How do you know a song is finished? How do you know it’s good?
Nick Cave, The Red Hand Files, No. 266, Dec, 25, 2023
LELE, DRESDEN, GERMANY
I don’t know.
Nick Cave writes the most wonderful responses to questions that he gets on The Red Hand Files. People ask him anything from the ridiculous to the sublime, and he always gets it right. Having read his book, Faith, Hope and Carnage, the record of candid and intensely personal conversations that he has had with film-maker and collaborator Seán O’Hagan, his answers, and the thinking behind them, are consistent. This is Nick Cave – plain and simple. On Christmas Day 2023, his Red Hand Files post contained questions that have “yes”, “no”, “I don’t know” and “Yes, we do” answers. The question, above, resonated with me:
How do you know when a song is finished?
Cave’s response: “I don’t know”. This makes sense, because each song is unique and whether or not it is as good as it’s going to get, depends on too many factors to be able to generalize. However, as someone who has done quite a lot of painting, I always have this quote in my head:
“Perfection is achieved not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.”
French writer Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, author of The Little Prince
Knowing what to remove and what to add, is the trick, of course.
All I know these days, is that when I have added the vocal recordings from the artists to my songs, and fitted them in, or, in reverse, fitted the song to the vocals, then the song is done. Finally, DONE, at least for my part. And no thanks to my own terrible scratch vocal demos.
Then I send it off to the sound studio for mixing and mastering. Nothing that I create can ever be as beautiful as what those singers can do with their voices. Sometimes I am so moved by hearing them sing what I’ve written, but better in countless ways, that I feel like my heart will break. I ask myself, do they have some secret music instrument – a flute – in their throats, where other people only have vocal cords? How can they possibly produce that? How it is possible for a singer to do that with their voice? I know it’s a combination of physical ability, training and education, technique, musical intuition and experience. But there is always something there that is more than the sum of these parts.
Wonderful and mysterious voices
The singers that have sung my songs are professionals – and doing session singing is a job to them. They also have their own recording careers. If it had not been for SoundBetter and the raft of wonderful voices that I can actually access, I would never have had the pleasure and the privilege to connect with them and work with them.
The Main voices-for-hire
Ben Alexander
“Ben Alexander” is the name that Ben Botfield gives to his clients if they want to credit him for session singing. He is a recording artist and uses his real name, Ben Botfield, for recordings where he is the featured artist. For the rest, he is Ben Alexander (one of quite a few Ben Alexanders in the industry). Ben is unusually talented and no job is too difficult for him. The very first song I wanted him to do the vocals for was in Latin – Invenies Me Mane Caelo. That would’ve done the head in of most vocalists. Ben got it done, beautifully. ‘Til today, his voice on that song still sends chills down my spine. He can do a marvellously clear falsetto. On his SoundBetter headshot, above, he looks remarkably like a very young Elvis Presley. He says he doesn’t like being filmed or photographed while he is recording, but it looks like he’s been exposed by the Frische Fische band in their video, below.
Ben is on SoundBetter – YouTube – Spotify.
Shelley Harland
Shelley Harland, also known as Shelley H., is very talented, and very creative, and prolific. She has a marvellous warm, mellow voice that can be amazingly expressive. I simply went for the top-of-the-line female vocalist on SoundBetter when I was looking for one, and she was it. Since then, I have been astonished by the beauty of her singing countless times. She asks to be credited as “Dawn Lief” – “lief” meaning “dear” in Danish – for her session singing work. (Interestingly, as an established artist, she has a Wikipedia entry.)