Prism In Jeans

Album: In This City They Call You Love (2024)
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Songfacts®:

  • "Prism in Jeans" is an exploration of loneliness, connection, and the search for belonging. Richard Hawley paints a picture of a vibrant, colorful girl trapped in the ordinary confines of everyday life.

    "It's about someone who is like a rainbow in a very confined space," said Hawley. "A Prism in Jeans."
  • Hawley wrote the orchestral ballad himself and co-produced it with Colin Elliot and Mark Sheridan.

    "I love the music of that pre-Beatle era," said Hawley. "The Tornadoes' 'Telstar' and The Shadows. That kind of far-off netherworld. I've always loved that time whether it's cool to or not."
  • Director Graham Wrench shot the visual in the heart of Hawley's home city of Sheffield with the iconic Moore Street Substation serving as a backdrop. The video features students from the Bailey-Cox Dance Academy, while Hawley cameos as a workman observing the action.
  • Hawley recorded "Prism In Jeans" for his 10th album, In This City They Call You Love. The LP's title was inspired by Sheffield, and arrived long before the record was finished.

    "In Sheffield, which is my muse and always will be, people do call you 'love,'" Hawley explained to Mojo magazine. "Every single day of my life I hear the word 'love,' ha, ha! It's the language that's we use, very much a 'here' thing. Then you read the news, which is enormously depressing, and you just seem to see the word 'hate.' So it's that, and voices singing together. Something positive and I don't mean this in a soft arse way."

    "This concept of unity seems to be something that's kind of missing out of their world," he added. "So some sort of healing, I think was going off. From what? Probably the last few years, we've all been battered and bruised, but it's not a lockdown album."
  • There's an emotional background to the album. Hawley played nearly all the solos on three guitars: his father's old Gretsch and two Telecasters, one bequeathed to him by the late Scott Walker, the other a gift from Duane Eddy, who died a month before the album was released.

    "Scott Walker's family got in touch with me, because I was friends with him," said Hawley to Mojo. "Scott wanted me to use one of his guitars, and a representative of their family flew from Denmark with the guitar to put it in my hand in Sheffield."

    Hawley added that on In This City They Call You Love everything that's a guitar solo was played on "Scott's beautiful, very old Telecaster, with love."

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