Welcome to Deluxe. In this track I will be telling you about the album, the meaning behind the songs and why they are on the album and how they got where they are. Something I love about music is that lyrics can usually be interpreted however the listener wants to. If you want to do that with my songs, just skip this track and listen to the next one. If you are wondering about the lyrics and such, keep listening
I'm gonna start with the deluxe-tracks
When I was writing the album I wanted the whole album to form a story. I did that with track 1 to 14, and then I got to the deluxe tracks. I wanted the deluxe to be special, I wanted it to be more than just extra songs. So, I chose track 15 to be an introduction to the deluxe tracks and as an album and track-by-track an*lysis
Track 16 is a cover of “Celestial” by Tori Kelly, taken off her EP “Handmade Songs by Tori Kelly”. The reason I covered a song on an original album is that this song basically set the vibe of the album. I started writing this album in 2012, when Tori's first EP came out. I was inspired by it and I loved the vibes Celestial gave me, both lyrically and musically. It was the base and the inspiration for the album, so I wanted to give that to you. Here is Tori Kelly explaining the meaning of the song, which I think is just… beautiful
This one, uhm, is one of the newer ones that I put on the EP. And, uh, lyrically I kind of wanted to, uh, allow the listener to use their imagination, and kind of get lost in this world, uhm, but it's… it's really about… a place where heaven and earth would meet. And, uh, yeah… this one's called ‘Celestial'
Track 17 is the first ever one-take recording I did of the title-track ‘Beautiful Things' and I wanted to show you how I made a song from a scrap
The outro, track 18, is the last song of the album I wrote. As I said before, I wanted the album to form a story, and if you were to repeat the whole album it would still be a continuous story. If you repeat track 1 to 14, it continuously tells a story. If you listen to all the songs, it properly opens and closes the album. The outro is about how I enjoyed making the album and I hope all the listeners enjoyed it too. It ends with ‘for now, this is my goodbye'. I ended it like this because I will probably be off the radar for a little bit after this album, but I will for sure be back
Now for the rest of the album
The first song was written by a very good friend of mine, Dominique, she sent me a video of her playing a song on her piano, and she was like ‘look what I wrote.' I later wrote lyrics to the medley and made a recording of it and now it's on the album as the Intro!
Track number two was the first song I wrote of the album, and that's why I wanted it to be the title-track. For this one I started with the chords and wrote melody and lyrics last. I wrote it about being confident with whoever you may be, and being yourself no matter what other people may say
The third track I wrote about being in a happy relationship and appreciating yourself and your partner. This connects to the second track because I think that to be in a healthy relationship you need to be confident in yourself
The fourth track, ‘Story Of A Boy' is based upon an experience I had where I met someone and he asked me on a date, on new year's eve. When I was at the spot where we were supposed to meet up, he wasn't there. I waited for hours and he still hadn't showed up. I knew he was way to good to be true, but I just hadn't realised it yet until this actually happened
After that ‘event', I tried getting over him as I hadn't heard from him in about a month, but it was difficult. This is what ‘Let Me Go' is about. He kept coming back into my mind, and it stopped me from thinking clearly. I think getting over someone is good for you, though it can be hard. Writing songs is really a coping-mechanism for me, and so after writing this song I felt much better about the situation
‘Tired' is about realising that the world is actually kind of f**ed up and that not everything is perfect, although many people make it look like it is. I wrote this song after watching the news one day, and after seeing everything that is going on right now. This is really just me mourning at the world. I guess I was just done with it being so easy to help for some people and that no one is actually doing it
After that we get ‘Dance', track 7, which I wrote and sung with a really good friend of mine, Anna. It's actually kind of funny how this song came to what it is now, when Anna knew about the album I was making she came to me asking if there was a possibility that she could be on it. I said: sure, let's write a song. A little while later we had like a three-hour Skype session in which we wrote the song and later Anna came over and we recorded it. We wrote it about escaping from the world which I talked about in ‘Tired'. It's about just being so done with everything you just want to leave and dance it off, just ignore everything that is happening to just be happy and careless and… free
Track 8 is about that boy which I wrote about in track three through five finally leaving my mind. The note I made when setting the subject, after writing the chords and melody, is this: ‘I'm over you, so now I'm gonna do other things, like…'. The ‘like' was hinting to the next song, ‘Begin'
I wrote Begin after being over that boy from the last track and then going back to your realization of how f**ed up the world is. Now that you are over your breakup you can start helping the world. This song is very, very old indeed, it was one of the first songs I wrote. It's been re-mastered many, many times and I'm very happy with how it turned out
‘Try' takes place way after Begin, and is about, when you're done with everything you want to do, you're alone. In my time of being alone I liked to idolize celebrities, which I then wrote a song about. It's about not being able to get that person but trying nonetheless, and knocking every opponent out on your way, which there are many of since it's about a celebrity
When you finally get that person you land at track 11, which is about being with a person that is just so right. That person knows you so well even though you haven't known each other for very long. This person knows exactly what you're thinking and knows exactly how you feel
I wrote ‘Drown' after realizing that your relationship with that person from the last song doesn't work. It's about not feeling happy anymore and it just isn't working. As I may have said before I try to base all my songs off of real emotions I've felt. To clearly give these emotions to other people, so they can relate, I make the emotions bigger which is clearly visible in ‘Drown'
Now you may have thought: if that person from ‘Try' is so hard to get, how did you get in such an amazing relationship with him? Well, I didn't. I, after a long time, realized I was imagining things and it wasn't real, which is what ‘Broken Me' is about. I want to talk especially about the ending, so I want to give you a short clip of that. The reason why it fades out anyway is because the person I'm asking to get me fixed is the same person as the person who I imagined a relationship with, meaning they can't get my fixed because he doesn't exist
When all this drama is done and you have rested for a while, you're ready to go into a new relationship. There's a lot of people who want you, which is a good thing. You think. Problem is: they're all too low of a ‘rank' for you and you want them to stop trying to get to you. This is what I wrote ‘Stop' about. Fun fact about the production of the song: the person you're hearing say ‘stop' in the choruses is my mom, she wanted to be on the album so I gave her a little spot
This song makes the album go full circle, because it stands for confidence, which the intro and ‘Beautiful Things' are both about. This makes it so that if you listen to the regular version of the album, it goes full circle and if you listen to the deluxe it will be properly closed and opened
I hope you enjoy my album, as I've worked really hard on it for a really long time