New Season in depth | Part 3: It’s You
Every Monday for the next eight weeks I’m going to be posting an in-depth blog about a song from New Season. Here’s the third one.
Part 3: It’s You
‘It’s You’ is in the same key as ‘Have You Got Heart?’, and isn’t a million miles away in terms of tempo and feel, so I had to do something to make sure that it didn’t end up sounding too similar on the record. Whereas ‘Have You Got Heart?’ sounds quite bright and cheery thanks to the high guitar line, we went for some slightly dirge-y Weezer-esque guitars on ‘It’s You’ (listen to the start of ‘Buddy Holly’ or the chorus of ‘The Sweater Song’) to give it a bit of rock weight.
I’ve always felt that the verses are a good car-driving tempo and one of my favourite bits of the song is at 2:06 when the high guitar line comes in. To me, it sounds really American and like you’re driving on a long, open road, probably in a Cadillac through a desert or something. There’s also a killer shaker part at 1:46, which really gels the verse together. Never underestimate the role of a shaker.
My main concern with the chorus was worrying whether the hook was too basic (“It’s youuu, youuu, youuu, you are the one I love” was never going to win any awards for lyric writing). Whist it’s good because it’s super catchy and you can sing it after hearing it once, the danger with those kinds of choruses is that you’re sick of them after hearing them three times (mind, this chorus never gets old). Anyway, I tried to develop the chorus a bit and make it more interesting, but it felt complete as it was and I decided to risk putting an über-pop chorus on the album. Plus, I was super into the Gm7 chord in the chorus (2:40, for example) and there was no way that wasn’t making the album.
Other things I’m into on this track are the thick three-part harmonies at the end of each chorus (2:46 - the low part kills me), the way the drums play through the breaks before the choruses (0:20), the build-up at 3:31, and basically everything from 4:17 onwards (if I ever get to play a stadium show, this bit will be great). Although I do worry that we recorded the whole song too slow and that I didn’t sing the high bits very well. But look, I never claimed to be Freddie Mercury.
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Listen to / buy ‘New Season’ at lukeleighfield.com/newseason.
Watch ‘Seasons’, the feature-length documentary about the making of the album, at lukeleighfield.com/seasons.
