I get quite a few messages on social networks from musicians and vocalists as well as fans, and I have to confess I don’t open them all, nor do I listen to the music they want me to hear. An exception was a message from Bulgarian Goddess, aka Daniela: something prompted me to open the message, and to click the link to her first Spotify release. Her voice blew me away, as did the song.
I asked her to send me more material, as I was now intrigued. I think she sent eight songs. She’s very young, yet her voice contains generations of emotion. The music she sent was beyond eccentric. The first thing I asked her to do was to revocal Don’t Give Up Now (see page 30), and she had the cojones to do that. Then, deep inside one of her own songs i found magic. I asked if I could deconstruct ‘She Slowly Caught Fire’ and remake it, almost from scratch, and thankfully, Daniela trusted me to do it.
A few weeks later, she flew over from Stockholm and we worked out this amazing intro - creating a Scandinavian choir in the process, and we intuitively harmonised as we went. One of the highlights of being a producer is when you work with a new vocalist and this kind of magic happens. It makes all the other boring donkey work bits (like the days spent EQing snare drums) worthwhile. We established a musical rapport and I’m very happy to have the Bulgarian Goddess on my album!
The meaning of the song is open to interpretation, so please draw your own conclusions. When you do work it out, let me know!