Black And Blue

Album: Favorite Ghosts (2022)
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Songfacts®:

  • Jocelyn & Chris are the brother-and-sister duo of Jocelyn and Chris Arndt. They have quite a backstory: both graduated from Harvard after growing up in the small town of Fort Plain, New York. "Black And Blue" is a hunting blues-rocker from their eighth album, Favorite Ghosts. Jocelyn told Songfacts the story behind the song:

    "There's a fine line between attraction and obsession. 'Black and Blue' balances right on that line. We draw inspiration from all angles when we're writing music - sometimes a song comes from personal experience, while other times it starts from an imagined experience, a scene from a TV show, a conversation we overheard on the bus, anything honestly. I was picturing a scene from one of those 'Women Who Kill' crime shows... she's tossing and turning, fixating on the one that got away. Insert the dramatic narrator voice: 'But no one could have predicted what she would do next...' I love creating characters and writing songs from their perspective. It's like slipping into someone else's mind for a bit."
  • David Bourgeois and Joel Moss produced this track, which Jocelyn & Chris initially wrote for another artist. Jocelyn explained: "Chris and I had been approached for a network television series featuring original music. In each episode songwriters like us would write original music for famous artists and compete to get them to record our song. But after we wrote 'Black And Blue' we liked it so much that we ended up keeping it for ourselves. It started out as a pretty straightforward 3/4 bluesy rock song. But when we brought it into the studio, it really led us in a direction that was wildly new for us and took on this electro-blues, pop-infused edge. There's a really dominant guitar presence, which you would definitely expect from a song like this, but there's also a very deep, layered electronic element that brings the song to an entirely different place. Luckily our producers David and Joel were willing to go down the rabbit hole. And I'm incredibly glad we did, because we arrived at what I think is the best melding of my voice and Chris's guitar on the entire album."

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