Cobra Starship
Cobra Starship’s new album is one Hot Mess

By Emily Zemler

When the soundtrack to Snakes on a Plane came out in 2006 with an unknown band named Cobra Starship at the helm, it seemed unlikely the fivesome — singer Gabe Saporta, guitarist Ryland Blackinton, bassist Alex Suarez, drummer Nate Novarro and keytarist Victoria Asher — would become a career band. But flash forward three and half years, and the group’s got staying power. It released its first two albums in two years (2006’s While the City Sleeps, We Rule the Streets and 2007’s ¡Viva La Cobra!) and built a massive fanbase of followers. The band had hoped to release its third album, Hot Mess, within a year of the second, but the writing process proved more arduous than anticipated. Saporta recently spoke about the making of Hot Mess, why he stands up to the band’s haters and how Cobra got a gossip girl to sing on the single “Good Girls Go Bad.”

When did you start working on the new record?
We started working on it on tour last year. We came home in September and recorded nine or ten songs and we just weren’t happy with them. We started from scratch again in the winter, and we pieced together everything from a bunch of studio sessions after that.

Is hard to throw away nine or ten songs like that?
It kind of is. But we picked the best ones from those and used parts later.

When you initially started writing did you know what you wanted the new record to be like?
No. We didn’t really have a vision in mind. We were really happy with how our last record turned out, so we wanted to make sure it wasn’t worse than our last record. We wanted it to be like the last record. What we realized about the last record is how much diversity there is in it. So we had this chart of the different styles on the last record and we’d think, “Okay are we accomplishing this on the new record?” We did a few new things on this one. We had a good amount of variety on it.

Once you restarted the writing process, did things get easier?
I think when things really started working was when we rented this house in the Poconos and we were there for ten days. We reworked all the songs we had before, and we wrote a bunch of new ones too. I think the most important thing is that we had it set up, so we cleared out all the furniture and we set up all our gear and made a little studio. And we had a desk where we would write and a bunch of rooms to write different stuff. The problem was that we had written stuff on tour and in the studio and hadn’t had a chance to play it. So being in that environment where we could create songs and then play them right away was good.

How many songs came out of that ten days?
We ended up writing about nine new songs and we reworked about nine old ones. We had 18 songs by the time we left there. We came back and started collaborating with a bunch of different people and got even more songs.

With whom did you collaborate with?
A lot of people. We worked out in LA with a producer we’d met named Kevin. One day when we were in the studio with him, someone from the label called and said, “This girl Kara is coming in for a two hours.” I was like, “Who is this chick?” They were like, “She’s a top line writer.” We didn’t know what that meant. We thought they were saying a “topless writer.” We were expecting this girl in a police uniform to come in and be like, “One of you has been a naughty naughty boy!” She came in and we gave her a hard time. We’d been coming up with a lot of good stuff with this producer and we were like, “Why are we being interrupted by this chick and why is she only working with us for two hours? Thanks for gracing us with your presence for two hours!” She asked to see some music and so we gave her this throwaway beat to work with. I read her some really nasty lyric ideas from this list I keep on my phone of lyrics and song titles. She didn’t flinch at all. I was like, “Okay maybe she’s cool,” so I read her “Good girls go bad” and she just dropped the hook like it was nothing.

Did you ever apologize?
I did. On camera with her. I went back to L.A. later to record some more and we did this interview on camera. We talked about writing the song and I hadn’t told her yet how I had viewed it and didn’t understand why the fuck she was coming in the studio. When she dropped that hook our jaws just hit the floor. I told her the whole story during this interview. So I admitted on camera that I was wrong. I go around singing her praises now.

And how did you get Leighton Meester to sing on that song?
I was on the Gossip Girl fan livejournal page, just trying to stay up on the gossip, and I heard that both Leighton and Taylor [Momsen] were working on records. I was like “Yo we gotta get one of these girls to sing on our record!” That was in September. I thought it was a joke at the beginning. She ended up loving the song and thought it was a great idea. She was originally going to sing on a different song that we ended up cutting, but “Good Girls Go Bad” turned out to be perfect for her.

How come you didn’t get Taylor?
She wouldn’t return our calls. Next record.

Is the video for “Good Girls Go Bad” at all inspired by your real life pursuits?
What are you talking about? I don’t know what you’re talking about. I don’t go to underground gambling spots.

So it’s public knowledge now that you’re an underground poker player?
I don’t hide it. I can’t say where I go. I don’t get to play as much as I used to. Before Cobra started touring, I played all the time because I needed money and that was the only way I made any. Now we sell T-shirts.

Do you realize how notorious you are for standing up to all the Cobra haters online?
Yes. Some people just choose to ignore that stuff but I like to talk shit. I think the reason we do it is because we like to make fun of ourselves. The ability to make fun of yourself is a liberating thing. You take the power away from someone to say it about you. So there’s nothing I read online that I haven’t already said about myself. And calling us sell-outs? The first thing Cobra ever did was the soundtrack to Snakes on a Plane. That was like the biggest hustle in all of music history. It’s not like we were originally this paradigm of artistic integrity.

Is it weird to you that Cobra was the Snakes on a Plane band and now you’re putting out a third album?
Actually that, to me, makes sense. That was the biggest obstacle we faced was getting past that. I didn’t want to lose those fans we made from day one. We’ve never changed who we are. We’re still goofballs. We don’t act like we’re famous. We’re not this Hollywood band now. That experience made our heads spin. We’d just started. We barely knew each other. People thought we were trying to cash in on the movie thing, but really it was the opposite. We already had all this music and we were using Snakes on a Plane as the launching pad. We had to prove it. We had to tour and be a real band and work for it.

Will you attempt to put out a fourth record within a year, like you wanted to with this new one?
I don’t know, man. I have this theory that a band can only make three good records. So if we put out a fourth it will probably suck.

Maybe one of yours has been bad and you still have a good one left.
The first three are always the best. Any band I like, the first three are the best. After that they start getting weird. And then they try to go back to what they were doing on the first record but they’re too old.

What would you say to encourage someone to buy this new album?
I would say: “Just download it. That way it’s free.”