This month's release is the final installment in our Year of the Groove [where we've put out one electronic music release a month for a year,] and what a year it has been! As much as I'm tempted to launch into a recap of the Year of the Groove, that is for another blog post. Today is all about this month's maxi single "Make Me Free". Giddyup!
The Story Behind "Human" - Dedicated to Nichole Nordeman
I'm excited to tell the story behind this song because the past two months' singles had much different inceptions than this release. Instead of writing to someone else's target given for a pitch opportunity and having to crank it out in a couple of days, this song came to be through the more artistic and organically inspired path. I simply wrote it because I wanted to. It was something on my heart, the melody just "came to me" as the muse whispered it in my ear, and I documented what was forming in my head as I went about my days. I'm going to break it down into the various facets and talk about the reasons and creative process.
The unorthodox story behind "Until I Have You"
As so often is the case, the path to creating anything is rarely short or straight, and this song is no exception.
As I've written in the past, one of the few remaining ways for songwriters/artists/producers to make money with music anymore is to license songs to film, TV, and advertising. Sometimes we get an email that has come to us [and goodness knows how many others], giving the specifics of what someone is looking for. Sometimes there's another song they've temped into their video, but it's a song that's either unavailable or too expensive and they want something that FEELS and SOUNDS like that song, but is NOT that song. And sometimes we decide to set everything else aside and do our best to crank something out that might fit their needs, in hopes that we might land the license and pay some bills.
The Story Behind "It's You I Love"
This month's release was one of our "in case of emergency, break glass" releases for the Year of the Groove. We had planned to put out a song I wrote called "Human" this month, but after talking about the promotional angles, we decided to wait on that one until we could properly line things up and not rush. So, we pulled out this track that was never officially released, polished up the mix, mastered it, and sent it through the pipeline. It would have been released eventually on an EP I've got planned in my head, but I'm excited it's out there now because I actually really love this track and I'm glad to be able to talk about how it came about.
The Story Behind Standard Chill...
Since this month's release is comprised of all cover tunes, instead of songwriting, I'm going to talk just a little bit about the creative and production process. And I'm glad to have the opportunity to do this because many of the tracks were part of our Chillodesiac Lounge album and I've never told that story. We were originally going to only release the brand new track Our Love Is Here to Stay for February in honor of Valentine's Day in our Year of the Groove, but as we formulated the release schedule, it seemed like we might as well throw the other jazz standards on the release since many people may not have been familiar with our previous releases and it makes sense to have them all together in one place...
The Story Behind Glitter & Bliss.
Glitter & Bliss is one of those tracks that had a rather unorthodox path to the final version you hear. Most of the tracks we are releasing during our Year of the Groove have come about in one of two ways. Either it was a track Kurt started and then I wrote the lyric and melody over the top [which in songwriting is called "top lining"], or I write the song on my own and then do a rough demo and then present it to Kurt...