I'll have to admit, writing love songs is not something that I often do. Sure, if you look at Thoughts And Notions' song catalogue, there are a number of love songs on it. Some are even fan favorites (like Earthbound Angel) back in the day, but I feel writing love themed songs is not really my strength. Most often than not, I prefer to write about the hurts and pains, and how to get through from those. I feel I'm suited to mining those type of emotions from within rather than write sappy love songs. But sometimes, there's that urge to feel that overflowing love. Whether coming from myself or from being expressed by another. After all, the song that really got us started as a band and with our music career was the song called "My Love Song". Which I believe is just a pretty simple love song that expresses our love for another. And for that song's specific case, God.
When I wrote the songs in our first album "In Awe of His Amazing Love", I was fresh from a heart break. So the emotions I experienced while writing the songs in that album were pretty much a roller coaster ride. I had so much love to give, only to be rebuked. So where do I direct that love to? Of course to our greatest lover, Jesus Christ. The love songs that I wrote for that album could easily be directed to our significant other or to Jesus. It won't matter, because the emotions came from the kind of love that was rooted in the Christian values that I learned from the Bible. But like the typical cliche of romantic love where we fall out of it, sometimes we do also stumble to nurture that love with Jesus. This is where the new song Falling in Love comes in.
I wrote the song Falling in Love during a time when I felt so distant from Jesus. Not because I feel he was distant, but because I feel I did not do enough to make him feel that I love him. It felt like I needed to go through a humbling period of asking for Jesus' love. That's why while reading the initial draft of the lyrics, it felt weird. If you are in a spiritual state of being so in love with Jesus, I believe you'll find the song weird. Because there were so many doubts and uncertainties with the way I expressed the words in relation to starting a relationship with him. Will Jesus love me again despite my inadequacies with my faith? However, we should always keep in mind that Jesus' love is unconditional. You don't need to ask him for that. He already expressed that to us when he died for our sins. But for me, when I wrote those words, I felt ashamed, I felt shy, and inadequate. Thus, it was expressed that way.
But then, if you are in a state of your relationship with Jesus where you are just beginning to fall in love with him, I think the song would work. Personally, when listening to the song with this point of view, I'd want the listeners to feel that Jesus is not a distant Deity as some perceive him to be. His presence actually surrounds us if we acknowledge it. Being in a relationship with Jesus is just like when you are in a relationship with a fellow human being (though you know that with Jesus, it is on a higher form). You can easily choose to strike a conversation with him. Just as I have chosen to do when I wrote the song Falling in Love. I was lost. I drifted away from him during those times. And I had to, with all my shame, ask him humbly if he could love me again. I think you can feel it in the verses of the song how much uncertainty and how I felt a tinged of shyness when I asked him to take me back.
Another important milestone with this song is that this is actually the first song that I co-wrote without Wilbert Tan and the band. The song was originally intended to be a part of our third album. In fact, our old drummer Adonis already supplied the melody and the basic structure of how the song would sound like. It was supposed to be a sequel to My Love Song, if ever we were given the chance to release it as a Thoughts And Notions song. But the reformation of the band never came to be. So Wilbert and I have moved on to focus on songwriting instead. But then, as I was in the thick of things forming a core team with Namfi Fernandez and Migz Llado for our fledgling record label Cre8Music Records. Namfi suggested that the three of us should work on a song. She asked me to send some of my lyrics so that she could pick one to use. Naturally, she picked this specific song.
At the time that Namfi picked the song, I did not let her listen to Adonis' finished melody. So she supplied her own melody to the song. She also added some lines and a whole bridge to match the lyrics with her melody. The whole bridge of the song is hers. The collaboration was also a difficult process for me as I recall there were times we had argued to keep or change some words just to keep my original vision for the song intact. My songwriting style in the Christian Contemporary Music genre has always leaned on the vague Christian message type. I always wanted to reach out to the mainstream audience and serve as a bridge for them to encounter Jesus. So the songs could easily speak to them too without being too preachy. But if being listened to by someone who has a deep Christian Faith, you'd immediately know that the songs are referring to God or about our Christian Faith. So the point of contention was whether to keep the song vague or to straight up direct it to God. Namfi wanted to keep it vague. I wanted to make it more direct towards God. Well, when the song is finally released, you tell us how it turned out😅
And like what I shared earlier, this is the first song that I am releasing without my songwriting partner Wilbert providing the musical direction of the song. So, I cannot release it as a Thoughts And Notions song. Though in a way, this project kind of opened me to explore collaborations. In this Digital Music age, collaborations seems to be the trend. Because of the interconnectivity and algorithms (if you get the drift). But that's not much of a problem as Migz Llado (lead singer of the band The Mox) took care of arranging and producing the song. The funny thing though is that his musical influences had always leaned towards the garage rock and punk genre, the type of songs that his bands are producing. So making him produce and arrange a pop song is something new for me I guess. As to how it turned out, we'll let you be the judge of that. But Falling in Love is a song that we are proud of, warts and all. Because this signified the bond and the birth of Cre8Music Records' core management team.
I can't wait to share this song and hear from you.
You can pre-save the song by accessing the link below:
https://bfan.link/falling-in-love-7
Thank You and hope to hear from you soon.
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