When you live with somebody you love in a one-bedroom Harlem apartment, privacy becomes a thing you had. You learn not to miss it, as the two of you go about your days giving each other your Hulu passwords and admitting that you ate the rest of the gelato but promising to buy more. That said, if you find yourself possessed of a secret, it is not easy to hold it back.
I wrote this song, about how much I love my life with her, during the course of many walks back and forth between our apartment and Fairway. For some reason, every time I made the commute, this song would come back into my head. It took me a good long time to convince myself it was good, and to hunker down and learn to play it properly (the first time I played it through was the day before I took it into the studio), and I had to do it all outside of home because I wanted it to be a surprise for Ana. The bridge, and the idea to modulate, happened one day on the way to work.
I didn’t plan to release the single on our two-year anniversary, like it turns out I am doing, until I realized that we had come so far with the track that it was crazy not to push a little and send it out the door. It only made sense, once I was doing that, to make a lyric video. After googling lyric videos and confirming that we as a society still do them, it occurred to me that they have great potential to be more than just words on a screen, so I mined Banksy’s recent NYC residency for source artwork and found that many of the results I got fit perfectly with the themes in my song!
So please enjoy “Just As Long As You Want Me To.” I made it for all of you to enjoy, even though it’s Ana’s present, and so it would defeat my whole purpose if you didn’t. I’ll be adding some links as they become available. Enjoy!
Love,
Paul
(P.S. If you donated to my Rockethub, please note that you will be getting an email from me with a download code today!)