Joining Rubin’s podcast via a Zoom call, Parker played what he described as a “very candid” voice memo, explaining how song ideas unexpectedly come to him and how he forms them into a full-length track.

“It’s like flicking on the radio… [when you flick on the radio] it’s not like starting the song. It’s like coming in halfway through a chorus. And then I do my best to get to a place where I can record it, before I forget it… It’ll be like two bar, or a one bar piece of music,” he explained.

“I’ve obviously got like a hundred voice memos on my phone. It’ll be like two bar, or a one bar bit of music,” he adds, claiming that he forgets about 90% of the ideas he has. “It’s rare that I’ll listen back to it and decide that it’s good enough. I don’t know why.”

You can hear the voice memo from the 29-minute mark below:

One of the weirder kernels of inspiration Parker highlighted was a six-part YouTube video series on the making of Justin Timberlake’s debut solo album, Justified.

“It almost seems like leaked footage, because it’s just fly on the wall, someone’s holding the video camera the whole time… The first bit of ‘Breathe Deeper’ was kind of me pretending to be Pharrell and Justin [Timberlake] making Justified,” Parker laughed.

Parker recently shared a “self-isolation” edition of The Slow Rush, dubbed The Slow Rush In An Imaginary Place.