, are we gonna get in trouble for this?

Totally, like, I can't believe Samina saying all I mean, I'm saying it a lot.

Like, it's not without some little electric charge.

I understand, I understand.

Yeah.

But I think there is something

different about

saying it with your friends or hearing it in the air and then hearing it in a song.

And especially to have seen it in that context where it's like, there are lots of people here to pay attention to this person, what they have to say and what they have to sing about.

And then she says that and they all sing along.

Like that's got a power to it.

I think another part of it too was there was anger in that room, right?

There was an anger

as she sang, there was an anger that people were releasing when they would sing it with her.

And certainly, by the time it became my anthem, like I had anger that I was letting out.

But as much as I've always had kind of a bad temper, I would say anger in that way, like super, like feeling it to my bones and letting myself feel and express a feeling was not something that ever happened for me in my home,

in my childhood or adolescence, or really until many, many years later when I started going to therapy.

And so it was this little outlet for me to have a feeling and what I considered a bad feeling and to like have a way to let that feeling like move through and out of my body.

There's sort of two different degrees maybe of a thing that I'm imagining where when you describe being a good kid who's obedient and respects their elders, there's a version where you feel the feeling of like wanting to say fuck you to your parents in response to, I mean, any of the, any number of just the things that you've already talked about in this.

And then there's another version of it where it's like, you don't even allow yourself to have that thought.

Oh, I didn't even know it was possible.

Yeah.

And so in a weird way, this little song was a tiny, tiny taste of that

for me.

This was a little tool.

that helped me be, it just helped me cope a little bit better.

When was the last time that you listened to this song?

I haven't listened to it in, I don't know.

I mean, I do feel like I pulled up on IndoFranco on Spotify a couple years ago,

but I definitely didn't listen to it after you and I talked about it a couple months ago.

Can I play it for you right now?

Yeah, yeah.

So the track starts with this guitar amp sound.

Yeah.

When you hear that before the music has even started, is this a song that you know well enough that, like, I can recognize that sound?

Yeah.

Oh my god.

Tell you the truth, I prefer the worst to you.

Too bad you had a hair, a better hair.

She's not really my type, but I think you two are forever.

And

I hate to say it, but you're perfect together, so

fuck you.

And you are untouchable face.

Fuck you

for existing in the first place.

And who am I

that I should be lying for your touchsay hold on

I bet you can't even tell me that much

wow I'm crying it like brought tears to my eyes yeah

yeah

then when she says fuck you there's just a I just remember

how I felt like

yeah it brought tears to my eyes because I just it really takes me back to being that age.

I didn't know how fragile I was, but I was so fragile.

And so I was like a little deer in this big, big world.

And there's a part of me, too, that's like, oh, wow, it's so obvious what this song is about.

And it's not that that never occurred to me, just probably not that first time, you know?

Yeah.

But even that, the idea that it's about this, like, you know, this romance and she's mad that the guy had a partner or whatever, and you deserve each other.

Like

that part of life, I was so,

I don't know, not the word behind, but like, there were so many other burdens for me that it wouldn't have, couldn't have even occurred to me.

I just didn't even have an opportunity to feel that way about another person, some man or whatever.

Like,

that might have been what was happening for everyone else in that chapel.

You know what I mean?

Right.

Right.

Who was like having their romantic, you know, adolescence or whatever.

Yeah.

But I just, of course, my feelings had to be about my parents.

Like, of course, because I just was coming from such a different place.

Yeah.

I was light years away from that.

And I think I had a lot of shame about that in some ways.

But also now looking back, I'm like, I also just had this massive, massive burden on my shoulders.

And this was exactly the right vehicle for me to have these feelings for the right people.

And it just wasn't the same people in the song.

And that's okay.

It strikes me, the way that she sings it.

The song is sung really delicately.

Sweetly.

And I loved that.

I wonder if that made a difference.

Yeah.

Yeah, because I think that's it did make it.

It made it like something I could consume.

Because if it had been death metal or like hardcore rap or something,

that would have been too hard for me.

I needed it to come in a sweet package.

Like I needed that.

She sings it sweetly, but she still managed to get a real edge

on those two words.

Oh, God, I've listened to that song so many times.

Yeah, I think if it had only been sweet, it wouldn't have landed with me.

If it had only been harsh and edgy, I couldn't have heard that.

I wouldn't have been open to it.

I couldn't have let it in.

Yeah.

So this somehow like struck this really wonderful balance.

Maybe along similar lines.

Did it make a difference that it was sung by a woman and not a man?

Oh, for sure.

Because I could relate to it because it was from a woman.

Just subconsciously, there was a way where like there was a pathway into the song for me because it was coming from a woman.

And this song showed up in this moment with this like language and also this presentation

that

kind of broke through to me.

And this was a teeny tiny crack that allowed me to for the first time to feel this thing.

When I first met you, which was before Salt Fat Acid Heat came out.

And then it came out and exploded and became so popular.

And your show came out and became so popular.

So many people associate you with joy

in the way that you talk about cooking and just like in your public persona.

And it's so authentic.

And I know it's authentic that I think people just think that that's

your whole thing.

But I'm actually a deeply unhappy and rage-filled person.

Well, I was wondering if you feel like doing that for people and being that joyous source is at all an extension of the parameters you set for yourself from having been told for so long, be a good kid.

Oh, 100%.

Yes, absolutely direct line from one to the next.

Yeah.

And also, it is genuine.

I'm not an actor.

I don't know how to act.

So like when I'm excited or curious about something, it's truly how I'm feeling.

I do feel like I built a weird trap for myself because now people see me as that side of me only, which is tough.

But I also feel like that's why I'm happy to talk about this with you.

And that's why it gives me such joy to offer joy and goodness to people because also it's disappearing every day from our lives.

So if I can do that, I'm happy to, but I have to take care of myself to be able to feel it.

genuinely.

And in order to have that, I have to have the full range of like human human experience.

And

I was taught for so much of my life, culturally and family-wise, to keep so much of myself behind a wall because that's like not proper for the world to see.

And that doesn't serve me.

I can't do that anymore.

And it's not that I need to tell everyone every single thing about my life, but I do have like a distinct

interest

in sharing my wholeness, partly because I don't want to just be a flat sort of caricature of myself in the world,

and partly because I yearn

for the young me to have had that to see in the world.

Did you know that Ani DeFranco is touring this year?

No, is she coming to Oakland?

Not that I can see, but she is playing San Diego.

Oh my god.

Should we go to that show?

I could never.

You can't go.

It would be too scary.

It's already my heart is, I'm having heart palpitations.

Like at the easy end.

You've grown a lot, but not that much.

No, no, no.

I would still, I would, no.

No can do.

No can do.

Thank you so much, Sameen.

Oh, thanks, Rishi.

That was really sweet.

Sameen's new cookbook is Good Things, Recipes and Rituals to Share with People You Love.

And you can pre-order it right now on our website, chowsameen.com.

You can also get tickets to see Sameen on her book tour this fall.

I'll be joining her for some of those dates, including San Francisco, LA, and Dallas.

And if you want to hear more of us together, subscribe to the Home Cooking podcast, which returns this year.

Special thanks to Ani DeFranco and the wonderful people at Righteous Babe Records who graciously allowed me to play Untouchable Face in this episode.

Go see Ani on tour and listen to all of her life-changing songs.

There's a link in the show notes to buy or stream Untouchable Face.

You can find all the other episodes of Keychange at songexploder.net slash keychange, along with a playlist that includes all the songs discussed on the series.

I'll be back with another Song Exploder episode next week, but stay tuned for more KeyChange episodes in the future.

This episode was produced by me and Mary Dolan with production assistance from Tiger Bisco.

Song Exploder is a proud member of Radiotopia from PRX, a network of independent, listener-supported, artist-owned podcasts.

You can learn more about our shows at radiotopia.fm.

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You can find a link to it on the Song Exploder website.

You can also follow me on Instagram and you can get a Song Exploder t-shirt at songexploder.net slash shirt.

I'm Rishikesh Kirwe.

Thanks for listening.

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