Story Behind the Song, Brandy Clark, ‘Can We Be Strangers’
One of the things that contributed to Brandy Clark's new studio album, Your Life is a Record, becoming such a career-defining project was the singer's work with producer Jay Joyce. When they set out to make the record, Clark challenged Joyce -- who is known for his skills with electric instruments and production -- to make an entirely acoustic record.
That was a stretch for the singer, too, because while she has played on her records in the past, she has never been so heavily involved in the musical recordings of an album as she was on this project.
Although Clark and Joyce did wind up adding a few electric elements here and there, they used the spirit of their acoustic-only challenge to make themselves as creative as possible while crafting the new batch of tunes. One example is "Can We Be Strangers," a song that ended up sounding quite a bit different than it started out.
Read on as Clark explains the story behind the song.
You know, I don't remember exactly how [that song] came about. I wrote it with Clint Daniels, who's also singing on it, and I just remember loving that idea of, "Can we be strangers?"
And this is a song -- I wish I had the demo to play, because this, really, this was a straight-up country song. I love a straight-up country song, you know?
But what [my producer] Jay Joyce envisioned for this production-wise, and how we made it happen, it's just mind-blowing to me. I've been lucky enough to work with [a producer] who really is the last writer on the songs. This is so different than how I envisioned it, and I love it so much.