if you can be there for me
new song + sampling + camila cabello + life
Hi everyone,
It’s been a minute! Sorry about that… I’ve spent most of my writing energy on journaling and then pasting that into ChatGPT to find out what’s wrong with me. Haven’t worked it out yet.
I’ve put out a new song today called ‘if you can be there for me’ - it’s available on Youtube, Soundcloud and Bandcamp. I can’t put it on streaming services because I sampled Janet Jackson, and I can’t afford to clear that. But I’m hoping this song will go viral so that she, Jimmy Jam, and Terry Lewis will be forced to get on a call with me.
I wrote this song while I was annoyed at the person I am dating for not making an effort to see me. We have since squashed the beef, but it’s unfortunate that I’ve given them the satisfaction of me getting a good song out of it. This is the life I have chosen, I suppose.
My friend Connor made a video for me very quickly last Sunday afternoon (he also took the beautiful photo at the top of this newsletter). We just walked around Freemans Bay filming on an old iPhone. That’s about as good as videos get for me. Check out Connor’s work here.
if you can be there for me - youtube / soundcloud / bandcamp
I’ve been thinking about sampling a lot. It’s an eternal frustration of mine that I can’t legally sample anything I want. It can feel like one of the truest forms of expression in this current era. We have basically every song ever recorded at our fingertips, and our culture has leaned so heavily on nostalgia this past decade. We’re constantly referencing. Everything is on the moodboard.
With ‘if you can be there for me’ I’d started writing the main guitar/vocal phrase, but in the back of my head I just kept imagining this “all for youuuuuu” backing vocal coming in. It took me a minute to work out where this was actually from (I feel like I have a great memory, but it’s all just fragments swirling around the music room of my mind palace).
I googled ‘all for you acapella’, youtube-to-mp3’d it, then had it sitting perfectly in my song in less than 5 minutes. I briefly tried to recreate it with my own voice, but it didn’t come anywhere close to that magical quality of Janet’s harmonies. What choice did I have?
There’s a great quote in Pitchfork’s review of the new Camila Cabello album, talking about the brilliant song B.O.A.T
“…a subtle sample of Pitbull’s “Hotel Room” needles its way through, half-mocking, half-longing. It’s sad, sophisticated, and utterly singular”
The sample in this song is so gorgeous. It moves the song from feeling sad to feeling completely heartbreaking. Taking a song from deep within our musical memory, recontextualising it alongside a piano ballad…it’s stunning!! It might be my favourite song of the year.
I’m worried that as AI becomes more prominent in the arts, governments will try to crack down and tighten copyright laws even further. I hope this doesn’t happen. I don’t think it benefits anyone - creators or consumers. Music has been devalued to such a point that I don’t think we can afford to gatekeep every aspect of it. When people share their covers, remixes, or samples of my songs, I’m ecstatic. There’s no greater gift to me as an artist than knowing that someone was inspired enough by my work to create something themselves. We should do everything we can to encourage this.
I hope you’re all having a great week. Here are some other songs I’ve been enjoying lately.
Talk soon xx
Eddie
Old:
Wilco - Should’ve Been In Love
Drake & 21 Savage - Hours In Silence
New: