Today was the final day of Guy Sebastian`s recording sessions for his next album `Like It Like That`.
He is working on a tight schedule. Tomorrow he is on a plane to Milwaukee to attend a friend’s wedding this weekend and then he is back in Australia next Tuesday.Undercover caught up with Guy today to hear how the new album was coming along.
“I was in the studio until 4 last night finishing a vocal for a ballad I am putting on the album,” he tells Undercover. “It is the song ‘Perfection’ that I wrote for my Mrs for the wedding and will be including it on the record”.
“There is also this other thing that I am producing, a song called ‘Undo It’. It has just been a monster task doing this while I’ve been doing my promo because I’ve got horns in and strings in, and stuff. Whenever you get a whole lot of tracks, there are 80 or 90 tracked, I had to go and edit all the horns and edit all the strings”.
“Now I have to go in the studio, finish the vocal for this ballad and then track the vocal for the other song and do a bit of a mix. Then I have to do the boring thing of exporting all of the files and putting it up on the web so it can be mixed in LA”.
Although ‘Perfection’ was written a few years back for his wedding, it was a last minute choice for the album. “I wasn’t going to put it on,” he says. “It was one of those songs that I thought I would keep private but I sang it at a show and had a bunch of people requested for me to put it on the album so I thought I may as well”.
‘Undo It’ is also a last minute choice. “It’s funny, this song was originally an acoustic pop thing and then I started producing it and it went down a Brooklyn, happy soul sort of thing. It has come up good,” he says.
There have also been some changes to the career path in the United States for Guy. He is no longer working towards a debut release Stateside featuring parts of his last album ‘The Memphis Album’ and the new record ‘Like It Like That’. “That all might be changing,” he says. “I am thinking it is going to be what I am releasing here because I am much more into the production that the record here has”.
The change of plans came about because of a change of personnel at his US label Sony Victor. “I was signed with Sony Victor but I am sort of not sure where I am standing with them right now,” he says. “They have had all of these internal changes and the dude who signed me has been fired. I am not sure if I want to stay with them so I am thinking of shopping the record to someone else. It’s not a secret”.
“When I started there was a whole record label in place in Sony Victor then Johnny, who was a big player, got the sack so it threw everything into a panic. They said “you are still signed” and I still am signed. There is a guy going in to resurrect the company. I don’t know if I want to be with that. I want to be with a company that is better set up and ready to go. Tons of people around me were getting fired. My publicist was moved on and then two days before I left the head of marketing for the whole company of Sony Victor was fired. It was like a firing squad. It’s pretty hostile over there with the recession and a tough time to release the record”.
He will decide where he takes the album next month. “I am heading back in September and will either go with Richard Story who is going to come in and save Victor but is probably likely I will go to somewhere else,” he says.
Meanwhile, Sony Australia is right behind the new single ‘Like It Like That’ and has already driven it into the charts. “I’m stoked how it has been received. It is number 4 on iTunes and going well at radio”.
‘Like It Like That’, the album, will be released in Australia on October 9.
