Notes on Easy

On a Winter’s day in the beginning of 2009, the good friend of mine, Fredrik Muskos sent a draft to some new lyrics, wondering if I could do something with it. It wasn’t the first time we collaborated on a song, as we also wrote ”Anything” together, but there we worked together on both music and lyrics.

I had a first go and came up with a workable idea for both the verse and the chorus. I did a recording and sent it to Fredrik. We both agreed that it was promising but for some reason things stopped there. It wasn’t that we didn’t like it; probably something else demanded our attention and we sort of forgot it. These things happen.

Writing this post I had a look back in my song archive and found the version that I send to Fredrik (click to listen). Apart from the very obvious reason why I stick to playing and don’t sing in the band  it’s interesting to compare it to the final version, if only to see which of the early ideas that made it to the final version and which did not.

A couple of years later Pär and I were listening through songs, planning the new album. We both thought ”Easy” would do as a Bus Stop Dreams song and Pär suggested Tobbe Möller as a singer. At that time I had no real idea of where to take the song, meaning how it should be arranged and produced. So rather than hold back I went with the idea, made the arrangements, and recorded vocals in January 2012. Tobbe’s performance put a new direction to the song. He added a very down to earth, dry and honest touch to it that made it much more easy to finish. Actually, until recording the vocals we were very much fumbling around in the dark. Many thanks should go to Tobbe for actually setting the song into it’s current frame.

I love the lyrics. They are very direct and upfront and work fabulous with the vocals. There is nothing hidden, just a very honest feeling of happiness and the need to tell it to the person responsible of that happiness. A kind of text I could not write myself. If I had written it myself it probably would have been about broken love or something equally depressing. The song is so much better of with Fredriks lyrics I think.

So, going from being one of the more elusive songs that we recorded for the album, a song that early on just never would behave, it has become one of my favorites. In the end it turned out, at least to me, to be one of the most focused and well produced songs on the album. A good proof that hard work yields good result if there is quality to begin with.

/Lasse

I liked the song the first time I heard it. It had a kind of crooner-jazzy vibe to the the melody in the verse, like it was an old song playing through the radio in the middle of the last century. And then the chorus came in, where the singer just couldn’t hold back any more, he just had to pour his heart out. A mood swing from a playful happy feeling to a this-is-serious-I-really-mean-it-I-would-do-anything! feeling.

I was very keen on asking Tobbe Möller to try out this song. He has a special kind of tone in his voice, which I had enjoyed for some time, but never in someone else’s song. He did a wonderful job and exceeded my expectations by far, from what I heard in my mind beforehand.

Mixing this song with Lasse was one of the most fun mixing adventures of the album. Lasse brought his palette of recorded tracks to the table and we set out to make the song fly. It wasn’t that the song changed in any radical manner from the post-mix Lasse had done; it was rather like a work of fine-tuning it with delicate tools, making it breathe and catch some breath before the song final. To me it’s a song that still grows each time I listen to it.

/Pär