Track-By-Track des ehemaligen Spice Girls zu ihrem neuen Soloalbum…

Vor einigen Wochen ist das jüngste Soloalbum von Mel C erschienen. Hier sind ihre exklusiven Kommentare zu den zwölf neuen Songs – im Original und gänzlich ungebügelt…

THINK ABOUT IT

It is the first single from the album, it’s a really fun track. I love this one because lyrically I think it’s really quite cheeky. I do quite a lot of soul searching and I can be quite dramatic and ‘woe is me‘ at times, but Think About It is quite quirky, fun and cheeky. The song kind of speaks for itself, it’s really about doing something you want to do, but you shouldn’t really be doing it and not worrying about the consequences and being spontaneous instead.

I went over to Copenhagen to work with Cutfather and his team along with Adam Argyle, who is a really good friend of mine and a great collaborator. We’ve worked together many times, the first on „Next Best Superstar“. He wrote that song and from the minute I started working with him I fell in love with him. He’s a great guy, a fantastic songwriter and we just connect when it comes to songwriting and lyrics because we just want to express ourselves really similarly. I think a lot of that is because we’ve had a similar upbringing; we’re both from the North of England, similar things have happened as we were growing up, I think that’s made us quite similar. But he’s an absolute genius, maybe that’s where the similarities end… I love working with him and we had a fantastic time in Copenhagen. „Think About It“ was one of two brilliant tracks we did over there.

I’m very excited it’s the first single, I think it has a real radio friendly sound and people seem to be enjoying it. The video’s great, I’m really happy with it, so I think this is a good introduction to the album.

BURN

Another track that I co-wrote with the guys over in Copenhagen, the Cutfather team and Adam Argyle. I absolutely adore this track. I performed it acoustically a few times, it’s really powerful when it is performed live and feels really good to do. This is about a relationship that is over and is bad for you, but you just can’t burn that bridge, you can’t walk away. There’s just something that keeps pulling you back. That’s a bit of a theme with the record… I suppose you can kind of look at it in, other aspects of life, whether it’s friends, work or just the certain things we can’t leave, we can’t walk away from, that’s what Burn is about. Brilliant production by Cutfather and his team, this could well be a single.

GET OUT OF HERE

„Get Out Of Here“ was written with Peter Vettese who I adore and work with a lot. He is such a wonderful musician and an inspiring human being on all levels. I’ve learnt a lot from him, he’s a very intelligent man and also an incredible pianist. I started working with him on my second album „Reason“, the first song we ever wrote together was „Reason“ which is one of the songs in my career I’m most proud of. Peter has the amazing ability to draw my real true feelings and emotions out of me. When we work together, I feel so confident with him that I’m very literal with my lyrics. I don’t try to hide behind anything, so it’s been quite scary sometimes. We wrote „Reason“ together, „You’ll Get Yours“, „Better Alone“ and „Get Out Of Here“. Sometimes I get a little bit scared that people are going to find out who and what it’s about, but up to now, I’ve got away with it. The person who this is about will never ever know it’s about them and that gives me so much pleasure.

When we started work on this song, there was a situation going on, not romantic, not a friend, something quite different, and I was filled with frustration. That’s how this song was born, and again it was one of those magical moments with Peter, it came together so quickly. It’s an absolute favourite of mine I can’t wait to perform it live. I don’t think I’ve ever written a song in 6/8 time before, am I getting all muso now? It’s a great song and I love it.

WEAK

One of my favourite tracks from the album. I had a new collaboration on this track, I worked with Ina Wroldsen and Jez Ashurst. Ina has worked with some fantastic really current artists, she has tracks on Britney’s new album and she has very famously worked with The Saturdays. She’s had a lot of success and is very sought after, so to get a session with her was fantastic. Jez is brilliant, he’s the lead singer in a band called Farrah, which is huge in Japan; it was a really lovely team to work with. Ina is such a talent. I was really impressed with her. It was really nice to write with a woman because I’ve nearly always written with men.

I’ve found that male song writers are very sensitive (and a bit girly, sorry lads!). I think male songwriters they are very much in touch with their feminine side, but to actually write with a female writer is quite nice. You know how women like to bitch about men, it’s really nice to just get these emotions out and see it from a female perspective.

STUPID GAME

Stupid Game is a favourite on this album in the vein of being quite attitudey. Lyrically it’s inspired by one of my favourite inspirations which is the British media. We have this love/hate relationship, as I think all people who have been in the public eye do. It’s about myself, my career, the way I am viewed in the media or rather the way I’m portrayed in the media and it’s a bit tongue-in-cheek and it’s a bit of fun. I’m not being super serious on this, you know I’m not attacking anybody, it’s just really about how ridiculous it all is, it’s a stupid game. It’s a stupid game that I entered into. The media has changed a lot since I first became aware of it working with the Spice Girls. This one was just nice, to get a little bit of that off my chest and express how I feel about that situation in quite a light hearted way, because really none of that matters.

„Stupid Game“ I wrote with Adam Argyle and Martin Brammer, we had a couple of fun days working on this track, lots of laughing that kind of always comes with a writing session with Adam, he’s a bit of a giggle. Production-wise I love it, it’s quite disco-y, it’s Depeche Mode, a real fusion of styles – just brilliant. Andy Chatterley and Paul Boddy co-produced this song. Again, this would be another cracking single and I know that this will be a brilliant one live.

LET THERE BE LOVE

A really beautiful ballad and I am very lucky I was given the opportunity to record this song. It has already been a huge hit in Germany as „Liebe Ist Alles“ for a band called Rosenstolz, this is in fact their biggest hit in German speaking countries. Peter Plate, who is one half of Rosenstolz and also a co-writer on this song, approached me to record an English version. He came over to London when I was working in the theatre, came to see the show and asked me if I’d do the song. I really love the track, the English translation is very beautiful. So I went over to Berlin where he lives and spent some time with him in the studio. We recorded the song and it’s turned out great. However, it also makes me quite nervous because I know there are a lot of fans of the original version so I just hope that they enjoy my version too.

DROWN

For „Drown“ I worked with a female writer called Jodie Marr for the first time, she is incredible. I had such a wonderful time working with her and Adam Argyle. We had two days of just laughing, joking and getting the most beautiful melodies that we could find, really trawling our souls to get great lyrics. This was a really wonderful song to work on, it’s really intelligent as a pop song and I really hope I get to work with Jodie again, she was brilliant. One of her big hits that people will know her for was with Mika, she was a co-writer on Grace Kelly, she’s worked with Cee Lo Green and lots of other different people, she’s really fantastic.

This again is about a relationship which is over, you think you’re over it, you’ve moved on, life has changed. Then you bump into your ex (which actually happened and inspired this song) and it all comes flooding back, it just floors you, you can’t believe how you feel after seeing this person. You really thought all those feelings and emotions had gone, but the love wont drown. The production of Drown is once again very beautiful. Andy Chatterley worked on this and Paul Boddy did some additional production. This was a really important song for me to get right because it was always such a great demo and had so much heart. I have to be honest and say it was a little bit of a struggle getting this right, because it was so important. But eventually we got there and I think it’s quite a highlight of the record

ALL ABOUT YOU

All About You is a track I haven’t been a part of the writing team on this album. I was played the song by Warner Music who I work with in Northern Europe. I’ve had fantastic success with Guy Chambers songs in the past and they were quite keen for me to hear this song. As soon as I heard the song I really wanted to record it because it’s a great song and Guy is a great songwriter, he collaborated with two other writers on this song. Unfortunately we didn’t get the opportunity to get together in the studio for this song, like we have in the past, but I love it! I think it’s really beautiful, it’s very „classic Guy“. It’s a wonderful ballad, lyrically it’s quite modern. There’s a lot about relationships and the breakdown of relationships on this album but I find quite a lot of inspiration from quite dark times or things that are quite dramatic, I like to be emotional as a performer. Because of that, and because of its beautiful melodies, this song appealed to me. I recorded it with Peter Vettese, he produced the track and „Tufty“ (Mark Evans), who is an absolute superstar, has mixed this one, we always get fantastic vocals.

THE SEA

A fantastic track, obviously the title track of the album and one of the first songs to be written. I was working with a dear old friend, Richard Stannard („Biff“), we worked together throughout the Spice Girls days („Wannabe“, „2 Become 1“, „Spice Up Your Life“, „Viva Forever“) and on my first album („Suddenly Monday“, „Goin‘ Down“). He’s a wonderful writer and it was lovely to get back in the studio with him. Richard lives in Brighton, which is on the south coast of England and I was staying in an apartment about half an hours walk to the studio. I’d walk down the sea front each day and found that a really inspiring time, looking out to sea.

I think the sea is something that’s inspired me throughout my career, there’s something very powerful. I’m just drawn to the sea, I think it’s a way of being very expressive and you can use it in so many ways, which inspired the song. After writing it I thought: „It’s everything I want the album to be. I want it to be powerful. I want it to be unpredictable. I want it to be a real force of nature.“ That’s why this track became the title for the album as well.

It’s quite an atmospheric track, lyrically it’s about a bad relationship, using the sea as that person who, to use another Melanie C lyric, „chews you up and spits you out“ („Better Alone“). You just keep going back for more, but you just get caught up, even though you know it’s very dangerous and powerful. It was just about all those emotions, when you’re in one of those relationships you’re finding very difficult to escape from, and just being washed up on the shore and going back for more.

BEAUTIFUL MIND

„Beautiful Mind“ was written with two new collaborators: Dee Adam, another lovely lady, and James Earp. It was one of the early writing sessions on this album. We worked so quickly, I think we did four tracks in four days; „Cruel Intentions“ was another of the tracks from this session. We had a lot of fun, we just played around and did lots of different things and thought it would be really nice to have more of a narrative than a song that was again about me.

This was really inspired by the world around us and sometimes the character in the song is just quite disillusioned with the world. She feels that the whole world is prettier when she closes her eyes and sees the world that she has within. If she sings to herself she can block out the horrible things that are going on in the world. It was quite nice to write about a fictional character, it’s a great track. I think it’s quite different, when I listen to the album as a whole, this one kind of stands out as it has more of a rock feel, there’s more guitars on this track. The rest of the album is more electronic and atmospheric with beautiful strings, but this one is probably a bit more guitary than other songs on the record.

ONE BY ONE

A beautiful song, one of the more acoustic sounding songs from the album, it starts off quite simply. This was again a new collaborator. I wrote it with James Walsh, who was the lead singer in Starsailor and now has a solo career and does a lot of music for movies. He is a lovely guy, a fantastic talent. We just hung out for two days. I went up to the flat that he rents in London and we just sat in his front room with a computer, and a guitar and a microphone. This was just really charming because often when you work with songwriters now, lots of them have studios, but we just did this in a front room so the demo was very, very basic. But it’s such a strong, fantastic song that whenever people heard the demos, they always loved this song. I think it’s been realised really beautifully for the album. It was produced by Greg Hatwell, who is one of my guitarists and my musical director, and I’ve worked with for a very long time. He has done a fantastic job on this song. It is so beautiful and it just needed to be treated very delicately but it needed also to fit with the rest of the album. „One By One“ is really about being in a relationship, but the magic is gone. We all have ups and downs in our relationships and sometimes you can’t remember how wonderful it was at the beginning.

MEL C
The Sea
(Wsm/313 Music/Warner)
VÖ: 02.09.2011

http://www.melaniec.net

Autor: [EMAIL=friedrich.reip@popmonitor.de?Subject=Kontakt von der Website]Friedrich Reip[/EMAIL]