Singled Out: Envy Of None's Never Said I Love You

Keavin Wiggins | 04-11-2022

Band photo courtesy Chipster

Rush legend Alex Lifeson's new band Envy Of None have just released their self-titled debut album and to celebrate we asked lead vocalist Maiah Wynne and bassist Adam Curran to tell us about the song "Never Said I Love You". Here is the story:

Maiah: This was one of our early collaborations and it is one of my favorite songs on the record. I remember Andy sent me the bed track with some vocal ideas that included the beginning of the chorus "I never said I love you, I never said I want to make you mine"

It had such a driving and bouncy energy already, and it was easy to be inspired. I could feel momentum leading into the big chorus of the instrumental, and I decided to lean into that. I moved the chorus back a little and built energy into the pre chorus to give it that punch before that killer guitar part came in. I wrote the verses and bridge based around the lyrical theme in the chorus. I had 2 different pre chorus ideas and was thinking of just using one, but Andy liked them both so we decided to use them both. It was a great team effort. I pre recorded all my vocal ideas and harmony ideas, and then I took a trip to Toronto to record the vocals for this song with Andy and Alf. We had a blast in the studio and it was a breeze working through this song together. Once Alex added the acoustic guitar layers, it really brought the song to life.

Andy: This is one of the older EON ideas that me & Alf brought in because we really felt even as a musical bed track it had so much potential, very catchy , kinda 80/90s Brit Pop vibe to it. Even the early riff idea had the working title "Pop Goes"...so we knew what direction we wanted to take it.
I had a vocal line & melody for the chorus and sent it to Maiah to expand on. She came back and instead of dropping the line on the downbeat of the chorus she moved it back and it perfectly fit, she did that a lot with other songs and she has great instincts .

Lyrically my perspective was telling someone in a relationship..."hey back off...I never said I loved you"....however Maiah's approach , which was much better is perhaps the regrets of not telling someone you love them.
Fast forward and given the Covid chapter and given how fragile life is maybe this is a great reminder for all of us to tell someone close to you that you love & appreciate them, because you never know how long someone will be around ... its a great positive message.

Alf and I laid a bunch of guide guitars down on this with hopes that Alex would play them "for real" however to our surprise he loved them all and didn't want to replace them.

I love what he did in the middle 8 sections adding really great chimey sounding , almost pedal steel like guitars. His acoustics in the chorus sections really lift them to a new level.

It's one of the only up tempo songs on the record, so Alex Lifeson felt it was a good opening track for the album.

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