In August, Julian Lennon released a new single, ‘because…,’ and now, American Songwriter is hosting the exclusive premiere of the infectious, New Wave-influenced tune’s official music video.
Videos by American Songwriter
The black-and-white clip features Lennon performing ‘because…’ in an all-white room with an unidentified backing band.
[RELATED: Julian Lennon and Gregory Darling Revisit Old Song With Timely Message on “A New Dream”]
The 62-year-old singer/songwriter recently chatted with American Songwriter about his latest single, and about his upcoming four-song EP of the same name.
The because… EP will be released on October 24, and can be pre-ordered now. Besides the title track, the collection features songs titled “I hope,” “Keep on searching,” and “I won’t give up.”
The EP is the first multiple track collection Lennon has since his 2022 studio album, Jude. Similar to Jude, the EP is made up of archival songs dating back decades.
The four tracks were taken off archival cassette recordings from the late 1980s and ’90s, songs that never made it onto his earlier studio albums. Working with his longtime studio collaborator Justin Clayton, Julian cleaned up the recordings and, in some cases, added new musical elements.
As he explained to American Songwriter, “My problem is I almost can’t move forward until I finish these older songs off. I mean, some are finished, but … they really just didn’t have a home. You know … they just didn’t sit with any particular album. And after we finished Jude … there was still a lot of stuff there. [I]f you were counting, there’s about two or three albums’ worth [of unreleased and/or unfinished songs].”
More About Putting the EP Together
Lennon said he wanted his follow-up to Jude, which he pointed out featured serious emotional themes, to be lighter and more fun. He asked Clayton to pore through his archival tapes and find several songs that felt “easiest and most comfortable and most relatable.” Julian added that he wanted to work on material that “more than anything … gives us a little bit of excitement and gets our toes tapping.”
Lennon eventually settled on four songs, and began working with Clayton during a series of monthly visits to London. He said he wanted the completed tracks to keep the raw sound of the original recordings, including his vocals.
“A lot of these tracks were very much back-bedroom vocals. I mean, the original vocals that I put down … as a demo,” Lennon noted. “[A]nd we didn’t really change a thing. We just cleaned the tapes up, so to speak. … There [were] a few new parts we played here and there to make it gel together a little better, each independently as songs.”
Julian also shared that some AI technology was used to enhance the original vocals, not unlike the process The Beatles utilized to clean up the 1970s demo his late father, John Lennon, recorded that served as the basis of their 2023 single, “Now and Then.”
As Julian pointed out, “If you’d have heard where [these recordings] came from—I mean, literally a dusty old cassette in a box in a basement of an office—to where they are now, it’s quite staggering. And even since we finished those, the technology has jumped in leaps and bounds to the next level of restoration of older works. … [E]verybody’s thinking AI is bad in many respects. Actually, it can be very helpful. It’s just how you use it.”
About the Song “because…”
Julian explained that “because…,” like the majority of the tracks on the EP, steered away from dark themes, and simply was about some relationship trouble he was experiencing as a younger man.
He maintained that “because…” and two of the other tunes “are pure 20-year-olds in love and lust, and lost. Love, lust, and lost. That probably sums it up, really.”
Lennon further explained that these songs were basically about “losing out on a girlfriend or something happening within a relationship that … you thought wasn’t going to happen, but it did. And so … you get a little upset and angry, and you think karma’s gonna get them, or you hope.” He continued, “I mean, there’s nothing more to it than that. It’s just rock, pop music in its simplest form and simplest delivery. There’s no hidden agenda here.”
Musically, Julian said “because…” was influenced by some the New Wave bands he loved during the 1980s.
“I would have to say that XTC was certainly an inspiration,” he shared. “I mean, [my 1984 hit] ‘Too Late for Goodbyes’ had a reggae element to it … and XTC, especially with ‘[Making Plans for] Nigel,’ [had] this kind of ska [style]. And I also love The Police, too. And so, it was a little bit of … my own version of that, I guess.”
(Photo by Robert Ascroft)
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