“Magnets” (with Lorde)

Howard: We always say, “Has anything interesting happened to you?” With anybody we’re working with, we always ask if anything mad has gone down in their life recently that we can write about. Or maybe I’ll come in and have had something happen to me. It’s very organic. When Lorde came in, I had this idea about writing about the phrase “the point of no return,” and originally that was going to be the name of the song. We didn’t know how we were going to use that, because that can be used in a lot of different ways—flying, or boating or whatever. Ella came up with the idea of using it in the sense of if you’re attracted to someone you shouldn’t be for moral reasons, and then you tell them, then you’ve gone past the point of no return.

Guy: Stepping over the line of “I’m out there now, I better fully go for this.” It’s a nautical term, you hear about it with ships. When you’ve gone so far you can’t get home with the amount of fuel that you’ve got. I’ve heard our dad say it—he sails yachts and uses it a lot.