Singled Out: All Mankind's Can You Hear Me?

This song is one of those songs that sticks around for a long time. It's one of those songs that people really connect with and it gives you the inkling that maybe you'll be playing it for the rest of your career. I say that because it was put together all the way back in 2006 and it's still hanging around! During one of our then rare writing sessions, Rich (singer, lead songwriter) came in with a track which at the time was called "Shining City." Rich played it through and Gav and I played along. It sounded pretty cool but Rich felt he wanted a different approach on the drums; he wanted more of a marching style groove. No problem! So we played through, got all our parts together fairly quickly and recorded a really rough demo just through a laptop microphone. Little did we know that apart from the lyrics the song would hardly change after that point.

Later in 2006, we did another demo of the song but this time it was a little more involved than just a laptop mic. We put all the rhythm tracks down, almost as they are now. We got in a mate to also put down a few lead guitar lines and Rich put his vocals on top. At some point between the two demos Rich had changed the lyrics to "Can You Hear Me?" based on a period of time in his life where things felt a little hopeless. After we did the demo we kind of put the song aside for about two years until we recorded an album as the new band, All Mankind. This was recorded in Sydney at 301 studios. The album was never properly released but at the time that song was gaining a lot of attention, especially from our current managers who heard the song and were immediately blown away, which was nice.

Enter 2010. This is the year we recorded our soon to be released debut album, Simple Desire, with superstar producer, Mike Crossey. This was to be the definitive version of the song. Mike brought the energy out, he brought the vibe out and we recorded the version that really does the song justice. The only thing that was to change was a middle section; we later decided to put in a guitar solo so we could keep the energy of the song really pumping. It's been a long journey for the song, but one that has been pretty amazing thus far. This song changed the direction of our band, and in the process has changed our lives, we are looking forward to what other changes it brings!