“Music does a lot of things for a lot of people. It’s transporting, for sure. It can take you right back, years back, to the very moment certain things happened in your life. It’s uplifting, it’s encouraging, it’s strengthening.” — Aretha Franklin

Key 7

Key

2023 Single

The basis for this song is quite strange, at least to me. Back in the days when I was scoring songs to paper (because I didn’t have any recording equipment, I’m talking when I was a young teenager), this was one of the things I came up with. It was a simple chord progression that only lasted eight bars. It wasn’t even enough for me to write it down at the time.

I would have forgot about it altogether except that I fell asleep one afternoon and ‘dreamed’ the memory of this chord progression. When I woke up, I remembered playing this silly chord progression on some silly Casio keyboard that was bought at K-Mart — I must have only been 12 at the time.

So, that possibly makes this the oldest song I’ve written. There was not much effort put into this track, meaning that it was not difficult to come up with a track that I felt was finished. The lyric writing was quick, which is not very usual at all.

While I was creating it, it noted that it was unabashedly the most ‘Pet Shop Boys’ song I’ve ever done. Surely they have been an influence, but this is essentially written for them, in that I could see them recording it. The minor seventh chords and the breakdown are pure PSB. The lyrics are very a very tongue-in-cheek dialog from the point of view of a narcissist who doesn’t understand why they’re so bad with people. There is even a Chris Lowe-style word recitation. Knowing that this was going in that direction, I just pulled out all the stops and added the cowbells and agogos that were so prevalent in their 80s works. Might as well lean into it.

Yes, there was a specific narcissist in mind when I wrote it.

Fob 37
Lock 701
All About Me

Key

Credits

written, produced and arranged by Key. additional whispers by Nikki Macdonald.