Earlier in September, Adelaide-based Beau Lightning hit it out of the park with his debut single 'Last Night'. He took some time out to share the inner workings of 'Last Night' and details on how the track came to life.
I wrote ‘Last Night'… quite a while ago now, like maybe started writing it 3 years ago. It wasn’t finished until late last year when all the production and 1% extras that make a song sound more like a record were complete.
The story behind ‘Last Night' is… basically about an experience I had when I was 7 or 8. I remember looking out my bedroom window and seeing a ghost or demon or something along those lines, depending on your beliefs. At least that’s what I thought I saw when I was that age and it scared the hell out of me. In the song, it’s kind of a conversation with myself using that experience to talk about whether or not god is real or what I believe. There is no answer by the end, just a conversation.
My favourite lyric is... “when I woke up this morning, I felt like, last night, something went down.” It’s hard to pick a favourite lyric, i see the whole song as one story. But I think the timing and phrasing of that lyric is cool, it’s fun to sing that part.
It was made… all over the place. Drums were recorded in an auditorium in the city. Guitars were recorded in my bedroom, the vocals, as well as some production and mixing, were done at the studio I actually live in now.
My main inspiration was… Queens of the Stone Age, I was a bit of a latecomer and only really got into them a few years ago, which was good because of the huge back catalogue, but I was listening to lots of them at the time so I think that definitely came out in the sound of the song.
It sounds best when… we play it live. There is this extended bit at the end in the live show where it drops down to just electric piano and slowly builds back up, instrumentally. It’s my moment to go for it on guitar, I start with some wah pedal and delay and slowly get the tone all fuzzed out. It gets pretty massive and then I just start to mess with knobs on my pedals and make some crazy sounds which is so much fun.
You can listen to 'Last Night' by Beau Lightning below:
