Gold
Looking at the lyrics of this song, anybody would think it’s about a real love interest, but Gold actually had the most bizarre inception. In February of 2018 I was working at a drive through liquor store, and a customer used the phrase “good as gold” with me after I helped him. I hadn’t heard that phrase recently, and it stuck with me and I almost immediately came up with the melody of the hook. I went home and wrote the whole song from start to finish that night, purely based on that customer interaction. I’ll never know where he is to thank him, but I love the song that he inadvertently inspired!
Gold has had a few iterations. I initially wrote it on my ukulele, but soon started working on a demo in my first proper DAW (Digital Audio Workstation) that I’d bought earlier that month – Mixcraft 8. This opened my mind to a whole new world of music production, and I got carried away creating a Chvrches-inspired, synth heavy pop song. I had no idea how to produce anything back then, and while I had some good ideas, my execution was pretty poor:
Here’s a clip of the original demo for Gold
When I started working on the album with Nick Mason, my producer, he was able to see my vision of what the song could be, and executed it to perfection. He created the gorgeous synth leads from scratch, and crafted the upbeat 80s synth-pop vibe you hear now. Gold is somewhat of a stylistic outlier on the album, being one of two more “electronic” songs, but I love the diversity that it brings to the album, and the Pearl Lee sound.