“Yo, have you ever wondered how to get elephant sounds into a song?”
It's the eternal question. Keen-eared listeners might have picked up on the mysterious wail that rings over the final moments of Bring Me The Horizon’s track Teardrops. But for those who haven’t been keeping up to date with the band via their TikTok, there's slightly more to the story: Oli Sykes insisted on having an elephant feature on their latest album, and Teardrops is the result.
“First you gotta’ find the perfect elephant sound.”
In an explainer video uploaded to TikTok, Sykes details that the “elephant mosh” was the product of an hours-long YouTube trawl, where his mission was to locate the best trumpeting, floppy-eared beast on the 'net.
In the video, Sykes flicks through soundbites of elephants doing their thing, commenting on their suitability, and – obviously – making time to pause for a particularly cute baby one.
“What even the fuck is that?” he asks, as he watches an elephant paint, holding the brush within its trunk.
At last, he finds the perfect sound – but is then faced with the difficult task of convincing the rest of the band to let him go ahead with his idea.
Whether it’s Judas Priest shuffling around cutlery on a tray to mimic the sound of marching robots on Metal Gods, or Gojira’s apt inclusion of whale calls on Flying Whales, there’s always time for a little artistic innovation in metal. Whether the elephant actually added anything to the track or not is for you to decide, but the genre/species-busting album reached UK Number One last week regardless.
You can watch the full TikTok below:
@officialbmth ever wondered how to get elephant sounds into a song? ##elephantmosh ##teardrops ##bmth ##fyp
♬ original sound - BRING ME THE HORIZON
