Singled Out: Lynne Hanson's Spray Paint

Keavin Wiggins | 05-27-2024

Ottawa, Canada based songwriter Lynne Hanson just released her new album "Just A Poet", and to celebrate we asked to tell us about the song "Spray Paint". Here is the story:

"Spray Paint" is a co-write with guitarist Blair Michael Hogan. I've been working with Blair since 2019, and we actually co-wrote nine songs together on my 2022 release, "Ice Cream In November." I absolutely love writing with accomplished instrumentalists. I consider myself to be a fairly modest guitar player, so I'm limited by the tools in my toolbox as far as coming up with interesting grooves and chord progressions. Writing with Blair really opens up a lot of new territory for me, and allows me to stretch out musically into new directions. For this song, I had wanted a triplet feel, so Blair recorded an instrumental demo of an idea that he had and sent it to me.

The track was really different from what I would write, and initially I wasn't sure what to do with it. So I put the track on repeat in my music room and hummed along in order to develop a vocal melody that I might build off of. About an hour into this process I saw the opening scene of the movie... and the lyrics just started pouring out of me. I loved the idea of a repeated call and response through each of the verses, where the singer progresses from wanting to try to work things out to accepting that they have to let go of the relationship.

While the song is musically relentless with the driving triplets of the acoustic guitar, the production is dreamy, which balances out the overall feel of the track, and reflects the almost ethereal storytelling of the lyrics. Producer Jim Bryson even managed to sneak a little banjo onto the track. I don't think I'll ever get tired of writing breakup songs, and it was fun to put a slightly different spin on this one.

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