Brian once again focuses on the track while Jes works on lyrics, and they discuss that as he continues to knock out the melody. Jes eventually gets annoyed because he is interested in lyrics to the point of ignoring her and only critiquing them when he notices her talking at all, which makes her feel exposed.

Sonyae wants to compare your gay marginalizing to being excommunicated, which is like too much maybe, and Scotty plays some chords for them. Nick gives them a chorus, and Sonyae runs with it, but Scotty and Sonyae get worried about whether the riff is dope enough. Nick gets a little pissy about it, and keeps saying his riff over and over and telling them how brilliant it is instead of working toward the middle, but you never know.

Jes finally gets Brian to sit down for lyrics, and hits him with some pretty intense and awesome stuff, but Brian's not sure about any of this. Suddenly it's about how useless Jes is and how he's having to walk her through it, which sucks because it's the best stuff she's done. She's got some good lyrics in her, but it's so honest and surprising that maybe it's too much for Brian.

Nick is like, rapping or something. I don't know, it's weird. Sonyae gets scared that there's no bridge, and Scotty begins to trip. For once, Nick is not leading the team, and it's a pretty interesting dynamic. Scotty has such a beautiful voice that it's hard to tell how good the song is. They stress out, pull it together, stress about something else, get serious. It's a roller coaster. Sonyae is like, totally weirded out that she and Scotty are hitting a wall, and then suddenly they are done. Scotty's not hugely proud of the effort, plus he's worried about trying to downplay Brian and Jes's future effort because of how shit-talking seems to rebound on him every time.

Nick, for ten years: "I'm not gay. Mostly that's what this is about. How not gay I am."

NEXT AM

Jes, demonstrably: "Having a black roommate is taking a strange toll on my speech patterns."

Keith's vest is maybe almost too much this week, but he's still magnificent. The guest judge besides the other guest judge is Colby Caillat, the writer of the classic lyric about how it starts in your nose.

Nick: "For how not gay I am, I refer you to Colby Caillat. Word. For real though, no homo. I am not gay. Not even a little gay bit. Just singing this gay song about being gay has not caused me to be gay."