Trent Reznor respects motherfucking craft when he hears it. The Nine Inch Nails leader recently sat down with Rick Rubin for a two-hour conversation on Rubin’s Tetragrammaton podcast. Reznor’s done a ton of film-score work over the past decade and a half, and he told Rubin about how he’s found something rewarding in working to serve someone else’s vision rather than his own. Near the end of the conversation, as Billboard points out, Reznor got onto the topic of pop songwriting. He said that he recently “teared up listening to a Dua Lipa track.” Here’s what Reznor said:

To me, the hardest thing is the songwriting — having something to say, having something to say with truth that has that thing, has that reason to exist, rather than just a thing, just an exercise, having to think about the multiple layers. For a Max Martin or a songwriter, I don’t know how that works. I appreciate the craftsmanship of it.

I’ve got five kids now, and it’s the best thing that’s ever happened to me. I know that’s a thing to say, but it’s radically reshaped every bit of who I am and why I do anything. The reason I mention that is for a while, I’ve kept them hermetically sealed away from pop music because I think it sucks, generally. I have thought that, for whatever reason. And then I realized, about a year ago, that’s not fair. And they’re not away from it; I’m just not playing it at breakfast. In the car, I don’t have on radio stations.

I heard my daughter, who’s six, singing Dua Lipa the other day. She’s so into it, and it was so cool. Like, this is her music, you know? This is her thing… It really reminded me that the art of writing a well-crafted song. I teared up listening to a Dua Lipa track the other day because it was just a really well-done piece of music, you know? It was clever. It felt good. It’s difficult!

I don’t know how to do that. Because when I’m thinking of what to say or how to say it, I’m saying it from the unvarnished me. And that requires me thinking about who I am and where my position is now, and all of that together becomes something that feels — the stakes are higher.

Reznor also said that he’s not really interested in touring extensively anymore but that he misses the kind of attention that music could command in a pre-streaming world. You can listen to the episode below; the talk about pop songwriting starts around the 1:48:00 mark.

So what Dua Lipa track got Trent Reznor all misty? “Levitating”? “New Rules”? “Don’t Start Now”? I bet it was “Don’t Start Now.”