Singled Out: Hamish Anderson's No Good

08-31-2018

Blues rock guitarist/singer/songwriter Hamish Anderson just released his latest single "No Good" and to celebrate we asked the acclaimed artist to tell us about the track. Here is the story:

I started writing "No Good" in March of 2017. I was back in my hometown of Melbourne, Australia just playing around on the guitar one day when suddenly the chords for the riff just fell into place. I played it over and over and bit by bit built up the chord progression for the verse and pre chorus and came up with the little lick that starts each verse. The melody for almost the entire song came about pretty quickly too but the only lyric I had was the opening line "Don't say you love me, Cause you know I don't go for that". I thought that was a really cool opening line to start a song with but I couldn't come up with any other lyrics that I liked and I was just singing phonetics with no actual words.

For about the next 7 months I was always coming back to it but still couldn't get the lyrics together and I wasn't sure where to go for the chorus. I spent most of that year on tour in the US and I would just play the riff over those months at soundcheck or when I was off the road just trying to piece the song together. In October I went back home to Australia and almost the exact day I got home in the same room where I started the song suddenly when I played it all these lyrics came pouring out and I came up with the chords and lyric for the chorus being the key to the song "You're no good for me". Once I had cracked the chorus almost all the rest of the song revealed itself and I knew what it was about.

When we were recording it we were all really instantly excited by it because the groove just had so much energy to it and it felt like it had a power to it. It reminded me of a tougher late seventies sound almost a little bit like The Stones Some Girls era meets Heartbreakers kind of feel.

"No Good" is really a song about making the decision to leave behind a situation that is doing you more harm than good and to me the song has a defiant attitude to it. Sometimes when songs are harder to write and taking longer than usual it can be tempting to just give up on them because it's becoming too much work, I'm really proud of how that song turned out so I'm glad I stuck with it and didn't give up on it until it was done!

Hearing is believing. Now that you know the story behind the song, listen for yourself and learn more about the album right here!