Right, this is where I get all pretentious. The album booklet very nearly became this, before I decided to run towards irreverence instead. But I thought I’d write this for those who may care.
I’ll keep it short – four headers – you’ll get a lot more out of this if you’ve bought the CD or at least heard it (it’s available to play through for free, so you could load it up while you read) – think of it like the director’s commentary:
Reversed Speech
You And Me, Georgia and Heart On My Sleeve all have reversed speech. In the case of Heart On My Sleeve it’s before the first chorus and it’s very obvious, but I’m not gonna tell you what it says :D In Georgia it’s during the solo and it’s barely audible, so I will tell you what that says – Tom said we should do some reversed speech, and I didn’t think it would sound good, so he took me in the recording booth and explained to me why he thought reversed speech would work. And then we reversed it.
The most fun was had in You And Me: first, we recorded ourselves saying “Georgia, Georgia, Nikoll Lekaj doesn’t care” and reversed it. Then we listened to it reversed and recorded ourselves again, imitating the reversed sound, and we reversed it back. So the result is that it sounds like the same words, but slightly distorted and odd.
Production
Tom produces very spontaneously and organically. Usually he doesn’t hear the finished song until the morning that we record it, but he has some idea of what it sounds like (with the exception of Heart On My Sleeve, where he went in blind). We recorded the album in the order that you hear it on the CD. Thematically, the title is reflective of the two dominant aspects of my personality; one side cocky, one side vulnerable. So the album starts with You And Me, Georgia and Heart On My Sleeve, being big blasty songs that have confident, assuming lyrics; then The World Is Mine comes in and questions that, balances both halves, and then from The Time Of Your Life to the end it’s all vulnerable lyrics, with the production getting more vulnerable as well. Not Just Yet finally gives a bit of acceptance with a celebration of the times we had and promising more to come :)
In terms of specific ideas, Tom wanted You And Me to sound like a natural, organic bed of sound; Heart On My Sleeve was produced as a response to me saying there wasn’t enough synth in You And Me or Georgia (at the time, Georgia didn’t have a synth line – only one person in the world has a copy of the track without it); The Time Of Your Life started with Tom asking our engineer for ‘a sound that had never been used or asked for’ and we went from there. Living On The Underground was made to sound like an old blues song, as those were often about trains, and we also added loads of authentic train sounds, recorded on my phone as I was headed to the studio that morning. Fun fact; when I was recording the sound of the train pulling in to the station, this woman started talking to me. “Are you getting the Central Line? I’m getting the Central Line as well.” So that’s the nonsense you can hear at the start of the song.
Tom’s Voice
Tom uses his voice sometimes. He sings the “boo-doop”s in You And Me, helps shout the “no no no”s in Georgia, the “I know I know”s in The Time Of Your Life … lotta repetition, is what Tom brings to the vocal table. Most people think he sung the falsetto vocal on Stay With Me but that was all me, baby.
Influences
You And Me was inspired by an Evanescence song called Anywhere. Heart On My Sleeve was inspired by Lady Gaga’s Telephone. Living On The Underground was inspired by the riff of Green Day’s East Jesus Nowhere. Dead And Gone was inspired by Elvis Presley’s Love Me Tender, as well as the old sounds of the songs on the Wall•E soundtrack. Missing You has the structure of Molly Lewis’ “Our American Cousin”, the ‘missing you’ melody line of the Very Potter Musical song with the same name, and a bit of Ed’s ‘Less Than Three’ (compare “I’m getting over you tonight” to “let me start by saying sorry”).
And finally…
Tom’s favourite moment on the CD is the “looks like I’ve fallen in love again gain gain gain gain” bit of Heart On My Sleeve, before the final chorus. My favourite is the descending piano that Tom plays halfway through the instrumental break of Dead And Gone.
x
