Singled Out: Within Temptation's Faster

It's quite bizarre how uncontrollable songwriting very often is. You can work for hours even days on idea cause you think it's great and in the end have you have to let it go cause you can't make it work.

On rare occasions it works the other way around. On a day like any other in the studio room you're sitting down with a guitar. Then like by themselves your hands start to play a random chord scheme and without realizing the other one starts humming a melody. Just because you're used to record almost every idea on your phone you press the record button. 5 min later you realize it's a pretty nice basic idea for song. Then with like any other good idea the rest goes by itself like the song's got a will of its own.

Now this was pretty much the case with Faster. Sharon came home with an idea and wasn't even so eager to let me hear it cause she didn't think it was anything special. But I was curious so I put it on. Straightaway, the moment I heard it I was in love with it. It was so powerful and intense and still such a simple and straightforward song.

For years I've been trying to write a song like that, one simple strong melody line and one three chord scheme throughout the whole song. I never got it to work. But now it was there, finally, and what a good feeling to have it. So often also with good songs you never struggle with them. The whole recording and mixing process of the song was a joy, going by itself. Without realizing it till the very end, we had our first single just like that. An unexpected gift and those are always the nicest ones.