In April I was contacted by Andrew Marston from BBC Hereford & Worcester, who has for some time championed my work with gusto, and he asked me if I would be interested in taking part in the Collaborator Generator. This is pretty much as it sounds, I was to be teamed up with another artist and over the course of a week, write a song together. I said yes of course, only thinking about how amazing the person I would be matched with could be, not really thinking through the potential pitfalls.
On the 7th of May, on air, I was matched with Meg Scane and all I can say is thank god for that! I was told the point was to be matched with someone different and I had already concluded that must mean they would be young, female and cool. Meg is all of these things and more and I'm not sure I really brought much to the table, but the song we came up with is something we are both exceptionally proud of and it needed to be released.
On the 14th of May was were back on air explaining our process. We had had a great chat on the first Sunday finding a lot of common ground and coming up with a plan for how we'd manage to deal with the challenge logistically. Thankfully, Meg is a brilliant and instinctive writer and came up with an idea in less than 24 hours, sending over a phone recording. I could see huge potential in her idea and quickly fired over my own phone version with a slightly revamped chorus and Meg signed it off.
I then set about building up the song, programming the drum parts, recording piano, bass, guitar and backing vocals before Meg came to my home studio to put down her lead vocals. The plan was to have Meg leading the song as though one of her own, but with the usual Elison sound and arrangement, trying as best as possible to have a 50/50 split of input. The result is better than either of us could have expected and we present it to you here full of pride. Certainly I hope to work with Meg again, it has been the most amazing journey with a truly stunning end.
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