Singled Out: Babygirl's Easy (Live from The Opera House)

Keavin Wiggins | 02-06-2021

Photo credit Becca Hamel courtesy Press Here

Babygirl recently released "Easy (Live from The Opera House)", a performance video for their latest single and to celebrate we have asked them to tell us about the track. Here is the story:

"Easy" was a cool process to make, because it was a combination of a few different pieces we had over the course of many months.

Cam and his brother had started this beat, which was originally a lot more synth-driven, like 6 months before we started the songwriting itself. On the day we had booked the session with Tom Upjohn to record the trumpets for our additional production on Lauv's "Canada," they had a few extra minutes at the end. So, Cam just pulled up the beat randomly on a whim, sang the first thing that came to mind, and Tom played it back. That's where those trumpets came from at the end. Still didn't even have the song at this point.

When we first started "Easy," it seemed like it was going to be for our co-writer, Emily Rose. We felt like it was so much poppier than anything we had ever done. It had totally different chords that almost made it feel like a Motown thing, and the lyrics were a bit more sexy than sad.

A couple months later, we realized the tempos were similar, and that it would be cool to put that lyric and melody against the other instrumental we had. Once it was set against that more melancholy harmony, it started to sound a bit more like Babygirl. We showed it to a trusted friend, and he was like, "that's gotta be for you guys!"

So we set out to change the writing and production to fit the emo-leaning sound of the band more. Completely re-wrote the verses and replaced the synths with electric guitar and bass. We were out of town at the time, with no gear, so we got this random $100 pawn shop strat for the guitars. We also borrowed a friend's bass from when she was in a band in 8th grade; it was covered in stickers, like any 8th-grader's bass should be. Both sounded amazing. Those synths eventually still made it into the song -- the voice leading on those Prophet 12 chords actually ended up being how we found the melody for the post-chorus. But letting the guitar be the central harmonic instrument really brought it into our world.

The programmed drums were from an Elektron Analog Rytm, but we also felt like it needed some live drums in that last chorus to bring a real living, breathing band energy to the climax of the song. So, we actually just sped up the drums from another one of the songs on our EP and threw them in there. The kick pattern didn't really match, but we just left them both in there at once. So, in the last chorus, you get this subtle pulsing where suddenly there are 2 independent kick sounds and patterns happening at once. It gives it this urgency in the bottom end that's really cool.

It wasn't until we had laid out the whole arrangement that we realized, "oh my god, we have those trumpets!" We pulled them in and ran them through some tape stuff and reverbs to give them some glue, and they just felt so right as the outro. We've heard it called a "Thanks For Listening." It's like when you get an extra scene or bloopers after the credits of a movie roll. Just a special treat for the people who stick around to the end.

Hearing is believing. Now that you know the story behind the song, listen and watch the live video for yourself below, and check out the video for the studio version here