What a miserable, grey day today. I spent the day at Billy Stein's working on our new song - we tried to come up with some lyrics but nothing seemed good enough for the melody that we had previously written (such a cool hook!) So ultimately, we decided to finish the song on a different day altogether, but I will have another crack at it over the weekend.
Writing is a much more "inspirational" process than I thought before - it's not easy to come up with something if it's not "there" at that particular moment. Some songs can take an absolute forever ("Innocence" took almost 8 months, on and off - honestly!) whereas, others write themselves so naturally, such as "Connected", my very first attempt at songwriting. It was inspired by Kate Bush's "Mutual Understanding" - I first heard the song whilst wondering around Holland Park in London, and had an odd "cyber" idea for a song but couldn't figure out exactly how to make it work. Peter Adams and Jane Ryall came up with a great hook (we initially called it "You and Me" but later decided to switch over to "Connected".)
I still remember desperately wanting to give songwriting a well-deserved shot, but couldn't find the right partner right away. The most obvious names popped into mind (they shall remain nameless here!) but the ego factor was certainly an issue - "has she ever written before?", "could I be bothered to experiment with her?", "I'd rather just writer her a song myself!" But Pete and Jane agreed to give it a try right away! It really turned out to be a musical match made in heaven - we very rarely come up with something that doesn't immediately fit me like a glove. Although, we've had our strange moments, such as our "Dracula" lyric idea for "I Pray"...! Chris Neil came to the studio to have a listen to our new idea and he said, "It's a great commercial hook, why are you making it so obscure with that horror theme?" We then decided to have a good think about the song and what we really wanted to say.... Et voila the final take!
It's a quiet Friday night here tonight: it's so wet outside (not particularly cold) you barely want to be out and about. Should really try and work on my monthly Billboard Russia column, but can't get myself to feel too inspired. Would rather have an unusually calm evening...for a change!
Next week should be fun: shooting a promotional video for "We the Peoples", UN radio show (haven't even started scripting it!) and also my producer, Chris Neil is in town most of the week so we'll try and do some writing in-between the meetings.
Just praying for the weather to get better and feel more inspired!
Billy, forgive me, I will be more "active" next time :-)
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