After I saw the image and the "lights" theme, I was initially going to go for something wintery and romantic and sweet and pop. I immediately got the "kiss me under starry lights" as a chorus line along with the melody for the line as I looked at the image. I wonder if it's slowly becoming a tradition to do a
sappy sweet love song for the season... My last Holiday track was a
sappy sweet country pop song at the end of 2021.
But I ended up listening to an Enrique Iglesias song on repeat after the challenge started, and I couldn't help trying out some Latin percussion for this instead. The laid back tropical beach vibes followed, along with the warm double bass, twinkly mallet instruments, a tongue drum and simple improv guitar accompaniment. I went with the old-as-time twinkling lights of the starry night sky, as opposed to the electric kind.
I'm also a visual artist in traditional and digital media, and wanted to do a music video, hoping to keep it simple. But no, it managed to turn into a sizeable project and took far more work than the music production as is usually the case for this. I was trying hard to get it and the final bits of the track done before the deadline. Phew, I finally reached that point of "Yeah, I think is where I'm going to stop!" with both the music and imagery just in time.
For my music videos, I like working with CGI using 3D software. Right now, I like working on still image narratives or mood/concept sequences. I decided to go over-the-top sweet and romantic for this one, with lots of twinkling lights to match the theme, and warm and peaceful. As such this song, unlike my momentum song from last month, has little to no momentum. It's meant to be a state of feeling, so there isn't really a build though some elements change up over time of course, especially from verse to chorus, to keep the forward movement. I kept the structure simple (just verse-chorus-verse-chorus) for the same reasons. Slower-paced but compact, with relatively sparse lyrics, and with a soft and hushed vocal style. The intimate style is meant to evoke a "I'm thinking and feeling this" rather than "I'm saying this out loud" feeling.