Precious inspiration is what these two tracks have in common. Anre shares the stories that inspired his composition and arrangement of these two songs.
[Track 4, Our Love, plays]
Keren: What’s this one? And what genres are we hearing?
ACB: "Our Love", which IS the oldest song on this album. I wrote it in ’89-’90 when I was in a band, but I didn’t write it FOR the band—I just wrote it. Its Jazz/RnB/Pop that would have been played on an Adult Contemporary radio station.
An old friend helped write the lyrics, which I’m not using. And the thing is, it’s always been a sappy love song, but this version I think is dreamier—stars-in-the-eyes kind of sappy. Well, both versions have always been kind of dreamy, but this one is definitely more dreamy. Intentionally.
Keren: How so?
ACB: What makes it dreamier? Well, the sounds that I’m using are more ethereal than the others. And, when I was arranging this version, I kept thinking of my friend, Aly Connors, who recently lost her husband. Thoughts and feelings of them… Aly and Brandon’s incredible adventures… their love, enjoying one another.
I dedicate this song to them.
[Track 6, Breathless, plays]
Keren: What’s this one?
ACB: Breathless… 3-point-0, technically. [laughs]
Keren: [laughs] Tell me about 1.0!
ACB: Well, back in the early 2000s when I got sick and I lost my insurance, my oldest friend paid for two months of my medications, which were a significant amount of medications, and it blew me away. So, to say thank you, I wrote this song called Breathless. When you listen to the original version, it’s really sweet, and sappy and… sentimental. But version 2.0 isn’t like that, it is very lively and sassy, but there’s something about the first version that I really liked. So, when it came to 3.0, the album version, I kind of wanted to marry versions 1 and 2 together, and I think I did that. When it comes to the genres, there’s a LOTTA jazz, a lot of rock…
The thing I like about this particular song—like When She Smiles, which we’ll talk about later— is that it goes through a lot of musical changes. Like, the first verse isn’t even like the second verse—they’re different, and there’s a prehook. And prehook one is different than prehook two—there’s slight variations, and the thing about the song that I like is it grows and grows and grows and then all of a sudden there’s this break and then there’s a reset, and it grows and grows and there’s another reset with this really cool (I think it’s cool, at least [grins]) electric piano solo, and then all of a sudden it just rocks out in the end with this screaming B3 organ solo. So it’s a lot of fun, I think.
Keren: I couldn’t agree with you more. [smiles]