Tell Me a Tale

Album: Home Again (2012)
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Songfacts®:

  • London based singer-songwriter Michael Kiwanuka opens his debut album, Home Again, with this jazz number. The singer explained to The Sun that the song is a dig "at people who lie to big themselves up." He added: "That's one thing I can't do, pretend to be someone I'm not. I can only be myself. I can't hide if it's not me."
  • Paul Butler of the UK indie rock band The Bees produced this song in a basement studio in his house in Ventnor on the Isle of Wight. Kiwanuka penned this minor key song at Butler's house. He recalled to This Is Fake DIY: "I was upstairs with a guitar and just wrote it there and then. We'd been recording a session with some tracks that weren't really gelling, so I had to get away to try and focus. I wanted to do something a bit more up-tempo and then came downstairs with that song and it was exactly what we had been aiming for. It was all finished up really quickly and gave us a way into working on the rest of the record. It was when we really first found our groove, so I thought it would fit well as an opening track."

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