(Rock/Pop) Never Living Without You a bit '80s

[Benedict]

This is the first time I have had an artist make a full live-action video for something I have mixed. There have been lots with stills, incl the ones I make for clients, but a real live boy! is exciting.

That and I am pretty chuffed with the all-Reason (11 at the time) mix that references a sort of 80s revisionism with a slightly more modern feel.

I had been working with Jake for a while mixing a record for his comedy band and increasingly realized that he had a lot more songs of his own that he was sitting on. He was assuming that he needed someone else to sing them. I got him to give me this and I mixed it in downtime to show him how entirely possible it was for these songs to live as they were already. Once I dug further into his catalog I realized that there was really a light Country record and that is the main thing but there are four mixes of Pop songs coming out first. I showed Medicine a week or so ago here.

[integerpoet]

I was craving the synth chords at just the moment they arrived, and they managed to be appropriately "big" without overwhelming. Noice.

Is this guy just naturally resonant with the period or is he having fun at its expense? (I support either or both.)

[Benedict]

Thanks

Jake simply is Jake. A few years ago he put himself on a big mission to become a master songwriter with B1 & B2 (Benny & Bjorn) of ABBA as his cornerstone/benchmark. This was just Pop and seeing '80s (Retroblaze - or whatever silly name they call I this week) has been part of the culture, he rolled some of that in. I felt it, esp seeing he used his Juno 106 (yep a real one) that always screams Juno 106, giving it a bit of a mid-late 80s feel simply made sense of the material overall. That period still valued good songwriting (not a corporate spider drawing in random parts and doggerel cliches) so it also resonates well in that each of his songs is a "letter from us to you" to paraphrase how The Bs put it. That means it is inevitable that I might be thinking Rick Springfield, Taxiride, Ratcat, Lenny Kravitz...