Album: What Will We Be (2009)
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Songfacts®:

  • This breezy love song is the first single from psyche-folk singer-songwriter Devandra Banhart's seventh studio album, What Will We Be.
  • The album is Banhart's major-label debut for Warner Brothers. The label's executive VP of marketing, Diarmuid Quinn, told Billboard magazine that this sprightly R&B flavored groover was chosen as the album's lead single as, "everybody felt was a pretty accessible step for him, while maintaining what he does so well and his identity."
  • What Will We Be was recorded in a studio that Banhart built in a wood cabin in a sleepy Northern California town. Banhart and Paul Butler from UK's Band of Bees co-produced the album. Banhart explained to Clash Magazine how he hooked up with Butler: "My bass player was working on his solo record and played me 'Chicken Payback' and I freaked out. I love their song writing, I love the whole band's vibe. The sound was so good, I immediately started sending them love letters, hoping for a moderate degree of antipathy from him. And then, as that progressed, we started sharing songs, and I said, 'S--t, want to come to California and maybe record this record with me?' And he said, 'Yeah', and came down from the Isle of Wight."

    Banhart added: "What he really brought to the table was his musicality. For the first time ever he got me to do an hour-long vocal warm-up before every take. I think it adds more of a hotch potch."
  • Banhart explained to Rolling Stone how he came upon the title for What Will We Be: "I find myself meditating on Kleenex and thinking about how it used to be a tree" he revealed, "and what will I be, and sometimes I feel like my soul is blowing its nose on my body, so somehow a title came out about that."

Comments: 1

  • Manny from Dalls, TxJust so everyone can know and be as surprised as I was this isn't an original song, nope, check out the duet version by Tennessee Ernie Ford with Glen Campbell. Yes, you read correctly. It's very interesting to hear that version. :)
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