The WSSL Demos is a collection of three studio demos recorded at Musiclab Studio at Randaberg, Stavanger, Norway, in 2011. I had the need to do something with some of the songs I had and contacted producer Kjell Westby and asked if he would be interested in helping me. My first mail was sent to him 18th September 2011 and I got a quick reply the same evening that he would love to meet me and check out what I had, and he also gave some price options depending on what I wanted to do.
We had our first meeting Friday 23th September 2011 where I presented the songs and we talked about how to proceed. I had different options, from full studio production for release to simple studio demos. I chose to go for studio demos for this project with just one keyboard player and three different demo vocalists, one for each song. The drums were programmed by the producer.
We recorded the demos in the studio in October 2011. The songs I selected for this project were:
«Why can’t you just be mine»
Was originally intended to be a Michael Jackson inspired pop ballad, and my original demo was more in that direction. However, the producer thought that the song would fit very well to be taken in the direction of a «big ballad» with a female singer with a big voice, so we decided to go with that idea. I think that the song turned out pretty well and the vocalist that we used, who wants to be anonymous, did an incredible job.
«When I see your smile»
Is the one of these three songs that turned out most similar to my original demo and how I thought the song should be like. I like the song melody very much but I don’t think that the lyrics are good enough and very «cheesy», so if this song should ever be recorded again I would definitely update the lyrics, maybe even change title and write completely new lyrics to it.
«Beautiful face»
My original plan with this song was to make it (just like many other of my songs) a Michael Jackson inspired pop song. However, when I discussed the song with the producer, I think I mentioned both MJ and Prince as references and I think that the demo became more in a Prince direction – which certainly is not negative at all. But I did have another sound in mind. The vocalist that we used on the track did an excellent job on it and I think it turned out pretty cool. But in retrospect I am missing more layers in the production and I regret now that I did not give that feedback when we worked on it. But all in all, I think that the result is pretty good.