Behind the Scenes #8 - True
Another song, like the last one, which was originally written a long, long time ago. In the original demo, the lead part - the catchy Moog synth bit, on the album - was played by a lead guitar which sounded like it was tuned by Helen Keller. Okay, something that badly out of tune wouldn’t even be funny, even if it was Helen Keller who twisted the knobs. It was vaguely in key - VAGUELY - so you could tell what notes they were meant to be, but out just enough to make even the worst American Idol contestant double-take.
I’m working on some new material, and in one of the songs, I somehow accidentally programmed the lead Moog part a whole semi-tone low, which if you’re not expecting it, can be a source of much bewilderment, and then, hilarity.
Anyway… I recorded the song initially as a “hmm, maybe”, but it came out well enough for me to chuck it on the album. I mean, it’s barely two minutes long, and with the added little bassline licks and chorus guitar riffs, I thought yeah, it stands up.
It got singled out as a track to skip past in a recent review, but to be honest, I like it. I thought it was catchy enough to stick on the album, and whilst recognising it’s pretty lightweight, it’s over so quickly it doesn’t detract from the record.
And when I decided to try and duplicate the record live myself, armed with a MIDI keyboard and a laptop, its simplicity meant was the first track I went to.
Lyrically, it was/is about a girl I knew very well a long time ago. You could tell that from the opening line, I guess - which I wrote five years after we met, and recorded 15 years after we met… Thing is, we met in the early/mid 1990s as young teens. People change a lot in their teens - which explains the second line. And that’s pretty much it.
Yeah, the lyrics really are as simple as the music, but that’s what you get from a song written by a then 18-year-old who could barely play the guitar. “I had a crush on you, then we changed, and WTF, you’re different! Woah. I should’ve done something then, huh? Even so, it wouldn’t have worked out. That’s pretty much the end of the song, which is good, ’cause no one would want it turning into Twilight: New Moon, would they?”
LINK: DOWNLOAD ‘TRUE’
Tags: behind the scenes, recording
