I don´t remember exactly when the song was created but I think it must be some time from mid-2000s to 2010, like many other of my songs. At least it was part of my «Red Box» demo collection project in 2012 – 2016, which aimed to create better instrumental demos of older songs that I had been collecting. When I had moved on from thinking about a Norwegian pop album called «1001 Natt», and started working on an English album called «1001 Nights», it replaced a Norwegian ballad called «Alltid ver» as song number 4 and stayed in the same order in all remaining album configurations. The song was also one of three songs in the «Bersagel Sessions» project where vocalist Elisabeth and I recorded vocals on demos as a test. This is the project that was the start of the Dreamwork Project. The other two songs in the project being «Gimme your heart» and «Hotel».
I really like «Without your love» and it´s probably one of my own personal favorites from the project. The reference track I chose for this song is the Sinead O´Connor version of «Nothing compares 2 U». To me, producer Inge Engelsvold did a fantastic job trying to approach that sound and vocalist Elisabeth sings amazingly on it. The producer gave her an assignment to try to be a 17 year old girl when singing the song, as the lyrics gives a feeling of young heartbreak. Another fun fact is that at the time of recording the project had still not evolved into a real album project and Elisabeth was at this point only supposed to sing on studio demos. However, as the project moved on, the song went from a demo to an album track without any big changes. I think that the vocalist wishes that she had known that it was a an album song when she recorded the vocals because she thinks she could have sung it even better – but to me it´s perfect the way it is and it´s hard to imagine it could have been done any better.
«Without your love» was presented to the producer in his studio at Tinfabrikken, Stavanger, on 1th November 2018. I received the first studio demo version of the song with the original demo vocals on mail 9th November before we recorded the final vocals in studio Wednesday 28th November. Second and final version of the song was received Monday 3th December 2018.
«Without your love» ended up as track 5 on the Dreamwork album.