The tracks on our album, Find Me Find You: A Story, tell a full narrative if you listen in order. The first songs take place before the man and woman characters in the story meet...
Song 1: Sing Them Away is about breakup. Jingyu and I, Todd, were also separately recovering from love-wreck before we met. Song 2: Closing Down, is the saddest thing I could write. The album starts sad and gets sadder, but then things do get better...
(You can hear and download all the songs for free on our website ToddandJingyu.com. There's no signup or anything.)
In Song 3: Begin Where It Ends the man sings a realization: "Can't I use this failure to guide me through a truly different door? Find a really good woman, for whom I can change myself, to give her more." This was something I myself had concluded about love and relationship. And the woman in the song also learned from her past when she sings: "But I should now learn not to fall for a man not right for me."
These character changes lay the foundation for optimism and potential, which can be heard in Song 4: Find You and Song 5: When My Love Shoots Through You.
When Jingyu and I met we both loved music, and Jingyu has a beautiful voice. We often sang together. One thing led to another and we decided to record these songs.
Song 6: Boy and Girl is in the middle of the album, when the characters meet on a date. I've always loved vocal countermelody. That's when one person sings a melody while another person simultaneously sings a different melody – all against the same underlying chord structure. You hear it sometimes in a Broadway musical. For this song, I hurt my brain to write three intertwining vocal melodies that would meld well: First, the girl sings about herself while the boy sings his inner-thoughts in countermelody. Then the boy sings while the girl sings her thoughts in a different countermelody. Then comes our favorite part, when the girl and boy countermelodies come together.
So the boy and girl meet, and the album ultimately heads in a very positive direction. I felt it was time for me to stop creating art that tried to be clever and cool. Does an album (and a life!) where things end up happy make me dull and unfashionable? So be it!
In Song 7: Talk to Me the boy and girl fall in love. This is one of three songs I had already recorded before I met Jingyu, but we redid it to include her and together we took things to another level. It's a rough-sounding and organically composed tune. For all the songs, we kept taking things away musically. It's hard to toss out cleverly-written song parts, or to resist showing off when playing an instrument, but we think restraint can strengthen a song.
Maybe some people aren't accustomed to hearing such stripped-down arrangements, but we wanted every note to have a good-enough reason for existing. The album took us over ten years to write and meticulously record.
In fact, we also wanted every song to have a good reason for existing. We had recorded a pretty tune with beautiful harmonies, and the song easily fit in with the album story, plus it had some nice guitar playing of which I was proud... but in the end we didn't include the track because it just wasn't needed.
Song 8: My Last Love Song is about male commitment. And Song 9: Talk About Love is unique – the characters don't even sing, they just talk about concepts related to romantic relationship. We weren't sure if we should include this "song," but in the end we kept it in, and we're happy about that decision. People tell us it's a meaningful part of the album for them.
Song 10: Everything Is Good sings about achieving goals together. And Song 11: Where It Goes is about the intensity and poetry of life. Song 12: Independent Girl is the end of the album, when the couple have a child and thereby a connection to the future.
I had decided long ago not to make money in music and to keep it as "my art" where I didn't have to answer to anyone or to any audience. That gave us full freedom... which led us to create something unlike most of what's out there.
Since our approach was so different, we wrote a one-page declaration called A Song Is Not Over-Polished which can be found here: https://www.toddandjingyu.com/declaration-a-song-is-not-over-polished
Three excerpts follow:
“Singing is not… faked expressiveness… there is no inclination toward flashy posturing.”
“Van Gogh didn’t aim to win trendy favor.… he unleashed a raw, original vision.”
“Every word carries significance… great writing has precedents… Dostoyevski pays attention… Hemingway approves.”
Jingyu has been working on releasing our album in China, and they like us. They like the music and they like the love story. We now have many thousands of listeners and fans in China. This makes us happy since Jingyu is from China and we have lots of friends and family over there.
We were interviewed for a big Chinese podcast and I got to show off my crappy Mandarin. The Chinese like when I speak Mandarin, and although they totally appreciate the years of effort I've put into the endeavor, it still amuses them to hear me butcher the language. I'm sure it helped our ratings for that show.
One last thing, for the record: I never wanted to be a singer. I was all set to hire a smoother-sounding vocalist for my parts... but Jingyu didn't want that. She said she liked my voice, and it wouldn't be the same if someone else was involved. So if you don't love my voice I'm not sure I can be held fully responsible, smile.
LINKS
WEBSITE: https://www.ToddandJingyu.com (download the songs for free)
FACEBOOK: https://www.facebook.com/ToddandJingyu
TWITTER: https://twitter.com/ToddandJingyu
INSTAGRAM: https://www.instagram.com/toddandjingyu
YOUTUBE : http://bit.ly/2gq7crf
SPOTIFY: http://spoti.fi/2mosK7Q
