- It's not particularly feasible for one person
to be everything that another person needs.
That said, I think, in the kind of gorgeous naive space
that it is when one falls in love with somebody,
it can really, honestly feel
like when you guys are together,
you are everything that the other person needs
in that exact moment,
whether that moment will last for a lifetime,
or even where that moment will last for one second,
it's a nice thing to realize
that in that moment you have everything you need,
and everything you need is in that other person.
It's like you're, kind of, balancing each other out.
I performed all the instruments on this song myself,
most of which happened in this chair,
from the bass, to the drums.
I've got all the drums over there.
You can see the drums behind me
occasionally, guitar. I did lots of vocals
with my vocal mic as well.
There was a lots of dancing
and a lot of pacing, a lot of hard work
that went into this particular song.
And the mixing was quite some challenge
because this song actually broke my personal record
for a number of logic session tracks.
And a track is basically on sound.
And in this song,
at one point I had 600 simultaneous tracks in the session
which looks extremely bizarre.
But, it's the kind of matrix that
I've become accustomed with working alone in this room.
It's just that feeling of being in somebody's care
I suppose.
Of being under somebody's spell.
But the kind of warmth
and almost thoughtlessness of the affection
is something that certainly, in quarantine I miss that.
I thing there's something rather simple about
that kind of affection.
Which is just so precious in the world right now.
When you're walking next to somebody,
oftentimes you kind of settle into a pocket with them.
And there's one thing that I've noticed
as a kind of musician,
and a co-walker, across my lifetime.
Is that if you are walking with someone
slightly smaller than you
or slightly bigger than you
then the pace that you walk at
often syncs up.
Which is really nice what happens.
It's like you're experiencing the walk on the same level.
When something reminds you of the person,
which you know when you're falling in love,
is like everything basically.
Everything reminds you of that person on some level.
Once you start snowballing into that wonderful space
where your life becomes this person
and they're realizing what is possible with this person
then is so much like they stick in your mind
and they're with you wherever you walk.
I've written this song and I was pretending to be Mahalia.
And the way that I did this was by slowing down the track
and singing and then speeding the track back up again,
so that it sounded a bit more weird.
Like feminine and strange 'cause that's like my solution
when I don't have the right collaborator yet
is to kinda pretend to be them.
It took me a while I was thinking,
who'd be the right person to sing this song?
Because it can't be someone with too many kinda like
bells and whistles.
It needs to be someone super unpretentious.
And suddenly it clicked, it was like,
(click) I know exactly who could do this.
And it's somebody British which is very, very exciting
because I'm British.
This all happened right when quarantine began
so she recorded it from home.
We planned on recording it together
but she recorded it from home
on a little SM7B Shure microphone,
sent it my way over email.
I then took the tracks in here,
dragged them into my crossology session.
There was room for one more track.
Sometimes you think, "I don't know this quite fits,
I'm not sure." But with Mahalia it was just like,
"wow, that's the song."
Like, that's exactly what I've been waiting for.
And it was such a cool feeling to reach that conclusion.
There's a killer song by Heatwave,
is it bank or Heatwave called Central Heating.
There's a bit in that line that's like
And I think it is launched in my periphery because,
when I came to write this song,
I realized that there was these gaps
between statements and I wanted to fill that gap
with a little colorful something.
And the other thing that this particular line does musically
is it bridges the gap between the two keys
that are happening at the same time in the verse.
Because, the verses, it starts in G flat,
and then it goes to E flat, quite sneaky.
And so that ♪ there must be something I could say to make
Just bridges the gap between these two keys,
just to kind of like land your ear back in (click)
G flat again, as you are flipping from one to the other,
to other to the other to the other.
And so it's vivid clutch line.
It's more about just the simple,
like the most simple moments.
Like sharing food, or touching hands,
or speaking, speaking in the middle of the night
or watching a movie, like, these things are ordinary.
But the magical thing is that through the perspective
of two people who've got a lot of time
each other and have that kind of special thing,
these ordinary things become extraordinary.
And so, that line I suppose
is almost like a homage to that.
Me and Ty Dolla Sign have been friends for 3-4 years now.
He's really one of the most musical people I've ever met.
I've kind of been waiting for the right song on this
cordial album of mine
to drop that kind of Ty Dolla bomb.
And I suddenly realized really
kind of at the last minute with this song.
It got to the point of basically the finish line.
It was like this is missing some secret sauce.
What could be the secret sauce that this is missing?
And suddenly it was like, Ty Dolla Sign.
So, I called Ty Dolla Sign and I said,
"My hommie, wagwan,"
And he said, yeah, not much on quarantine.
And I said same as me, would you mind we sing a little song?
And he said, "Yeah, I'm sitting right in my set up."
I said, "That's great."
I sent him the song via text.
Within 24 hours, he sent me this video,
this iPhone video (chuckle) of him basically singing
along to this track and in the most unbelievable way.
It was kind of like, it was so,
it was real feel to the point of [Inaudible]
which is like so my style.
With the song blasting.
And I was just like, I know I've found the right person.
It was like the second time within this song structure
composition that I was like,
this is the person that this song is meant to have on.
I love the idea of kind of imagining the world
as something that can be shared with one another.
Just something as grand as star bright.
Or as broad as moonlight.
Like these are the things that belong to us.
And then this moment that,
I was like almost like, almost like I was alone, only us.
Unconditional love that never ends,
that is always there.
Even when the song goes down,
even those moments when things turn around
and if feels strange,
it will always come back around.
That kind of circular nature of unconditional love.
All of that feeling where you,
you almost, you almost can't believe
that someone would care about you that unconditionally.
But they do.
And so you, that ultimum feeling of safety.
It's like oh,
babe you love me then I must not need to be anybody else.
I can just be me then.
And that's such a relief.
For such a long time,
it was like
And it was that thing where I was trying to extract
all the vial sounds I could,
and try uncover what I was saying
And a lot of times so much, that's how I work.
It's like you, you record something,
mumbly
and then you, you listen closely
and you listen really closely
and maybe switch a couple of constants around you
realize that I'm kind of saying something.
It's a kind of charming conclusion to the journey
as it fades out.
Because obviously the song is fading out
so thing is coming to an end.
The moment is coming to an end.
And it's almost like me just saying,
"Oh,
don't go."
Because I love that,
I love that song.
So really this is all a bigger plan
to get the person to replay the song
up the stream count.
That's what's going on here.