Grey Watson – an artist from Birmingham, Alabama, presently making music out of Seoul, South Korea – impressed this past December with the stellar track “Radical Passenger“, which explored lushness and a contagious melody with a soft harp-like synth line lead and another accompaniments into its memorable “just drivin’” hook.
The artist follows that up with an even better one in “Love Is Good, It’s #1”, performed with The Visions. With warm, psych-pop-friendly vibes, the track pursues a perkier aesthetic than “Radical Passenger”, showing Grey Watson’s eclectic charm though without sacrificing his tendency for memorable hooks.
“The idea for this song happened while practicing for our 2016 US Summer tour,” Grey explains. “Brad Wheeler (bandmate/engineer) and I were jamming and I starting kinda riffing on it and he started harmonizing. Throughout the tour I kept on wanting to make it something we did just as a jam, but it wasn’t developed enough to really do anything with. However, rather than write several verses to go along with this refrain (like I usually do), I thought it would be cool to keep the idea simple. The basic idea being that ‘love’ is the best option in almost any situation and it doesn’t need much more explaining than that. I’m generally not very optimistic so the optimistic tunes don’t often choose me. I didn’t want to miss the opportunity to make an unabashed song about love.”
“When we were back in Seoul we slowly starting putting different pieces together. I felt like different sorts of love can be represented with a lot of different kinds of vibes. There is no shortage of beautiful love songs about romantic love. This song, however, was meant to promote an “all you need is love,”/ “make love not war,”/ or ‘love thy neighbor’ kind of mantra. It’s about all kinds of love–love among friends, family and lovers. Also, I hope that it will promote a general ethos about love and the importance of choosing it over more negative tendencies.”
“The music and arrangement is inspired by lots of ’60s including some of the psychedelia from the Beach Boys and the Beatles, however the baseline and drums pull heavily from the ’60s and ’70s Soul music of Stax Records and Motown. The guitar work, specifically the solos, pulls a lot from the southern influence that I inevitably am subject to having grown up in Georgia and Alabama. The production and vocal work tends towards more modern vibes, despite reflecting heavy influence from the 60’s and 70’s, and plants the song in the present.”
