Justin Vernon - better known under the stage name Bon Iver - is about to drop a new album. Due for release April 11, SABLE, fABLE will be Vernon’s first full-length project since 2019’s I, I, and features guest appearances from Dijon, Flock of Dimes and Danielle Haim.
Appearing on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon to talk about the new project, Vernon was asked about his collaborations with Taylor Swift - who he worked with on the 2020 song Exile - and Charli XCX, who asked Vernon to rework a track from her Grammy-sweeping 2024 album Brat for its remix project, Brat and it’s completely different but also still Brat.
Vernon’s remix transformed I think about it all the time - a reflective, mid-tempo cut from an album mostly dominated by hedonistic bangers - into a soulful, ‘80s-influenced ballad with a glitchy electronic edge. It’s not only Charli and Vernon’s voices you’ll hear on the remix, though, as Vernon brings in a handful of samples from an artist that he considers one of his musical heroes: Bonnie Raitt.
Lifted from Nick of Time’s refrain, the line “scared to run out of time” is repeatedly sampled throughout the remix, and Charli even repeats the line in newly-penned lyrics for the chorus. A sample of the line “I found love, baby” also appears towards the end of the track.
Vernon tells Fallon that the idea to sample Raitt’s 1989 hit Nick of Time wasn’t his own, but that of collaborator Danielle Haim, of the band HAIM. “My friend Danielle told me, ‘you should sample Nick of Time’, and I’m like, ‘that’s such a good idea’, because Charli’s song was a little bit about running out of time,” he says.
Securing the permission to sample a great like Raitt is no easy feat, but fortunately for Vernon, her blessing was just a phone call away. “Bonnie and I have been friendly over the years. She’s my number one, my greatest living singer,” he says, recalling how he contacted Raitt to discuss clearing the Nick of Time sample.
“She was like: ‘yep, let’s do it’,” he says. “She had to give us her blessing on using the sample, but of course she was touched, and she’s a huge fan of Charli’s, as am I. It was a really cool experience.”
Raitt has previously spoken about the sample to Rolling Stone, telling the publication that she was “very honoured” to feature in the song. “It’s hard to know exactly which parts they used,” she said. “It mostly sounds like her, but it has a different tone to it, and I know there’s one isolated part of my voice. But they did a really artful job.”
This isn’t the first time Vernon has incorporated Raitt’s music into his own projects. Back in 2011, he recorded a breathtaking cover of Raitt’s 1991 hit I Can’t Make You Love Me that interpolates part of Nick of Time, releasing it as the B-side to the single Calgary; as Fallon reminds him, Vernon even performed the song on The Tonight Show as part of a medley with Donny Hathaway's "A Song For You".
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