Need You is track 7 on En Masse, and really one of my favs. I co-wrote this song with Ian Smith and Steven Dall; two Ontario guys, and the same guys who wrote ‘Houdini’ with me. In many ways ‘Need You’ is incredibly different than ‘Houdini’ but in other ways it shares similarities.
One reason I love this song is that it feels really effortless. It’s super simple, it’s universal, and I hope that someone can hear it once and know the title and know the melody and be singing it through their day or something. We wrote thing song reasonably quick, I went for a winter walk that morning and gave some thought about what I wanted to write about, since I think all good songs, even if they are universal, need to come from a place that is very real. I remember having some train of thought like ‘I need to have my shit together, so I don’t always just rely on you’ and then Steven really wanted to take the song down a way simpler route. I recall really embracing the opposite path and ‘trusting the process.’
We tracked a vocal that day and I kicked both buds out of the room because I wanted to lay one down that was good enough to listen to for a couple months or however long the demo had to live. I’m glad I did, because this demo vocal seemed to have something special, something immediate and something in the moment in it. I’ve learned that sometimes you need to trust that type of intuition. Instincts, melody and intuition guided En Masse. Brenon Parry tracked an array of drums and percussion and Sean Lane tracked additional percussion and ‘Bike’ as well. We really leaned into the Phil Collins percussion vibes.
Here is the demo of Need You, and the original version side by side.
