Photo by Anders Bigum
A great song can change your life or at least make you re-evaluate certain aspects of it. It can become a legend that affects all different kinds of people. NOTHING BUT HOPE AND PASSION‘s ‘Behind The Song’ series wants to explore the stories behind those songs, in the words of the people who wrote them.
The story of Danish producer Esben Nørskov Andersen is closely connected to the one of NBHAP for a few years now. We followed his band RANGLEKLODS through two albums, countless great shows and a still quite bouncing Guestmix. Following the addition of his musical partner Pernille Smith-Sivertsen a while back not only the sound changed but earlier this spring the duo decided to skip the whole band name, resulting in the birth of BLONDAGE and their first self-titled debut EP. The story of that change is closely connected to one track – Dive. Right here, Esben and Pernille open up about its origins.
Dive was in many ways the beginning of a new era to us. It was definitely the first move towards a way of songwriting where we don’t avoid the uptempo vibe and very direct pop elements – if it just feels good.
It was in the spring of ‘15 and we were working in the studio on new demos after having completed the intense marathon of finishing our album Straitjacket a couple of months earlier. We bobbled with an intense longing for summer and long nights out and almost instinctively Esben found the sounds for the synth stabs that run throughout the verses and jammed the chord progression. It felt so uplifting and light somehow. That pretty much set the mood for the song and we added the sound scape with tropical noises and put bongos along with the drums. It was a very easy to write and it came natural to us at that point. Dive is a special song to us because the initial energy of becoming BLONDAGE lies deep within the soul of this song.
We early on decided that the song should be about being destructively carefree. It has an uplifting vibe but still there’s something mellow about it. If you sing the melody without any chords you can hear that it could easily have been a melancholic song. It’s a sad melody with happy chords. We then came up with the lyric for the first verse:
‘might be all out of money / but i’m all full of love / might be all out of money / but i do what i want / if i’m forever high /they’ll never see me low / broke like a dollar sign / i’m about to blow’
These lines describes the paradox of choosing a life outside the hamster wheel where you’re supposed to feel completely free but still you’re doing so many things to hide and cover your downs. When it comes down to it we’re all running and chasing things without even being aware of it.
It was amazing making the video for Dive with director duo Jonas Bang and Emil Wilk. Combining the hectic energy of the shots of Esben running in Chinatown and Wall Street with images from a lion’s hunt in the savannah added even more layers to the song. And we had a week of pure quality fun with the crew in NY.
It has turned out to be one of the best live songs we’ve ever had. It just immediately gets people moving and it adds an energy to the set that we really love. We haven’t played it that much yet so it still feels completely fresh and is one of the high points of our live set. Soon we’re going on tour and we can’t wait to play it in clubs around Europe. Today we see Dive as a new starting point and a song with so many good memories hooked to it. And we’re pretty sure it’ll stay like that forever.
BLONDAGE’S self-titled debut EP is out now via Tambourhinoceros. Find current tour dates below the
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