With its retro-future sonics and captivating vocals, ‘Falling Again’ breezed onto the airwaves in March courtesy of Stockport artist Daisy Valentine.
Enlisting her brother and fellow musician Gio, electro-pop track ‘Falling Again’ paired groovy instrumentation with spacey synth-pop to revel in the feeling of falling in love.
Below, we caught up with Daisy Valentine to dive deep into the song’s creation and meaning, her collaborative process with Gio, and being unafraid to “take yourself away from things that make you unhappy.”
Scroll down for our complete interview with Valentine, and listen to her latest single ‘Falling Again’ below.
HAPPY: What are you up to today?
DAISY VALENTINE: Today I’ve been to the gym and I’ll be working on some new ideas for some music! Hoping to order some new bits for my studio later on too!
HAPPY: Congratulations on ‘Falling Again’! What does a typical day look like when recording a song like ‘Falling Again’?
DAISY VALENTINE: We’d wake up early, I’d head over to my brother’s studio and we’d grab some food before going in. We’d give the tune a listen and then come up with a plan for the day.
There are a lot of layers to this song and there were so many times where one of us would have a new idea and we’d pause what we we’re doing to record it before we forgot it!
This was happening up until about 2 days before we sent the track off to be mastered! The ideas just flowed so well on this one.
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HAPPY: The single is a collaboration with your brother. Did you find that your sibling relationship helped the creative process?
DAISY VALENTINE: Definitely, like I said the ideas flowed. There is definitely an unspoken bond that I have with my brother.
Of all the people I have written with, it feels most natural to write with him. We are so on the same page. It’s like we can read each other’s minds without saying anything!
HAPPY: How did you borrow from each of your unique music styles?
DAISY VALENTINE: He comes from a very disco/funk background and he loves to make feel good music. I
come from a background of electronic and dance music from my Ibiza days but also I have a lot of 80s influences from artists that I have worked with and projects that I have written in the past.
We combined Khaki Fever’s funky bass lines and guitars with my retro synths and big drums to create a fusion of both styles.
We also took inspiration from ABBA and Daft Punk when it came to writing our vocals. Particularly in our use of backing vocals and the vocoda in the 2nd verse!
HAPPY: How was it that both of you found your way into music? Did you grow up in a musical household?
DAISY VALENTINE: We have always been very musical growing up, our mum played piano but was always too nervous to perform so she always encouraged us to play at home and get involved in performing where possible.
We actually have a younger brother too, Tom, and all three of us played the drums growing up – you can imagine how noisy our household was!
Mum and Dad used to play music and had a big CD/Vinyl collection, but neither one of them were particularly interested in playing an instrument so it wasn’t very clear where our love for performing came from until about 12 years ago.
My mum was adopted as a baby and about 12 years ago her Mother, Pat, got in contact with her. This encouraged my mum to get in touch with her Father, my Grandfather, too.
His name is Mo and it turns out he is a touring musician and has done session work for Fleetwood Mac, The Feeling, Level 42, Susie Quattro and various other bands.
He’s very cool and I actually went to record some of the very first tunes I wrote with him in his studio! There must be something in our DNA!
HAPPY: What’s so great about ‘Falling Again’ is how it feels both retro (with its funk and groove elements) and futuristic (with its synth and electro flairs). How did you go about striking that balance when creating the song?
DAISY VALENTINE: Well Gio actually started writing this song, he showed it to me when he had some drums, basic pads and a little lead line in the synth.
At this point it was just the verse and chorus section with no words. I loved it and we were pretty excited about it so we started playing around with funky bass line parts and it very quickly started to snowball.
He had the idea for the chorus vocal line, so we recorded that in very roughly. I then took it away and added loads of retro synths and changed the drums to an 808.
We carried on working together in the studio and pretty much did the rest together which I guess helped with keeping a balance because we were conscious that it needed to sound like both artists.
We needed a little more funk towards the end and that’s where the Khaki Fever guitars came in!!
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HAPPY: The song details that all-consuming feeling of falling for a crush. Why was this a particularly inspiring topic for you?
DAISY VALENTINE: Do you know what the funny thing is, Gio wrote the chorus vocal line first and asked me to sing it but never told me what it was about.
Me and Gio would both cringe at the thought of talking about the emotional feelings behind a song so we never talked about it.
I wrote the verses and the backing vocals, I just listened to what he had written in the chorus and imagined what he was talking about, he said it was bang on the money.
He thought it was weird that I knew what he was talking about without him telling me! I guess the words of the song are actually written from me performing Gio’s perspective! Weird!
HAPPY: Anything else exciting on the horizon that you can tease for us?
DAISY VALENTINE: Yes I’m playing a festival this summer and I’ve got lots of new music and projects in the pipeline.
I’m feeling very inspired by electronic music recently and I’ve been listening to a lot of Electronic Dance and Drum & Bass so you can expect some more genre fusing from me!
DAISY VALENTINE: What makes you happy?
DAISY VALENTINE: Music, Stockport and my friends and family. Life is short, surround yourself with good people and don’t be afraid to take yourself away from things that make you unhappy!
