Welcome to Week Five of Oh CRUMBS!
This week, we’ll be looking at
My single, Spatial Awareness, the final track on my first EP, Overlooked
Some quotes on doing it and how dancing is actually a perfect metaphor for love
A movie hitting all the nostalgia points (“oh lover boy…”)
A poem by W.H. Auden
And more songs my friends wrote in Peach Picks!
Behind The Song 🎙️
Before I dive into the song, I want to shout out the amazing Ed Newton who helped design all the artwork for the EP. I will dive into more detail behind the art in a later newsletter, as there is some legit cool things Ed did when designing the P and the meaning behind how it looks.
About the song: early in my career, I did lots of writing for pitch, which means writing songs for artists who aren’t involved in the writing process. Sometimes, the artist has a clear idea of what songs they need/want for their record with specific lyrical content and production references, so the writers and producers can stick closely to that brief. But sometimes, the artist has no idea what they are looking for, and wants to be surprised, so the writers and producers have to guess what they might want.
It was in one of these sessions that Spatial Awareness came to life. I was working with the incredible Christopher Nicholas Bangs - a multi-talented producer, writer, composer, artist, mixer, masterer and one of the nicest people on earth - and we were writing to a pitch a song for a Swedish artist. At that time, I was obsessed with Tove Lo and Sigrid and loved their rhythmic melodies and super catchy turns of phrase that wouldn’t get past the UK grammar police, but somehow always make sense.
It’s important to me that the songs I write have a story behind them - whether it’s something I’ve been through or not - but when you’re writing for an artist and you don’t have them with you in the room to understand their story, it’s a fine balance to navigate the specific and generic. This song is about what it’s like to fall in love and feel a way you’ve never felt before (generic), as well as being a clumsy oaf, and tripping even when there’s no step (specific - and personal - I do this all the time.) It’s about the trying to understand the mechanics of love, how and why someone you like makes you suddenly blush, stutter, come across as a drunken buffoon even when you’re stone cold sober. We chose to express this universal conundrum by suggesting that love turns us all into clumsy klutzs. Turns out the Swedes didn’t agree as we heard nothing back after we sent it off.
But as I like to say, gold doesn’t rust. Two years later, when I was scouring my hard drive for songs to release for my first Peachkit EP, this one quite literally jumped out at me. However, because we’d written it two years earlier the sounds were very dated to that time and those specific artists, so I played around with the stems that Chris sent and was trying to create a sound that kept the energy of the Scandi-Pop vibe but was more in keeping with where Peachkit was sonically going to sit.
Youngr then entered the chat and, like he did throughout this whole project, added some epic stardust that elevated it to a new level. And if you want some behind-the-scenes of that magical glitter, consider becoming a paid subscriber here:
Quote For It 📜
The quotes this week are all linked to aspects of Spatial Awareness and the title of the EP Overlooked. And they’re all smart ladies who’s names all begin with A, so clearly it’s a sign and I had to include all three.
“The most effective way to do it, is to do it.”
— Amelia Earhart
“Never be so focused on what you're looking for that you overlook the thing you actually find.”
— Ann Patchett
“A good relationship has a pattern like a dance and is built on some of the same rules. The partners do not need to hold on tightly, because they move confidently in the same pattern, intricate but gay and swift and free, like a country dance of Mozart's. To touch heavily would be to arrest the pattern and freeze the movement, to check the endlessly changing beauty of its unfolding. There is no place here for the possessive clutch, the clinging arm, the heavy hand, only the barest touch in passing. Now arm in arm, now face to face, now back to back -- it does not matter which because they know they are partners moving to the same rhythm, creating a pattern together, and being invisibly nourished by it.
The joy of such a pattern is...the joy of living in the moment. Lightness of touch and living in the moment are intertwined. One cannot dance well unless one is completely in time with the music, not leaning back to the last step or pressing forward to the next one, but poised directly on the present step as it comes... But how does one learn this technique of the dance? Why is it so difficult? What makes us hesitate and stumble? It is fear, I think, that makes one cling nostalgically to the last moment or clutch greedily toward the next. [And fear] can only be exorcised by its opposite: love.”― Anne Morrow Lindbergh, Gift from the Sea
Watch It 🎬
It was a close call this week between two films - She’s All That and Dirty Dancing. The latter won, just because I was thinking about the lyrics to Spatial Awareness and the quotes this week, and this film reminds me of that same feeling. The feeling of being out of control when you start falling in love, knowing that there is a ‘me’ and a ‘we’ in the dance and that in the movie, Baby was overlooked. She was put in a corner (!) until she let herself be seen for more the limitations put upon her by her family.
If you haven’t seen Dirty Dancing, then stop everything you’re doing and get straight to it! And if you have see it before, what’s your favourite moment in the film?
From The Poet Tree 📚
This week’s poem is O Tell Me The Truth About Love by W.H. Auden. I once won a competition to read a poem at an English Theatre when I was younger and this was the poem I was to perform and I’ve never forgotten it. I adore the juxtaposition of the humour Auden manages to capture in this young person asking about what love is, and the poignancy of the final stanza where they realise the enormity of what might happen when you do finally meet someone who changes your life forever. But I thought it fit with the klutz-like topic of Spatial Awareness, especially the line ‘will it tread in the bus on my toes?’
O Tell Me The Truth About Love by W.H. Auden
Some say love's a little boy,
And some say it's a bird,
Some say it makes the world go round,
And some say that's absurd,
And when I asked the man next door,
Who looked as if he knew,
His wife got very cross indeed,
And said it wouldn't do.
Does it look like a pair of pyjamas,
Or the ham in a temperance hotel?
Does its odour remind one of llamas,
Or has it a comforting smell?
Is it prickly to touch as a hedge is,
Or soft as eiderdown fluff?
Is it sharp or quite smooth at the edges?
O tell me the truth about love.
Our history books refer to it
In cryptic little notes,
It's quite a common topic on
The Transatlantic boats;
I've found the subject mentioned in
Accounts of suicides,
And even seen it scribbled on
The backs of railway guides.
Does it howl like a hungry Alsatian,
Or boom like a military band?
Could one give a first-rate imitation
On a saw or a Steinway Grand?
Is its singing at parties a riot?
Does it only like Classical stuff?
Will it stop when one wants to be quiet?
O tell me the truth about love.
I looked inside the summer-house;
It wasn't ever there;
I tried the Thames at Maidenhead,
And Brighton's bracing air,
I don't know what the blackbird sang,
Or what the tulip said;
But it wasn't in the chicken-run,
Or underneath the bed.
Can it pull extraordinary faces?
Is it usually sick on a swing?
Does it spend all its time at the races,
Or fiddling with pieces of string?
Has it views of its own about money?
Does it think Patriotism enough?
Are its stories vulgar but funny?
O tell me the truth about love.
When it comes, will it come without warning,
Just as I'm picking my nose?
Will it knock on my door in the morning,
Or tread in the bus on my toes?
Will it come like a change in the weather?
Will its greeting be courteous or rough?
Will it alter my life altogether?
O tell me the truth about love.
Peach Picks 🍑
This is where I share my Spotify playlist of “Songs My Friends Wrote”. This week, I’m shouting out the amazing artists and writers Chris Bangs, Me For Queen and MAYLYN, all of whom I can be my most spatially unaware with.
The artwork for the playlist is by the incredible Austin Kleon
Thanks so much for following the crumbs with me, can’t wait to share more next week!
Love,