Writing a lot helped a lot with my songwriting - it helped me write a lot faster, it allowed me to be a lot more concise and specific with what I wanted to say. How does writing books influence your music? I don’t know if that’s synesthesia in technical, psychological terms or if it’s a little bit of that and a dose of my OCD in there.
But the people around me have color, my clothes, I am really sensitive to color. If someone throws another track on top of the track I’m working on, the colors change - sometimes I can’t even look at the screen because the vibe has changed so much. Do I literally see color? No, but I feel its presence really strongly, so much so even when I’m using ProTools, everything has its color and that’s what Pharrell and I were specifically talking about. I wasn’t sure if I had it or have it, but I have connections to color - everything has a color. Pharrell and I actually talked about synesthesia before. Like with “Why Don’t We Fall in Love,” I got on the video with the director and he’s like, “OK, I’m thinking summertime, you on a beach,” and I go, “OK, this is cool, but actually my initial thought was black, red and a highway.” No one else seems to feel that. The funny thing to me, I’ve always felt like my music is dark - even when no one else thinks that. I’m hearing a lot of darker and moodier vibes from you on this project. I didn’t want the album to be a smorgasbord of sound, it needs to have a vibe and that’s why there’s two projects. As I was recording, I wasn’t trying to limit myself in any way, I was feeling very, very creative - I had just came off of writing a new story and I wanted to go full-out into the recording process. I love my projects to be very sonically cohesive. How did the idea of a double album come about in 4AM Mulholland and After 4AM? I record, engineer and do my own vocals and rough mixes.
I was doing little sexy rolls on those tracks. “Not a Love Song” and “The Wall” were around then. You recorded these projects while pregnant.Įverything on the album was recorded from when I didn’t know I was pregnant to eight, nine months. I’m passionate about writing and story, but it creates a different kind of fatigue. But I was really missing actively recording, because it gives you a different creative outlet. One is done, two are almost finished, some I’m revising, others are in various states. I was living, breathing writing - I wrote six novels in the past years.
I kept thinking I would get to music, but for the most part it was writing and learning story craft. I was thinking about my next project in 2012 and still making music, but I was writing and wanted to put all my time into writing. Your last full-length project was in 2009 with In Love & War. Speaking to Billboard exclusively ahead of the independent drop, Amerie shares what’s changed since her early days, how her new jobs have affected her work and what she still has to prove almost two decades after her debut. The projects read as an artist content in creating in a way that reads and sounds satisfying to her - bucking what listeners may expect from her past music or what traditional trends may dictate. Mulholland opener “Curious” sets a moody, mysterious tone, followed by snappy, trap-heavy cuts like “A Heart’s for the Breaking” or “4TheLovers” After 4AM tracks “Give It All Up” and “I Remember Us… ” deliver a pang of nostalgia with flecks of jittery pop and boom bap. On Friday, the 38-year-old singer will independently release 4AM Mulholland and After 4AM, a “double project” that pivots from her pop-leaning past hits into a deep dive of more subdued, cavernous R&B and trance-laced productions.
0 kommentar(er)
