Notes from Robyn on Patreon in 2021
I wrote SOMEBODY TO BREAK YOUR HEART in Joe Boyd’s flat in London. Joe had gone away for a while, and I was there, sitting at a table, eight years ago now. He was due to produce my upcoming album that autumn (which he did, with Jerry Boys engineering) and I was assembling material for it. The album we came up with was deliciously sparse - no double-tracking, no drums: only the essential ingredients, beautifully recorded by Jerry. But listening to these demos, they’re sparser still - even the lyrics haven’t fully congealed yet. Production serves a song up to you, but it can also distance it from you. For all its flaws, the original version is often the most intimate.