tues, mar 25, 2025, 9:23 pm
i thought now that i have this blog it might be fun to breakdown some of my most popular songs. talk bout the inspiration, writing and recording.
well turn away is a crazy one because it was written in a lesson with a student to show them how to write a song. i said: “ok let's take this basic chords: G, Dm, Am and C!” i said “well ain't that swell, these chords are classic and sound good! but what if we want to spice them up a little bit?? what if we want to play different voicings?!”
So i went up to neck to the 10th fret and played that Cmaj kind of voicing but with the B and E strings OPEN. “Doesn't that sound better!?” i said to the girl
And damn it did sound better. I was sliding those chords around thinking “this is really nice.” I was espesically captivated by the Dm to Am change. Well those chords weren't just normal Dm and Am anymore because they had the open high strings in them.
I pulled out my phone and started recording, demonstrating my process. “Aight aight” I said to the student. “At this point I'd make a little demo and just scratch vocal on top of it trying to find a good melody.”
Well the Turn Away melody isn't really crazy it's mostly one note. But I think the chords are doing most of the work. At some point this student, already shy, is just watching me get really absorbed into making this song.
This must've been last year, sometime in 2024, when I was deep into this philosophy of “do it quickly”. You know, write quickly, record quicker. Don't do a million takes. Do one take and if it sounds f*cked, then that's fine. Because you don't get Alex G sloppy vibes by being a perfectionist. (And we want the Alex G vibes ofc).
So anyway I don't get many concrete lyrics out of that lesson and the next day before work I sit down at my computer. We were suppose to release Grows On Trees that Friday but I was forcing the producer to go back and fix the bass levels. So it wouldn't be ready. So I needed something to release (this was self-imposed, of course. The only deadlines were placed by me. There was no label or fans breathing down my neck).
“What the heck do I have to record???” I asked myself. “Well I guess I could do that thing we did in the lesson yesterday.”
We had tried to write a second section for Turn Away but it wasn't happening. It didn't need it. I still had no real lyrics for the song and I only had an hour or two before work.
I did the guitars. Two acoustics and two electrics (I believe with the Gretsch) hard panned as usual.
And for the vocals I just kind of winged it. I wasn't sure if it worked but the syllabic sounds seemed to fit. “I'm your man, better love me while you can” all that. It could just have easily have been something different. Doubled the vocals. One take each. Went out to test the mix in the car. Fixed some bass levels. Did a master. Tested it in the car. Came back and tweaked a few things. And it was done.
Art??? I didn't have any art. But I had some pictured from an old photoshoot my old roommate had done in my office. Same place I make all the tunes. The best photo would work. Turn Away… to drop that very next day. And the people liked it. And so my work fast philosophy was vindicated. Modern World had that same kind of approach. But I've moved a bit away from it since then. Maybe I should go back.
That is the story behind TURN AWAY, Watson's biggest hit to date! Thank you student who needed to know how to write songs… though I believe she still hasn't written one to this day :(.
sincerly
watson