It’s really not the case that Georgia Lines has an evidently split personality, but the video for her newly released single Call Me By My Name makes such prolific (and clever) use of split-screen effects, different settings and clothing styles, that it may seem she inhabits multiple versions. Despite her variously elegant outfits, and the song’s placid trajectory, there’s a classic flash of that Georgia Lines’ fun personality she reveals as a vibrant and spontaneous live performer, at about the halfway mark. Indeed a key charm of the Call Me By My Name video is a number of what might have been dismissed as off-cuts that have been left in – those moments before the artist has settled her ‘camera face’ or pose. As Georgia tells us below, that sort of honesty is just what this new single is all about.
Call Me By My Name is such a special song to me, and has been one I have had tucked away in the back pocket for almost a year now. It’s a song about the frustration I had felt trying to find my feet in a relationship, wondering if what the current landscape of the relationship was how it was always going to be.
When the NZ Covid lockdown was lifted and things were slowly returning back to normal, I started working with Djeisan Suskov and doing a few writing sessions in the APRA space at Parachute Studios. If you’ve been in the space, you would know that there isn’t a whole heap of gear/musical things to play around with… so conversation is where our idea for CMBMN began.
From memory, this was the second song we had written together, and from the get-go there was such a great artist/producer connection. Within 5 minutes of meeting each other, we had discovered that I used to live in his cousin’s house in Tauranga, which of course sounds like such a non-important piece of information, but for me it immediately bridged the gap between two strangers meeting and feeling okay to be open and honest with my thoughts as a human being/writer.
One of the most important things for me is that I connect with the people I am working with, and actually like working with them. It allows me to feel safe with sharing my thoughts and ideas when it comes to songwriting, which is a vulnerable thing.
The initial demo of the song is pretty close to what the final version of the song has turned out to be. We wrestled with so many different versions and tried to make all of them work in their own ways… but ended up going back to the original! The only difference was that, the day before we sent it off to be mixed, Djeisan had come up with all these incredible layers of sounds/percussion that lifted the song and brought a new energy/movement to the chorus that made the song make sense.
The biggest thing I learnt from the making of CMBMN was the process of allowing myself to be completely honest with myself lyrically and pour those ideas into the song. Djeisan encouraged me many times in our sessions to be honest; completely honest with what I felt and to be okay with writing honestly. Those are the songs that mean the most… because they aren’t trying to be anything that they aren’t.
In terms of the sound of the track, we started to discover there was something special about having a really close and intimate vocal which felt like the vocals were talking/singing directly to the listener. The other sonic aesthetic that I loved was that we focused on creating simple tracks with fun textures and let the melody do the heavy lifting. It feels like these new songs, CMBMN especially, are a step forward with my writing and almost a more mature sound compared to the songs I’ve previously released.
The honesty that is captured in the lyrics is something I am so proud of, and I can’t wait for it to be released into the world!
