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Background to Songs: Let Love Shine, Remix
Written by Jimmy
Ok. First, this is a remix. And to be clear, the original is far better according to its author: Listen here. We wanted to record it with Abubilla and after a long and winding road…. (yeah, i could do a link but won’t), we got Motown.
Lou’s Description:
Let Love Shine I think was Jimmy’s idea – he had this kind of vision with it, that it could be a great, poppy band number. I have to say, I laid down the guide track (which I was not happy with) and left the band to it (I am deliberately skipping the bit where we all tried to jam together and I almost cried, I was so terrified they might destroy my song). Literally. I stepped out of the studio while they jammed with the chords, discovered this funky little riff and a clever style break in the bridge, and then stepped back in to record a more free vocal line, with Andy miming ‘Shirley Bassey’ to me over the reflector shield. And now there’s this pop song. Which used to be a folk number. And I really like it. Plus, I got so fed up with noone being able to ‘get’ the backing vibe that I was given studio time to work it out and do it myself (all due credit to Jimmy for the ‘bah-bah’s though).
Jimmy’s Description
So Let Love Shine Remix is a wonderful example of artistic struggle in a conflict. Lou had done the song on her own a few years back and it meant a huge amount to her. She loved the ‘moment in time.’ The rest of us had no connection to the songl, thought it was lovely, but thought that the band could do something with it. We tried to recreate the original with a few more instruments. Bad idea, bad direction, because it basically was a direct re-creation of the original and for Lou, it didn’t work at all. So we then took it in a very very different direction and once she decided ‘Oh hell, this is different enough’ to go for it, we had a lot of fun. I fought hard for the bah bah and got yelled at a lot. That’s all I’ll say about that.