Only Love Matters

Album: Ohio Players (2024)
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Songfacts®:

  • The Black Keys duo of Dan Auerbach and Parrick Carney spent three days with Noel Gallagher at Liam Watson's Toe Rag studios in Hackney, known for its old-school recording techniques. The sessions produced a song a day: "On The Game," "You'll Pay," and "Only Love Matters," a down-and-dirty rock anthem about the enduring strength of love.

    "With Noel, we started the songs from scratch," Carney told Uncut magazine. "Noel is hilarious and we hit it off instantly. It couldn't have gone smoother. He was very meticulous about finding the right transitional chords for each section. It was amazing. Dan started calling him the 'Chord board.'"
  • Auerbach, Carney and Gallagher were joined by Leon Michels, a producer and multi-instrumentalist who played saxophone in Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings and has also performed with Auerbach's band The Arcs. The sessions were an intimate affair, with Auerbach laying down bass, Carney on the skins, Gallagher wielding his trusty Gibson 335, and Leon Michels adding keyboard textures.

    "We were just in a circle in this tiny room, recording live, working up songs in real-time, literally figuring out chord changes and melodies," said Auerbach. "Every song that we got with Noel is a live take. It just felt really good."
  • Carney admitted they toyed with the idea of a fourth song during the sessions, but wisely decided to quit while they were ahead. "My biggest fear was trying to do another song and it sucked," he revealed to UK newspaper The Sun, "and that being Noel's last memory of us."
  • This collaboration marks a first for Gallagher – never before has he written songs explicitly for another band outside of his own projects (High Flying Birds and, of course, Oasis).

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